Gregg Loomis - The Pegasus Secret

There was no guard rail. On the right, Lang could see occasional tree tops and roofs of the town far below. Twice he saw a large bird below, wings outstretched over the farmland as it coasted along thermals. On this motorcycle, he thought, Im almost that free.

He was never sure what pulled him from the euphoria of the day. He only knew he was surprised on one of the short straight stretches to see the bikes mirrors filled with a truck. Not the eighteen-wheeled behemoth of American Interstates, but large enough to fill its half of the road.

Lang leaned into a sweeping right-hand turn and set up for a hairpin to the left. No doubt about it, the truck was gaining on them, swerving all over the road as it struggled to stay on the pavement.

Lang searched ahead for a turn-off, even a space between paving and mountainside. There were none. Straight drop right, perpendicular rise left. Nowhere to go.

Taking his left, non-throttle hand from the handlebar, Lang tapped Gurts leg and pointed behind. He heard a German expletive over the roar of the trucks engine. She squeezed him tighter.

The bike shuddered as its fiberglass rear fender shattered and Lang braced against the impact. The bastard intended to run them over! He opened the throttle to stop.

How had they found him?

Other books by Gregg Loomis:

The Coptic Secret
The Sinai Secret
Gates of Hades
The Julian Secret

GREGG LOOMIS

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

January 2011

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright 2005 by Gregg Loomis

Nicolas Poussin, The Shepherds of Arcadia
Photo Credit: Runion des Muses Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
Louvre, Paris, France

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4285-1142-2
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-1104-0

The DP logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com .

Thanks to Mary Jack Wald, my agent, whose help and suggestions were priceless, not to mention her efforts to make sure this book saw print. Thanks to Don DAuria, editor, for his help, too. Henry Lincolns video on Rennes-le-Chateau was helpful, as were the suggested translation of the Latin puzzle in Poussins painting by Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenbergers Tomb of God.

THE
PEGASUS
SECRET

Rennes-Le-Chteau
Southwest France
1872

Father Saunire had made a strange discovery.

The roll of vellum parchment was so old that the ribbon tying the sheets together had crumbled into dust when he took the bundle from its hiding place in the altar. He had never seen writing like this, faded lines that looked more like worm tracks than script.

He had been doing some work in the little church, repairs his parish could ill afford to hire out. The roof leaked, a number of the pews were going to collapse without new nails and the altar... Well, the altar was older than the church itself.

He frowned as he looked up at the altar. Basically a stone slab, centuries of serving the Holy Eucharist had worn it so unevenly that it was about to fall from the two short plinths supporting it. Even at six feet and over two hundred pounds, he had barely been able to lift the block from its supports. That was when he had discovered that one of the columns was hollowwith the parchments inside.

No one knew the origins of the altar. Saunire supposed it had come from the ruins of one of the many castles nearby. Its intricate carvings were far too elaborate for a church whose poor box rarely yielded more than a few sous at a time.

The area was old. Romans, Templars, perhaps even Moors when it had been part of Catalonia in Spain. The altar could have come from any one of their chapels.

Or Cathars or Gnostics.

The possibility that the altar could have been part of heretic or pagan services made Saunire wince. God alone knew what heathen use the stone might have served. He looked over his shoulder as though someone might be there to reproach him for the thought.

Mere objects could not be evil, he told himself. Still, holding these pages made him uncomfortable. It might be best if they were destroyed. No, that was not his decision to make. He would show them to the bishop on the prelates next visit, let authority decide.

What harm could mere inanimate documents do, anyway?

The answer came to him as he was conducting evening mass: It had been paper nailed to a cathedral door that had torn the church apart forever.

Paris
0234 hours

The explosion shook the entire Place des Vosges as well as a good part of the Marais district. Had the thirty-six town houses, nine on each side of the square, been built with less sturdy material than the handmade bricks of four centuries past, the damage might have been greater. Even so, the antique glass had been blown out of every window of the largest of these stately homes, the former Htel de Rohan-Gumne, the second floor of which had been the home of Victor Hugo.

The only real damage, though, was to number 26, the source of the blast. By the time the pompiers from the 11th arrondissement, the district fire department, arrived twelve minutes later, the building was four stories of inferno. Saving the house and its occupants was not a possibility.

A line of gendarmes kept spectators a respectful distance from the blaze while others interviewed bathrobe- clad residents. One man, an apparent insomniac, told the officers he had been watching a rerun of the past years World Cup championship match when he had heard a crash of shattering glass followed by a flash of light brighter than any he had ever seen. Rushing to the window, he had nearly been blinded by the intensity of the blaze.

The glass, the policeman asked, could it have crashed when something was thrown through a window?

The man stuffed a fist into his yawning mouth, his interest diminishing now that the best part of the show was over. How does one distinguish between glass shattering when something is thrown into it rather than something being thrown out? He shrugged as only the French can, conveying uninterested ignorance as well as annoyance at a stupid question. Je ne sais pas.

He turned to go back home, almost bumping into a middle-aged man in a suit. The spectator wondered what anyone would be doing in business attire at this hour. Not only dressed, but in a shirt freshly starched, jacket and trousers neatly pressed. He shrugged a second time and trudged homeward wondering if TV reception in the neighborhood had been affected by the fire.