The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  But nobody knew Rashid was a psycho killer. That was the big problem. They knew about the bombs, kidnappings, assassinations, and terrorism, but knew nothing about his much deeper and more private psychosis. If they did, they would never have set up Marie to trap him like that.

  “Makes you wonder how many women he has killed over the years,” said Callahan.

  “Hmph, what we do know is that he’ll never do it again,” she replied. “Wonder how many we’re saving.”

  She stood up and tied her hair back with a scarf. “Ok, we did something stupid. Forget about it. But we got the bastard, and now all we have to do is get the info from him that Zurich wants. Then he can go to artists’ heaven.”

  Marie stayed with the unconscious prisoner while Callahan went back to Rashid’s room, the first room, the one he initially had waited in. He didn’t expect to learn much from searching the room, but it had to be done. Most of the breaks they got in the business came from mistakes. Rashid had made a big one with Marie, so maybe he had become too comfortable and made some more.

  And, after the mess he had made of tonight, something had to go his way.

  Rashid had been off the Templars’ radar for nearly a year, ever since he had engineered the destruction of 345 people and an airliner flying from London to New York. The British MI6 had rolled up the rest of his cell in London, killing half in the process, but never realized the brains behind the attack had been sent by the Hashashin to oversee the locals in London. The Templars knew, but for whatever reason had chosen to withhold that item from the Brits.

  Before that, he had staged a daylight attack on the Vatican in an attempt to kill the Pope, then, after escaping, promised to return to finish the job. When a Templar Watcher on vacation had spotted Rashid on a cruise ship from Cabo San Lucas to Costa Rica, a team had been sent. The Watchers memorized hundreds of faces, but it was only blind luck and a Watcher sipping a Pina Colada that had found Rashid.

  Rashid’s cell phone and Rolex had been with him, and they would go back to Templars in Zurich for analysis by experts, but Callahan did a quick sweep of Rashid’s room, looking for any other items that may be important. He found Rashid’s soft-sided suitcase and packed everything into it.

  With all of Rashid’s belongings in the suitcase, he lifted the mattress, looked inside lamp shades, checked under drawers, behind dressers, and fluffed the extra pillows and blankets on the closet shelf. Nothing. He could check through the stuff in the suitcase later, but it didn’t look like any clues remained in the room.

  He pulled the sliding door to the small balcony shut, then saw a pool towel neatly folded over a chair to dry. He grabbed it, too, and noticed a pair of swim trunks hanging on the balcony rail by their drawstring. He untied the knot, and felt a distinct clank as something in the trunks struck the iron posts of the railing. Maybe their luck was still with them. When he left with the suitcase, the room looked ready for its next guest.

  * * *

  Zurich had specific information they wanted from Rashid, and had provided a list of detailed questions. Interrogation had always been a cat-and-mouse game, but the Templars now had a great advantage, modern drugs. Their secret financial interests in drug companies gave them access to research and drugs that would never make it into doctors’ offices and hospitals. Many were just too dangerous for general use, but the Templars weren’t interested in general use, and the dangers to the patient didn’t matter.

  When Rashid regained consciousness and the paralyzing agent had worn off, he found himself taped, fully dressed, to a straight-backed chair in the middle of the room. An IV tube ran from his arm up to a floor lamp positioned next to his chair. He looked over at Marie and said, “I know you wanted it. You know it, too. Now you’ve ruined it.” Neither Callahan nor Marie said a word.

  Rashid had been expecting torture, and even looked forward to it. Great art came in many forms. Torture could make him both the art and the artist. But a syringe? He was furious. That was a syringe in Callahan’s hand! Marie jammed a sock in his mouth when he started screaming, the same sock he had used on her.

  Callahan stuck the first syringe in Rashid’s IV tube, and they waited the prescribed five minutes before asking the questions several times. Callahan asked the questions, and Marie recorded the answers. Who did he report to? Where? Who reported to him? Where were the safe houses in Paris? How did they fund European operations? Who led their organization in America? What front organizations were controlled by Hashashin? He gave accurate answers to all the test questions.

