The Alchemist’s Code Read online

  THE ALCHEMIST’S CODE

  Martin Rua

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  About this Book

  About the Author

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  About The Alchemist’s Code

  A dark figure. A secret code. A battle between good and evil...

  Years ago the Knights Templar developed a secret code. A code so secret that only one man could remember it.

  The code lies in the hidden recesses of Lorenzo Aragona’s memory. The alchemist has always known it, but, until he crosses paths with a beautiful but brutal Russian spy, he does not realise its significance.

  In a race against the clock from Milan to Kiev, Lorenzo uncovers an ancient history involving Nazis and Freemasons, secrets and spies. He must remember the code, unlock the Baphomet and take control of The Guardian of the Threshold. The lives of the Pope, his dying wife and all of mankind are at stake and only Lorenzo has the power to save them...

  To my parents,

  who allowed me to remain a child

  To Mario Buonoconto,

  who one day opened the doors of the Temple to me

  To Yuliya,

  who has the Dnipro River in her eyes and a poem in her heart

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Alchemist’s Code

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Book One

  1 A Perfect Day

  2 Operation Sunrise: The Wolf is Trapped

  3 From Light to Darkness

  4 Operation Sunrise: In the Heart of the Reich

  5 The Reawakening

  6 The Mission – Part One

  7 The Fog Lifts

  8 The Mission – Part Two

  9 A Friendly Face

  10 The Mission – Part Three

  11 The Secret Safe

  12 The House of Horrors

  13 The Sanctuary of the Reich

  Book Two

  14 The Hellebore, the Lily and the Columbine

  15 The Mysterious Mr Navarro

  16 Look For Me, Lorenzo, Look For Me!

  17 The Baphomet Code

  18 To Kiev

  19 The Tomb of Nestor

  20 Oblivion

  Book Three

  21 The Ambush

  22 Family Secrets

  23 The Masked Man

  24 The Graft

  25 Bastian

  26 Navarro’s Safe

  27 Woland

  28 Group 9

  29 The Villa of Chimeras

  30 A Valuable Ally

  31 Who is Camille?

  32 Trastevere

  33 The Mithraeum of Saint Prisca

  34 Villa Gondemar

  35 The Last Crusade

  36 The Secret of Sean

  37 Yet Another Deception

  38 Terrorists

  39 Lethal Weapon

  40 The Knights from The Mists of Time

  41 Race Against Time

  42 Jimmy Choo

  43 Attack on Rome

  44 The Untouchable

  45 The Archbishop of La Plata

  46 Hands Tied

  47 The Templar Idol

  48 Rendezvous

  49 The Son of the Thunder

  50 The Masks Come Off

  51 Oscar and Volta Go Into Action

  52 Secret Service Stories

  53 Non Nobis, Domine, Non Nobis, Sed Nomini Tuo Da Gloriam

  54 The Guardian of the Threshold

  55 The Wings of Death

  56 The Masks Come Off

  57 The Alchemical Door

  58 The Raven

  59 A Wonderful Evening

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Thanks

  About Martin Rua

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Reconstruction of the Chronica Gondemarensis

  Twelfth century Templar manuscript found in Pontarlier, now Franche-Comté

  Jerusalem, 1118

  “Get those rocks out of the way and get this tunnel propped up before the whole thing falls in on us!”

  The voice of the foreman – a big man with a bushy white beard and a face that bore all the marks of time, dust and sun – thundered in the narrow space, while the diggers moved aside the final obstacles hindering the work.

  They had been digging for weeks, but had so far found no trace of what, according to all the evidence and documents they had gathered, was supposed to be down there. They had dug up piles of Roman remains, bones and pot shards, but as yet nothing to make them think they might be looking in the right place.

  The king had proved enthusiastic and had welcomed the initiative to found a new order. He had allowed them to occupy a part of the royal palace and to operate undisturbed in the foundations of what had once been the great temple. But the king was unaware of the true intentions of these men who, to his eyes, appeared to be nothing more than brave and pious warrior monks, determined to defend the pilgrims.

  “Master, I think we’ve found it,” gasped one of the completely exhausted labourers.

  The last layer of wall they were attacking with pickaxes seemed to have finally given way, and a current of cold air poured into the tunnel, making the torches flicker. The foreman approached the opening with an oil lamp, and held it up to illuminate the interior. A moment later he turned towards the builders. Upon his face there was now an expression of triumph.

  “Get out of here, the lot of you, and send me Master Hugues.”

  The labourers obeyed. To a man they were devoted to the cause of the emerging Order, bound by an oath of secrecy that included these mysterious excavations.

  Despite the confidence they had in their labourers, the nine founding knights had decided that they should not be permitted to see what they found.

  The foreman waited until everyone had left the tunnel, then moved aside the remaining rubble still blocking the entrance and entered the dark cave.

