The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series)

by C. M. Palov

  Bracing himself, Caedmon examined the small LCD screen. Even in miniature, the photo of a young woman, sitting on the edge of a metal-framed bed, bound and gagged, was sickening. In that instant, his belly painfully cramped, as though some sadistic bastard had just clamped a pair of red-hot pincers around his intestines.

  Only one other time in his life had he experienced the same sort of palpable, existential horror; that was five years ago when his lover, Juliana Howe, had been killed in a RIRA bomb attack on a London tube station. That incident, and its brutal and bloodthirsty aftermath, caused a downward spiral that was best forgotten, his battle with the bottle still ongoing.

  ‘Did the caller permit you to speak to Anala?’ Caedmon asked in a businesslike tone as he returned the mobile to Gita.

  She wordlessly shook her head, the bleak despair in her eyes almost too painful to bear.

  ‘Right.’ Grateful for the muted lighting, he coughed into a balled fist, trying desperately to suppress his swelling emotions. ‘You mentioned that Anala was abducted from her bedroom, is that correct?’ When Gita, again, mutely nodded, Caedmon glanced at his wristwatch and said, ‘I have just enough time to examine the room before I have to depart for Kottayam.’

  ‘This way.’ Turning, Gita headed towards the staircase on the other side of the hallway.

  A few moments later, stopping in front of a closed door, Gita turned the handle and pushed the door ajar. Caedmon followed her into Anala’s bedroom, taken aback by the ransacked debris. Smashed lamps; apparel, bedding and curtains flung haphazardly; an overturned night table; pictures ripped from the wall and smashed underfoot.

  Staring at the wreckage, he could feel his self-control disintegrating. Unless he was greatly mistaken, Anala had fought her abductor. Tooth and nail by the looks of it.

  Suddenly feeling the sting of bitter tears, Caedmon closed his eyes and breathed deeply, fighting for control. Accidentally stepping on a framed photograph, he bent down and retrieved it. For several moments, he stared pensively at the picture of Anala standing beside Gita in front of Balliol College at Oxford. For one brief, forbidden moment, he imagined himself standing on the other side of his daughter.

  ‘You didn’t tell me that she was a student at Oxford,’ he said in a ragged voice, the disequilibrium expanding. Like a metastasizing cancer.

  ‘There’s a great deal that I didn’t tell you,’ Gita replied with a guilty blush. ‘I was only in Paris for a few hours and –’ She waved away the explanation. ‘Anala has a first-class honors degree in PPE and has been accepted at the Department of Politics and International Relations.’ Taking the framed photograph from him, she turned it upside down, broken shards of glass falling on to the bed covers. She then removed the photo from the frame and handed it to him. ‘You should have a picture of her.’

  Caedmon wordlessly slipped the photograph into his trouser pocket. More affected than he wanted to be, he strode over to the window.

  ‘Caedmon, are you all right?’ Joining him at the window, Gita put a solicitous hand on his forearm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said automatically. Turning his head, he looked directly into Gita’s eyes. The dark half-moons that shadowed her lower lids indicated that she’d been getting little to no sleep.

  Unwillingly, Caedmon recalled that when he was nineteen years old, he fell in love with Gita Patel’s eyes, going weak at the knees when he used to gaze into her hazel orbs. He also remembered how, in the pre-dawn light, he would dash from Gita’s Oxford digs, the cobbles slick with rain, the scent of her still clinging to his person.

  How did I get from there to here?

  As the seconds slipped past, neither spoke. Probably because neither of them knew what to say.

  He redirected his gaze out of the window, the long-ago remembrances making him distinctly uncomfortable.

  On the other side of the stucco wall, he saw a group of boys playing cricket on a cleared field with youthful abandon, their childish shouts carried on the breeze. About to turn away from the window, Caedmon caught sight of a dark-skinned man attired in a black T-shirt and baggy jeans. Loitering near a red motorbike, his gaze was fixed on Gita’s house. Although he stood in the shadows, Caedmon could see that the lone figure had a moustache and closely shaved dark hair.

