The Rose Conspiracy Read online

  ENDORSEMENTS

  Kudos for The Rose Conspiracy, Craig Parshall’s latest legal-suspense novel

  “A captivating novel with mystery, suspense, faith and values. Craig Parshall has written a book that won’t let the reader put it down. A story that mixes the one of history’s great mysteries with gripping legal suspense, it will intrigue every reader. Bravo!”

  —Ted Baehr

  Chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission and publisher of Movieguide®

  “A powerful novel, with the intriguing detail that is typical of Craig Parshall’s fiction…This legal thriller doesn’t miss a beat, putting you into the dead center of a murder case only to find out you’re confronted with a spiritual mystery.”

  —Phil Cooke

  founder and creative director, Cooke Pictures, Burbank, California

  …And for the novels in the Chambers of Justice series

  The Resurrection File

  “Powerful…one of the most fascinating books I have read in years.”

  —Tim LaHaye,

  coauthor of the bestselling LEFT BEHIND® series

  “A compelling, realistic story…Incorporates…spiritual awakening without ever being preachy.”

  —Faithful Reader.com

  Custody of the State

  “This is not only a great mystery, but also a deeply moving, redemptive book…Deserves translation to the big screen. Bravo!”

  —Ted Baehr,

  chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission and publisher of Movieguide®

  “Authentic characters and a believable story line make Custody of the State gripping and even unnerving reading.”

  —Christian Library Journal

  The Accused

  “Grisham and Clancy…move over! Craig Parshall has truly arrived…The Accused [is] a super thriller—a masterful tale of suspense as well as romance…it could be a superb motion picture!”

  —Ken Wales,

  executive producer of the CBS television series Christy and veteran Hollywood filmmaker

  “I was riveted from the first page. Not only an excellent novel, it is also a highly accurate account of military justice and the covert world of special operations.”

  —Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, USAF Retd.,

  former military aide to President Clinton and author of the bestselling book Dereliction of Duty

  Missing Witness

  “A legal thriller wrapped inside a very poignant love story with a twist…Fresh, compelling storytelling…with enough grit to appeal to a mass secular audience.”

  —Chris Carpenter, producer, CBN.com

  “The author has a true gift for storytelling.”

  —Teens4Jesus Library

  The Last Judgment

  “A fitting finale for [Parshall’s] Chambers of Justice series. The Last Judgment incorporates all of the elements that made us wish the series would continue indefinitely.”

  —Faithful Reader.com

  “Craig Parshall is a master at weaving morality into the narrow, litigious [confines] of the courtroom.”

  —CBN.com

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

  Cover by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon

  Cover photo © Shutterstock

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

  THE ROSE CONSPIRACY

  Copyright © 2009 by Craig Parshall

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parshall, Craig, 1950-

  The rose conspiracy / Craig Parshall.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-7369-1514-4 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-6416-6 (eBook)

  1. Murder—Fiction. 2. Artists—Fiction. 3. Freemasonry—Fiction. 4. Washington (DC)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.A77R67 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2008032122

  All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.

  “The world is in pain, our secrets to gain.”

  —A SONG OF THE CRAFT

  This is a work of fiction. As such, all of the characters and situations are fictional, including the character of Horace Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as all references to that institution, with the exception only of the physical appearance of its famous “Castle” administration building and the general configuration of those political categories that populate its Board of Regents.

  However, the references in this novel to the religious philosophy and mysteries of the esoteric followers of “the Craft” are taken from research and writings on speculative Freemasonry, much of it authored by Freemasons themselves. It is unknown to or ignored by rank-and-file members, who consider the Freemasons to constitute merely a fraternal or social organization. “The secret” revealed here was gleaned from the symbols, ceremonies, and history of Masonry itself, and from the writings of those who have studied it.

  Contents

  Endorsements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63
/>   Chapter 64

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  The driver behind the steering wheel was sweating like a hunter in the dripping heat of the jungle.

  But this was a very different kind of jungle.

