The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  Dhahran, Saudi Arabia - Friday, March 27

  It was a half-hour drive from King Fahd International Airport to Hammid’s villa on the eastern shore of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and he looked forward to some rest, not glad handing an idiot.

  He still wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dead. That little guy walked into the café, shot Saad, and ignored Hammid and Jean. But Hammid and the treaty were now safe in Saudi Arabia, and that’s what mattered. Still, he didn’t understand what had happened, and he didn’t like that at all.

  “Allahu Akhbar! God be praised! God be praised!” Abdullah danced around like a fool.

  “Can you believe it, Hammid? Can you believe it? We have smashed the enemies of God in the heart of their foul den. In the Vatican! The Pope! We have blown the Pope into so many pieces they’ll have to mop him up! All of them! Dead!”

  Abdullah pumped his arms and grinned. “Oh, and what a great party we had to celebrate! And the Filipina whores! Oh, yes!”

  Great victory, thought Hammid. Blowing up a thousand old people is a great victory. That’s how far we have fallen. But he had to deal with these people, so he had to put on the act.

  Hammid al Dossary beamed at Abdullah. “Yes, my friend, we did it. We struck in the name of God and the whole world now trembles in fear of what we can do.” He grabbed the much larger Abdullah by both shoulders and feigned a kiss on both cheeks. “And you, Abdullah, your name will be remembered for a thousand years, and your sons and their sons will be honored for generations to come.”

  Abdullah looked over at the Sky News satellite TV broadcast from the Vatican and suddenly wrinkled his forehead and frowned. “And our good friend Ibrahim. He did it. We must never forget what he did. How proud he must have been standing alone among his enemies, standing strong, standing for God. Ibrahim is truly the greatest of the greats.” Abdullah looked like he might squeeze out a tear.

  Hammid eyed Abdullah, nodded sadly, and looked downward. And your time will come, too, my friend Abdullah, he thought. Your time to strap on the vest full of C4 is coming. Your time to walk among the enemy and push the little red button. Your time to be a hero. Your time to be proud. Your time to stop sending others. Your time to smite the enemies of God. And my time to get rid of your stupid, drunken carcass. But not yet. Not yet.

  Hammid turned and walked out of the air-conditioned house onto the wide balcony overlooking the Arabian Gulf. On the other side, he thought, they called it the Persian Gulf. The hot, humid air of the gulf breeze instantly condensed on his cooler skin, and drops ran straight down his sunglasses. In thirty seconds his Armani print shirt was damp, not with perspiration, but with the humidity carried by that stifling breeze.

  He leaned his elbows on the marble railing, looked east and sniffed the air. The water was calm. It was always calm. And the brown desert stretched north and south from the estate walls surrounding its clipped green lawns and putting greens. The water to keep them green came from the desalination plant fifty miles to the north, a true marvel of modern engineering. In this case it was American engineering, but it was Saudi oil money that paid the Americans. The Americans were clever people, and they would do anything for money. And the Saudis? He smiled. They were not very clever, but would pay money for anything, and God forbid they do it themselves. He really wasn’t sure who was screwing who.

  The Dhahran headquarters of Saudi Aramco was thirty minutes north, and the giant Abqaiq oil processing center lay to the south. And it was just off these shores, he had been told, that the American geologists looking west from the deck of their ship had first noticed the very gradual and uniform slope of the land from west to east. Over millions of years the oil had migrated and settled in the Ghawar field, the Saudis’ Golden Goose.

  Americans. Damn them. Why did Americans and not Arabs find it? And why did Americans developed it? And why did Americans provide the advanced technology to keep the aging field in production? And why did the largest oil company in the world recruit Texans for its most skilled positions? Why did Arab students study science and engineering in America rather than in Arab nations? Why did the best Arab students stay in the West?

