The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  There was something else in there, too.

  A prosthetic hand, made out of copper. It was corroded and oxidized, tarnished to a dark brown patina with greenish-blue patches all over it. It was startlingly elaborate and well crafted for something that was seven hundred years old.

  She held it up to the Iranian. “It’s Conrad,” she said, then gave him a “what now?” look.

  He mulled it over for a beat, then said, “If he had it with him, it’s got to be around here somewhere. Maybe even buried with him.” He thought about it for a further moment, then said, “Take him out. Let’s see if there’s anything else down there.”

  Tess and the Byzantinist lifted the linen cocoon out and set it down in the middle aisle. Tess then stepped back into the shallow pit, got down on her knees, and started digging some more. After only a few strokes, the pick struck something hard, sending a recoil of adrenaline through her. With renewed focus, she started clearing the earth around the hard object with her hands.

  “Give me some more light,” she told Abdulkerim.

  He shone the flashlight at her hands as she scraped the earth back to expose what appeared to be a dark round shape. She cleared more soil from around it to reveal a plain earthenware cooking pot, low and wide, about a foot and a half in diameter and under a foot tall. Her breath caught. She studied it for a beat, then lifted it out carefully and settled it on the flat part of the grave.

  She examined it closely. It was plain and unremarkable, lacking any external decoration, and it had some kind of a bowl for a lid that was sealed into place with bitumen.

  Abdulkerim’s eyes bounced around from the pot to Tess and to the Iranian and back. “What do you think is in it?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Zahed said.

  He snatched the pick from Tess and, before she could stop him, slammed it into the top of the pot. The plate that was sealing it shattered. Zahed then pried off the pieces that were still hanging in place.

  He took the flashlight from the Byzantinist and aimed it inside the pot, then turned to Tess, making an inviting gesture with his hand.

  “Be my guest,” he told her. “After all your hard work, you deserve it.”

  She looked at him askance, then leaned in for a look. The sight made her heart bolt. She reached in and pulled out the pot’s contents: two codices—small, ancient leather-bound books, each roughly the size of a hardcover novel.

  She held them with quivering fingers, carefully, as if they were made of the most fragile porcelain, marveling at them. For a blissful instant, all the horrors she’d been through, the Iranian monster standing inches from her—it all faded away. Then she set one down in her lap and examined the other.

  “What are they?” Abdulkerim said, his tone a whisper.

  Tess gently unfurled the thin, leather strap that was rolled around the first codex. The back cover extended into a triangular flap that folded over the front one. She peeled that back, then, slowly, opened the codex.

  The golden-brown papyrus leaves inside were clearly brittle, their edges crumbled in places. She didn’t dare turn a single page, so as not to damage the manuscript, but the lettering on the first page was enough to announce what she was looking at.

  “Alexandrian text-type letters,” she said. “It’s written in Greek.”

  “What does it say?” the Iranian asked.

  Tess read it, then looked up at Abdulkerim and showed it to him. Even in the faint light in the cavern, the astonishment on her face was evident.

  The Byzantinist was clearly familiar with Greek writing, his area of expertise. “The Gospel of Perfection.” He looked at Tess. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. But it’s in Greek. Koine Greek,” Tess said to the Byzantinist, emphasizing the point.

  The Byzantinist’s expression morphed to mimic Tess’s surprise as her point sank in—something the Iranian caught too.

  “What about it being in Greek? Why’s that such a surprise?” he asked.

  “Koine Greek was the lingua franca—the working language—of the Near East during Roman times. It’s what any gospels that would have been written around the time of Jesus’s life would have been written in. But we don’t have any original copies of gospels from back then. The oldest Bibles we have are in Greek, but they’re from the fourth or fifth centuries. The older texts we have aren’t from the Bible. They’re non-canonical, gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas that was found in Egypt in 1945—and they’re Coptic translations of earlier Greek texts.” She held up the codex. “This isn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But it’s in Koine Greek, which means it’s an original. Not a translation. It might be the oldest full gospel ever found.”