  Suffering a faint dyspeptic twinge, he suspected that whoever abducted Anala had assigned a ‘watcher’ to keep tabs on Gita and report on her movements. To ensure that she didn’t go to the authorities.

  He stared at the dodgy-looking fellow for a few seconds longer. Then, glancing down, he noticed a milky palm print on the glass pane. Curious, he went down on bent knee.

  ‘Were you aware of the fact that there’s a print on this pane of glass?’ he asked Gita, certain that the window had been the abductor’s point of entry into the house.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Gita said, her brows drawn worriedly together.

  Caedmon scrutinized the distinctive print – ‘distinctive’ because it clearly indicated that Anala’s abductor had a Chi-Rho cross branded on his right palm, the tell-tale image now stamped on to the glass.

  A symbol dating to Constantine the Great, it was actually a monogram composed of two superimposed Greek letters. More importantly, it was a symbol long associated with the Roman Catholic Church. A damning signpost.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered under his breath.

  It was what he’d feared all along.

  14

  Bored out of her wits, Anala Patel wondered if was possible to die from unrelenting ennui, her brain withering on the vine.

  Sitting cross-legged on the narrow cot, she closed her eyes, the harsh glare of the bare light bulb that dangled from the ceiling inducing a headache. By her reckoning, she’d spent three days in her wood-paneled dungeon, her life reduced to the most banal of bodily functions: eating, sleeping and using the loo.

  Sighing, she opened her eyes and glanced at the dour-faced guard who sat on the wooden chair a few feet away playing a video game. There were three different guards who rotated shifts, taking turns watching her. Because of the constant surveillance, her only privacy was the few minutes each day that she was escorted to a grungy toilet. Oddly enough, while all three men spoke Spanish amongst themselves – which Anala didn’t speak – they addressed her in accented English.

  She still had no idea in which country she was being held, the guards refusing to divulge any details. None the less, she’d been able to glean a few dribs and drabs, fairly certain that the men holding her captive weren’t sex traffickers. Much to her relief. For the time being, at least, her captors didn’t want her dead. Merely docile.

  Despite the fact that meek had never been her MO, Anala had quickly assumed the role of mild-mannered captive. The last thing she wanted to do was antagonize her jailers who, after the failed escape attempt, had manacled her wrists with plastic Flexicuffs rather than duct tape. The upgrade meant that she didn’t have a prayer of breaking free of the restraints. However, on the plus side, they’d cuffed her hands in front of her waist, enabling her to feed herself and tend to more personal matters. Albeit it rather awkwardly.

  Suffering a twinge of pain in her hip, Anala shifted her weight, the metal bed frame creaking loudly.

  The guard immediately glanced up from his video game, brows drawn in a fierce frown.

  ‘No need for alarm,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘I’m just trying to find a more comfortable position.’ Two days ago she’d asked permission to pace the room, explaining that she desperately needed some exercise. The request had been denied.

  Frown dissipating, the guard held up a water bottle, silently offering her a drink. Very tempted to tell him to ‘piss off’ – he’d been the bastard who’d stopped her from pacing – Anala, instead, nodded her head, refusing to let her pride dictate her actions.

  Taking the bottle from him, she murmured her thanks.

  This is what my life has come to. Not quite the end of the world. But I can definitely see it from here.

&
nbsp; As a despondent wave washed over her, she rested her head on her bent knees and stared at the dingy linoleum.

  Which is when she caught sight of a piece of glass glittering on the floor about eight feet from the cot. Obviously someone had missed it when they’d swept the floor after her failed escape, the window having been boarded over with planks of wood.

  I can use that piece of glass to cut through the plastic cuffs!

  No sooner did the thought take root than Anala turned her head in the other direction, keeping her expression as neutral as possible. Seeing that jagged piece of glass, a small flame of hope had flickered. Not a bright flame. But enough of a glow for her to immediately think about how she might go about retrieving the piece of glass.

  She didn’t need to hang around until the closing credits to know how the movie was going to end. It was going to end badly. Very badly. Unless she did something to rewrite the script.

  15

  La Torre dei Venti, The Vatican

  The Prefect of the Secret Archives peered over his shoulder, verifying that no one lurked in the vicinity.

