The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  Dhahran, Saudi Arabia - Monday, April 6

  Hammid clicked from one London Internet site to another. All the daily papers had the story about Professor Jean Randolph’s tragic death in a fire at her Kings Crossing flat. The Daily Mail even had a half-screen picture of the fire gutted three-story building. He could always count on Jamilah. She did good work.

  The message Jamilah had sent last night confirmed that Jean Randolph not only had a sample of the treaty parchment, but also a series of pictures. The stupid cow was writing a scholarly article so she could be the first to publish when Hammid released the treaty to the world.

  But Jean Randolph wasn’t a problem anymore. Neither were her pictures, samples, or articles. Jamilah had seen to that. He imagined that with her work done, Jamilah was probably dancing on tables in some club. Good for her.

  The Old Man might have his suspicions, but Hammid doubted he would do anything. Jean, and whatever threat she posed, had been eliminated. And even if the Old Man found out what he did, he’d have to admire it enough to let it go.

  Salisbury - Monday, April 6

  Callahan and Marie watched Jean exercising on the monitors. She did pushups, crunches, running in place, and whatever else could be done in a closed room, then looked up at the camera and said, “I’m going to take a shower. Can I have breakfast, or maybe it’s lunch, or dinner? I don’t know, maybe in about fifteen minutes?” She waved, stripped down and stepped into the shower.

  “She do anything unusual, Ted?” Callahan asked the Templar who had been watching Jean until he and Marie arrived from London.

  “No. Cool as they come. She slept for eight hours, and woke up about 8:00 am. Ate everything last night. No screaming, crying, or banging on the door. We haven’t told her anything, and she hasn’t said anything.”

  “I don’t want her to see me,” said Marie. “It’s better to hold that in reserve.”

  Callahan opened the outer sound-proof door and knocked on the inner door. “Back in the corner.” Ted glanced at the monitor and nodded to Callahan.

  He opened the door and entered with the tray. Jean stood quietly in the corner with hands folded in front. He put the tray on the table, gestured for her to sit, and stepped back.

  “Thank you.” She sat.

  “You should know some things, Jean,” he said. “First, last night your partner Hammid Al Dossary sent someone to kill you. The plan was to kill you and burn down your house to destroy any evidence of the Treaty of Tuscany.”

  Now he had her attention. The glass of orange juice in her hand shook, and she put it down. “What are you…?”

  “Quiet.” He cut her off. “I’m providing information you need to know. We already know it.” He paced in front of the table. “The world thinks you are dead. Your body was found last night in the burned-out husk of your building. The people on the upper floors escaped. Even the cat… Elliot.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked over his shoulder at her. She had frozen in position, holding the edge of the table and staring at the orange juice.

  “Eventually, your Al Qaeda friends may find you’re not dead. Burned bodies are hard to identify, and the body was in your bedroom, in your big T-shirt, in your bed. Maybe some enterprising coroner or cop pushes too much. I don’t know. Maybe they get a tip. It’s hard to say.” He shrugged. “You know how it goes. Then they’ll kill you again.

  “Now, the Church also has a beef with you since you killed the Pope and a thousand people, not to mention the two thousand injured. You’re a historian. You know how the faithful treat folks like that.

  “The Italians want you for that guy who got shot at your table in the café in Rome.

  “In fact the whole world is after you. They don’t know it’s you, but they are after the guys who blew up all those people in church.”

  She stood up. “I didn’t know…”

  “Shut up! Sit down! I talk. You listen.” She sat slowly.

  “I represent an interested organization and we have already passed sentence on you. You’re a terrorist. It’s simple. Death. We don’t mess with the legal niceties.”

  He leaned against the wall and watched her for thirty seconds.

  “And your Swiss bank account at Steiner Strasse Bank? We took all the money. Well, not all. We left eleven euros as a maintenance balance.” He pulled out an index card and flipped it on the table. “This is the account I’m talking about.”

  She picked up the card and saw her account number, plus the three passwords necessary to withdraw or transfer funds. That really got to her, he saw. He didn’t tell her she had such bad luck she deposited her funds in one of the Templar private banks.

  “Get the picture? You’re broke. Your house is smoking cinders. The world thinks you’re dead. If anyone found you were alive, you’d be explaining forever. Suppose we let the authorities and newspapers know what we know? Now Al Qaeda knows. And everyone wants you dead. You can’t work in any university. You can’t get a regular job. All you can do is hide in the shadows hoping nobody finds you. Ever thought of becoming a hooker? It’s a cash business.” He gave her an appraising look. “Hmm, medium grade… a few good years left, but I hear those are really hard years.”

  He walked to the door and turned. “And all for an old piece of blank paper. Sorry, parchment.” He shook his head. “That was really dumb.”

  * * *

  Marie and Ted were staring at the three monitors and Callahan moved to look over their shoulders.

  “Well, how did I do?” he asked.

  “Wait, just wait,” said Marie, pointing at the screen. Jean sat at the table with her elbows on her thighs and her hands pressed between her knees. Then she slammed both fists down on the table, grabbed the tray and hurled it down on the floor.

