Lost City of the Templars Read online

  Perhaps thirty or forty feet down, the stairway opened up and to left and right in a long curve were actual cobbled streets and rows of buildings, some made of stone and others of sand-colored brick. It was a city buried beneath the surface of the sheer mountain, the streets thronged with people—men, women and children going about their business, all dressed in simple skirtlike tunics.

  “This is magnificent,” said Rafi. “A modern Machu Picchu. A city underground cut off from the rest of the world.”

  “But how is it possible?” Holliday asked. “How do you keep an economy running, feed these people, get them medical help?”

  “We are not as cut off from the world of men as you might think. And we have resources,” said the so-called king.

  “What you have are mysteries,” said Holliday. “How did you get here? Why did you come in the first place?”

  “All your questions will soon be answered,” said Hiram.

  They went down another five levels until, by Holliday’s rough estimation, they were close to the level of the jungle at the base of the strange mountain. All the way down, both the levels of the hidden city and the staircase joining them all were lit by the strangely filtered natural light. By Holliday’s estimation, there was room enough for more than a thousand people in the city, and if those he had already seen were any indication, they were neither Middle Eastern nor any other race he had ever seen.

  Their skin was a beautiful golden brown, like heavily creamed coffee, and their hair was mostly straight and as black as the local indios’. Their features were fine, neither Caucasian, Negroid nor anything else. Hiram’s eyes were bright blue, which seemed strange for what would now be a Palestinian, but Holliday had seen blue, brown and black on the way down to the last level.

  The bottom level of the city seemed much brighter than the others, and stepping out onto a broad cobbled street, Holliday soon saw why. Hiram led him down the street to a wide set of steps that ran down into what looked like a massive circular gorge at least a mile across, its top opening up to the blue sky high overhead.

  Looking outward, he could see across to the rock wall on the far side, and in the interior there was the incredible vision of what could only be described as a jungle as it might have existed a million years or more ago. Gigantic ferns battled strange flowering trees for light, and cascading foliage of plants and vines with tentacle-like leaves flowed down the rock walls.

  Holliday saw what looked like something half reptile and half bird in a fluttering flight from tree to tree, and he saw what looked like a miniature dinosaur racing across his line of vision, head high, running upright, his short front legs ending in razor claws. Out of the corner of his eye, Holliday saw something glittering and turning. He saw that it was an emerald the size of a baby’s fist still in the rock matrix of the wall.

  A man stepped out of the jungle to their left. He looked to be in his early to midthirties and was dressed like a model for Tilley Endurables complete with heavy mountaineering boots. He was wearing modern-looking aviator-style sunglasses and had a camera slung around his neck.

  “That’s a Hasselblad H4D-60,” whispered Peggy. “Forty grand on the hoof. Who the hell is this guy?”

  “Hello there,” he said, the accent definitely British. “My name’s Harrison Fawcett. Who might you people be?”

  17

  Fawcett and Hiram led the others back inside the city. Directly in front of them was a large building carved out of the rock, three stories high, its facade studded with high windows set with wooden shutters. A set of steps led into the cool interior of the building, where Hiram showed them into a large room on the left side of the broad entranceway, its surface set with a mosaic of colored stones in a design of three large sailing ships around a dark blue circular sea. In the corners of the immense mosaic, dolphins arched into the air and giant serpents twisted around the perimeter framing the whole design.

  The room Hiram led them to was high ceilinged, the walls were covered in pale brick and the furniture—tables, chairs and a single large cupboard—was all wood and had brightly colored simple Mediterranean lines. The chair seats and backs were pale rattan or split bamboo and the larger seats, looking almost Egyptian in their designs, were slung with some white, closely woven cloth. There were mats and rugs of the same white fabric littered across the floor. Hiram indicated that they should sit in the larger chairs, which they did.

  “Harrison Fawcett,” said Holliday. “Let me guess, Jack’s grandson?”

  “That’s right,” said the younger man. “You still haven’t told me your names.”

