The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  Professor Zawari of Cambridge looked back and forth between the screen and his hard copy, then reached into a pocket and put on a pair of glasses. Again he peered intently at the screen.

  Granville of Harvard consulted his briefcase and removed the copy of the treaty they had been given prior to the start of the initial laser testing, laid it next to the hard copy of the screen, and looked from both papers back to the screen.

  Hammid watched Gustuv on the other side of the room. His head was bobbing from two pages in his hands to the image on the screen. Then they all began to whisper quietly and gesture at the screen and the pages they held. More briefcases snapped open and closed as they pulled out the previous copies of the treaty.

  Hammid looked at Mulroony from the Kruger. Was the man smiling? He was holding his hand in front of his face and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  The nine men huddled and spoke quietly at the table, then Greene turned to Hammid. “Ahh, Mr. Al Dossary, I think we have the wrong document here.” He gestured to the projector and Hammid felt ice-cold claws clutch his heart.

  “This manuscript,” Greene pointed at the image on the screen, “it’s not the same one you showed us before.” Now Greene picked up the copy of the treaty he had received from Hammid before the laser testing, the same copy that had been released to the whole world. Green held both papers next to each other. “They are different. In fact, they are very different.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hammid jumped up and rushed to the table. “They are the same. There is only one treaty, and that is it.” He pointed at the page on the screen.

  “Excuse, me, Mr. Al Dossary,” Harketi from Karachi said quietly. “Do you read Latin?”

  “No. No, I don’t, but I know what the treaty says.”

  “Well,” said Harketi patiently, “I’m afraid these two documents say very different things.” Harketi took out a pen and circled several words on each page. “If you look here, you will see these words are not the same. The layout looks the same, and many of the words are the same, and the sentences are the same length and have the same spacing, but the words are different and completely change the meaning. The script even looks like it was done by the same hand.”

  “That’s impossible.” Hammid shouted. “I guarded this treaty night and day. It hasn’t left my sight. This is the treaty that was tested under the laser and passed.” This wasn’t happening. He knew what the treaty said, but he could see the words that Harketi had circled were different.

  “Please, Hammid, just listen.” Harketi took Hammid’s elbow. “The copy of the treaty you gave us before called for the elimination of Islam from the Earth. This treaty,” he pointed at the screen, “calls for love and cooperation, toleration and mutual respect. It calls for an end to war and a new era of progress for all humanity. It calls for an alliance between Christianity and Islam to further the welfare of all under the God of Abraham.”

  Hammid’s mouth was too dry to speak, and his brain was too confused to think clearly. He sat in Greene’s chair and moved his finger along the words in the two copies of the treaty. He didn’t know what he was reading, but he could see the differences. There might be ten identical words, then there were a few different. The casual observer would look at both and say they were the same, but a detailed examination showed where they differed.

  “Zahid. Get Zahid in here,” Hammid croaked.

  Harketi nodded to one of the guards and he briefly stepped out of the room. When he returned, Zahid hurried to Hammid’s side.

  Greene just showed Zahid the two copies of the treaty and pointed to the image on the screen. “Just read them,” he said.

  Zahid knew what the two copies would say. He had known ever since Hammid had handed him the treaty to hold while he showered back in Saudi that morning. When Zahid had read it while Hammid showered, it was immediately obvious that the treaty had been switched. Even if he couldn’t read it all with the naked eye, the differences he could see were startling. But that was when he made his decision. He could let the world march to death, destruction, and hatred, or he could remain quiet and let his own politics trump scholarship. He could let the haters run wild, or he could check them before they gained a foothold. Maybe it was the work of God.

  But, now Zahid was playing for his life, so he carefully read both pages, then the image displayed on the screen.

  “Well?” asked Hammid, “are they different? What do they say? What?”

  Zahid sighed. “Yes, they are very different, Hammid. In fact, they are completely different. One calls for the destruction of Islam, and one calls for cooperation and prosperity for all Muslims and Christians.”