  The interior, cool and moist, consisted of a large room carved into the rock whose ceiling was supported by massive, crudely sculpted pillars. The foreman lit several torches and placed them in the metal supports which protruded here and there from the walls, then began to inspect the place. His eyes immediately alighted on the symbols cut into the pillars supporting the vault – perhaps marks left by the masons who had hewn that space out of the rock, stonemasons who had lived at least two thousand years before. There were set squares and hammers, but also more obscure symbols, perhaps the letters of a secret alphabet. Lining the walls were eight massive stone sarcophagi, crudely worked. Upon each, a symbol was carved.

  At the far end of the cave, a ninth sarcophagus was visible.

  The master mason moved closer and saw two symbols which revealed with certainty the identity of the one who lay within.

  “Finally—”

  At that moment he heard footsteps behind him, and spun round: eight men wearing work tunics had just entered the cave. At their head was one whose eyes gleamed with a particular light of determination – that exhibited only by those with the responsibility of command. And yet, that conviction and rigour seemed tempered by hints of kindness and mercy.

  The master mason stood silent beside the ninth sarcophagus, while the others approached with slow, reverent steps.

  “Is it he?” asked the man at the head of the small group.

  “I would say that there is no doubt, brother Hugues.”

  Hugues approached the coffin and ran his fingers over the two symbols, one of which was a branch of acacia, representing the legendary Architect of the Temple of Solomon. He then turned to observe the other eight tombs, and his eyes fell on
the wall behind them, where a niche carved into the rock was closed by two doors of bronze.

  “Let us open them, brothers!”

  *

  Two of the men walked over to the niche and began to force open the doors with an iron bar. After resisting for a few seconds, the ancient hinges gave way and they sprang open, revealing a square chest which bathed the entire cave in a golden glow. Next to it was propped a stone tablet upon which something was engraved. The two men picked it up it carefully and took it over to Hugues, who studied it carefully for a moment before handing it to the monk beside him.

  “It is written in the ancient language of the Jews, brother Alain. See if you can decipher it”

  Alain, the most senior of the group, was a great linguist, fluent in many ancient languages. His large brown eyes raced across the inscription on the tablet and, after a moment of concentration, he attempted to translate.

  “’Nine keys for nine symbols for nine keepers, that the eyes of the guardian may be forever sealed.’ There is no more.”

  As they heard this, they exchanged alarmed looks. All but Hugues, whose eyes had moved instead to another sarcophagus.

  “Nine keys for nine keepers… Quickly, let us open the sarcophagi.”

  They set to work, and one after another the nine tombs were uncovered. The last was that of the Architect of the temple. Together with the remains of the legendary guardians and builders and the precious garments and ornaments with which they had been buried, each grave contained a small curiously shaped golden key which did not end with the usual teeth but rather with a symbol – a kind of seal. In the sarcophagus of the Architect was found a golden triangle, upon which was engraved a long formula.

  Hugues took it gently and once again handed it to brother Alain, who examined it quickly and, with an expression at once worried and excited, said, “It is the ritual – it explains everything.”

  Hugues grew resolute then, and he turned to the others, saying, “Brothers, none must ever have access to this inscription, these keys, and especially to this chest. Nobody, neither the Pope nor the most pious man alive, nor he who lives in the full grace of God. For none will ever have the strength to resist its immense power. None except us.”

  Amazed and frightened, the others looked at one other.

  “Why do not we destroy it forever, Master Hugues?” suggested one.

  Hugues was thoughtful for a moment, his gaze fixed upon the sarcophagus. “Yes. Yes, that would probably be the best thing. But we would never forgive ourselves for having done so, if what it contained might provide us with victory over the infidels.”

  The others nodded, but their faces were grave.

  After a moment, Hugues spoke again.

  “As Grand Master, I take responsibility for the preservation and study of this discovery. Each of us will retain a key and a symbol; we, who are the nine founders of our Order, as nine were those who accompanied the architect on his last journey, guarding too the most terrible secret. Let us take everything and close forever this cave.”

  BOOK ONE

  1

  A Perfect Day

  Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragon

  Naples, December 2012

  That day had begun perfectly. I’d slept like a log until the long blades of light creeping across the bedcovers had gently awakened me.

  I stretched and sat up in bed, looking around myself with satisfaction. There were only a few days left until Christmas and it was bitterly cold outside, but the light on the furniture was intense and hinted at splendid weather.

  “It’s going to be a magnificent winter solstice.”

  My wife was already up, but I was still sleepy, so I slipped lazily back beneath the covers, putting off the moment I would have to abandon them for the next fourteen hours. I only got up when the familiar, bewitching scent of coffee crept treacherously into my nostrils and persuaded me to head towards the kitchen.

  I found Àrtemis there and kissed her on the neck, while she was still intent on stirring the coffee in the pot.

  “Hello darling – sleep well?”

  “Extremely well, I’d say. If it wasn’t for the smell of coffee, I’d have stayed buried under the covers a little longer.”

  My wife put her arms around me and gave me a passionate kiss, which took me by surprise. “Really? And you’d stay in bed without me—?”

