Blake set down Wren’s letter onto the kitchen table. The words ‘Great Pyramid’ seemed to glow from the page. There had been pyramids drawn on the wall of Henry Ross’s secret temple at Canonbury Tower. He had also seen pyramids and Egyptian motifs in abundance at the United Grand Lodge of England. His hand was trembling slightly and his lips were unnaturally dry. The extraordinary revelations of the last few hours, Mary’s screaming about the coming ‘Reckoning’, Constantine colluding with ‘the Commissioner’, and now Wren’s shocking handwritten letter had knocked Blake clean off his axis and his brain was struggling to keep up.
Through his previous research work at the Royal Society archives, Blake knew that whether Christopher Wren had been a Freemason was a topic of much academic debate. The first Grand Lodge meeting of English Freemasonry had indeed taken place at the Goose and Gridiron Tavern in 1717, just metres away from St Paul’s Cathedral. Blake had often walked past the blue plaque commemorating the historic meeting at the pub in Paternoster Square three hundred years before. He had thought it unlikely that the genius architect would have been unaware of a new organisation within the ranks of his Master Masons. Blake now had evidence that Wren, far from being just aware of the proceedings, had actually been the founder of the secret society.
According to the letter, something of great importance called the Logos had been carved into a stone and its secrets passed down the millennia. Was this the tantalising fact that had fuelled so many conspiracy theories about the shadowy organisation? A direct link had often been suspected between the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, and now Blake understood what it could be—a vow to protect the Logos Stone. This was an extraordinary discovery. Blake appraised the ancient book and Wren’s letter lying on his kitchen table: two incredible artefacts kept secret from the world by the mysterious Freemasons.
Blake fished in his pocket for his phone. He took a picture of Wren’s letter, pushed back from the table and instinctively called DCI Milton. The sound of the ring tone pulsed loudly in his ear. He waited for Milton to pick up. A flash of uncertainty streaked through his mind. Blake quickly killed the call.
The objects were astonishing and undoubtedly worthy of intense academic research; however, Blake’s action to acquire them was technically theft, and precisely theft committed whilst carrying out police business. To make matters worse, he now believed that DCI Milton’s boss, the newly promoted Commissioner Peter Lewis, was involved in a cover-up of some sort involving the Freemasons. He swallowed and his throat clicked. A moment of hot-headedness had resulted in some serious implications.
Informing Milton of his theft would put his old friend in an impossibly difficult position. The situation could quickly spin out of control, and Blake could find himself sharing a prison cell with a felon whom he had previously helped to put away: a law enforcer’s worst nightmare. He eyed the picture of Sarah on the kitchen dresser opposite and felt a lurch of panic. He was the author of his own predicament and suddenly he felt like a man marooned on a desert island.
He sat back in his chair and contemplated his next move. After a couple of seconds, he picked up his phone, thumbed its screen and waited for the line to connect. There was a click and then a voice.
‘Vincent, my dear boy, it’s been a while.’