The Master scorned the idea with a wave of his hand. “A Templar in the Vatican is a Templar in the Vatican. Like a turd in a punch bowl. Think the Pope knows he’s a Templar? Invites him for afternoon tea to talk over fine points of theology and old Inquisitions?”
The Master rubbed an old scar above his eye. “We need to take this to the Council. We put Mancini in the Vatican on our own, but this new stuff?” He rapped the laptop with a knuckle. “This belongs with the Council. If the two of us do anymore on our own, we’re going too far out on a limb. With the Hashashin going after the Vatican again, this has to be a decision of the Order. And that means the Council.”
The Marshall shrugged. “Ok. Let’s do it.”
The Master unlocked the door, hit a few buttons on the desk console and Andre appeared. “Call a full Council, Andre. Get the other five. Special meeting. No agenda. As soon as possible. ”
“Live or video, Sir?”
“Live, damn it! If I want to choke someone I need a neck handy.”
“Yes, Sir,” Andre retreated and the two men resumed their staring match.
“One more thing,” said the Marshall.
“Yeah. I know. There’s always one more. Now what?”
“I don’t want to leave Mancini down in the Vatican all alone. If it all hits the fan, it would be nice to have someone else around.”
“I have a feeling I won’t like this.”
“You probably won’t. I don’t care. That’s life.” The Marshall paused, leaned forward on his elbows, and cracked his bent knuckles. “We’re already in violation of the Concordat with Mancini. I’ll grant that. Let’s stick another Templar from Ops down there. Nothing says one of our guys can’t visit Rome and take in the sights.”
“You think I’m an idiot? If you want to send Callahan, just say so. That’s what you want to do since he’s the only one besides us who knows about this. And Marie Curtis knows, too, doesn’t she?”
“Curtis? Of course she knows. They were both there. But she’s as safe as they come.”
“Safe?” He snorted. “None of us are safe anymore. Right now you, me, Callahan, and Marie know. That’s already four too many. After the Council meeting, eight or nine will know. If the Council honors the Concordat, and keeps quiet about the attack, that makes it a secret that could potentially ruin us.”
“They’re all sworn Templars,” the Marshall shot back.
“Sworn Templars? I don’t care if they tap dance naked on Lake Lucerne. All the Hashashin or the CIA or the KGB has to do is grab someone. I don’t care if they’re sworn Templars or not. Shoot them up with that new joy juice, and they’ll blurt out everything, everything they know, chapter and verse. They’ll sing like castrated canaries.”
The Marshall shrugged.
“And you know all this. Don’t waste my time. That’s why you want to send Callahan to help Mancini. So we don’t have to let anyone else in on this. Callahan knows, so Callahan goes. Right?”
“Great minds think alike.” The Marshall spread his fingers and studied his hands. “And I’ll even grant you Callahan’s not the best. He’s not a Steinhaus or a Creole. But he is very good. Besides, what choice do we have? I think both of us know what the Council will decide.”
“Steinhaus or Creole?” the Master said. “If we were talking about them, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem. But we’re not talking about them, are we? We’re talking sending Callahan down there.”
“Good point, good point,” said the Marshall. “But let’s not forget it was Steinhaus who recruited Callahan away from the Americans. I always said Steinhaus had good judgment.”
“Go to hell.”
The Master pointed to the laptop. “Who has heard this thing? Anyone else? Code clerks? Programmers?”
“It came directly to me, and I decoded it myself. The other stuff they got from Rashid? That came in through normal channels. I’m the only one who got the Vatican stuff.” He gave an evil grin. “Thank God for Callahan’s good judgment.”
“Crap.”
“So, do we send Callahan to keep Mancini company?” The Marshall stood up. “And do we let him tell Mancini what he knows?”
The Master got up and stared out the windows at the mountains. Now, why wasn’t he up there at his cabin and not here?
