8

Reynolds hovered over the table, dispensing Parma ham onto porcelain plates heaped with salad.

‘Thank you, Reynolds.’

‘Ma’am.’

Karla Lindars, a strikingly attractive fifty-year-old, ultra-smart in a purple corduroy miniskirt and matching jacket, glanced admiringly at Ashe. ‘You know, Toby, I found your exposition fascinating, but I want to know what the mythology is that inspires all this hatred and mayhem. We all know that politics is about manipulating dreams.’

Ashe sipped his glass of fine Florentine white and pondered the question. ‘The anti-Masonic myth is a contributory factor, Karla. But I wouldn’t say it was a mainspring of terrorist motivation.’

‘But if you’re going to attack a Masonic Lodge specifically, it must be pretty important.’

Ashe thought for a few seconds. ‘Yes, it’s funny, isn’t it?’

Marston caught the edge of the conversation. ‘I don’t find it at all amusing, Ashe.’

‘Not funny in that way, Commodore. But sort of uncanny the way these things can come together.’

‘What blasted things, Ashe?’

‘Esoteric things. Let me explain. I was asked to examine a CD not so long ago. The CD was produced at a studio in London and sold from a market-stall in Brixton. Professionally produced, using English and Asian actors’ voices – very much in the style of a slick documentary. The cover announced it contained a sensational revelation of how the Knights Templar secretly control world events.’

‘Come on, Ashe! We’ve all heard this story over and over. Balls, all of it.’

‘I know, Commodore. But this wasn’t just Holy Blood, Holy Grail kind of stuff. It was fundamentalist propaganda. Sophisticated. Even sinister.’

‘Sinister?’

‘A sinister conspiracy, Commodore, is what it describes. And it starts, according to the propaganda on the CD, with the Crusades. According to the myth, the Crusades were not an attempt to liberate Christian holy sites following the Turkish capture of Jerusalem in 1099.’

‘Really, Ashe? What were they then?’

‘The Crusades were a deliberate attempt to destroy Islam itself.’

‘Preposterous!’

‘Yes, Commodore. You know that – but people hearing this story for the first time are probably hearing about the Crusades for the first time as well. According to the myth, or propaganda, the Crusaders failed, ultimately, because God was against them. It’s a small step then to say that the Crusaders were… against God.’

‘I presume then we can extend the Almighty’s disapproval to any troops on Islamic territory.’

‘Precisely, Brigadier. That’s the inference. As the narrative goes, the Pope’s own shock troops – the Knights Templar – were kicked out of Jerusalem in 1187. By 1312, even the Pope was wondering whether or not the Templars had been corrupted and so earned God’s condemnation – hence their military failure. The Templars’ secrecy didn’t help matters. The question was, and remains: had the Templars succumbed to Satan?’

The Brigadier interjected. ‘I get it. In case Westerners say that all that “Great Satan” stuff about the US is just Iranian propaganda, the militants can argue it was the Christian Church’s own view that the Crusaders were dupes of the Devil.’

‘Spot on, Brigadier. As we all know, the Templars were condemned, despite quite justified claims of innocence. As the story goes, in spite of being tried for diabolical practices, some Templars escaped to the Western Isles of Scotland. Driven underground, the Templars – according to the story – metamorphosed into yet another secret organisation.’

‘I wonder who?’ asked the archdeacon, with a twinkle.

‘The bloody Freemasons, of course,’ chipped in the Commodore.

‘Not the Priory of Sion? We’ve all read The Da Vinci Code, you know!’

‘Not quite, Karla! Another trump card up the militants’ sleeve is that if anyone says this is just propaganda, they can point to the fact that the story of Freemasonry’s Templar origins has been repeated by Freemasons themselves for over two hundred years.’

‘But all that’s just a load of old myth, isn’t it, Toby?’

‘Myths can be very powerful, Archdeacon. This one certainly is.’

