Read Online The Rose Conspiracy by Craig Parshall - Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    â€œBecause,” Julia continued, “he’s done a nice job of carrying on the family tradition…occult beliefs, theosophy, really medieval kinds of stuff.”
    â€œWhy did he want the Booth diary?”
    â€œReally not sure.”
    â€œAny wild guesses?”
    â€œWell,” she continued, “he lectures in Europe and in the UK on what he describes as the ‘esoteric religious philosophy of the ancients.’ That was the title of one of his talks. He hasn’t published anything. But I notice that in his lectures he occasionally talks about the Freemasons. And also about the religious ideas of a very narrow slice of the Confederate leaders involved in the Civil War, who he describes as the ‘Gnostics.’ ”
    After a pause Blackstone asked, “Anything else?”
    â€œOh, yeah,” Julia added. “And this Lord Dee guy…he is a thirty-third-degree Freemason himself. That’s as high as you can get in the hierarchy.”
    Blackstone stood up quickly and announced he was heading home to his condo. He added, “I think I need to do some reading up on the assassination of President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and the War Between the States.”
    â€œYou mean like this?” Julia asked, and reached down to the floor to the side of her desk and picked up several books and held them out to Blackstone.
    He glanced at their covers.
    â€œYes, exactly,” he said with a smile. Julia was waiting for a thank-you, but she didn’t get one. Blackstone turned and quickly strode out of her office.
    At ten-thirty that night, Blackstone was well into one of the books, when his phone rang. It was Dr. Coglin.
    â€œAre you ready to jot this down?” Coglin asked.
    â€œSure,” Blackstone said, grabbing his pen and legal pad. “Ready.”
    â€œOkay,” Coglin said. “I have no idea what any of this means. But I’ve reconstructed the impressions left on the remaining pages of the notepad. Here we go. The first line appears to be Langley’s own comment. The remaining four lines I presume are a copy of what he read in the Booth diary pages:
    A strange cipher appears in the Booth diary as follows:
    To AP and KGC
    Rose of 6 is Sir al ik’s golden tree
    In gospel’s Mary first revealed
    At Ashli plot reveals the key
    There was a dead silence on the phone.
    Then Blackstone spoke up first.
    â€œThat’s it?”
    â€œYep,” Coglin replied.
    More silence.
    Then Blackstone grunted.
    â€œWell, happy hunting, J.D.,” Dr. Coglin said, and hung up.
    Blackstone looked over the cryptic four-line poem that, according to Dr. Coglin, was the last thing communicated in writing by Horace Langley before he was murdered.
    Then Blackstone, staring at the four lines of coded nonsense as he sat in his empty living room, spoke out loud into the air.
    â€œRats!” he yelled out in mock anger. “I knew Mom should have never thrown away my secret agent decoder ring.”

CHAPTER 14

    W hen J.D. Blackstone got to his office at 8:15 the next morning and opened up his e-mail, the prosecutor had a surprise waiting for him.
    AUSA Henry Hartz had electronically filed an emergency motion with Judge Templeton. In it, the AUSA was demanding that “defense counsel, J.D. Blackstone, be ordered not to divulge, to any other person, any impression made upon, or notes or other writings contained within, the notepad of Horace Langley found at the scene of the crime.” The motion also asked that Dr. Coglin be ordered not to further disclose his findings to anyone else at least until trial. Hartz was further demanding that Blackstone not reveal what Langley wrote on the notepad even to his own client and his own law firm staff, including his partner, Julia Robins.
    After reading the motion on his computer screen, Blackstone was stunned. He had been engaged in legal disputes over confidentiality issues before. But nothing like