30

Rue Muller, eighteenth arrondissement, Paris

Present day

The last rays of the sun struck the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen under its protective glass. At the top of the poster, two bare-breasted women with wings were holding up a pyramid with an eye in the center.

Antoine Marcas contemplated the poster as he sat in his threadbare armchair. Someday he’d fix up his apartment, but he had more important things on his mind at the moment. He had taken a taxi back to his place a few hours earlier. He hadn’t wanted to bother any of his colleagues or brothers. Now he was waiting for the grand secretary.

Marcas felt a tug in his heart every time he looked at the poster. For more than two hundred years, it had symbolized an ideal that men had fought and died for.

He had a weakness for the 1793 version, in which the writers, one of them a brother, had added several articles, including the last one, the thirty-fifth.

“When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

The article was a bit too subversive for some, and it had been removed from official versions that came later.

Marcas knew that his predilection for this document was a bit old-fashioned in a modern-day France, where attachment to founding principles verged on being outmoded. He had tried to teach his son, Pierre, about the deeper meaning of the revolutionary declaration, but he had given up. The boy was clearly bored. How could his antique document and its principles compete with plasma screens and game consoles? Marcas sighed.

Who still worried about human rights in this day and age? Well, at least he did. He had made it a habit to read and reread the articles the way other people were motivated to read the Scriptures day in and day out. He had even stopped once at the Concorde Metro station under the square where Louis XVI was executed. He had spent a quarter of an hour going over the entire text, which was written on the station’s tiled walls. Commuters had stared at him. He didn’t care. If only more people took the time.

He poured a second glass of orange juice and returned to the subject foremost on his mind.

He couldn’t understand why the killer had left him alive. How was he going to find him? He’d been obsessing over this since leaving the hospital. He hadn’t had a chance to check in with Hodecourt, who was still officially in charge, so he didn’t know if his colleague had come up with anything. But Marcas did have one clue: the man’s supposed vengeance degree.

In France, as elsewhere, the majority of Freemasons stopped with the degree of master. But a minority progressed over the years, or an entire lifetime, through higher degrees that largely focused on Masonic symbols. Many of these Masons eagerly collected medallions with strange names, such as Grand Elect, Knight Rose Croix, and Prince of the Tabernacle. The names made Marcas smile, but he respected the brothers who undertook this particular path. Those he’d met had always impressed him with their knowledge.

He headed to the library and swore. He had lent out his copy of the Dictionnaire thématique illustré de la franc-maçonnerie by Jean Lhomme, Edouard Maisondieu, and Jacob Tomaso.

He took out his cell phone and called the man who could help him: Pragman, a Belgian brother who had a Masonic blog. It was a mine of information.

Pragman answered on the third ring. “How are you, brother?”

“Fine. I need your help. Would you happen to have the thematic dictionary on hand?”

“Of course.”

“Can you look up the higher degrees for me?”

The brother in Brussels quickly scanned the text until he found what Marcas was looking for. Each major Masonic jurisdiction worked in one of three rites: the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Rectified Scottish Rite, or the French Rite. Each had a hierarchy of degrees that every Mason, in theory, could progress through.

“Here it says that in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the ninth degree, called the Elu, or Elected Knight, is a vengeance degree—vengeance for Hiram’s death,” Pragman said.

Hiram was Freemasonry’s legendary founder and, it was said, the architect of King Solomon’s temple.

“The French Rite has four high degrees called orders. The first-order degree, master elect, is a vengeance degree, close to that of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The focus of this degree is the pursuit of Master Hiram’s assassins in the name of justice. Both Masons and their detractors have worried about how justice is rendered in the vengeance degrees.”

“Is that all?”

“The authors go on to say that stabbing someone in the heart, as guilty as the person may be, is barbaric and that acting it out in a Masonic ceremony—which is what ninth-degree candidates do—is perhaps inconsistent with the teachings of Freemasonry. Does that help?”

“Yes and no.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the two murders in Paris, would it? The news has gone viral.”

“I can’t tell you much more, except to say that the bastard claims he’s a high-degree Mason. But I’ve got to go now. Give me a call the next time you’re in Paris. And thanks.”

“Any time, Antoine.”

The doorbell rang just as Marcas hung up.

So, during the passage to that degree, the initiate had to symbolically reenact a knifing. Was it possible that a brother had taken the ritual too much to heart? But why murder two innocent people?