Hunt for the Holy Grail

by Preston W Child

  Miller took two tentative steps towards her car. Still, Topeka blocked him. The cop nudged Miller back with his gun that had now materialized on his waist.

  “Lay off her, buddy,” he muttered menacingly.

  Richards was already beside the car. He guided Olivia into it and shut the door. Olivia put the car in reverse and drove away without looking at Frank Miller.

  “Who the hell are you?” Molina asked Miller.

  With a faraway look in his eyes, Miller said, “Her benefactor.”

  7

  Miller was waiting in her apartment when she got there that night.

  Olivia hadn’t been back there since the break-in, and the place remained as it was, untidy and strewn. The millionaire had turned the couch back on its legs and was seated in it, elbows on his knees, eyes trained on the open door.

  “How did you get in?” she asked, standing at the door.

  “I picked the lock. You learned to do that in the Order.”

  “The cops are down in the street, I—”

  “There’s a man called Snake, he works for the Half-face,” Miller began. “The Half-face never leaves his place. The people who took the Holy Grail from the secret lab were taking the relic to him in Rome.

  “The Snake is here, in Florida. He awaits the metamorphosis of the Half-face. The man who stole the Grail is a monsignor in Rome. He is not a Dissenter, he would not join us, and he would not support the Templars. He is a man with a different motivation.

  “But he is just a man, an ordinary cleric. He needs protection. If we can do him, we can protect him and make sure the Templars never get near the Grail—”

  “The Grail is not real,” argued Olivia, sitting on the floor.

  “Do you sincerely believe that, Ms. Olivia?”

  She didn’t. She was just tired; she needed sleep, hours of it, in her own bed. She closed her eyes briefly. She heard footsteps in the hall and opened her eyes again.

  Bobby Topeka was standing at the door, looking in at the hunched figure of Frank Miller.

  “Everything okay, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Bobby.”

  Topeka glanced at Miller one more time before stepping back down the stairs.

  “The cleric has gone into hiding,” Miller spoke again. “Father Andre is a cunning man. We need the address on that paper to find him before his trail goes cold.”

  “That’s a good thing, yes.”

  “At first, we thought it was a great idea for him to keep it, he being a recluse, a holy man, but no flesh may possess the Holy Grail and maintain control over their urges.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even he may be in danger,” he said more earnestly. “The modern Templars are nothing like the old one. They have the resources, the manpower, and the will to find the cleric and kill him.”

  “Ted said I must trust no one.”

  “Yes, indeed. I’m aware the cleric was killed by a cop.”

  Miller stood up and went to the window. He shook his head and looked at Olivia, his face illuminated by the meager light from the street. His face was gaunt, unlike how Olivia remembered it. He walked over to the door when Olivia sat on the floor.

  “Two cops are easy to kill; they’d get to you if they really want to.”

  He gave Olivia a white card. “There’s my number, call me when you feel ready. But you must know we don’t have the luxury of long deliberation.”

  Miller stepped out onto the landing.

  “May God keep you,” he prayed, and was gone.

  —

  Tom Garcia told Olivia he had not shared the bit about the paper they found inside Ted Cooper with anyone. He asked if she had told Peter Williams.

  “Nope.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said. “Maybe the coroner?”

  “Maybe the coroner, yeah.”

  Olivia hung up and stared at the card with Frank Miller’s number on it. She put it away in her bag and considered going back to Tom’s place. She had only come to take some of her stuff, but now that she was there, she suddenly missed it, her bed, her couch; she looked out the window, her street too.

  The unmarked police car was parked a block away. The cops were not inside it. Bobby Topeka hung in the shadows of the alley across the street. At the same time, Richards Molina smoked below the stairs of Olivia’s building.

  If these men died now, their blood would be on her conscience. Same went for sheriff Tom Garcia, and Betty, his wife.

  She was inexorably a part of the whole drama now. People’s lives hung on every decision she made, would make, or not.

  She took changes of clothes and spoke to the cops on the radio. “Guys, I’m coming out.”

  “Roger that, foxy,” Richards said.

  Foxy, hm, how nice.

  —

  There was a new man in the Consus Villa. The villa was a five-kilometer hike down its steep side and up the adjacent Caelian Hill. Since the villa wasn’t well known to the outside world, it was a perfect hideout.

  But the courteous people of the town were not aware that the man had come there to hide. They thought he was only a farmhand who was in search of day jobs. Perhaps, because he found a consistent one in the area, he had decided to make it home.

  After arriving at this conclusion, the people just about accepted his presence.

  The man in question was everything he formerly wasn’t. He had bushy, curly charcoal black hair, dark, intense eyes, and the lower half of his face was covered in hair as curly and pitch-black as that on his head. At first glance, he appeared tall, but this was only because he was so lean. He improved this disguise further by wearing long robes when not on the tomato farm, and red khaki shirts and shorts when he worked.

  The man should walk with a limp, but he didn’t.

  Everything he did in the little rustic town of Fiugi was carefully planned and calculated. His hair black because he dyed it every second day. His lean body he got from so much exercise and a strict diet, and his non-existent limp was so because he’d be dead in hours if he kept it up.