  Stuffing a hand into his cassock pocket, he removed a silver key on a nondescript ring and quickly inserted it into the door lock. La Torre dei Venti – the Tower of the Winds – was closed to the public. The reason why it was his favorite retreat. Reclusive by nature, he adjourned to the tower whenever he needed a bit of privacy. Or to escape from prying Vatican eyes.

  In a hurry, Franco made his way down a passageway that led to a small elevator.

  A few moments later, the old-fashioned lift shuddered to a stop. Exiting, he strode down a dimly lit corridor that dead-ended at the Tower of the Winds.

  As he rushed down the corridor, Franco barely gave the flaking frescoes that covered the walls a passing glance, whimsical personifications of the seasons and vividly imagined Biblical scenes streaming past his peripheral sight line in a colorful blur.

  Piled against those forgotten masterpieces were bins full of bound indexes, the tower used as an overflow storage area for the Archives. Here, some of the greatest secrets of papal history were safeguarded, with much of the diplomatic correspondence scribed in secret code due to the sensitive nature of the communiqués. Often confused with the Vatican Library, which was the repository for books, texts, codices and manuscripts, the Archives contained all of the papers pertaining to the internal workings of the Church, much of it political in nature.

  On the far side of the storage room there was a spiral staircase. Lifting his cassock with his left hand, Franco ascended. Halfway up, huffing, his chest burning from the exertion, he came to a gasping halt.

  Bracing a hand on the stucco wall, Franco continued up the corkscrewed stairs. Well worth the effort, he thought as he reached the top and entered the beautifully decorated Meridian Room, the only area in the tower that contained no book bins.

  Still trying to catch his breath, Franco set his gaze upon the anemoscope at the top of the ceiling, an instrument that never ceased to fascinate. Designed by the same Dominican friar responsible for the topographical maps in the Galleri delle carte geografiche, the anemoscope had a pointer attached to an outdoor weather vane that indicated the movement of the wind.

  Oddly enough, it was the anemoscope that had inspired Franco to use the alias ‘Irenaeus’ when he’d contacted the Patel woman. One of the early Church Fathers, Irenaeus was instrumental in creating the Gospel canon, weeding out the heretical gospels that had proliferated in the ancient world.

  ‘Because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, therefore there can only be four gospels that are authentic.’

  No surprise that liberal-leaning biblical scholars refused to countenance Irenaeus’s assertion and actively sought heretical gospels, wasting an inordinate amount of time traipsing around the Middle East peering into bat-infested caves. When the Nag Hammadi Library of ancient Gnostic texts was unearthed in the mid-twentieth century, rogue scholars were downright orgiastic about the discovery.

  Standing in the white marble meridian circle that was imbedded in the middle of the floor – part of a zodiacal diagram orientated to the movement of the sun – Franco opened the manila envelope that he’d received from the Vatican secret service. Although the airy enclave lacked electrical lighting, there was a small hole near the ceiling through which streamed a beam of natural light. It provided enough illumination for him to read the two typed sheets of paper; the dossier he’d requested on one Caedmon St. John Aisquith.

  He gave the photograph of a middle-aged auburn-haired man a cursory glance. According to the dossier, Aisquith had attended Oxford University and had an advanced degree in medieval history. Which he had clearly put to deviant use, having authored a work of conspiracy history entitled Isis Revealed. The sort of tripe that would have garnered a visit by the Grand Inquisitor several hundred years ago.

  Franco re-read the particulars, disturbed by the fact that there were nearly twelve years, from 1995 to 2006, missing from Aisquith’s biographical data. As though the man had temporarily disappeared off the face of the planet. He was also uncertain what to make of the fact that Gita Patel had contacted the Englishman.

  Perhaps they had known one another at Oxford.

  ‘Yes, no doubt that’s it,’ he murmured. Given that Aisquith and the Patel woman were the same age, the explanation was entirely plausible. Since Aisquith was a medieval scholar, Franco assumed that she’d consulted him to assist in deciphering Fortes de Pinós’s cryptic riddle.

