Grandpa!
You're not supposed to be up here, looking at that.
I just wanted to know.
Well, you're old enough, I suppose.
You should know the story.
OK, here we go.
It was 1832.
On a night much like this.
Yah!
Charles Carroll was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
He was also a member of a secret society known as the Masons.
And he knew he was dying.
He woke up his stable boy in the middle of the night
and ordered him to take him to the White House to see Andrew Jackson.
Because it was urgent that he speak to the president.
Did he talk to him?
No. He never got the chance.
The president wasn't there that night.
But Charles Carroll had a secret.
So he took into his confidence the one person he could,
my grandfather's grandfather,
Thomas Gates.
What was the secret?
A treasure.
A treasure beyond all imagining.
A treasure that had been fought over for centuries
by tyrants. Pharaohs. Emperors. Warlords.
And every time it changed hands it grew larger.
And then suddenly...
it vanished.
It didn't reappear for more than a thousand years.
When knights from the First Crusade
discovered secret vaults beneath the Temple of Solomon.
You see. The knights who found the vaults
believed that the treasure was too great for any one man -
not even a king.
They brought the treasure back to Europe and took the name "the Knights Templar."
Over the next century they smuggled it out of Europe
and they formed a new brotherhood called the Freemasons.
In honor of the builders of the great temple.
War followed.
By the time of the American Revolution the treasure had been hidden again.
By then the Masons included
George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Paul Revere.
They knew they had to make sure
the treasure would never fall into the hands of the British.
So they devised a series of clues and maps to its location.
Over time the clues were lost or forgotten,
until only one remained -
and that was the secret that Charles Carroll entrusted to young Thomas Gates.
Charlotte.
"The secret lies with Charlotte."
Who's Charlotte?
Oh... not even Mr. Carroll knew that.
Now look here, Ben.
The Freemasons among our Founding Fathers left us clues.
Like these.
The unfinished pyramid. The all-seeing eye.
Symbols of the Knights Templar, guardians of the treasure.
- They're speaking to us through these. - (man) You mean laughing at us.
You know what that dollar represents?
The entire Gates family fortune.
Six generations of fools... chasing after fool's gold.
(Grandpa) It's not about the money, Patrick. It's never been about the money.
Come on, son. Time to go. |
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