  Different? Zahid wasn’t the only one who had translated the treaty. Hammid knew what it said.

  Who had betrayed him, Hammid asked himself. The Filipino. The damned Filipino in the T-shirt! They killed him. Hammid himself had taken the treaty from the dead pig’s backpack. And Hammid had been clutching the treaty all night. He looked at the screen. Or had he been protecting a forgery all night, a forgery that was now shining down from the screen mocking him?

  And who had sent the Filipino? The Pope! Who else. The Mexican Pope! The Vatican was behind it all. They make a treaty, deny its existence when it is found, then substitute a fake to back up their claims. Lies! The Vatican was nothing but lies!

  That woman. Jean Randolph? What did Zahid say about what she was testing? Did she have something to do with this? But she was dead, Jamilah burned her with all her papers… she couldn’t… but what is happening?

  Gustuv watched the unbelievable drama before him. Had Al Dossary been bluffing all the time? How did he expect to get away with it? Or did he have the real treaty, and someone switched it? The Pope? But things were going well enough without any help from him, so he kept quiet and just watched.

  “Wait, wait, wait…” Hammid held up both hands. “We have been robbed. Someone has switched the treaty with a forgery, and I can prove it.” Back in control again. The men at the table glanced at each other, all of them confused, but none relishing the spectacle of a man falling apart.

  “Take a sample from this thing,” he waved at the screen, “take a sample of this forgery, and do a laser analysis on it. That will prove it is a forgery. It will be different from the original samples you took.”

  Al Qatani leaned toward the Archivist and whispered, “I’m losing track of how many forgeries we have here. Is anything real?”

  “Yes, yes,” answered the Archivist. “I think Mr. Al Dossary’s reality may be a state of mind. But, you know, so this thing doesn’t fester for years like some UFO sighting, maybe we should let him have his last laser test on this thing, whatever it is. Let’s put an end to it. Finish it up with no unanswered questions that can haunt us for years.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Al Qatani, “I think it is incumbent upon us to pursue all avenues here. So, while we may all be confused by what has transpired, I suggest we follow Mr. Al Dossary’s suggestion and take a sample from that treaty. This one right here,” he tapped the projector, “and run it through the laser analysis. After all, we had originally planned a second analysis after doing the ink and textual examinations. Let us leave no stone unturned. If the results are different from the original samples we took, then Mr. Al Dossary is correct that there has been a switch. If they are the same…”

  Heads nodded around the table and they spent the next fifteen minutes discussing the sampling method they would use. In the end they decided that one panel member selected by the Vatican, one selected by Al Dossary, and one selected by the joint committee would each take a sample to London for analysis.

  “And might I suggest,” added the Archivist, “that we lock this thing up here in Cairo, under guard, with 24-hour observers from the Vatican, Mr. Al Dossary, and the university? We certainly don’t want any more disappearances, switches, or forgeries.”

  By now the president of the university had returned and stood nodding with his hands behind his ba
ck near the door. “I think we can accommodate that, gentlemen.” He looked at Hammid. “And I doubt Mr. Al Dossary would have any objections.” It was time for damage control, and the president of the university was going to do whatever he could to pull his institution’s name out of Al Dossary’s mud.

  The Templar Archivist quietly took his Blackberry from his pocket and typed, “Callahan did it.” Then he hit the hotkey that sent the message to the Templar Master, and slid the phone back in his pocket.

  Dhahran - Friday, May 15

  Berrera yawned. “Look, Callahan, you can’t blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in the world. We did our best.” He yawned again, shook his head, and stood up. “I’m not sure how much longer I can make it. I have to get back to my place and get some real sleep. Think it’s safe to go north yet?”

  Callahan shrugged. “I guess so. They can’t watch the roads forever. Besides, it’s noon. Lots of people are on the roads.” They were in the rec room of the flimsy construction camp outside Abqaiq. The crew was almost all Filipino, and out on the job at this time of day.