  The Byzantinist looked baffled. “Why is it here? How did you know about this?”

  “What about the other one?” the Iranian interjected, ignoring Abdulkerim.

  Tess set the first codex down and picked up the second book. Again, taking great care, she opened it. Although the two codices were very similar outwardly, this one was different in that it consisted of bound parchment leaves, not papyrus, indicating that it was likely to be more recent than the first. The lettering was the same, though. It was also written in Koine Greek.

  “The Gospel of the Hebrews,” she read. This was a title she recognized. She looked up from it. “This is one of the ‘lost’ gospels. Some of the founders of the Church talked about it in their writings, but it’s never been found.” Her fingers brushed the open leaf with profound reverence. “Until now.”

  Her heart pounding, she was leafing through its first few pages slowly, her eyes roaming the tiny letters, trying to grasp what they said, when she saw something else. A folded sheet of parchment, inserted between the pages of the book.

  She pulled it out and realized it wasn’t just one sheet, but four, all folded onto one another. It had to be an official document of some kind, as it was sealed with a dark reddish-brown wax seal that had left its impression on the pages of the codex it had been sitting against. She pulled Abdulkerim’s light closer for a better look and bent a corner of the top sheet back slightly, but she couldn’t see much beyond some of the letters on it. They were different from those in the codices.

  “I think it’s Latin, but I can’t see what’s inside without breaking the seal,” Tess told Zahed.

  “So break it,” he replied.

  Tess exhaled with frustration. It was pointless to argue with the man. She just fumed in silence and slid her fingers under the upper fold of the sheet. As gently as she could, she popped the seal off the parchment, but still couldn’t help cracking it in two. The seal had fulfilled its purpose, even hundreds of years after it had been put in place.

  Tess folded the sheets open slightly, making sure she didn’t crack them.

  The writing on them was indeed different. The words they held were written in Roman literary cursive script—that is, in Latin, not Greek.

  “What is it?” Abdulkerim asked.

  “It looks like a letter.” She squinted as she studied it. “My Latin’s not great.” She held it up to him. “Can you read it?”

  The Byzantinist shook his head. “Greek, no problem. Latin, not my speciality.”

  She perused the text, then her gaze rushed to the bottom of the last sheet.

  “’Osius ex Hispanis, Egatus Imperatoris et Confessarius Beato Constantino Augusto Caesari,’” she read out. She paused, her neurons ablaze with the significance of what she could be holding in her hand, which was trembling. Lost in her own world for a brief moment, she mouthed, in a low voice, “Hosius of Spain, imperial commissioner and confessor to the Emperor Constantine.”

  Zahed’s eyebrows rose in a rare display of piqued curiosity.

  “Hosius,” Abdulkerim observed. “The bishop of Cordoba. One of the Church’s founding fathers.”

  “The man who presided over the Council of Nicaea,” Tess added. Something occurred to her as she said it. “Nicaea’s near here, isn’t it?” she asked.
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  The Byzantinist nodded, frowning with confusion as he processed the information. “It’s close to Istanbul, but yes, I suppose it’s not that far from here. It’s called Iznik nowadays.”

  Tess could see that he was bursting to ask her a hundred questions and was just barely managing to hold himself back. Nicaea was an iconic word as far as the early days of Christianity were concerned. There were a lot of unanswered questions as to what had really happened at that historic gathering back in A.D. 325, when Constantine the Great had summoned the senior bishops from all of Christendom and forced them to settle their disputes and agree on what Christians were supposed to believe in.

  Tess looked over at Zahed. “We need to get this translated,” she told him.

  The Iranian was also lost in his thoughts. “Later,” he replied. “Pass them over to me.”

  Tess took one last look at the document, hesitated, then folded it and placed it back inside the codex as she had found it. She handed both books back to him, and he slipped them into his rucksack.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything else buried with him,” he said as he handed the pick back to her.

