Truthseekers Read online

  Looking at his second with a slyness and cunning of years of warfare St Clar said: “I don’t trust him. How many have gone? There seems few here yet we are all sitting down like lame ducks.”

  De Odes’ senses were awakened to his old friend’s knowing.

  “Over a dozen of them… they…”

  De Odes swallowed his soup, not noticing the burn as it cascaded down his face. Blood ran from his arm. He heard the arrow but felt it at the same time. There was a barrage of arrows from the trees. St Clar had dragged him down all in one motion, which possibly saved his life. Around him De Odes could see women and men being cut down as they sat, sharing some laughter just moments before.

  Then a mighty roar like a lion came from the trees and ten men burst forth with the leader Perceel racing for St Clar.

  “Take Chancery… and go, old friend,” yelled St Clar rolling into a full standing position as Perceel was almost on him. Perceel avoided De Odes and sent a swift blow with his sword at St Clar who had picked up a log as defence. Men were being cut down everywhere, women too. Some ran for the woods and those that could find a weapon picked it up and rushed at the intruders. Yet they weren’t intruders. They were a group of eighteen-strong knights under the leadership of Perceel, a dark one, obviously promised riches and lied to about what was going on. These people had been Templars, and their aides, friends and shipmates on the journey so far. Confused, most did not know why they were in this strange land. They had been told it was Baron Dion Chancery’s fault and he had paid them for ridiculous crusade. They had been told that St Clar had kept the money and along with everyone else had planned to kill them and take their share. The story had worked as these men fought three to one against their brothers in arms.

  Chancery himself had been lying on the ground and luckily not initially seen. Now two knights had almost broken through the detail protecting him and as De Odes arrived at the scene, having reclaimed his sword from where it sat next to him on the log, he dismembered one of the attackers even though his arm streamed blood from the arrow. The hopeless knight lay on the ground writhing, missing the bottom half of his leg from an almighty blow.

  St Clar had his work cut out. Perceel was in full flight and he was good. Luckily St Clar managed to jab Perceel directly in the face with the log he had which was a good foot or so longer than Perceel’s sword. His nose broken, streaming blood and eyes watering Perceel had no option than to step back and wipe himself, just enough time for St Clar to bark one more order and grab his sword.

  “Flee my friend, take the detail and go now.”

  The detail around Chancery was just five knights but with just one direct attacker now that individual turned and took flight, only to be cut down immediately by another knight coming to the aide of the detail.

  “We must go…now!” yelled De Odes and turned and whisked a frightened baron and a few knights of the detail into the forest. They knew where there was a boat and they would head for that.

  Now for the first time able to take stock of the situation St Clar could not believe his eyes. Some of the women had run away; most of his knights and their aides were dead. The attackers were now failing and down to just four men. These men were fighting hard but were to eventually overcome by the fifteen or so knights that were standing.

  Perceel had recovered. He was a huge strong man of over six foot with forearms like tree trunks, and St Clar knew he had an adversary that was fuelled by the hatred within the dark ones, one who had waited all this time to show his true colours and now that he was losing, one who would stop at nothing to achieve his goal. There was only one way to kill such a man.

  St Clar ran at Perceel with everything he had. Perceel was not expecting that. He had figured that St Clar had softened with age and at ten years younger, five inches taller and much stronger, that St Clar would try and fight him from a distance. Getting this close meant Perceel could not swipe his sword, and before he knew it St Clar was on him. St Clar literally held the struggling Perceel in what would always be a futile hold but before the inevitable shake St Clar reached the neck of his foe and bit ferociously, freeing his hands he reached up and shoved them deep into the eyes of Perceel and took his sight. In a scream of anguish Perceel let go, stumbled and dropped to his knees his throat and eyes gone in one grotesque motion. His screams filled the void and his dark red blood found a natural channel into the hard ground.