  In fact, the only real thing about the man was the limp that he didn’t have now. And so, it was that the moment he stepped off a potato truck onto the dirt road that led into Latium Fiugi, the limp disappeared.

  He was a Catholic father once, now he was a farmer, and everyone called him Anthony, from Spain.

  He could be in the tomato farm and blend in, as invisible yet ubiquitous as the crops he plucked for a living.

  One afternoon not long after he had come to the town, the man had told the owner of the farm, and of course, the villa where he lived, that he was not feeling well. He would love to take the day off.

  The man, Cato, had given him a friendly pat on the shoulder and said, “You are the best that ever happened to my farm. If you must rest, then so shall it be. You need to regain strength, yes.”

  Cato had then walked off to the hillside with the rest of the workforce, which consisted of himself, his wife, Claudia, and his son, Cicero. Other workers joined them from the other families. But Cato preferred cheap labor.

  His cheap labor needed rest, though.

  When they were gone, the house was quiet, except for the singing of the maidservant Drusilla, a pretty girl with abundant breasts and hips that wouldn’t stay in her skirt since the new farmhand came.

  Anthony went up into his room in the attic and shut the door. He allowed his limp because it hurt so badly to hide it. He sat on the small bed and pulled from under it his black duffel.

  He removed an old radio transistor and found the desired station after several tuning attempts. He made sure the volume was low enough for him to hear, and for anyone outside not to.

  He had tried this for two nights now. Perhaps he’d get something in the day.

  He did.

  He got the BBC. It was mostly static at first, then attached a wire to the broken antenna, and the reception improved enough for him to hear the stringing word
s clearly.

  Anthony listened for almost thirty minutes before the news he searched for came on. It was local news from the United States. A particular professor of German history was dead; he had died of health reasons.

  Anthony frowned. He hunched over in sorrow because he knew the truth about the professor’s death.

  There were no more reports of death from that country that he didn’t trust.

  He put his radio away and listened to the maidservant's birdlike singing.

  —

  Thousands of kilometers away, in the country that so interested the pretending man, Anthony, something that would further interest him had just happened.

  Olivia Newton, who had been seeing Professor Peter Williams every other day of the week, was becoming agitated but trying not to think the worst.

  The journalist had just finished calling Peter’s cell phone for the third time. It was close to noon, an hour when Peter was usually free. Except he had to conduct tests for his students. In which case, he would have left a message on the telephone in his office.

  But Olivia had also called that phone twice. She had gotten no message to suggest that the professor was in a meeting or with his grad students.

  She went back to drafting her story from the previous day, the one about the congressman Matt Brolin. Her boss, Rob Cohen, had added one more candidate to her column, the candidate for the state of Texas. The Texas man was a likable man, thickset with a perpetual smile on his face that reminded Olivia of the face on the Kentucky Fried Chicken packs.

  At 1:00 pm, she called Peter’s office again. Then she called his cell phone, and like the other times, it didn’t ring.

  She finished up her column and sent it over to Rob Cohen’s table for a look-see before making her way down the street to get her lunch. Sitting at her usual table in the diner, she assumed that if Peter Williams was ready, he’d meet her there.

  She chose a spot from which he could see the door, and the people coming in. One or two regulars came in, people whose faces she had seen before. The raucous talk centered around the upcoming elections, the men clapped each other’s backs as they ate hamburgers and coffee. Every face drew her attention.

  She stared at her own Po Boy sandwiches, the can of Pepsi, and quelled the urge to make a run for the university. She ate quietly, watching the traffic outside and the people.

  Her phone, which was in quiet mode, began to hum on the table.

  “Peter?”

  “No, it’s me.”

  “Oh, Tom.” Her relief dissolved like smoke.

  “Olivia, I need you to check on Betty at home. I know you get off early today, and you have to meet Peter.”

  “Is she alright?”

  “I guess,” Tom said. “I won’t be getting in early tonight, I just want to make sure, you know.”

  Olivia looked out into the street again, hoping to see Peter’s car or his tall figure cross the street. There was just light traffic out there and people going and coming from their lunch break.

  “Okay, I will.”

  “Could you get her flowers for me?”

  “Who’s your florist?”

  “Ellis on Third Avenue, shop with the green Marquee. It smells like lavender all around.”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you alright, Olivia?”

  “Uhuh.”

  She hung up. She checked her watch; it was already past the hour. Except if Peter called now, she didn’t think he was going to come. Premonition tugged at her mind.

  She went back to the Miami Daily, but there was not much for her to do there. Rob Cohen still thought the Templar story was out of touch with present reality. The Brolin speech at the university was going to press that evening, and Cohen was in an agreeable mood.

  Olivia wheeled her chair around and observed Marybeth Norton’s swishing bottom. The pretty girl went from her small office against the wall where she served as the editor in chief now, to Cohen’s office and back. Marybeth threw Olivia guarded glances too. She wore her usual, a jacket with her lapel stuck proudly on the breast, her skirt shy of her knees—just enough for Cohen to get a generous peek every time. That piece of flesh was getting kissed on weekends, Olivia had heard. Offices like this always had grapevines. And grapevines still sprouted rumors more than the Boston Tribune.