  Stuffing the two sheets of paper back into the envelope, Franco strode towards a closed door that led to an outdoor terrace. Like his lavishly designed tower, the little patio was another perk that came with the job.

  After his humiliating ouster from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Franco had made the best of the situation, undertaking his new duties overseeing the Secret Archives with due diligence and devotion. His humility was soon rewarded when he began to peruse long-forgotten files pertaining to the Knights Templar that had been stashed in a locked armadi, the closet tucked away in the section of the Archives that was often referred to as terra incognito.

  Like Minerva’s owl spreading ‘its wings only with the falling of dusk,’ the Knights Templars’ dark secrets had been unfathomable during their 200-year history. The Church only knew that they had secrets. Even the inquisitors could only wring from them hints and vague allusions. ‘The knights at Château Pèlerin discovered something in the caves of Mount Carmel.’ ‘The Grand Master was hiding a relic at the commandery on Cyprus.’ ‘There was a secret ritual performed beneath the preceptory in Paris.’ Never anything specific. Just enough information to induce the inquisitor to loosen the screws and lessen the pain.

  Although he had no proof, Franco believed that the Templars’ demise had nothing to do with their insufferable arrogance or blind ambition, as was so often claimed, but rather their fall from grace had to do with a great secret. One that harkened to the very dawn of Christianity. A secret that was contained in the Evangelium Gaspar.

  Fascinated by this bit of unknown Templar history, Franco had began to comb through the archive indexes in search of all the files pertaining to the Templar Order. No easy task given that the archival records weren’t maintained in alphabetical or even date order. Instead, the voluminous records were indexed by narrow topics.

  It had taken three years of committed research to finally locate Fortes de Pinós’s inquisition transcript.

  Having had no luck deciphering de Pinós’s riddle, Franco had nearly given up all hope of ever finding the ancient gospel when, quite unexpectedly, a historian from India contacted the Vatican Secret Archives requesting information regarding a Knights Templar named Fortes de Pinós. The politely worded missive was a godsend, Franco nearly swooning on the spot when he’d first read it, certain that Dr. Patel knew far more about the Evangelium Gaspar than she revealed in her email.

  While Franco had been considering his next move, unsu
re how to coerce Dr. Patel into spilling her golden beans, Pope Pius XIII, who’d always enjoyed excellent health, had suddenly died.

  The fact that those two unforeseen incidents occurred within a twenty-four-hour period convinced Franco that the invisible Hand of Providence was at work, the Almighty giving him the means and the opportunity to rebuild His Church.

  However, he’d been given a very narrow window to do so. In order to execute the plan, he had to get his hands on the ancient gospel before the College of Cardinals went into conclave. Once the papal election was underway, it would be too late to act.

  Inserting a key into a lock, Franco opened the door that led to the terrace. The second-highest point in the Vatican City, the tower provided a breathtaking view of the Cortile del Belvedere. When the weather permitted, he often took advantage of the private terrace to escape the maddening crowds, if only for a few brief moments. Between the throngs of tourists and the army of black-robed clerics, he sometimes felt as though he was trapped in an overcrowded ecclesiastical prison.

  Inhaling a deep breath, Franco admired the lovely courtyard enclosed at the far end with a soaring exedra wall. A light breeze, blowing across the Tiber, ruffled the deep folds on his cassock. He reached up and removed his red zucchetto, the skullcap worn by cardinals, and tucked it under his arm to prevent it from skittering across the terrace. He then retrieved a slender box of wood-tipped cigarillos from his pocket. Every priest had his vice. His was tobacco. We are, after all, men not gods.

  Lighting up, he blew a hazy plume into the air. To his surprise, Franco caught sight of Cardinal Secretary Moran rushing along a pathway that separated the grassy courtyard parterres below.

  He frowned, his pleasant respite instantly spoiled.

  No different than Satan, Thomas Moran and his liberal ilk constituted a dark menace.

  ‘I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it,’ Franco murmured, Machiavelli’s advice ringing with pitch-perfect clarity. And he had the perfect secret weapon with which to launch his offensive. Tucked away in the hinterlands of upstate New York.