  When is the Vatican attack? Where? Who is involved? What kind of attack? Where is it being planned? What is the escape plan? Do they have any inside source? Why are you in Central America?

  Thirty minutes after giving the first drug, he administered the second drug, waited five minutes, and asked the same questions again. Same answers.

  Thirty minutes after giving the second drug, he stuck him with the third. Same questions. Same answers.

  Marie looked at the answers. “Well that was easy. Are we done with him now?”

  “Yeah. No reason to keep him around. Time for Mr. Nelson to do some more partying.”

  Callahan grabbed an open wine bottle and spilled some down the front of his shirt. They cut Rashid’s tape, and stood him up. He reflexively leaned on Callahan as they moved out the door and down in the elevator. He limped on the bandaged bad leg, but the drug cocktail killed the pain. When they reached the lobby, Callahan stumbled and let everyone know his opinion on the current American president. “Damn egghead is what he is,” he slurred, holding Rashid’s chin in his hand and speaking directly to him. “An egghead who doesn’t know enough to pour piss out of a boot with the directions printed on the bottom! Oh yeah…”

  He steered Rashid on a crooked path toward the beach door, waving the bottle and announcing that the National Football League was fixed. Rashid took a drink when Callahan put the wine bottle to his lips. “Fixed is what they are. All grubby little bitches. Little bitches patting each other’s butts are what they are.” The few people in the lobby at midnight detoured around them and avoided eye contact.

  A few hundred yards down the beach when they were away from the hotel’s lights, Callahan kicked off his shoes and led the drugged-sotted Rashid into the gentle surf. When it was waist high Callahan stopped, held Rashid’s head underwater, waited for all movement to stop, then kept him down for another two minutes. He put Rashid in a standard lifeguard’s carry, towed him out to sea with the tide, let him go, then fought the tide back to the beach. The outgoing tide would take the body miles offshore.

  * * *

  When Callahan returned to their room, Marie was on the laptop making two separate files from the interrogation recording. She would send the recording of the original questions and answers to Templar Intelligence, but the questions about the Vatican would go straight to the Templar Marshall.

  She made the files, disconnected the recorder, and listened to the Arabic coming from the computer. The drugs worked wonders, but most subjects responded in their first language. The Marshall insisted that all Templars be fluent in Arabic. “You can kill any damn fool,” the Marshall preached, “but you can only defeat them if you can understand them.”

  Marie took the earpiece from her ear and frowned. “Listen to this, Callahan. What’s that word? Does it mean ‘treaty,’ like between nations, or is it just ‘agreement,’ like anyone can make an agreement? Does Arabic reserve a special word for ‘treaty?’” She pushed the play button on the laptop and Callahan cocked an ear to the machine.

  When the clip finished, Callahan said, “Yeah, I remember him babbling about that. I’m almost sure the word means ‘treaty’ between nations. That’s how Arabic refers to the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.”

  “Ok,” said Marie, “so what’s the Treaty of Tuscany? Tuscany’s in Italy, north of Rome. I never heard of it.” She waved at the computer screen. “And there’s nothing on the Internet about it.”

 
Callahan shrugged. “Look, if you never heard of it, do you think I have? History is your turf. You know? I do computers and you do history.”

  “Remember how he was almost gloating every time he mentioned it? Like they had really pulled one over on us? But he didn’t know the details when we questioned him about it.”

  “Well.” Callahan smiled. “He did seem in love with himself, but I’d have to say he was especially pleased with that treaty. Maybe Zurich knows.”

  Callahan leaned over the Blackberry he had retrieved from Rashid’s room. Some of the messages were in clear text, some in code, and others unopened. He paged through the open messages that were in plain text, and sat back at the last one.

  “Whoa. Here it is again.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “This message. It says they will have to wait for the treaty. That’s all. Doesn’t say what has to wait, just that it has to wait for the treaty.”