  “What did you tell these guys about me?” Callahan asked.

  “I said you were an American engineer from Dhahran with a girlfriend in Abqaiq. Your wife and girlfriend both kicked you out at the same time. They loved that. That’s why we got these fine couches here.”

  Berrera took a hard look at Callahan. “Look, I mean it. You did your best. That’s all you can do.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But we still lost a man, a good man. And we didn’t even get anything out of it. He essentially died for nothing. Why did he run back? That’s what I don’t get. He was right behind me.” Callahan got up and looked out at the sand swirling around the camp. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  Berrera aimed the remote at the TV, clicking through the channels. “It doesn’t have to make sense. Just accept it.” Then he moved up close to the TV set. “Hey, Callahan, look at this. Look!”

  …in a startling development, CNN has learned the treaty Hammid Al Dossary presented to the experts here in Cairo today actually calls for peace and cooperation between Muslims and Christians. Sources tell CNN it says nothing about Christian hostility toward Muslims. This is a complete reversal of what Al Dossary previously told us about the treaty. In our continuing coverage…

  Callahan and Berrera looked at each other, then back at the TV.

  “My God,” said Callahan. “Damn it! I know what he did.” He shot up, looked around, and cocked his head. Both men moved to a deserted corner.

  “Ok,” said Callahan, “let’s work this through. After the gunfight in the treaty room, Eguardo grabs the treaty, the real one, and we ran. We got caught, so we just grabbed the original. He had both the original and the forgery in his pack.” He looked at Berrera. “He was faster.”

  Berrera took up the thread. “Then the two of you get out, over the wall, and start running across the sand.”

  “Right.” Now Callahan was fully awake. “We take cover behind that pump shed, fire back at the guards, hit a few, then take off again.”

  “Yes. I saw it. You both stopped, shot from opposite sides of the shed, then took off running again.”

  “And that’s when Eguardo stopped. He says, ‘God be with you, Callahan. Pray for luck. Remember my mass.’ He turns… sneaks halfway back… all in the shadows… they don’t see him… and goes into the lights and starts running for the ridge again. He was escaping all over again. It was a replay. He gave them a second chance to get him.”

  Callahan slammed a fist into his palm. “Only one treaty in the world calls for peace. The forgery. And Eguardo had it in his pack. In the same case that protected the original treaty. That’s where they got it. They thought they had recovered the real treaty.”

  “He died for it,” Berrera marveled. “He died so they would believe.” He crossed himself and softly mumbled a short prayer. “They took the forgery off Eguardo’s body and returned it to the treaty room. They thought they had saved the real treaty. They killed him, and took it from him. So, what happened to the real treaty? Where’s the real one? The one Hammid had? The one from the Vatican Museum? The one Eguardo took out of the case in the treaty room?”

  “Eguardo had the real treaty in his pack when we got out of the villa. He told me several times he had both treaties.” Callahan held up two fingers. “Both treaties. When we got out of there, we only stopped one time, at that shed. He had to have stashed it somewhere around that shed.” Callahan leaned his elbows on his knees. “Hammid recovered only one treaty from Eguardo. If he had recovered both the forgery and the real one, he would have had them checked. So, the only thing he got from Eguardo was the forgery.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you, Callahan? Eguardo let them kill him so they would accept the forged treaty as the real one. That’s why he ran back.” He crossed himself again. “He gave his life for his Church. That’s what he did, Callahan. He didn’t die for nothing. He gave his life for his Church.”

  * * *

  They watched Hammid’s villa from the ridge, saw only two cars in the drive, and just one man on patrol. They doubted Hammid would be back so soon after his public humiliation. The guard circled the villa every ten minutes, smoked the entire time, and was as useless as he had been before.

  Thirty minutes later a pizza delivery van drove into the driveway. “Looks like only two pizzas,” said Berrera. “So, three, maybe four guys?”