  The answers were simple. The Americans could do it, and the Arabs couldn’t. The British could do it. The Germans could do it. The Japanese could do it. And now even the Chinese could do it. The Arabs mattered to the rest of the world only because they sat on top of all that oil. Ragheads. Sand niggers. WOGS. Pests. Disposable.

  His people had become lazy, lost their spirit, watching rather than shaping world events. But that would change. Again, he thought how the Arabs once led the world in science, literature, religion, mathematics, and medicine. The world bent its knee to the universities in Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad. But that was once, long ago. But the time was coming, the time when the world would again recognize God’s natural order.

  But first the Arabs needed a wake-up call. They needed to realize who they were.

  Bombing churches wouldn’t do it, hijacking airplanes wouldn’t do it, and killing people in pizza parlors wouldn’t do it. Those were all the actions of cowards. That brought contempt, not respect. None of these could reach in, squeeze the heart, and grab the spirit of the people. None could put a hand around their throats and shake them from their stupor. But the time was coming when he would pick up the whole Muslim world and force it to see reality. Force it to look at its ancient enemies in the West. Force it confront the West and say, “No.” It was coming. And who were the natural leaders of the Muslims? The Arabs, of course. The Treaty of Tuscany was the key to all that.

  He could see the people below parading on the beach. A Saudi man strutted in a long white thobe and checkered gutra on his head. He eyed the compound, but pretended he didn’t. His wife followed in a black head-to-toe abaya that covered everything but her face and hands. Hammid felt sorry for the women. It was one hundred and twelve degrees and she was out in the sun shuffling through the sand in a big black bag. The kids followed, like kids anywhere, laughing and running in the surf. It would take a few more years for them to adopt the strict mores that knit Saudi society together. A few more years of freedom. A typical family wrapped up for a day at the beach.

  Zurich - Friday, March 27

  The Templar Master’s phone rang late at his house on Lake Zurich. “Well, are you going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what, Patrick?” sighed the Master. What did the Archivist want now?

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how the thieving crooks knew the treaty was just sitting there begging to be stolen?”

  The Master confronted his own stupidity. How, indeed, did they know?

  “Marie pretty much nailed it. She found entries for the thing in the Vatican Library. She gave us some index numbers and we narrowed our search.”

  Silence. “And what did you find, Patrick?”

  “It’s on the damn Internet. A compendium of interlibrary listings of new additions to about five hundred major research libraries. Page after page, indexed and sorted by library, department, blah, blah, blah.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Say? It says Treaty of Tuscany, 1189, Vatican Library. Evaluation. Some temporary catalog numbers. It’s a few lines of text hidden in a thousand pages. A needle in a hay stack.”

  “Who gets the list?”

  “Who gets it? Who do you think get it? Libraries. Universities. That’s why I get it. Some Vatican idiot listed it without knowing what it was. Probably don’t even know they did it. For all I know, the computers did it all by themselves. That’s an option on their system.”

  “Is the entry still on the internet?” asked the Master.

  “Good God, no. We got the computer whiz kids over in your cellar to hack the hosting computers and erase it. No point letting anyone else know what we know. Knowledge is power.”

  “Ok, Patrick, if you dig up anything else let me know.”

  “Let you know? You bony French toad! Open your eyes, man. Think.”

  The Master owed t
he old Archivist a lot, but there was a time to draw the line. “Patrick, either get to the point or I’m hanging up the phone.”

  “Hang up? Hang up at your own peril. Has it occurred to you that someone had to know about the treaty before that line in the index could even have any meaning to them? They had to know enough to realize it was worth stealing? Know what it said?”

  The Archivist stopped to let his words sink in, then softly said, “And just who might have been around long enough to know that? Just who might have mention of it in their own archives? And just who might love to get their diseased claws on it? Just who might have web crawlers burrowing through the Internet looking for a reference? Just who might that be?”

