The man that was propped to become president made him sit up. Antonio’s hands trembled, more from anger than from terror.
“No, it can’t be,” he said in clear English.
The face of the man was unmistakable. He’d see him in the dark, with the devil himself. He’d seen this man with the Half-face. Even though Antonio had known about the man’s desire as a politician to contest for president, Antonio had not believed he could come this far.
Antonio had underestimated the Templars again. He closed his eyes. In his head, he saw what America would become if he became the leader.
He turned the TV off. Frustrated by his inaction, he gritted his teeth. Had he not done his best, had he not tried to stop the conspiracy? And what had he gotten for all his efforts?
Betrayal. That was all Antonio got. Betrayal from the woman. She had…Antonio choked on his thoughts and sighed.
Antonio stopped trembling and sat on the bed again. He recalled that evening in Rome, how he had almost been killed. He faked his own death to get the Templars off his tracks. And it worked. But now, this was happening.
Caged in this dark room over hay, he was nothing but a coward seeing as nothing he had done effected any change.
He had to go back.
The Templars took almost everything from him. Antonio—which was one of the names he had taken along the way—had to run. He was tired of running. Antonio would never let them take away what was left of his life. He had to go back. He must find the woman.
2
Miami, Florida
Olivia loved her apartment on Biscayne avenue better. Here, the ocean greeted her every morning when she opened her window to let the breeze in. Pollution was less, and Smokey liked it too, he loved to sit on the windowsill and watch her write.
Last week she admitted to Betty Garcia that she liked it out here for another reason: art. Tom Garcia and Betty had been to her apartment too. Betty loved the studio feel of the living room, the soft texture of the lean carpeting on the floorboards, and oh, the floorboards itself made her want to pick up her yoga again. But Tom Garcia would never give up their apartment for a studio.
“And you like him too, don’t you?” Betty had said about Edward Byrne.
Olivia had deflected playfully. “No Betty, I just met him—”
“It’s been three months, Olivia, I’m keeping count.”
Tom had ignored the women by watching TV. That was another improvement in her new place. She had gotten a new TV, a Sony, it was huge on the wall. Fit for the expanse.
The news had been on. Olivia had learned an outstanding lesson about American politics in the past two months; public opinion was even more fickle than Bayside weather. And predicting it was as tricky as trying to figure fog movements on the Southside.
When the news came on, the two women joined Tom.
“How’s Brolin doing now?” Olivia asked with half her former interest.
Tom sipped his coffee and shrugged. “That guy is sunk, he’s never gonna come back,” he said.
Olivia had wanted to vote Republican because she thought Matt Brolin was an American industrialist’s greenhorn. The Republican candidate was a hitherto less known guy, David Zimmerman, tough-talking about the American dream.
And then Brolin had begun to show some promise. But allegations grew around him like spring mushrooms, so much he became swamped in it. A candidate with pending court cases didn’t inspire much confidence. Apparently, Brolin was abusing his secretary. That was at least what the Republicans were saying. No evidence yet because said secretary had an accident and was still in a coma.
As a matter of fact, Olivia thought it was all made up. The whole allegation smelled worse than fish stalls in the Baypoint market. The more lack of concrete evidence, the less seriously Olivia took the claims. Rob Cohen agreed with her, and she ran a story on it.
As a further matter of fact, Olivia had attended a Zimmerman rally in Opa-Locka. She had seen something that struck her dumb the whole day. Zimmerman wore a symbol, like a cross on his arm. He had chanted, “In God we trust!”
“It could be anything,” Cohen had said when she drew his attention to the striking similarity of that symbol with another one.
“It could also be it,” she had pouted.
All of this had happened a week ago.
Olivia refused to have pictures on her dark blue walls. "The view of the ocean is all the picture I want," she’d said to Edward Byrne. The artist had tried to force her favorite painting from him, on her. The Chiaroscuro of Memories, he called it. A spiral of blue and red, grains of all the other colors in the known spectrum, all packed on white embossed paper.
Olivia had only conceded to putting a picture of her aunt May Gilmore, who sat on a rocking chair on her patio in the summer, knitting yards of mittens. She was the only surviving family Olivia had, she being an orphan. She was a fine woman with plump cheeks, a wide smile, and fluffy white hair like those worn by English lawyers.
Edward was in love with her. Olivia liked him very much. At least he made her laugh. And Edward was an outdoor person, a contradiction that Olivia found interesting. And that was enough for now.
Sometimes Olivia rummaged around her emails, looking for a strange one, anything. Peter Williams’ family was planning a memorial in the fall. They thought Peter was dead. She thought they were irrational.
So, when Smokey looked out the window and meowed at the stranger on the street, Olivia thought it was a big deal.
She had been working on an article for the International Women’s Right Rally in Tampa. She was reading her third draft aloud to the cat when she saw the figure in the street. The man was looking up at the cat.
Olivia thought at first that it was Edward. He did that sometimes, yelled her name from the street below, and shrieked laughter when her face appeared. He would stand beside his Ford Jeep with his red surfboard tied to the top.