He gave a hard spin to the old globe that showed the boundaries of the world prior to World War I, and turned back to the Marshall. “Anyone with half a brain in the Vatican knows they are under a threat of attack from Al Qaeda. They probably don’t know about the Hashashin, but an attack is still an attack. I guess they just do what little they can with that idiot Pope in charge. The message from Callahan and Marie says there will be an attack. That’s not news. But it says it’s imminent and the countdown has started, soon enough that Rashid Al Bashar was being recalled for the new phase of the struggle. That is news. Big news.”
He turned back to the globe and waited until it stopped turning on the well-oiled bearings. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked to the other side of the globe and looked across it at the Marshall. “Callahan can tell Mancini there will be an attack, that he found that message. They know that. But he cannot tell them it will be soon. He can’t let Mancini or anyone else know. The Council can always overrule me on that. In some ways I wish they would. It meets in two days.”
Zurich - Wednesday, March 18
The Master’s secretary said, “Sir, I have the Chief Archivist.”
Great, thought the Master. Just what I need now.
“Hello, Patrick, how are you today?”
“How am I, my ass. When did you ever give a shit? We’re in the shitter and we have to talk.”
“Can it wait?” asked the Master. “We’re busy with a few things now. Maybe you noticed, things like…”
“Sure, it can wait,” the Archivist cut him off, “and the longer we wait, the deeper we sink into the shitter. We can wait if I can stand on your shoulders. You best pay attention here. When’s the last time I called you and said we were in the shitter?”
“You never did.”
“Well then you better pay attention, don’t you think?”
* * *
The Templar Master sat in the back of his armored limo and thought about the Treaty of Tuscany. Twenty minutes after the Marshall left his office, the Templar Archivist had essentially summoned him. So what on Earth was the Treaty of Tuscany, and what’s so important about it? The Templar Archivist might be a pain in the ass, but he was the smartest man the Master had ever known. If he was sounding the alarm, then he better pay attention.
His driver turned in to a driveway to an old stone building on the edge of the university campus, adjacent to the university, but not on the campus itself. More modern structures were off to one side, but the old stone defined it. The Kruger Institute was one of the premier private research libraries in the world. Its origins were a bit murky, intentionally murky, but an endowment from a Templar company in the late 1800s, plus astute management of the endowment by another Templar company, allowed it to maintain its independence and become a destination for scholars from all over the world.
When the car stopped in the back parking lot next to the staff entrance, a silent young man held the library door for the Master and escorted him to the Archivist.
“Well, well, well, come in. Come in. What a surprise.” A short, wiry man looked up from a desk piled high with books and papers. “Wonderful to see you.”
“You called me this morning, Patrick, so let’s drop the crap.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. I seem to remember something like that way back in this addled brain and broken body that is no longer fit for field duty.”
The Chief Archivist of the Knights Templar shuffled around from behind his desk. Wire spectacles sat on his forehead, and his old cardigan sweater hung nearly to his knees. This would be another difficult meeting. They had all been difficult since the Master had taken the old man off the active field roster after sixty years as a Templar.<
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“Well, have a seat, and let’s see what you want. I presume you are here to pursue learning? The French are so backward.” The Archivist pointed to a set of matched armchairs. The instant the Master reached to help him into the chair, he knew he had made a mistake.
“Get your skinny claws off me,” hissed the small man. “I can still sit in a chair under my own power, and I expect to be doing it long after you’re moldering in the dust. I’ve been doing it for eighty-five years, and it’s not something that takes a lot of practice. You, you might forget, but not me. And you might remember it was me who pulled your sorry French carcass from the clutches of the Saracen fiends. Not the other way around.”
The Master recalled being injured and trussed up in a Beirut cellar many years ago after a particularly stupid move on his part. The man in front of him had bounded down the cellar stairs with a bloody knife in each hand, cut his bonds, and carried him out to safety. On the way out, they passed his three guards piled in a bloody heap with their throats cut. Well into his eighties, the Archivist still taught knife technique in training.
“Yes,” replied the Master, “and good afternoon to you, too, Patrick. And once again, I thank you for my worthless carcass. I’m always grateful for the good cheer you bring to my otherwise miserable life.”