  “Looks to me you did real good, Callahan,” Marie turned back toward him. “Didn’t I say you two would make a great couple? I think you just had your first fight, or maybe she did.”

  Ted’s partner came in the house and tossed the Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Guardian to them. They all had pictures of the fire and stories about the unfortunate demise of Jean Randolph, well-regarded professor of medieval history. The Daily Mail had a half-page picture on page three.

  Callahan folded each to the page with the story of Jean’s death, and headed to her room. She was sitting in the far corner with her arms wrapped around her knees. He just laid the papers on the table, said nothing, and left.

  * * *

  Jean spent most of the day on the futon staring at the ceiling. The newspapers had indeed shown her burned-out house, and gave a brief biography of the victim, her biography. And the body found in her house? Who was that? The woman who attacked her? Or just someone off the street? Was it Marie? And who held her prisoner? Who was that guy who told her everything she had done? How did he know about Hammid?

  When the man returned, he had a laptop computer. He set it up, and connected to a WiFi wireless network. “I suggest you access your Swiss account to check the balance. I already know the codes, so there’s no worry about confidentiality. No need to trust me. You check.”

  What more could go wrong, she thought? She accessed the account, typed in the passwords, and stared at the eleven euro balance. Who the hell could pull off something like that? At a Swiss bank?

  “Logoff the bank,” said Callahan. She clicked the button and slumped back in the chair. What to do now?

  Callahan closed the laptop and left.

  * * *

  “Ok. What do you want from me?” It was 4:00 pm and Jean had been in the room for almost seventeen hours.

  “Yes!” Marie turned from the monitor and punched the air. “Our gal has seen the light! She’s dead. No friends. No money. Everyone wants her dead. Who does she have but us?”

  “Let her sit for another hour or two,” said Callahan from his lounge chair. “We’re not jumping whenever she calls.” He went back to reading his Economist.

  She repeated the question several tim
es over the next hour, then retreated to a fetal position on the futon. “Well,” Callahan stretched after getting up from the lounger, “let her ask one more time. Then we give her an answer.” He popped the top on a Coke. Almost on cue, Jean stood up and faced the camera.

  “I’ll do whatever you want. Just tell me.”

  “Now, that’s the spirit,” Marie twirled a finger over her head and pointed at Callahan. “It’s show time. Go get ‘em, big boy.”

  Callahan closed the door and put the cold Coke on Jean’s table. “What we want? Simple. Answer all our questions truthfully and fully. Enthusiastically cooperate. Don’t ever cross us.”

  “Cross you? I don’t even know who you are!” She plopped down on the bench and took a deep breath, “Ok. Ok. Ask your questions.”

  He said nothing, just left her alone.

  * * *

  “What were your plans for the blank piece of Twelfth Century paper?” Callahan resumed his usual pacing.

  “Plans? I didn’t have any. I never even dreamed something like that would fall into my lap.”

  “Why did you test it at the British Museum?”

  “I wanted to make sure it was good, and I wanted to find out soon, a few years before using it. I couldn’t wait to test it in a few years, then follow up with a manuscript that would be tested at the same place. The profiles would be the same and someone might get suspicious. If I tested, then waited a few years, nobody would remember the first test, and I would also be testing legitimate things in between times.”

  “How many other things have you forged?”

  That was the question, thought Marie, watching the interrogation on the screen. That’s the big one. What else had she done? Give it up, Bitch.

  “Eleven or twelve. I’m not sure.”

  “Where did you do the work?”

  “At my place.” She shrugged. “You don’t need that much.”

  He went on for another hour after she admitted to the forgery, asking about Hammid, how she met him, how she was paid, who else was involved, and how much she knew about the St. Peter’s bombing. Then he gave her a pen and a pad of paper and told her to write the details of each meeting with Hammid, what she remembered about the contents of the treaty, and the details of each of her forgeries, including what it was, who bought it, how much she got, and who turned a blind eye.

  At 10:00 pm he went back and she handed him a page. “Here’s my best recollection of what the treaty says. That was easiest. And it’s not an exact translation, but I guarantee the meaning is accurate.” She passed another three pages. “And here are the elaborations on the thoughts of great thinkers, what you call the forgeries. I’m working on the Hammid stuff.”

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Starved,” she replied.

  He left and returned with half of a cold pizza. “You get to eat the same stuff we eat.” She grabbed a piece and inhaled it.

  “Finish the Hammid stuff and that’s all for today.”

  When he turned to leave, she asked, “I’m cooperating. What do I get in return?”

  “What do you get? You got it. We saved your life last night.”

  * * *

  “Give me that.” Marie grabbed the list of forgeries and scanned it. “Miserable bitch,” she mumbled. Then she set the list down next to her computer and started searching the Internet.

  “She has eleven listed here, and it looks like we can get a look at five of them. At least five, maybe seven. These others I can’t find on the net. I’ll send the whole list back to the Archivist and see what he can do.”

  “How long?” he asked.