  “Is that plain text? Uncoded?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get into the other ones? The coded ones?” She lifted her palms. “I mean, you’re the computer guy. Computers are your turf. You know? I do history and you do computers.”

  Callahan winced. “Touché. But you’re right. Computers are my thing, and I’m not going near those coded messages. I don’t have the stuff I need. They might have a tampering trap that will destroy everything.”

  He carefully removed the Blackberry’s battery and wrapped the unit in a small towel. “This goes back to Zurich with us. They have the equipment to deal with it.”

  “Can you believe that stuff about the Vatican? These guys are going for broke here.”

  “I’ll believe anything about the Hashashin.”

  “Ok,” she said. “Almost done. I’ll add a line to our message telling the Marshall about the Blackberry.”

  * * *

  In the morning Callahan reddened his eyes with grapefruit juice, then the Nelsons checked out of the hotel and took the limo to the airport for a Miami flight. The desk clerk noticed they weren’t speaking.

  Two days later the hotel accountant charged Rashid’s American Express card for his stay. He had skipped out without settling his bill. He was pleasantly surprised when the charge cleared.

  Zurich - Wednesday, March 18

  The Marshall of the Knights Templar leaned over on his thick forearms and listened intently to the interrogation of the Hashashin. Halfway through, he could already see one problem piling on top of another. Coded messages, uncoded messages, Blackberrys, Vatican attacks, and wholesale confusion all competed for attention. And Callahan had killed the guy, so they couldn’t ask any more questions. But that’s what happened, so he had to deal with it. When he finally heard the entire message, he tipped his sturdy wooden chair back on two legs and stared at a tapestry on the wall showing a white shield with a red Templar Cross. And the Treaty of Tuscany? What was that? This one had to go upstairs right now.

  His office was a windowless cube three floors beneath one of the oldest banks in Zurich. It was actually much older than most people thought since it had cycled and recycled through hundreds of years of reorganization, dissolution, rebirth, mergers, hibernations, acquisitions, and partnerships, all in an effort to disguise its true identity and heritage. So far, the strategy had worked for seven hundred years. While few of the general public knew it even existed, in the international banking community it was both respected and feared, but none knew it represented the Knights Templar.

  The Marshall scowled, grabbed his yellow pad and laptop, left his plain wooden chairs, fluorescent lighting, computer and telephone on a metal desk, and briskly moved through a maze of concrete-floored corridors to the stairs. He took the stairs two at a time to the second floor above ground, and emerged into a hushed hallway with inlaid paneling, deep carpeting, recessed lighting and a general air of secrecy, discretion, and security that reassured the bank’s nervous customers that nothing was too expensive, too subtle, or too exclusive for them.

  He followed the understated opulence through the Master’s outer office, nodded to Andre, his Templar secretary, and stood in the doorway.

  The Templar Master took one look at the Marshall and waved the accountants out. This was serious. In the forty years they had worked together, since they had both been young men in the field, the Master had learned to recognize trouble when it was standing there in front of him. The face staring back at him told him to pay serious attention. He turned away from the computer screens flashing the major global markets and the day’s financial headlines and motioned him to a chair.

  The Marshall frowned at the fleeing accountants, made them walk around him, then glided across the deep pile carpet to a chair in front of the antique mahogany desk, moving much more gracefully than one would expect for a man of his size and age. He slid down into the soft leather, dropped the yellow pad on his laptop, gripped the arms of the chair with large, broken hands, and waited.

  The Master pushed a button on a depressed console next to his desk and an electronic lock snicked into place in the office door. Both sides of the door were polished oak, but the core was quarter-inch steel.

  “This is bad, isn’t it? You’re here as Templar Marshall rather than Vice President for Bank Security. Right?” asked the Master.