  Right after John died, Olivia caught the rumor that she was sleeping with Tom Garcia. Floyd had confided that someone had told him at a company ball about the year Olivia was even going to marry the sheriff. Olivia had gone straight with the news to Betty, better the woman heard it from Olivia than from lackeys in the hair salon.

  Olivia smiled ruefully at the memory of those tumultuous days. She had drifted through the office like a waxwork, numb, and desolate. But Cohen had been an outstanding boss then, at least, better than those assholes up at corporate. Cohen had done his best for him.

  Olivia pulled herself out of her reverie. She walked without looking sideways towards Cohen’s office.

  Cohen was always on the phone these days.

  He was on it now. He raised a finger, gestured for Olivia to sit, and he continued to murmur in his characteristic manner into the mouthpiece.

  Olivia let her eyes roam around Cohen’s office. The walls had been repainted a lighter blue. The paintings of Uccello and Masaccio had been taken off the wall on the far side. The office had only Cohen, his desk, two file cabinets, and a small shelf of self-help books.

  Cohen finished mumbling on the phone, “Heard the sheriff’s wife is in the hospital for cancer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know that’s not why you’re here, but that’s one good story you should write about in the meantime.”

  “I have another story.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “The Templars.”

  Cohen showed no reaction. He knew nothing about them, or he was one goddamn pretender.

  “What about them?”

  “I’ll do a draft for you to see,” she said. “You’re gonna love it.”

  Olivia made to rise, but Cohen stopped her. He shrugged. “Tell me about it, everything.”

  Olivia did, leaving out the essential parts. She kept the Catholic Father, emphasizing the connection with the sudden explosion in Antarctica. She showed her a report from the sheriff’s office with Tom’s signature. Cohen’s mouth fell open. He glanced at Olivia, riffled through the two-page report, and said, “Fuck me.”

  Cohen gave the report back.

  “Do it.”

  —

  Olivia wrote the column Templar story in thirty minutes. Cohen read it in ten minutes. It got shipped over to the press down the street after.

  Olivia drove to Third Avenue to get Betty’s flowers. Contrary to what Tom thought, she missed the green awning of the florist shop because there were other awnings in the stretch of stores on Third Avenue with shades of green.

  There was a clothes store with a chartreuse-colored awning that extended over half the sidewalk. A Porsche was parked in the street the color of sage.

  Then there was the sedan in the rearview mirror. It shot out of a narrow alley after the carwash in the street. Its Brolin banner was flapping over the road.

  Olivia kept her eyes on it all the way to Third.

  She missed the florist shop, saw it in the side mirror, and stopped at the light a block away. The light green sedan dipped into a sudden screech behind her. And that was how she knew.

  The driver had been paying attention to her car instead of the road.

  The light changed, and Olivia went through, cut left, and headed back the way she came.

  As she went by, Olivia checked to see who was behind the wheel of the sedan. She didn’t see much, though. The driver was male, and he looked away.

  “Pussy, look at me! Look at me!” she screamed at the car on the other side of the road.

  Olivia drew a stare or two from pedestrians.

  She found a spot and parked. She got out and saw the sedan speed away without
making the turn. Lips trembling and heart pounding, she crossed the street.

  When she could back out from her business with the florist, the green car was nestled between a tow truck with its crane up and a taco van.

  And the driver was staring at her.

  The sun was behind the buildings back there, so the driver’s face was hidden in the shadows. Olivia stared back, summoning every ounce of composure in her; flowers in one hand and her bag in the other, she started crossing the street.

  As she came closer, dodging oncoming vehicles from the other side, she heard the sedan’s engine start. Olivia doubled her pace. A utility car with windows down and kids singing in the back blocked her progress.

  The sedan pulled into the traffic right now in front of the utility and zoomed off. Panting, busting with the adrenaline of close confrontation, Olivia watched the car turn a corner in the distance, and it was gone.

  —

  Peter Williams’ place was a ten minute-hike from the university, whereas the Brentwood General Hospital was about twenty-five minutes from the university campus if traffic was heavy.

  Olivia considered her options.

  Betty would need more company than flowers, and a “have a good night’s rest” kiss. The flowers Tom had asked Olivia to get were still in its ribbons and those glittery gift wrappers they always wrapped them in. Olivia looked through her rearview mirror to see what the traffic looked like behind her; she expected to see the green sedan again. There was nothing back there but folks trying to get home.

  Peter Williams hadn’t called. Now someone was following her around town.

  She stepped on the brakes suddenly, she made a hard turn on an exit, and headed for the university.

  She started praying.

  —

  She was here two days before. Crest High Street, it was called; broad streets with juniper trees, low hedges around red brick chalets, and white fences made with stakes. It was a beautiful layout with less city noise and pollution. Moving currents of air carried the fragrance of freshly cut lawn.

  Olivia stopped by the only black letterbox on this street. Peter had repainted it.