  “I’ll do these two in London myself,” she said. “Tomorrow. I’ll leave tonight. And the Archivist can get his people on these others. We should be able to examine all the ones in the public collections tomorrow and the next day. If she really did them, we can see how good she is. Then we can test her.”

  “Why not just test her now?”

  “The Archivist wants to see her best work first, not something she knocks out in a cell.” She jerked a thumb toward Jean’s room. “And we can also have her duplicate one of the things she already did. They should be very close in style and content. It’s sort of another test.”

  “Does she have the stuff she needs to do a duplicate of anything? I mean all those pens and special inks?”

  “No. I’ll be bringing all that back with me from London tomorrow night.”

  Salisbury, UK - Tuesday, April 7

  Marie returned from London around 6:00 pm with several long, wooden boxes of pens, a stack of different types of paper, a tilting desktop, and fifty different bottles of ink. Then she hauled out erasers, blotters, wipers, magnifying eyeglasses, high intensity lamps, mirrors, and anything else the aspiring forger could hope for.

  “What did all this stuff cost?” Callahan watched her unload the supplies.

  “A little over five thousand pounds.”

  “For pens and paper? Five thousand?”

  “You’re still an ass. This is the best. And believe me, if she did those manuscripts I saw in the London collections today, she really is the best, and she uses the best. I have a hard time believing those were fakes. Nobody would question their authenticity.”

  “Well, you saw her flat. She didn’t have all this stuff.”

  Marie shrugged. “Yeah. She had her favorite tools. I can’t say what they were, so I just got everything. She can pick what she needs.”

  “What did the Archivist say?”

  “His people looked at three manuscripts and had the same reaction I did. They would never have suspected a thing. Now he wants to test her on the Kepler letter. Have her to do it again. If she can do it, great. If not, then we have to figure out what to do with her. She’s already under Templar death sentence, so I suppose…”

  “Ok. Tell me what to say and I’ll bring these things in and give her the assignment.” He picked up the Xacto knife set, and hefted scissors. “You know we’ll be arming the prisoner?”

  “Can’t be helped. She can’t use chalk for this.”

  * * *

  Jean stood up when Callahan entered the room. She hadn’t seen him since the previous evening, and her meals had been brought by Ted, who didn’t say a word.

  “You said you forged a letter from Johannes Kepler.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to recreate that letter right here.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have any equipment or supplies.”

  He left and returned with the tilting desktop and boxes full of the supplies Marie had brought from London. A very strange smile crossed her face when she saw the supplies. So, here was yet another side of Jean Randolph.

  She began to open boxes and order items on the long table. “I can’t do it exactly, but I can come close. I have an idea this is a test, anyway. I don’t have it memorized, so it won’t be exactly the same words, and a line by line comparison won’t match. And the ink won’t match because I have to make it from scratch using the same ingredients they used in Kepler’s time.” She waved a hand at the bottles of ink. “These are very nice, but all modern. There’s no oven for heat treatments, either. But I think I can convince you I did the manuscript in the Rothham collection. I presume you have seen it by now?”

  Now he was out of his depth. Don’t answer when you don’t know. “Remember earlier when I said you shouldn’t cross us?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “You do or do not remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Good. Hiding any of these sharp things is considered crossing us. Trying to stick anyone is crossing us.” He picked up a rubber band. “Hiding this is crossing us.”

  “Yes, I understand. Now can I get to work?”

  * * *

  She selected pens and inks, laid out wet rags, little cups of water and alcohol, angled the desk, and hollered for an extension cord for the high intensity lamps. Then she spent fifteen minutes drawing different sized circles on scratc
h paper with the different pens. That was followed by boxes, alphabets, lightning bolts, and a long series of swirling fishhooks.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Callahan asked Marie.

  “She’s warming up. Watch this. That’s the master forger limbering and stretching before the big game. Just like any athlete. Like each instrument in an orchestra practicing the scales before the performance.”

  By then Jean had tied her hair back, and bent over the desk wearing the magnifying eyeglasses, carefully drawing the letters on the page. She threw away pages, started over, tore some in two, but finally settled down into an even flow, and eventually laid three pages next to each other on the table. She stood up, stretched, did some deep knee bends, and shook her hands out.

  She looked up at the camera and said, “Give them about five minutes to dry, then you can have them. I’m done for the day.” She spun around and held her hands out. “And look. No sharp pointy things hidden up my sleeves.” She pointed back at the three pages. “The script matches the Kepler in the Rothham. Size, point, style, and pitch should be the same.”

  Jean waved, stripped off her clothes, and stepped into the shower.

  “Why Callahan, I do think the lady is inviting you to her chambers,” leered Marie.

  “She’s a weird one. Yesterday she was curled up in the fetal position. Now she’s dancing around naked as a jaybird.”

  He waited for her to climb into the futon, then brought the three pages out and laid them on the table for Marie. She took some large photos of the Kepler letter at the Rothham from her briefcase and laid them next to Jean’s pages, then went through them line by line.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. She’s truly gifted.” She took her glasses off and pushed back from the table. “I think those old men in Zurich were right about her.”

  Marie went to the computer and typed a short email to the Archivist. “Kepler done to perfection.”