  It was five minutes before midnight, and the car was cruising along the marble-and-monument-studded streets of the Capitol Hill district of Washington DC. The driver was tugging at a collar edge. Drops of perspiration trickled down back and torso, even with the air conditioning on. Maybe it was the freakish heat wave that had hit the city, causing brownouts and power failures across the city. Maybe it was something else…the nasty assignment that had to be taken care of. When the trigger was pulled, and it was all over, the long-missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s personal diary would then be in the grip of someone else’s hand.

  Yet the driver knew what was actually at stake that night. And it really wasn’t about the Booth diary. Or even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the hand of a Confederate radical. The note that was about to be seized contained a message with ramifications far beyond any of that.

  Sweltering temperatures had suffocated Washington with a relentless haze of humidity that week. Even though it was only June, temperatures were in the low hundreds during the day and in the nineties at night.

  The only thing cool to the touch was the white marble of the statues and monuments. The driver steered past the Lincoln Monument and then slowed the car slightly. As usual, interior lights illuminated the massive likeness of Abraham Lincoln in his great marble chair. Once past the monument, the car picked up speed, entered Constitution Avenue, and started heading toward the National Mall. The destination was the Castle, the nineteenth-century red-brick building full of turrets and spires where the administrative headquarters of the Smithsonian Institution were housed.

  The driver parked the car a block away and walked quickly to the side entrance of the Castle—then, reaching the door, quickly tapped a code into the security panel. The lock clicked open.

  Upstairs, the lights were still on in the office of Horace Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was working late.

  But the object of his work that night was not business as usual.

  Only moments before, Langley had opened his safe and pulled out a metal case containing a folder enclosed within a plastic zip bag. Now he was studying the contents—eighteen pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth. They had been missing for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Their disappearance had occurred suspiciously, about the same time as the federal investigation into the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln was taking place. Booth’s diary had been taken when the assassin was captured and killed. But at the time at least one witness swore that eighteen pages had been removed from it.

  That was the point at which those pages seemed to have vanished forever.

  Then, a century and a half later, the granddaughter and sole heir of a farmer in central Virginia went rummaging through her grandfather’s attic after his death and happened upon some boxes of old letters and papers. But one sheaf of papers looked different. While much of the writing on them was faded and undecipherable to the layman’s eye, a reference to Abraham Lincoln was visible. In his will, the farmer had given everything to his granddaughter—except the papers. Those, he said, must go to the Smithsonian Institution.

  After some wrangling with lawyers, the eighteen pages were transferred to the Smithsonian. Horace Langley had succeeded in keeping the discovery from being leaked to the press, even though he was thoroughly convinced that the pages belonged to the Booth diary.

  That June evening, as Langley studied the pages in his office, he knew that some eight hours hence, a council of epigraphers and historians were scheduled to convene and, for the first time, to study the Booth diary entries in that same office.

  But he had to get the first look.

  He had a pair of white gloves on as he studied the brittle pages, yellowed from age. A pad of paper lay on the desk in front of him, next to his pen. There was a glass of water off to the side.

  Langley then began to slowly, painstakingly, write down something on the notepad.

  Just a few lines of writing.

  He paused to study carefully what he had written.

  Then he heard something. He looked up, half-expecting a late-night visitor. “I wasn’t sure I would see you,” was all Horace Langley had a chance to say.

  The individual who had entered through the side door below was now standing in front of Langley holding a handgun with a silencer—and proceeded to fire two clean shots directly into the left upper quadrant of Langley’s chest.

  The Secretary started to grope upward with his arm, trying to touch the injured area of his chest, but failing. He fell backward into his chair, slumped, and then fell to the floor, where he collapsed on his back, surrounded by an expanding pool of blood.

  The shooter stepped over to the desk, picked up the Booth diary pages, placed them back in the plastic zip bag, and put that into a larger bag. The killer snatched the pad of paper, ripped off the top page that had Langley’s writing on it and then another page for good measure, and put them also into the bag. Then the killer placed the pad of paper back on the desk with a clean page exposed as Langley lay dying on the floor, making a final gurgling, gasping sound. Before leaving the room, the shooter paused only for a moment at Langley’s desk, gazing down at the empty drinking glass that was resting there.