  Tess’s mind stumbled. The man didn’t seem at all fired up by what they had just unearthed. She thought of questioning it, but decided against it. Instead, she just got back on her knees and dug and prodded around the rest of the grave.

  There wasn’t anything else buried there.

  She looked across at the Iranian.

  He seemed dissatisfied. “We’re missing something.”

  Tess couldn’t hold back anymore, and her exasperation spilled over. “What are we missing?” She flared up angrily. “This is it. We’ve done everything we can. I mean, hell, we found his grave. We found these texts, and whatever’s in them, that’s already one hell of a find. These gospels … they’re unique. And this man, Hosius … he was Constantine’s head priest. He was there when Constantine decided to become a Christian. He was at Nicaea, for God’s sake, he was there when all the arguments about what Jesus really did and what he really was were thrashed out and when Christianity became what we know it as today. It’s where they came up with the Nicene Creed that churchgoers still recite every Sunday. His letter can tell us a hell of a lot about how that really happened. What more do you want? What the hell are we doing here anyway? What more do you think you’re going to find?”

  The Iranian smiled. “The devil’s handiwork, of course. All of it.”

  “There is no devil’s handiwork. They’re old gospels.” Just as she said it, she grimaced. An understanding came bursting out of the dust and the darkness.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he said, mocking her. “These writings and whatever else the Templars were transporting terrified those monks so much that they were willing to murder to keep them hidden. Then they killed themselves when they lost control of them. They’re not just gospels. To them, they are the devil’s handiwork. They refer to them as something that could devastate their world, their Christian world.” He paused, then added, pointedly, “Your world.”

  “And that’s why you want them?”

  His smile broadened. “Of course. Your world is already crumbling. And my guess is, this could really help you along your downward spiral. Coming on the back of all these pedophile scandals the Vatican has been so helpful in suppressing? The timing couldn’t be better.”

  A nasty chill prickled the back of her neck, but she tried not to show it. “You think you can undermine people’s faith that easily?”

  “Absolutely,” the Iranian shrugged. “I think your people are more deeply religious than you give them credit for. Which makes them all the more vulnerable.”

  “I know how religious a lot of us are. I just don’t think anyone really cares about the fine print.”

  “Maybe not all of them … but a lot of them do. Enough of them to really cause problems. And that’s good enough for me. Because that’s what it’s all about. That’s what you people don’t understand. This battle, this war, between us … this ‘clash of civilizations,’ as your people like to call it. It’s a long-term fight. It’s not about who’s got the biggest gun. It’s not about landing one big killer punch. It’s about attrition. It’s about killing the body slowly, with lots of well-placed jabs. It’s about relentlessly chipping away at the soul of your enemy with every opportunity you get. And right now, your country’s in bad shape. Your economy’s shot. Your environment’s shot. No one trusts your politicians or your bankers. You’re losing every war you get into. You’re more divided than ever and you’re morally bankrupt. You’re on your knees on every front. And every jab, every uppercut that can help bring you further down is worth pursuing. Especially when it comes to religion, because you’re all religious. All of you. Not just the churchgoers. You’re even more religious than we are.”

  “I doubt that,” Tess scoffed.

  “Of course you are. In more ways than you realize.” He thought for a beat, then said, “I’ll give you an example. Remember that earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Haiti recently? Did you notice the way your leaders reacted to it?”