  “My name is John Holliday, the young lady is my cousin Peggy, the man with the curly hair is Rafi, her husband, and this is Eddie, my good friend from Cuba.”

  “I see one of the Old Ones has come with you up the Devil’s Throat,” said Hiram. “No doubt he will find some of his friends who have come before him.” Seated in the large chair, his head high and his posture straight as a statue’s, he certainly did look very kinglike.

  “Old Ones?”

  “In the time of the first Hiram they were called magi. Harrison tells me the English word is shaman. Those with the strength sometimes come here to die. We care for them until they do.”

  “His name is Nenderu,” said Holliday. “His grandson remained behind.”

  “It’s taboo for any young warriors to climb here before their time,” said Fawcett.

  “I have a thousand questions,” said Rafi eagerly. “We all do, I think. Why the Phoenicians? How did they get here and why? And how does Percy Fawcett wind up with a great-grandson living in the Brazilian rain forest?”

  “All your questions will be answered,” Hiram said. “But first we must eat.”

  The food was brought into the room and laid out on the table by two men and a woman a little younger than Harrison Fawcett. Holliday assumed by their uniform-like white tunics that they were servants and wondered if the old Phoenician tradition of slavery was still carried on here.

  There were several courses: an enormous fish that looked like a gigantic trout, some sort of roasted fowl and slabs of succulent white meat crusted with some sort of crushed and roasted nut and a dessert of mixed fruits and dripping squares of honeycomb.

  Fawcett described the dinner laid out before them, all of which turned out to be excellent. “The big fish is called a taimen, a prehistoric version of the trout and the largest salmonid ever discovered, the bird is Brazilian shamo—something like the guinea fowl, only much larger—and the white meat is smoked tapir.”

  Surprisingly at the end of the meal, they were served rich aromatic coffee in high-sided hand-sized bowls. “Coffee grows all over the summit,” explained Fawcett.

  “Okay,” said Holliday. “Percy Fawcett and your grandfather Jack were supposed to be a thousand miles south of here when they vanished, never to be heard from again except for various sightings for more than ten years after they vanished. What really happened?”

  Fawcett smiled and sipped his coffee, gathering his thoughts. “From what I can gather from my grandfather’s stories, Percy had heard stories about this place from his previous expeditions and he believed them. On his final expedition his whole intention was to hide his true destination from everyone except his backers.”

  “The White Gloves,” said Holliday.

  “You’ve done your research, haven’t you? Yes, the White Gloves, really what remained of the Order of Templars. On his previous expedition Percy had come back with some large gems from the Xingu area as well as a number of Phoenician gold coins.”

  “That was enough to convince this White Glove organization?”

  “According to my grandfather they had their own sources of information. He just provided the concrete proof.”

  “You spoke as if you knew your grandfather well. How old was he when he died?”

  “He lived here for many years. He was a hundred and nine when he died.”

  “Amazing,” said Rafi.

  “Not
so amazing.” Fawcett shrugged. “I’m fifty-two, for instance, and Hiram is well into his eighties. It seems that living here has a beneficial effect on one’s health.” He shrugged again. “No one is really sure, but I think it’s the concentrated oxygen levels down here on the bottom of the mountain.”

  “The giant dragonfly we found in Raleigh Miller’s box,” said Peggy.

  “The dragonfly he stole, not to mention Percy’s notebooks,” said Fawcett. “They found the dragonfly dead a few miles away from the mountain. Percy mounted it and that night Raleigh disappeared along with the notebooks.”

  “And that’s the end of the story?” Holliday asked.

  “For Percy it was. He’d contracted some sort of infection along the way, and no matter what, they couldn’t cure him here. Somehow from what my grandfather told me he was just as happy to die here. He saw the great wealth this wonderful place represents and he knew the Glove would only destroy it to enrich themselves. The people here would not have survived. He’s buried on the summit, facing the sunrise, which was his dying wish.”

  “How do you figure in all of this?”