“Ok. Now, what do you want?” asked the Templar Archivist. “What do you want? I’m busy, and don’t have time to waste on nonsense.”
“What do I want? I want to know about the Treaty of Tuscany. You’re the one who called me about it. What is it?”
“Tuscany? The Treaty of Tuscany? Oh, yes.” The Irishman cocked an eyebrow and the Master swore he could see new life leap into the small man. “Now, Tuscany? Nobody knows about Tuscany. But just this morning, our own Marie Curtis calls up out of the blue. She calls in from Costa Rica and asks about it because she ran across it while having high tea with one of our Hashashin friends.”
“Let’s not play games, Patrick. Not today.”
The Archivist seemed lost in his own thoughts.
The Master waited. “Patrick? Do you know? What is it?”
“Know? Of course I know. At least I know more than anyone else knows.” He sprang up with surprising agility and darted to the door. He looked back at the Master. “Well, are you coming or not? I thought you wanted to learn about the treaty.”
He led them down the corridor to an unmarked door, pressed his palm against the scanner, and scampered down two flights of stairs. The old fraud, thought the Master, he’s infirm when it suits him, and can dance on a high wire when he wants. Something to remember.
An armed guard behind a bulletproof glass admitted them, and they passed through a second door leading to a large room with aisle after aisle of shelves and cabinets. “The Templar Archives,” said the Archivist. “One day, maybe this can all be moved upstairs, but not yet. Hmmph, it would be nice to let the world know what really started the French Revolution, what Henry VIII and the Pope were actually doing, who shot Kennedy. But not yet, not yet.”
The Archivist tapped a keyboard and ran his finger down the screen. Then he slowly moved down an aisle, lightly dragging his fingers across the books, and pulled a large, leather-bound volume from a shelf.
He took a seat and paged through the volume. “Yes, yes… this is it… hmmm…”
The Master waited, then asked, “Well? What is it?”
“First off, understand we don’t have the treaty. Don’t even have a copy of it. Nobody does.”
The Archivist turned his chair sideways to the table, crossed his ankles, settled back in the chair, and folded his hands in his lap. “Simply put, the treaty is the stuff of legends, and mostly forgotten legends. But don’t forget legend is usually born in fact. I haven’t heard mention of it for fifty years. We have some Templar documents from the early Fifteenth Century that refer to it, but they don’t tell us much. One of my predecessors as Chief Archivist, Hugo Deboge,” he tapped the volume on the table, “he wrote about it in 1540 when he tried to gather all the information he could into a short history. I’m sure he did quite a fine and complete job. Unfortunately, we don’t have his complete work, and the manuscripts he references have disappeared into history’s dustbin.”
The Archivist bent over the book again. “And we don’t know why he was interested, either. Something had to prompt him… hmmm… but there’s no hint here.”
He lifted his glasses onto his forehead. “So, the treaty. Now mind you, what I’m telling you isn’t based on anything close to verifiable history. It’s a mix of conjecture, legend, hearsay, and probably a heavy dose of crap, but it’s all we know, or all anyone knows.”
The Master just nodded.
“Ok. Just before the Third Crusade, let’s say about 1190, which was a horrible disaster for the Europeans, and well after our Order had been founded in 1122, the Pope got the big three kings of Europe to sign onto an eternal campaign to wipe out every vestige of Islam. Not just secure Jerusalem, keep pilgrims alive, and plant the Pope’s flag, but go way beyond that. Way, way beyond. Think about it. We have the Pope and the kings signing a document that pledged them to rid the world of the Islamic menace and ensure Christian dominance forever.
“And it wasn’t just for the Third Crusade. No, not at all. It committed them and all their descendants to the task. All of Europe, and all of Christendom forever. Let’s say they were taking the long view of history. Get rid of Islam. Get rid of Muslims. Kill ‘em all. Rend ‘em limb from limb. Accept the gentle Lord Jesus Christ as universal love, or die! Heathen scum! Infidels! All good, peace loving Christians, of course.”