  St Clar took his sword and drove it deep into the man’s sternum and it became quiet. On his own knees now he turned to see the carnage of the fight. Perceel was dead, and the last of the traitors was being dealt with by one of the surviving knights. The scene was a battlefield. St Clar went to stand but could not. Something was wrong. He looked down and saw for the first time a pool of blood beneath his own torso. As he had reached up for the eyes of his foe, the razor sharp edge of Perceel’s sword had lifted up with Perceel’s self-protection under the arm of St Clar. He had not felt it, yet a deep gash was gushing blood.

  His knights surrounded him and carried him to one of the makeshift shelters. He felt himself getting lighter. A tunnel was forming. He lost track of time… he saw faces and ghost like concerns. He struggled to make out words. He did not know if it had been a few minutes, an hour or longer. A woman bathed his brow and his wound. Just as his energy was draining he saw a familiar face… De Odes.

  “We have him, the baron, my lord… they are gone but we are massively depleted. I was in a boat when I heard it was over and you…” He stopped and held St Clar with genuine concern. “I heard about you.”

  St Clar could hear the tremor in his friend’s voice. Opening his mouth to speak he started and at first the words did not come out, then he finally said:

  “Take him… take him far from here. Leave this place – leave some here and go, just you and a few… hide him…but he must breed… you must have him breed.”

  “I will, my lord,” stuttered De Odes. “I will do your will… I know what it takes. I will not fail.”

  St Clar thought he should say more, but there was nothing more to say. De Odes knew what needed doing. The fog was coming. A tunnel appeared for St Clar. There was a warm light at the other end. He decided to go. It was so cold where he was. He closed his eyes.

  Seven years later his brother William found out about his heroism.

  6

  Rocko Rizotto stepped off the plane onto the hot sticky tarmac of Siem Reap airport. Although the flight was only two hours long he almost preferred commercial flights to the small but serviceable Embraer Legacy 650 jet that David had talked him into leasing. The truth was their businesses had been very successful by all accounts, that success showed itself in cash flow, and that cash flow allowed things, like a three-year lease on a small private aircraft that most people never had the luxury of affording. Rocko wasn’t so much into luxuries. The hostess was staff, so it was hands off and the toilet was such an enclosed space he seemed to bounce off every wall. He openly shrugged his broad shoulders. At least he didn’t have a bunch of people knocking at the door as he emptied his often-disruptive stomach.

  David stepped out behind him, a little worse for wear. He had flown overnight from Greece, with a couple of awkward stops for fuel in Bahrain and Pakistan. He hadn’t slept much as he was pondering all the new information and the trail that Stacey had set up for him and on picking up Rocko in Kuala Lumpur he hadn’t done much more than a brief overview, handed his old pal a beer and then tried to grab some more shut eye.

  “I like this place, David, are we going straight to Pub Street?” said Rocko, knowing only too well that was the last place on David’s agenda.

  “No, big guy. We most certainly are not. In fact we are going to grab a tuk tuk and head straight out to Angkor Wat. Mr C is going to meet us there.”

  Mr C (real name Chereak) was an old friend of both of the men. A tourist operator and wheeler-dealer, he was one of Cambodia’s new breed of savvy entrepreneurs who knew his way around any system.

  Davi
d’s wavy hair blew straight in the breeze and his steely eyes set sight on an official just outside the door to the terminal.

  “That’s our guy, Rocko. C said he would be there.” David marched off purposefully, shook hands with the man and Rocko almost didn’t notice the US$20 note shift from David to the man. The next thing they knew they were marched right past the huge line of tourists from the commercial flights all struggling with the Visa on Arrival counter and dealing with typical Khmer bureaucracy. Just four minutes later they smiled good-bye to the immigration official as the tuk tuk puttered away from the airport.

  Rocko always loved Cambodia. The people, the smiles and probably the thirty years of beating the hell out of each other in a civil war really appealed to him. The girls were ridiculously pretty, the beer $3 for a whole beer tower and the food was a culinary surprise being based on the French occupation of ninety years coupled with that amazing Thai style of the region. Today he was hoping to sample all three loves, yet before he could do so he knew he had at least to endure David’s blabbering and find out what the creative genius Stacey had found.