  Hashashin. The Master wondered if he or the Irishman should be Grand Master. He sure hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  The Archivist had the knife in and couldn’t resist a twist. “So, now I’ll leave you to think your great strategic thoughts, with the ancient foe so far ahead of us, planning God knows what mischief. And, you know, you’re supposed to be the brains of this outfit. And none of you thought to ask the simple questions. Mental midgets, all of you. Brains like BBs in a boxcar. See, I’m still pulling your chestnuts out of the fire. Heaven help us. Not like the old days, no, not at all. Have to get my little knives out before…”

  The Master clicked the phone off.

  Chapter Seven

  France - Sunday, March 29

  Every few seconds a telephone pole flashed by his glum reflection in the train window. Everything else was pitch-black. Well, he was in a fine fix now, and it was all his own doing.

  While the rest of the Templar operatives were redeploying for strikes, real strikes, against the Hashashin and Al Qaeda, Callahan was taking the night train from Zurich to London chasing pieces of paper. He wasn’t chasing terrorists, he wasn’t bringing the fight to the enemy, and he wasn’t doing what he had been trained to do at great expense to the US government. No. Now he was chasing after a paper like a mad librarian after an overdue book. And he didn’t know anything about that stuff.

  “Screw your head back on for a minute and think,” the Marshall had told him. They were in the Templar Archives under the Kruger Institute in Zurich. “You’re the one who suspected that bishop at the library was holding back, and you were right. You’re the one who recognized DeLarossa was moving in on a target sitting in the café with the two library thieves. Right again. You’re the one who got Marie Curtis involved and found out they took the treaty. Right again. Marie’s the one who knew Randolph, and that never would have happened without you.”

  The Marshal cracked his knuckles and pointed at Callahan. “And I’m right to keep you on this because you’re the one who has a feel for it. To put it real simple, we want to know what that treaty says, really says. And then we might or might not want to get our hands on it. Maybe we’ll just leave it in play. Depends on what it says. We don’t want to take this Randolph woman because we don’t want to tip our hand. First, we want you find out exactly what the damn thing says. I’m sure she knows. Second, find out where it is. She’s the link to that. That’s it. We have the best chance of getting it with you. Case closed.”

  The Marshall shifted a foot forward and lowered his voice. “Besides, we want to keep this quiet. The Master approved letting you and Marie Curtis in on everything, so you, me, Marie, the Archivist, and the Master are the only ones who know all of it. Hmmph… and we don’t know enough.”

  “You realize, I hope,” said Callahan, “that this woman in London doesn’t have it. She probably passed it to that unknown Arab who light-footed out of the cafe and is now sitting pretty in Saudi or Egypt or Syria.”

  “Of course I know that,” the Marshall exploded. “Any jackass can figure that out.” He lowered his voice again. “But she knows what it said because she read the damn thing, and if you want to find something it’s best to know what you’re looking for, and why. She’s what we have, so she’s where we start. You’re the hunter. You can pass what you learn to all these bookworms back here. Marie Curtis is available for whatever support you need, and the Chief Archivist here says she’s a match for any scholar in the business. He and I have gotten together and this is the best way.”

  “That we have, Mr. Callahan, that we have.” The Chief Archivist spoke for the first time. “Now, the Marshall here is mostly right, but he’s wrong on one thing. You’re not the best to go after this. No, no, not at all. I am. No question about that. There’s only one…”

  The Marshall spun all the way around. “Enough, Patrick! We’ve been through this a hundred times. It’s Callahan. That’s it. Callahan is going! Now, are you folks going to brief him so he at least knows the Twelfth century was after the Eleventh? Don’t forget he went to school in America.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said the Archivist. “So, listen up, lad. The biggest problem the Hashashin and Al Qaeda have is motivating their own people. Most Muslims are just ordinary people living ordinary lives, and all they want to do is get on with their ordinary lives. You know? Read the newspaper, go to work, raise the kids, play with the grandkids. Try as they might, the Al Qaeda folks just can’t get them riled up. But if they have something like that silly treaty, something where crazy Popes and inbred kings promise to kill ‘em all, eliminate them, wipe them off the face of the Earth? Then that might just be enough to piss them off a little bit, maybe enough to piss them off a lot.”