  “Bad,” replied the Marshall. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Very bad. This has a rotten stink to it. I just know it.” He put the laptop on the Master’s desk and tapped a few keys. “Listen. Remember that Watcher who spotted Rashid Al Bahsar on that cruise ship going to Costa Rica? I sent Callahan and Marie Curtis after him.”

  The Master frowned. “Marie I understand. She’s the best. But why Callahan? Did you want to sink the whole ship? Destroy Costa Rica?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t underestimate Callahan. US Marines recon, loaned out to the CIA, Delta Force. He’s done lots of work for the Americans, and good work for us, too. Loyal as they come, and as good as they come.”

  “It’s not his skills or loyalty I question, it’s his judgment.”

  The Marshall bit back a response and just stared across at him.

  The Master said nothing, just returned the stare. Finally, he held his palms up in a question and said, “And?”

  “And what? Just listen to the damn thing.” He pointed at the laptop on the Master’s desk. “That’s what Callahan and Marie found out. Just an hour ago. Thought you might want to know. Listen to it for yourself here, or wait for CNN.”

  The Master ignored him, clicked the PLAY button on the laptop, and leaned back in his chair. He listened to the Arabic interrogation twice, made some notes, looked over his glasses, then waved at the laptop and asked, “You think this is real?”

  “I’m leaning that way, strongly,” said the Marshall. “When Callahan gets here… he should be here tomorrow… he’s bringing Rashid’s Blackberry with some encoded files. Marie says the clear text Blackberry messages confirm the interrogation. But, if it is true, we have a big problem. I don’t think Rashid knew we had a team on him, so the Blackberry isn’t a plant, and we know the drugs work.”

  “What’s this Treaty of Tuscany thing he’s bragging about? You ever hear of it?”

  “No idea. You’re going to have to ask Patrick about that.” The Marshall hooted. “Good luck. I know the soft spot he has in his heart for you.”

  “I know, I know.” The Master rubbed his forehead. “But if Marie knew, she would have given us a heads-up. She puts a question mark after it on the message. So it’s pretty arcane stuff if she doesn’t know about it.”

  The Marshall was enjoying this. “Well, in that case, you just have to consult the guy who knows everything.”

  The Master shook his head. “Yes I do. It wouldn’t be so bad except I think he really does know everything. Damn all Irishmen.” He pointed at the laptop again. “So, we got all this from Rashid, and his Blackberry confirms it?”

  “Yeah. They got the info we needed from Rashid with those whizbang drugs, and Rash
id’s dead. But he talked up a storm before he died and Callahan and Marie got it all. Everything we asked for. Then I guess they found the Blackberry on Rashid or in his room. Callahan’s headed back here with it. As soon as we get it, I’ll give it to the Intel geeks so they can take it apart.”

  “Wait a minute,” the Master waved a finger and interrupted. “He got the Blackberry before or after he questioned Rashid?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t say.”

  “So, he might have had both the Blackberry and a living and breathing Rashid in his hands at the same time?”

  “I suppose so, but can’t say.”

  “Like I said, judgment, not skill…”

  “You’ve been behind that damned desk too long!”

  They both stopped, glared at each other, and silently decided to renew their long truce.

  “So what do we do now?” The Master closed the Marshall’s laptop on the desk. He pulled out a file drawer, put a foot up on it, leaned further back, and stared at the ornate gilded ceiling.

  “Do? We do nothing,” the Marshall blurted. “The Concordat forbids it. That’s the agreement we have with the Vatican. Pope Pius rejected an alliance under the Concordat. That means we stay out of Vatican business. They’re on their own. Out means out. That’s what the Concordat says, and that’s what the Templars are bound to. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it works. It’s never been pretty, and it’s going to get uglier now.”

  The Master frowned and shot back, “Do nothing? What are you talking about? We’ve already violated the Concordat by getting our man in as second-in-command of Vatican Security. Mancini is a Templar. That’s a Templar in the Vatican. Big as day, my friend. A Templar.”

  The Marshall drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “That’s intelligence gathering. Just keeping an eye on things. What’s one man?”