  “Jack, my grandfather, married one of the local women. They had a child. He was named Percy, in honor of his grandfather. His namesake had been a great believer in education, so when my father was eighteen Grandfather Jack took him up the Essequibo River to Georgetown, where he sold a handful of gems for cash and held back a bag of even finer stones for his son’s use abroad.

  “He bought young Percy a fake American passport and put him on a freighter for the United States. This was shortly after the end of the war. He wrote the entrance examinations at Harvard University and ten years later emerged as a medical doctor, paying his tuition and expenses using the second bag of stones.

  “Dr. ‘Smith’ returned here with his knowledge and an assortment of useful medical supplies. That was in 1957. I made my own trip in 1976, to Cambridge this time, using a counterfeit British passport. Eight years later I had an official passport and degrees in paleontology and prehistoric botany. I’ve been cataloging the flora and fauna here ever since and I’ve barely begun.”

  “Do you ever leave the mountain?” Holliday asked.

  “Regularly. The same route my father and grandfather made. From Georgetown I go either to America or the United Kingdom for supplies and books, then bring them back to Georgetown. I keep a boat there and hide it carefully at the end of the journey. I have a prearranged return date and my people meet me at the boat and help me bring the supplies back to the mountain. Soon I will be sending the first of my sons on his own journey.”

  “You have children?” Rafi asked.

  “Three sons and two daughters. Each will make the journey into the outside world when they feel they’re ready. For all King Hiram’s royal stature, he deals far more in ecclesiastical matters than those of day-to-day living. The mountain is essentially a democracy, each level electing two members to sit on what they call the Great Council.”

  “What’s your role in all of this?” Holliday asked.

  Fawcett smiled and shrugged. “Adviser, teacher of children, librarian, a botanist who tells the people here which creatures and plants in the canyon are beneficial and which are dangerous. A medical doctor or what passes for it with the help of my father’s textbooks, a midwife when it is required. A jack-of-all-trades and a master of a few.” Fawcett’s expression darkened. “I’m also a man who keeps his ear to the ground for any information about activities that might harm this place.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as I am aware that what is nothing more than the modern-day version of the Glove is building a dam nearby. It purports to be for power generation, but its real intent is to dry out the downriver plain to expose the ancient alluvial river courses that ran through the valley. They’ve already got a test mine for diamonds, and when the dam is complete it will have accomplished two things—destroyed the hunting and fishing habitats of the river people and provided a trail back to the source of the gems—this mountain.”

  “You’re talking about White Horse,” Holliday said.

  “And the present Lord Grayle, the direct descendant of the man who underwrote Percy Fawcett’s last expedition. They knew something then, and they know more about this place now. I can’t allow them to destroy what this place has become and what it once was.”

  “Cryptic,” Holliday said. “But how are you going to stop them?”

  “There’s a band of warriors on the way there now.”

  “What do you propose doing?”

  “I’m going to help them blow the dam to hell and gone.”

  18

  “May I ask a question?” Rafi said, looking thoughtful.

  “Of course,” said Fawcett.

  “You just said, ‘What this place has become and what it once was.’ What did you mean by that?”

  “I think that question is for His Majesty to answer,” said Harrison Fawcett, turning toward the king.

  King Hiram nodded. “The answer to that lies far in the past, when Solomon was king of Jerusalem. Most people credit him with the building of the Holy Temple there, but Solomon was no architect and in fact it was the Phoenicians of Tyre who designed and constructed it. Which means they also knew its secrets.”

  “Where the treasure chambers were for the holy relics and what those treasures were,” said Rafi.

  “And other secrets,” said Hiram. “When the Jews were exiled to Babylon well after Solomon’s time, the treasures of the temple were taken out through a passageway known only to a few. It was hidden in Tyre until the time of Herod and was then returned to the Second Temple, once again built by the architects of Tyre.

  “There was secret news before the destruction by the Romans of the Second Temple almost forty years after the death of Christ. The temple had hidden those most holy relics for almost seven hundred years, and once again they were secretly removed to Tyre, where the Romans could not find them in their attempts to wipe out Christianity. Matthew, the tautological wonder, fearing for the great relics and treasure, decreed that four ships be built of Roman design, each sixty meters long, and that the relics be divided between them. Their only instructions were to sail ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’ and despite storms and the fury of the raging seas be taken to a place of safety far beyond the Romans’ grasp.”