  “Yeah. Look. Our smoking guard is going inside for the goodies.” Callahan looked around. “I’m going down there. Now’s the time. Pray for luck.”

  Callahan pulled the balaclava over his face, adjusted the night vision goggles, put on the thin black gloves, and eased over the ridge on his belly. He crawled the hundred yards to the pump shed, coming up on his knees behind it. He had been shooting around the left side, and Eguardo had been shooting on the right side, so if Eguardo stashed the original treaty somewhere, it had to be on the right side.

  He inspected the area with the goggles. The wall was cheap concrete block covered with brown stucco, topped with a sloping tile roof. He felt around under the eaves. Nothing. But Eguardo wasn’t standing when they fired from behind the shed. He was half-sitting, bracing his arm, and taking well aimed shots.

  “Guard coming back,” Callahan heard Berrera’s whisper in his earpiece. He flattened to the ground and peeked around the shed. The guard was back on his patrol with a piece of pizza in each hand. Callahan waited for him to turn the corner of the villa. That should give him eight minutes.

  He knelt where Eguardo had been and felt around the shed’s foundation. The stucco had only been applied from the ground up, and was crumbling at the bottom, exposing the concrete block. He took off a glove and ran his hand along the foundation blocks where the ground had eroded. There it was, the TIME magazine Eguardo had been reading, right where he had been sitting.

  Callahan quickly fanned the pages and saw the stiff, brown treaty, folded in half and sandwiched between two pages. Had Eguardo planned this from the beginning? And now the treaty was here in his hands.

  He clicked the radio three times, and Berrera responded with three clicks. All clear. He crawled back up and over the ridge, and an hour later they were back in Callahan’s compound in Dhahran.

  “Here it is,” Callahan said. “Take a look. God knows you deserve it.” He carefully unfolded the treaty and spread it on the coffee table. “Can you read any of it?”

  “A little, but not much. I can’t make out those letters. Hmm, just one little piece of paper can turn the world upside down. What happens to it now?”

  “Now it goes back to Rome. After that, they can do whatever they want with it. If they have any brains, they’ll burn it. I hope I never see it again.”

  Dhahran - Monday, May 20

  Only Zahid remained with Hammid at his villa. Everyone else had drifted away, some under orders, some recruited by others, and some in disgust.

  Hammid sat on the balcony watchin
g the waters of the gulf, as he had ever since returning from Cairo. His father had taken the private jet, cut off his funding, and suggested he find another family to disgrace.

  He was a public fool, a fraud, and a charlatan. Rather than leading his people, he felt their contempt, and rather than a great victory, he had made fools of all those who supported him. Already there were calls on both sides for dialog and exchange. The rioters went home, and even CNN lost interest. He was old news. An old fool.

  Zahid came onto the balcony and leaned back against the railing. “I must be going, Hammid.”

  Hammid swirled the ice cubes in his Scotch. “We were right, weren’t we, Zahid?”

  “Yes, we were right.”

  “That treaty we had was authentic, wasn’t it? It really did call for the destruction of Islam?”

  “It did, indeed. We will always know that, no matter what else happens.”

  “And that Mexican Pope? He sent a Filipino to switch manuscripts at the last moment. But how did the laser test show the forgery was the same as the original? That is a question I will take to my grave.”

  A grave that is beckoning sooner rather than later, Zahid thought. He had to get out of here.

  “How can that be, Zahid? How could the original and the forgery show the same analysis?”

  Zahid knew a bit, but not all. He and Jean Randolph had identical laser analyses for their sample when they ran them in London. Zahid never did find out what Jean had been running. But they were identical. He had seen the results.

  But Jean was dead, burned to death right after that. That was a mystery he had decided to leave unsolved.

  “I don’t know, Hammid. I really don’t know. But I do know we had the real treaty, and I do know what it said. So do you. It’s little comfort, but a man has to face himself and face his God. And God knows it. The treaty was stolen and a forgery put in its place.”