  “So what’s holding me up from Pub Street?” asked Rocko as the tuk tuk puttered its way through a forested road away from the airport.

  “You know how I was on the trail of the Minoans, dude,” smiled David. Rocko nodded.

  “Well, I had Stacey pull a whole lot of research and I found something a whole lot more interesting than Bronze Age exploration. It involves the Knights Templar.”

  Rocko sparked a look out of his non lazy eye.

  “Those bad boys… now I’m interested. But they never came to Cambodia.”

  “Didn’t they?” replied David holding Rocko’s stare and then saying nothing more. He could almost see Rocko fidgeting on the seat; even the driver started to notice the back rocking a little. Rocko hated not knowing stuff and when David played these games it became a little too much for Rocko.

  “Ok, I’m in… I’m here aren’t I? What wild goose chase have you got us on now?”

  “Well it’s been a busy 48 hours since I spoke to you. I had Stacey so busy she nearly missed her flight to South Africa. She’s been wanting to go on a damn safari for two years. Blames us for constantly loading her up… So we paid her a bit of overtime in the way of an upgrade. She delivered everything I wanted in record time.”

  “Humph,” was Rocko’s response. Born on the wrong side of the tracks he hated spending unnecessary money unless it was him spending it, and he was always looking for deals. He actually spent most of his life eating things that didn’t agree with his stomach at restaurants because it was on special. “OK, OK, David… spill the beans.”

  David shared with Rocko how he had Stacey doing all sorts of research on the Minoans. He had been wanting to prove that America was discovered thousands of years before Columbus, the Vikings or any one else had found it. He told Rocko how he was sitting up late about to watch some You Tube and came across a short film of the hooked X and had become fascinated with it. Enough to reorganise everyone’s schedule and come halfway across the world on a hunch.

  David knew Rocko well enough to know he had to explain the whole thing right from the start.

  “You know Jesus right?” started David.

  “Yeah he was a gang banger I beat up at high school,” smirked Rocko. “Bullied that sucker until he crapped his pants and ran home to mummy. At least it got him kicked out of the gang.”

  “I’m talking about the son of God, dude, not some Puerto Rican kid,” David drew breath. “When Jesus died we all know he was buried in a tomb and as the story went, he rose a few days later and so on… right!”

  Rocko nodded as he watched the monkeys on the side of the road pick nits from each other’s fur. Rocko enjoyed monkeys. They had an indignation that he felt as well. Sometimes he wished he could sit with his everything showing and pick nits and flick them at tourists.

  “In the early 1980s that tomb was found. It was under an apartment building in Jerusalem. It’s called the Talpiot tomb.” Rocko was still watching the monkeys.

  “Well Rocko… inside the tomb were several ossuaries. Do you know what they are?”

  “Big birds that stick their head in the sand I suppose.” Rocko liked baiting David when he was on one of his rants.

  “Ossuaries were what the important and wealthy people were buried in during the first century in that part of the world… and in the Talpiot tomb some of these ossuaries had inscriptions, like Jesus, son of Joseph, James, brother of Jesus and most importantly Mary, wife of Jesus.”

  Rocko interrupted. “Well, we all know Jesus had a bro called James. It’s even in the Bible, yet they gloss over that one.”

  “Yes, Rocko, but clearly there’s an inscription about Mary, the wife of Jesus… that’s pretty damn unique don’t you think?”

  “David… Mary, Joseph and Jesus are pretty much as common as any names, especially back then.”

  “Yes I know. You are right, yet I read the research. Here’s the math…” Rocko always winced when David brought out ‘the math’.

  “There were only about 100 million people on Earth back then. Jerusalem was hardly Mexico City. It had about 30,000 inhabitants, about 140,000 in total over the whole first century. Take from this that only around 1% of these people were important enough or wealthy enough to get a tomb and an ossuary and that’s only 1,400 of them, and then match that with the combination of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and what are the odds?”