  Tess didn’t get the connection. “They sent money and troops and—”

  “Yes, of course they did,” the Iranian interrupted. “But so did the rest of the world. No, what I’m talking about is how your leaders really felt about it. One of your most popular preachers went on national television when it hit. You remember that? He said it had happened because the Haitians had made a pact with the devil. A pact with the devil,” he laughed, “to help them get rid of the French tyrants who ruled over them a long time ago. And the amazing thing is, he wasn’t laughed off the stage. Far from it. He’s still hugely respected in your country, even though he just sat there making the same ridiculous speech preachers have been making for hundreds of years, whenever an earthquake or some other disaster strikes. But here’s the part I find really telling. He wasn’t the only one. Your own president—your liberal, modern, intellectual president—he makes a speech about it and he says that ‘but for the grace of God,’ a similar earthquake could have hit America. Think about it. What does that mean, ‘but for the grace of God’? Does he mean God’s grace is protecting Americans and that His grace chose instead to wipe out the people of Haiti? How different is that from what that preacher was saying? You really think your president’s any less religious, any less superstitious, than that madman?”

  “It’s just an expression,” Tess countered. “People survive something terrible and they think, ‘God was watching over me.’ They don’t mean it literally.”

  “Of course they do. Deep down, they really do. They believe it, your president believes it. You all believe that your God is the real thing and that by being Christ’s chosen people, He will protect you. You’re as backward as we are,” he chortled. “Which is why all this is important to me. And it’s why I won’t give up until we’ve finished what we started.”

  Tess felt her temples throbbing. The man was never going to give up. And if he ever did, he wasn’t going to let her walk away.

  The Iranian stared her down in silence, his eyes narrowing to feral slits. “This is a great start. You’ve done well. But it’s not the whole story. Now, we know Conrad came here. From the looks of it, he battled some Muslim fighters. Maybe he died here too. Maybe. What we do know for sure is that when he and his men left the monastery of Mount Argaeus, they had three large trunks with them. Three large trunks that must have had more than just two books in them.” He spread his hands out questioningly. “So where’s the rest of it?”

  Chapter 41

  CAPPADOCIA

  MAY 1310

  They caught up with them late the next day. Maysoon knew how to read the terrain well. It helped that she had grown up in the region. What didn’t help was that there were six men out there, five of them viciously fit and able, and they were escorting something Conrad was keen to get back without risking any damage to it.

  Given their disadvantage, th
ere was only one option. An ambush. It had worked for the Turks. It would have to work for Conrad and Maysoon, if they chose their spot well.

  They had to choose it exceedingly well.

  They stalked Qassem and his outfit for a few hours, then tracked around them shortly before sunset and rode ahead to size up the ground the Turks would be covering the next day. Maysoon told Conrad they would have to make their move that morning. Any later, and the convoy would reach the wide, open prairies that led to Konya. It would be virtually impossible to take them by surprise there. The landscape was too flat and exposed. They needed to hit them while they were still making their way out of the pockets of trees, the swell of rolling, sun-baked hills and valleys.

  The problem was, even there, there weren’t any great spots to choose from. None at all. The landscape was still too open to present any promising ambush points. There weren’t any natural features that they could use. Furthermore, because the area didn’t have any narrow trails, bridges, or crossings that the Turks would have no choice but to take, Maysoon couldn’t even be absolutely certain of which route they would follow. Which meant that even the most cunning ambush could end up going to waste, with the intended victims not showing up.

  They only had one choice. To hit the Turks during the night, where they were camped out. Which wasn’t a bad option, necessarily. They just needed to plan it right.

  Exceedingly right.

  One and a half versus six.

  It took a while to find them. The Turks were camped out in a sloping thicket of trees, by the base of a winding valley. Conrad and Maysoon left their horses behind and crawled to within twenty yards of them, guided by the amber flicker of a small campfire the Turks had going and assisted by the glow of a bright gibbous moon. They tracked around their perimeter and noted the relative positions of what they saw: the horses, eight of them, tied to some trees off by the lower end of the slope; one man, seated cross-legged with his back to a tree trunk, watching over the animals; the wagon, its two horses still harnessed to it, the telltale silhouette of the trunks visible under a canvas cover; the men, asleep around the fire; another guard, on the opposite side of the small campsite, one they would have missed if it hadn’t been for a fortuitous change of position he made that triggered a small rustle.