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from a platter. “Hey, do you know the ambassador?”
    “I can’t say I do.”
    “So he’s not a Freemason, like you?”
    Marcas stiffened. “I’m no snitch. Ask him yourself.”
    “You’re joking, right? I don’t want to get sent to some faraway consulate in Africa. It’s a favor I’m asking. Don’t you have some sort of secret code of recognition? A special handshake or something?”
    Marcas sighed. It was always the same stupidities: occult influence, signs of recognition—the folklore. How many times had his hand been kneaded by overly familiar non-Masons who had read a few things about freemasonry?
    “Sorry, I can’t.”
    “At least say you don’t want to, Antoine. How long have we known each other? And you still cover for the ambassador? A man you’ve never even met? You brothers really do stick together.”
    Marcas didn’t want to get into a long explanation with his now-tipsy friend. He knew Jaigu well, and tomorrow the man would be full of apologies.
    “Drop it, Alexis.”
    “I won’t press. And I won’t hold it against you. Let me introduce you to two superb actresses who are waiting for nobody but us,” Jaigu said, throwing his arm around Marcas’s shoulder and leading him to the terrace.

4
    Bashir Al Khansa, aka the Emir, rarely went anywhere alone and usually traveled under the cover of night. It was his way of playing Israeli security, which was polluting East Jerusalem. When he had time to sleep, it was in homes carefully chosen by logistics specialists in his movement, which Israeli spies had been trying to infiltrate for a long time.
    On this night, Bashir was wearing a thin moustache and a white suit like those favored by rich Lebanese businessmen. A perfect disguise for his meeting with Alex Perillian.
    The two men were now sitting in the courtyard, heat reflecting off the old stones. Bashir’s two bodyguards watched over the entrance.
    Bashir was seething. “Allah is great, showing us to this stone, and you hand it over to those Jewish pigs? They will sully it with their blasphemous hands.”
    Perillian sighed. “Since when have the respectful servants of the Prophet been interested in a stone engraved by the sons of Zion?”
    “Everything found in the land of Allah belongs to Allah. Where is the stone now?”
    “At the archeological institute. The scientists are analyzing it, and if it is authentic, the price will be high, and your share will be great.”
    “The servants of Allah don’t care about money from unbelievers! I want the stone.”
    Perillion was sweating now. “Be patient. I’ll get the stone back as soon as the tests are done. Then you can—”
    “May Allah curse the infidels who don’t acclaim his light. Nobody must know the significance of the stone—especially those Israeli dogs. Do you understand?”
    “But there’s nothing I can do.”
    Bashir smiled. “Yes there is.”
    ~ ~ ~
    Marek was leaning over his worktable, examining his translation of the inscription. On his computer, a software program was matching the concordances with ancient Hebrew texts.
    His heart had raced at the idea of being the first to proclaim a fragment linking the chosen people with their destiny. But he had just discovered that he was not the first. In the lower right corner of the stone, an anonymous hand had engraved a Latin cross with branches that widened like the sails of a boat. It was the cross of the Order of the Temple—or the Knights Templar, the order founded by nine Frenchmen in the second decade of the twelfth century on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, just above the Temple of Solomon.
    Marek, the venerable master of his Freemason lodge, recognized it immediately. Didn’t some people claim that the higher orders of freemasonry were direct descendants of the Templars? Marek thought those stories were nothing but legend, but he knew them well.
    Now the cross danced in front of his eyes. What had the Templars been doing with this stone?
    The computer screen lit up.