  “The Pillars of Hercules,” said Holliday. “Gibraltar.”

  “Eight miles wide,” said Rafi. “The Phoenicians were the first to chart them almost three thousand years ago.”

  “And much farther. The ships sent out by the disciple Matthew had the benefit of secret charts of most of the southern Atlantic, Spain, even the African coast. When they sailed into the mouth of the Amazon, they knew exactly what they were doing,” said King Hiram.

  “Is that possible?” Peggy asked.

  “It’s easily within the realm of possibility,” said Rafi. “In 440 B.C. King Hanno of Carthage, a Phoenician protectorate, sailed a fleet as far as Sierra Leone; that much is history. From the coast of Sierra Leone to Brazil is less than two thousand miles, an easy jump for ships weighing more than seventy-five tons. There’s even evidence of Phoenician copper mining in Brazil and Mexico. The whole story could easily be true.”

  “I can assure you that it is,” said Hiram.

  “And the Templar ships?”

  “According to my forefathers, the Templars were nothing more than brigand knights without a lord, so they created a religious order to give cause to their appearance in the place the Christians call the Holy Land. They were thieves, blackmailers and looters above all else.” The king smiled. “According to Harrison, their descendants have changed very little over the centuries.”

  “But why did they come here?” Holliday asked. “The ship discovered by Grayle’s Excalibur Marine Exploration Corporation, the Santo Antonio de Padua, had been full of gold coins.”

  “Tyre was one of the last Crusader strongholds in what was then called the Kingdom of Jerus
alem. Before it was overrun by the Mamluks in 1291, the Templars looted the city, including its archives. They found records of the voyage ordered by Matthew the Apostle and copies of the maps provided to them. Returning to France, they gave the information to their leader, Grand Master Jacques de Molay. A number of years later Molay began to see the handwriting on the wall and called in a debt from the Republic of Genoa, which was supposed to finance two ships to follow in the Phoenician expedition from hundreds of years before. They never made it, presumably ambushed by Philip of France’s henchmen. Then in the latter years of the fifteenth century, three ships appeared.”

  “Financed by Pedro de Menezes Portocarrero, a high-ranking naval officer and grand master of the Real Ordem dos Cavaleiros de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo.”

  “The Templars,” said Peggy. “We’ve heard this bit before.”

  “They came with one ship full of gold to bribe us and two ships full of soldiers to make war with us if we refused the bribe. We refused the bribe and they tried to conquer us. It was a rout. The Devil’s Throat was the only way to reach us, and they hadn’t counted on our friends in the forest. It took less than a week despite their superior weapons. Of the five hundred men who attacked, four hundred and twenty died. The rest surrendered and those men’s descendants still live here to this day. In two thousand years in the place, it was the only time we have ever been attacked.”

  “I’m still not sure why they came here in the first place,” said Peggy.

  “Because Admiral Portocarrero thought he could retrieve the holy relics and make the Templars untouchable by his enemies—popes, kings, you name it,” said Holliday.

  “The same thing my grandfather’s backers wanted in the ’twenties,” said Harrison Fawcett. “And the same thing Grayle wants today—power.” Fawcett paused for a moment, a dark look flashing across his features for an instant. “There’s not much in the way of Grayle’s intentions, I’m afraid, but there is one fly in his particular jar of ointment.”

  “Which is?” Holliday asked.

  “The pope,” answered Fawcett. “Restoring the lost relics of the Old Testament would give them enough publicity to take the sting out of the events in their recent past. Attendance in churches would skyrocket. Tours of the relics all over the world would make millions and could perhaps even ease the pressures now being felt by the Vatican Bank. They might even finally get you and their friends out of their hair—my sources tell me you’ve been like the proverbial thorn in their sides for quite some time.”