Smokey was staring at the figure too.
It was a man, alright, and he was tall. Nothing about him looked familiar to her. He wore street clothes, a simple grey t-shirt, and blue denim. He was broad-shouldered, his hands hung beside him free, but they looked ready.
Ready for what?
He stood there watching her, but nothing was threatening about him. She took the cat off the window and set him down on the floor. When she looked back at the street, the man was walking down the street.
“Hm, odd.”
There was something about the man that looked familiar. But the face that memory called up was the face of a dead priest in Rome. No, it couldn’t be, that man died for real, Olivia had seen the photo in the news. It was him. Father Andre died for sure from the wounds when he was shot.
She sighed. Whoever the man downstairs was, he better come out and come clean 'cos she was done chasing people around. And the last person she had tried to save had only disappeared for good. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
She shrugged and went back to her draft.
Elections were in a few days, and Miami was celebrating. However, with half the enthusiasm that began the whole process, Matt Brolin was still their favorite.
Olivia drove out to the Miami police department. She found Sheriff Tom Garcia mulling over a stack of papers.
“What’s cooking, Sheriff?”
“This.” Garcia gestured at the stack. “It cooks so hard it gives me heartburn. These things just won’t sometimes fit, no matter how you cut it.”
“Yeah, I understand the feeling.”
Tom looked at her. “Yeah, you didn’t come all the way from your studio to give me a run on the back, Olivia. What’s biting you this time?”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Its where I live, Tom. It’s not a studio.”
“You know, you have a boyfriend who’s an artist, there’s no telling what you would become with such an apartment. Just stating the obvious.”
“And he's not my boyfriend,” Olivia sighed. “Yet.”
“You know what I think yo
u’re doing?”
“What?”
“You are scared to see things fit in.” Tom folded his palms together. “The moment it gets too good, you push it away. But who says it can’t be that good? I see how you smile when you’re with Edward. Come on, let him in.”
“I let him in when he knocks. Should I give him a key, Dad?”
The sheriff shook his head. They both smiled.
“Tom, there was a guy this morning, scoping my place,” Olivia said finally.
“An admirer?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Was he driving?”
“He walked away when I saw him. He was just staring at me from across the street.” Then she added after a second thought, “Maybe he used to live in the place, you know.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Tom agreed. “Something sentimental about the place that pulls him back. Next time ask him if he wants to move back in with you. You won’t mind, will you?”
“Edward would.”
They both laughed at the small joke. Garcia said his wife was throwing a party the next day. “You should come and bring Edward.”
“I will.”
“And Olivia”—the sheriff leaned forward—“visit your aunt, May Gilmore, in Wisconsin.”
“Connecticut,” Olivia corrected.
“Oh, thank God, she remembers!”
They talked about work, and Olivia set out to go by the Miami Daily. It was heavy in the office. There was a frenzy on account of the elections. Cohen was out personally supervising and covering grounds with rallies in the city.
Floyd was ready with office gossip as Olivia pulled out her chair and sat down. He told her she was an apple being plucked from the grapevine. Olivia just had to go and be so rad, he said.
“What’s that all about?”
“Why? You moved out of the area, and you moved on,” Floyd said as he chewed potato chips from a brown bag with blotches of oil on it.
Olivia was tired of this gossip. It was a dead horse.
“And they say you are seeing someone already.” Floyd beamed. “I said, that’s my girl!”
Olivia nodded and booted up her computer.
Marybeth Norton had seen her and was coming over. Relations between the two women had improved since Olivia came back from her adventure in Europe. That’s what the office was calling her trip—an adventure. Cohen had insisted in the last staff meeting that it was purely research.
But the report on Aljazeera had said otherwise. Olivia didn’t care one way or the other.
“Hey, Olivia.”
“Hey, Mary.” Olivia managed a smile. She was the only one with the mettle to shorten Marybeth’s name.
“Are you settling in well in your new apartment? I heard it’s a beautiful place.”
“Of course, it is.”
Marybeth lingered. She then told Olivia to have a great day at work. She sashayed off to her office and her kingdom.
Floyd made a face at Olivia.
“What?”
“Go, girl!” Floyd pumped his fist.
Olivia smiled and turned to her computer. There were drafts from the previous day to go through and outlines to work on. There was a ping; she got an email. Olivia opened it without much thought.
It didn’t come from someone on her mailing list. She hadn’t gotten anonymous emails in a long time. She’d, of course, gotten some from her readers in the online edition of the Miami Daily. But even those ones had become familiar after a while.
She opened it, and her heart lurched in her chest.
Her face must have been so white at that moment because Floyd frowned and asked her if everything was alright.
The email was reminiscent of ones that she had received from a certain priest a long time ago, and suddenly it seemed like yesterday when he saw the name, Andre. She saw him get shot, she saw the blood drain from the man’s chest.
No, it couldn’t be. That name was buried somewhere in the Vatican or wherever the Catholics in Rome planted their clerics.