‘Dr Ashe is right, Commander,’ agreed Brigadier Radclyffe. ‘You hear this kind of thing all over the Middle East: medieval Templars fought the armies of Islam, therefore Templars were evil. Templars became Freemasons, therefore Freemasons must be evil. Modern armies are also fighting Muslims, therefore those armies must be led by Templar-Freemasons, ancient masters of secret evil. The response? Jihad. The enemy has to be an enemy of God to inspire the real jihad.’

Ashe took up from Radclyffe. ‘And it gets worse. The fact that the Templars secured the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as their headquarters immediately connects them to the Palestinian–Jewish situation. A big part of the myth is the idea that the Freemasons are somehow in league with Jewish interests to establish a Masonic–Jewish temple in Jerusalem: a temple, they say, to the “false God”.’

Karla Lindars shook her head. ‘This is all very sad. Is there any truth at all in this myth, Toby?’

‘None. But there’s a problem. Freemasons have been constructing myths around their rituals for centuries. Harmless, really. They call them “traditional histories”. They were meant as moral teaching lessons, not political history. They use myths and legends. Masonic descriptions of Templars, for example, emphasise chivalry, courtesy and the idea of life as a spiritual pilgrimage, not fighting specific religious conflicts! Religious conflict is something Freemasonry is expressly against. It’s a nasty trick of history that the Middle Eastern situation has become so hot at precisely the same time that old Masonic myths have found their way into post-sixties sensationalist books.’

‘As you say, Toby, a nasty trick.’

‘I’m sorry, Karla, but history is often a legacy we’d prefer not to inherit. Take our own role in the redrawing of the Middle Eastern political map.’

‘What do you mean, Toby?’

‘After the withdrawal of the Turks from the region in 1918, the dividing up of newly liberated lands between British and French influence was, for many Arabs, a betrayal.’

‘And the myth explains how this so-called betrayal came about?’

‘Right, Archdeacon. The alleged betrayal of Arab hopes at the end of the First World War is, according to the myth, simply a prelude to the re-establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Israel’s existence is then seen as the fulfilment of a pre-arranged, anti-Islamic plan going back centuries.’

‘What bloody plan?’

‘Come on, Adrian! If I follow Dr Ashe correctly, the myth suggests a secret plan that required the destruction of the Ottoman Caliphate in Istanbul.’

Ashe was impressed. ‘Thank you, Brigadier. The alleged plan required the break-up of the Turkish Empire so that the Jews could take back their ancient homeland without serious opposition.’

Ashe paused for effect. ‘In short, the Devil runs Freemasonry and the Jews used Freemasonry for their own purposes. Britain, France and America have been manipulated by Satanic powers. Only militant Islam – al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah – stand up against Zionists and the US. The US, Israel, and also, apparently, the UK, allegedly want to neutralise Islam and conquer the world by supplanting Allah’s rule with that of the Dajjal.’

‘Dajjal?’

‘The Islamic false Messiah or anti-God, Commodore. Militants learn that there’s a secret god in Masonry, and this secret god is Shaitan, Arabic for Satan.’

The table went quiet.

‘All right, Ashe. We get the idea. Fundamentalist militants bombed the Masonic Lodge in Istanbul because by doing so they thought they were striking a blow against Turkey’s involvement with the Unites States’ pro-Israeli foreign policy.’

‘That’s basically it, I think, Commodore. The myth provides motivation and, in this case, the target. And the justification for the cause is secret, hidden.’

‘And the cause provides the terrorist with the satisfying feeling of doing it all for God.’

‘Yes, Commodore.’

Marston put his hands together beneath his nose, as if in prayer. He then arched his knuckles and, somewhat out of character, bit his lip before speaking. In spite of himself, he had been gripped by Ashe’s exposition. He addressed the committee. ‘Well, we have our Oddball myth. But do we have our actual Oddball?’

Ashe withdrew an old file from his briefcase, its cover marked in red: ‘RESTRICTED’.