  Then, exiting quickly through the same side door below where entrance had been made a few minutes before, Langley’s killer made a perfect getaway.

  The security guards didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until twenty-five minutes later, when one of them was making the rounds and stopped to check in on the Secretary. He caught sight of Horace Langley’s feet protruding past the edge of the desk. And the feet in Langley’s dress shoes were absolutely still.

  As still as the marble and bronze statues of the famous men that were frozen in time, scattered as monuments across Washington, and that were illuminated by the halogen street lights that buzzed overhead in the suffocating heat of the night.

  CHAPTER 2

  Two Weeks Later

  You’ve been called ‘one of Washington’s most brilliant yet enigmatic lawyers.’ That was from the Washington Post article. So, how do you react to that kind of assessment?”

  “Enigmatically.”

  “Clever. Okay, let me try it this way…in an article in Beltway Magazine you were called a ‘triple threat.’ You are a trial lawyer and a law professor, as well as a psychologist. So which one really defines who you are?”

  “I try not to define myself. I leave that job to reporters like you. And for the record, I decided not to finish my dissertation in psychology. So I never got my PhD in that discipline.”

  “Why did you leave the law and pursue a graduate degree in psychology, just to return to teaching and practicing law after all?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Which would be…”

  “Personal.”

  The female reporter smiled politely.

  J.D. Blackstone smiled back. He was used to press interviews. His meteoric rise as a topflight litigator in Washington DC garnered him some of the most celebrated politicians as clients, and some of the most notorious cases. And Blackstone’s position as a professor of criminal and constitutional law at the Capital City College School of Law gave him added gravitas.

  The reporter was glancing around Blackstone’s cramped law-school office. Then she located the picture of Blackstone’s wife, Marilyn, with her arm around their fourteen-year-old daughter, Beth. The girl, grinning exuberantly, was dressed in a formal gown. The photo had been taken a few hours before Blackstone had plopped down on his bed for a nap after some sleepless nights of work on a complicated case. And a few hours before his wife and daughter had climbed into the family car and driven off to Beth’s piano recital.

  “Well, I know, for instance,”
the reporter went on, “that you’ve had to deal with some profound tragedy in your life. That must have impacted you.”

  Blackstone stopped her there with an overobvious sigh.

  They always go for that one, he thought to himself. The soft underbelly.

  The attorney didn’t respond. He took an exaggerated glance at his wristwatch.

  The reporter took the hint and changed her focus.

  She gazed at Blackstone for a moment and studied him before diving into the next line of questions. She found Blackstone attractive. Most women did. He was in his mid-forties but looked younger. His hair, longish, disheveled, curled around his collar. He had a face with strong, angular features. His body was athletic and in great shape.

  “Let me just touch for a minute on some of your off-hours avocations,” the reporter continued. “You certainly are a man in perpetual motion—and so many different interests.” She began flipping through her notes. “Kayaking through the gorges of South America…driving the Baja road rally in the deserts of Mexico. And I find this one really fascinating—you’re an equestrian. How did you feel finishing in the top ten competitors in the eight-hundred-mile Santa Fe Trail endurance horse race last year?”

  “Sore.”

  She was about to do a follow-up question, but Blackstone cut her off.

  “I’m sorry, but I have a class I need to teach.”

  “May I watch? I promise to sit in the back of the room. I’ll be very quiet.”

  “I’m afraid not. You see,” Blackstone shot back, “I sort of enjoy humiliating my students. And like any good expert in torture, I work best when there are no witnesses.”

  She gave a little laugh and nodded. Then she rose, turned off her recorder, and threw it and her pad into her purse. Blackstone shook her hand and then blew past her at a fast clip, grabbing a briefcase by the doorway on the run, and headed down the corridor to the lecture hall.

  Most of the seventy-eight students were already in their seats when he hurried in. He strode to the lectern, dropped his briefcase, pulled a yellow notepad out, and slapped it down on the podium. Then J.D. Blackstone began.

  “Alright, you minions of Lady Justice, first case—Hamdi v. Rumsfield. Here’s the question: Did the Supreme Court really grant habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants or not?”