Sweat broke out on her forehead and the top of her nose. She felt it trickle down her back. Then the feeling of dread gave way to another more latent one. It was a quiet elation of triumph.
It was simple. “I am sorry.”
ROME, DE PALATINO
The contact in the Vatican was authentic then, Lin thought. He had just confirmed his suspicions.
The assassin knew the priest had faked his death, he knew inside his head the way he knew other things, like when one of his sparring opponents on the mat tried to evade by switching stances. He always knew which foot was going to swing, every damn time.
Lin had taken just one look at the body in the morgue, and he had known it. The body was a very close lookalike, yes. But a double was never precisely the same as the person.
And then he had insisted that the Order dug deeper. Actually, Lin didn’t have a choice but to dig. His life hung on the balance as well. It was his life’s job, it appeared, to deliver the Holy Grail.
If the cleric died, the Holy Grail would slip into obscure history. And so would Lin.
So, he had bought priests and nuns. He had paid top dollar and euro to get to the circle of Cardinals around the pope himself.
He had cajoled and threatened, and lastly, he had blackmailed a Cardinal. The man caved in quickly. His crime was an ordinary one if he wasn’t in such an exalted position. But he was a Cardinal, and Cardinals were not known to have mistresses, at least not while they served.
Every man had a dark side, like the moon. Lin sometimes transacted in finding the dark sides of powerful men’s darkness when he wasn't busy killing for money.
Cardinal Emilio Bartolini came to Lin in a black Jeep built like a colossal hearse two months after the bogus funeral, dressed in shirt and trousers, his mistress with him. She was beautiful, probably twenty-two, but Lin only looked once.
“You must keep this as it is, a secret,” he said. His jowl quivered.
“You are too old for this, Cardinal Emilio.”
The man looked at his mistress, then back to Lin. “What are you talking about? I’m just seventy-eight. I need young blood. What would you have me do, get married?”
Lin stared at him with his signature blank stare.
The Cardinal shifted in his seat. “Alright, he is alive, and he is in—”
“Shush,” Lin said.
He gave the Cardinal a piece of paper and a pen. He nodded at it. The Cardinal frowned. He looked at the girl, then his driver. He understood what the gesture meant. If he didn’t say it, no one would hear it. So, he wrote down an address and a name.
Lin took the paper and put it in his pocket, his wax eyes never leaving the Cardinal’s groggy pair.
“Easy on the booze, Cardinal,” Lin said and stepped aside.
The Cardinal tapped the back of the driver's seat, and the black Jeep drove away into the Roman night.
Lin smiled—one of the rare times he’s been seen to do so—and walked away.
—
Father Andre left his small room early in the morning and joined the small contingent of town folks on their way to church. Simple women shuffling along the tiny road, scarves tied around their heads, simple men in farm clothes they seldom took off.
He had not gone to confession in a long time. But even a priest needed redemption.
It was a fairly big church. The pews were filling up, and a white-haired and fat priest was moving towards the podium, dressed in the usual garb.
Father Andre turned left into a small hallway. He was familiar with the place; his left, to the vestry and his right, to confessions. He heard movement in the vestry, maybe the choir getting ready.
He entered a booth and sat on the small bench provided.
He didn’t feel the usual presence on the other side of the partition. He resisted the temptation to peep through the mesh.
He heard movement again, behind him, scraping footsteps.
Then he turned around and saw the curtains part. The m
uzzle of a gun appeared there. It spat red breath. Father Andre folded his body. He threw his hands over his head. The bullets broke through the mesh, and he heard running movements back there. Strong hands grabbed his arm and pulled him through the curtains.
He didn’t have the time to see who dragged him out of the booth as he was rushed into the vestry. The light there was low, but by the faint glow coming through the small window, he saw the face.
“Who are you?” he puffed.
Before the stranger could answer, shots sprayed the walls above their heads. The man pushed Father Andre down and covered him with his own body. His gun coughed silent fire in the hallway where there was a loud crash.
“Come!” the man said. He opened a small door no higher than three feet set in the wall at the back of the door and pushed the cleric into it.
They crawled through the damp square of the hole on all fours. It was very dark, but there was light shining at the end of it.
They came out into another room, which wasn’t part of the main church. The man pulled a door open, and they found themselves in an open field. Beyond the field, there was the Baltic sea.
The man put his gun away. Now, Father Andre got a clear look at his face.
“My name is Lawrence Diggs; you remember me from Rome?”
“Yes,” the cleric said, his feet shaking.
“I’m a friend of Olivia Newton.”
“What is going on?”
“They found you,” Diggs said. “We are not safe yet.”
He started walking off. There was a small wood ahead; he struck for it. Father Andre followed him, limping slightly along the rugged terrain.
They came upon an old Volkswagen Beetle hidden among low tree branches. There were tire tracks along the middle of the wood.
“I have to take you away from here, Father. You are in danger.”
“I don’t understand,” Andre said, trembling very much.
“I have been watching you since you disappeared in Rome.”
Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 32