  “I don’t know, David, but I know you are going to tell me.” Rocko had been in these situations plenty of times before.

  “It’s not my numbers Rocko. The University of Nova Scotia did the math and it’s a 1 in 183,000 chance it’s not Jesus, but that’s not the good part.”

  Rocko forgot about friendly little monkeys and turned his full gaze to David.

  “There’s some material in Jesus’ ossuary. They have his DNA, for God’s sake.”

  “OK – that’s pretty cool,” Rocko admitted. “Even that the son of God has DNA is weird on so many levels, but why does all that matter?”

  “Ah ha … now I gotcha…” smirked David. “Now here comes the fun part…”

  David went on to explain that the symbol on the Talpiot Tomb was an upside down V representing the penis or the male. When coupled with the female vagina symbol of the V it created an X, yet the inscription on Jesus’ tomb had something unique about it. There was a hook on the X, like another V. This could only mean that Jesus and Mary were not only married. They had a daughter.

  Rocko obviously had a million questions, even the basic ones; how could David surmise all this? David didn’t wait for his reply. He kept talking.

  “There’s a bloodline, Rocko, and it’s been written about by everyone from Dan Brown to conspiracy theorists, yet there is a part they missed. It’s recorded. They have the names and now with DNA recognition, we can trace who is actually a descendant of Jesus. How freaking cool is that. What if it’s Barack Obama or Gandhi?”

  “What if it’s Hitler or Pol Pot?” chimed Rocko. “How do we know there is a list?”

  David went on to explain that in 1119 AD nine knights under the command of Hughes De Payan spent nine years digging under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Here he explained they found riches, the Ark of the Covenant, the secrets of Egypt and the most prized possession: a scroll with the names and family of Jesus and Mary. They didn’t understand what they had at that time, but when De Payan gave it to the Pope, he knew the importance of it. David then explained how Mary was taken to France after Jesus’ demise and how when she finally died, after spending time making a pilgrimage home to Jerusalem, she was buried next to her husband. He told Rocko how Mary’s was the only DNA in the tomb that was of a different family.

  David went on to say that the research Stacey turned up was that the list of family was well known from the daughter, also known as Mary, who lived in France her whole life. There were those watchers who looked after each bloodline and it was
very secure and well documented. When Constantine became the first Pope after the Council of Nicaea in 326 AD he simply got rid of the list from circulation, took all reference to it and the union of Jesus and Mary away, making Jesus divine, and creating a religion that until this day has been a large part of global control. When Innocent II reviewed the list that the Templars found with a list held by the Church passed down from Constantine, he realised the lies that had been spread for 800 years at that point

  Rocko stared at his friend. “How does Stacey find all this stuff?”

  “Well she did study in Switzerland you know and she makes a lot of friends. She has friends inside the Vatican archives and the libraries of Congress. That’s about as good a source as there is these days.”

  “OK – having those type of friends isn’t necessarily the best thing to have David… you know that, so why am I here in Cambodia?” Rocko patted his old pal on the knee. The tuk tuk motored casually past a group of children who chased all yelling ‘one dollar’ and holding postcards. Next to them a group of landmine victims were playing Khmer instruments and hoping for a tip.

  “The thing is Rocko that the system worked pretty well for many years. The Church was damn powerful, and whilst it was built on a pack of lies it had its place. People at least had something to believe in and faith shifts a lot of mountains, especially in the dark ages after the fall of Rome.”

  David went on to explain how the list of names ceased in 1136 with one final name: Alphonse of Toulouse. He was a known friend of the Templar Knights and suddenly he vanished. David explained that the Templars’ affairs had led them to be challenged by King Phillip the Fair and Pope Clementine V in 1307 and how they literally ceased to exist not long after. Yet whilst there were apparently 2,000 Templars at the time, with aides, those in training and wives there were in fact many more and most ended up in hiding or simply migrated to the Knights of St John, an order that lasted until Freemasonry became popular in the 17th century.