  With a single gesture she undid her robe and let it fall to the ground, then stood naked in my arms.

  ’Well, if you put it that way—” And I lost myself again in her black curls.

  *

  It seemed that winter had arrived, bringing with it a promising assortment of all its aromas, flavours and pleasures. That alone would have sufficed to put me in a good mood. For a while now, though, strange nightmares – or, better, vividly coloured dreams – had disturbed my nights, though the memory of them almost always faded upon waking.

  My extreme sensitivity had made me particularly receptive to certain, let’s say, out-of-the-ordinary subconscious signals and phenomena, and in fact, many times during my forays into the world of the esoteric in search of mysterious artefacts, it had been dreams which had cast light on things which would otherwise have been difficult to understand.

  In short, I’ve always had a fairly lively dream life.

  In an attempt to keep my turbulent psyche a little more under control I’d started taking some pills, which I would have forgotten every morning if Àrtemis hadn’t been there to practically put them into my mouth.

  “You really are incorrigible, Aragona,” she told me that morning, calling me by name as she did every time she wanted to tell me off, as she stopped me at the door with a glass of water and the magical tablet.

  I took a sip and swallowed the pill, then grabbed my wife and kissed her passionately. “I know – that’s why you love me.”

  She pushed me away with a mischievous smile. “Away with you, art dealer, or I’ll be late for university.”

  Ah my Àrtemis! Her students considered her a living legend - a kind of be-skirted Indiana Jones, always ready to get her hands dirty and stir up any amount of hornets’ nests just to prove a theory. She was one of the few scholars in the world to have managed to decipher the obscure language of the ancient inhabitants of Crete, Linear A, and certainly one of the first to have been able to read it, winning the respect of her researcher colleagues around the world. Her bond with her Greek homeland had given her a kind of sixth sense for all that was Hellenic. She had made more than one luminary look a fool with her radical theories, and had inflamed the field with dozens of pioneering academic publications. She was unique, and, with her beautiful black curls and feline looks, as intense as the depths of the Aegean, as beautiful as one of the dancers of the palace of Knossos. I adored her.

  I left my lovely Greek struggling with her morning preparations and before going to the car I walked to my favourite newsagent.

  “Good morning Fausto – the usual please.”

  “Here you are, Mr Aragona. Have a good day.”

  Fausto’s friendliness always put me in a good mood, even though the dense downtown traffic, on the rare occasions that I decided to travel by car instead of taking the funicular, could plunge me into abject despair. That day, however, it seemed that everything was going for the best, and on the way to the art gallery I met very few cars and didn’t encounter a single traffic jam. Curious, it being so near Christmas.

  That morning, however, I had no desire to ask myself too many questions and decided to abandon myself to the gentle caress of a perfect day.

  *

  Upon entering the store I found Bruno, my partner, in the thick of negotiations for the sale of a valuable Louis XVI console table. It seemed that things had got off on the right foot even as regarded business that morning. I greeted the customer, whom I knew well, and walked towards the small office that we had at the back of the shop.

  After about fifteen minutes, Bruno came in with a smile. Hands on the desk,
he leaned towards me and pushed his angular face, which reminded me so much of Chopin, forward. His small dark eyes stared into mine with penetrating insistence.

  “Hello again, partner. Apparently I’ve just set a new record for sales. I only opened half an hour ago, and Doctor Ciliento has already written the first cheque for the purchase of that console.”

  “I’ve always said that you’re an extraordinary salesman.”

  “Oh, I’m just a salesman, am I? Well in that case, you’re just a shopkeeper.”

  “Thin skinned as ever, I see! Calm down, we all know that you’re also a master antiquarian with a flair for rare pieces.”

  Bruno nodded, a serious expression on his face. “That’s better.”

  As well as being an extraordinary antiquarian, my friend and partner Bruno von Alten, who had inherited his name from his German father, was an extremely refined man, as well as an excellent jazz pianist. When not in the gallery, he was always rehearsing with his trio or on a stage somewhere in Europe performing. A very cool customer.

  That morning he had concluded the sale of the eighteenth century console table made by the school of Jean Henri Riesener, a German who had moved to France and who became the court cabinet maker in 1774. Half of the furniture displayed at Versailles that had belonged to Marie Antoinette was his work. Bruno loved to offer his customers pieces made by German artists, a kind of little homage of his memory of his late father, who he had lost when he was twenty. He was also obsessed with the furniture of the late eighteenth century, and each time he sold a piece he went through a little performance as he acted out the pain losing it would cause him.

  I, of course I had no objections to all this, so long as it didn’t interfere with the success of his negotiations. I myself felt the same attachment, moreover, to another style, which he, unrepentant snob that he was, classed as sheer vulgarity.

  “How on earth can you compare the style of Louis XVI with that art nouveau crap?”

  I shook my head and shrugged.

  “Your problem is that you’ve never progressed, old man. Styles change, new things happen.”