The Master raised his cane. “And they wrote it all down? Isn’t that a bit strange for the times? After all, how many could even read?”
“Who knows why they wrote it,” answered the Archivist. “Maybe the Pope wanted to have a stick to use against the next generation of kings when he wanted to shake them down for men and money for some future Crusade. I don’t know. They were all half-mad. Who knows?”
“Ok,” said the Master, “go on.”
“Now, one of the sketchier things about all this has to do with the authority the Pope invoked to get it all done. And this is by no means verifiable, since nobody has ever seen the treaty, if it even existed.”
He stopped and twisted around. “Could you perhaps fetch an old man a bottle of water? I’m afraid I can’t make it on my own.”
Fetch? The Master refused to give him the satisfaction of objecting. He simply got up and grabbed a bottle of water from a small cooler.
“Much better,” said the Archivist, twisting the cap off the bottle. “Have to keep this dried-up old wreck of a body hydrated or I might just blow away with the dust before I finish my story.”
The Master sat silently.
“Alright, back to the Treaty of Tuscany. Apparently, some folks thought the Pope invoked the magisterial teaching authority of the Church in demanding the obliteration of Islam. In today’s terminology, that means it’s an infallible teaching. Infallible. Can’t be wrong because the Pope speaks for God and God says so. Can’t be changed because God doesn’t change his mind. That would be admitting error, and God doesn’t screw up in the first place. Can’t be questioned, because one does not question the Lord Thy God. And it binds every Christian to the end of time. How’s that for a great, fine mess?”
The Archivist sat back and cackled. “And if it’s real and if it’s in play? And if our Hashashin friends have the ball? Oh, we’ve been tipped into the shitter now. Love to get a look at it. Love to know exactly what it says.”
The Master was silent for a few moments, then raised his head and asked, “And you are getting all this from that old Templar Archivist? The one in the Sixteenth Century?”
The Archivist frowned. “In a nutshell, that’s right.” He tapped the book again. “Maybe a few references before his time, but those are included in what he wrote. There’s stuff he referenced that we don’t have, and there’s stuff he referenced tha
t we do have. But there’s nothing since this 1540 summary he wrote. In fact, I doubt you’ll find any reference to the treaty anywhere but in our own Templar archives. It’s essentially lost. But now it’s being chatted up by the enemy?”
“I presume this wouldn’t be of any use unless someone had the original?”
“Yes, yes. Something like this, something that has essentially been lost and forgotten? You have to come up with the real thing to make any kind of claims.”
“The real thing? Ok, where is it?”
“Where is it? Now how would I know? It isn’t here, if that’s what you want to know. It could be anywhere, tucked away in some dusky corner. Remember, the kings of England, France, and Germany were in on it. That means it can be in any of those countries. It could be in Rome, Jerusalem, or Antioch. It could be anywhere.”
“Could they forge it?”
“Not today. With the new laser analysis for manuscripts, anything older than four hundred years gets you a date within twenty years. Now, if you had a piece of Twelfth Century parchment sitting in your supply room, I suppose you could forge it. But there isn’t any. We don’t have any blank Twelfth Century paper just fluttering about. Without that, they can’t cook up a forgery. It would be exposed immediately.”
“That means if they plan to do anything with it, they need the original.”
“Excellent. You’re coming along nicely.”
The Master paused and flipped a few pages in the old volume the Archivist had been consulting. “Does Marie Curtis know about the treaty?”
“No. She hasn’t a clue. I told her nothing.”
“Good. Let’s keep it quiet for now. At least until we decide how to proceed. We may have to bring her in on it. Probably will. She works for you. You know better on that. So, I’ll leave you to it, Patrick.”
“If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it. Yes, we’ll find it. I’ll have them burning the midnight oil tonight. We’ll be humming the Anvil Chorus in three-part harmony round the clock. Send our people scurrying through libraries all over Europe.”
The Templar Concordat Page 5