  “You have your orders, Callahan. The Templars need that treaty, and you’re our best resource to get it, so you’re the one to do it. Case closed. Again.” The Marshall headed for the door. “Let Patrick and his people brief you, then go do it. I’m done here.”

  They did brief him, and now Callahan shared a night train compartment with a nineteen-year-old couple who desperately wished he wasn’t there.

  “I think I’ll take a walk to the dining car,” Callahan said to the couple. “And I expect to have a bite and read there for about an hour.”

  He munched on a sandwich and reviewed the material Marie had compiled on Jean Randolph. University professors left long paper trails behind them, and she was no exception. After she left Rome, the Watchers had followed her on the train across Europe, then located her flat in the King’s Cross area of London, so that’s where he would start.

  “Good luck,” Marie grinned when he left the Kruger Institute. “If you have any questions, just call. I mean it. Put me on speed dial. We’re open late.”

  Dhahran - Sunday, March 29

  While Callahan took the train, Professor Hosni Zahid watched the lights of London as his plane circled, waiting for landing clearance into Heathrow. Why not, he thought, why not accept one of the faculty positions offered by the British universities? Would he rather have his daughters grow up in London or Cairo? He knew the answer. London. And it troubled him. Was his duty to his people or his daughters? Perhaps when he finished with this Treaty of Tuscany business?

  When Professor Hosni Zahid had first been approached by the Egyptian Brotherhood at the University of Cairo, he had dismissed them and their view of history. They were very pleasant people, but Zahid had little patience for the people who tried to bend history to support current political agendas. They were persistent, but polite, each time courteously accepting his equally courteous but firm refusals.

  The last time they visited, they brought a Saudi, judging by his Arabic, and he asked to speak to the professor alone. He told him a fantastic story about a treaty the Popes and European kings had signed promising to wipe out all the Muslims in the world. The professor tried to explain to him that such a treaty never existed, since there was absolutely no record of it, and no record of such sentiment. While it might be an interesting bit of fiction, it had no basis in historical record.

  What, the man asked, if he could prove it existed? And suppose this treaty invoked the Christian doctrine of infallibility? And what if the Popes, two Popes in fact, attested to the fact that it was God’s will as revealed to them, and there
fore all Christians were bound by it for all time?

  That would be troubling, the professor conceded, because the power of religion has such a strong hold on the minds of people that it might be irreversible. It would be very damaging, and probably extremely damaging to the Muslims of the world. Wrapping evil in religious dogma could enlist the support of millions who would otherwise remain uninterested. Everyone yearned for a cause, he said, and those who mindlessly accept religion are apt to mindlessly accept its perversions.

  “We would like your willing cooperation in examining some historical documents in Saudi Arabia, Professor. And by willing, I mean we would like to enlist you as a confidential consultant.” The man opened a briefcase full of neat stacks of American dollars. “I’m sure this would make life much more enjoyable for you and your family.” Then he named the professor’s three daughters, their school, when they left in the morning, and when they returned home. “Don’t look so startled, Professor. I only suggest that with this money, you may be able to hire a driver.”

  The visitor stood up and extended his hand. “I look forward to working with you at my estate on the Arabian Gulf.” He rubbed his nose and added, “There’s something else, Professor. If you tell anyone about this, such knowledge could be extremely dangerous to them.”

  Hammid Al Dossary left the briefcase with the professor.

  * * *

  When Zahid reached Saudi Arabia, he found Hammid to be a cultured, well-educated, and intelligent person. The veiled threats Hammid made in Cairo were forgotten, and their spirited discussions of the current state of the Arab world were quite interesting. Hammid saw the hand of outsiders as holding back their advancement, while Zahid saw internal cultural weaknesses as the culprits.