The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  Reilly didn’t like the sound of that. Jansson obviously wasn’t going to let Reilly’s solo adventure slide. He’d be getting his ass handed to him, no question.

  He went back to the room and found Tess coming out of the bathroom, freshly showered, wrapped in a thick white towel. A radiant smile lit up her face when she saw him, the same smile that reached deep into his very core and never failed to ignite him like a blowtorch. Despite everything that was swirling around in his head, he craved her more than ever before and felt like pulling her into his arms and spending a few days in bed with her. He drew her over and gave her a long, deep kiss, enjoying the smooth feel of her shoulders under his fingers, but it didn’t go further. There was too much bouncing around inside him.

  Tess must have sensed it. “What’s the scoop?”

  Reilly grabbed a can of Coke from the minibar and settled himself on the bed.

  “Not much. Our guy’s gone. That’s about it.”

  Tess puffed up her cheeks and exhaled slowly. “So what do we do now?”

  “We go home.”

  Her face sank. “When?”

  “I’m waiting to hear back. They’re going to send a plane to fly us back to Istanbul.”

  Tess nodded. Then she dropped her towel and, instead of joining him on the bed, reached for her clothes.

  “Where are you going?”

  Tess picked up Hosius’s letter and held it up. “I want to know what’s in here before we leave.”

  Reilly shot her a look. “Tess, come on.”

  “Relax. I’m just going to see if they’ve got a computer I can use. Maybe a scanner too. I could use some help translating this.”

  Reilly studied her for a beat, then shook his head. “What is it with you and these books?” He sighed with exasperation. “I ever tell you about my friend Cotton Malone?”

  “No.”

  He leaned back against the pillows. “Great agent. One of the best. A few years back, he decides he’s had enough intrigue for one lifetime. Looking for some peace and quiet. So he leaves the service and moves to Copenhagen and opens an antique bookshop.”

  Tess gave him a look that said she knew where this was going. “And … ?”

  “His days as a gun-toting government agent? Much more peaceful.”

  Tess grinned. “I bet. I should meet him sometime. Sounds like he might have some good stories to tell, starting with where he got that name. In the meantime,” she said as she held up the document and crossed to the door, “I’ve got some translating to do.”

  Reilly shrugged and slid down the bed. “Knock yourself out,” he told her as he curled up with a pillow, deciding his mind and body could use a break.

  “SEAN, WAKE UO.”

  He sprang up at her voice, his eyes stinging in protest. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep.

  “What time is it?” he asked groggily.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Her voice was alive with excitement as she bounced onto the bed next to him and held up the ancient sheets to his face. “I got this translated. It reads like Hosius wrote it in his own hand. In A.D. 325. In Nicaea. At the end of the council.” Her eyes were dancing left and right, scrutinizing every reaction on Reilly’s groggy face. “He wrote it himself, Sean. Right after the big meeting.”

  Reilly’s mind was still booting up. “Okay, so—”

  Her enthusiasm blew over his words. “I think I know what Conrad had in those trunks.”

  Chapter 50

  NICAEA, ROMAN PROVINCE OF BYTHINIA

  A.D. 325

  The imperial palace was quiet. The long, drawn-out council was now over. Weeks and months of heated debate had finally ended with grudging compromise. All present had signed off on what had been agreed and were now heading back to their dioceses, to the east and to the west, all over the emperor’s dominion.

  Constantine was pleased.

  Resplendent in his imperial purple robes, festooned with a dizzying array of gold and jewels—the same as he wore on the first day of the proceedings, when he’d addressed the assembled clergymen, fully conscious of the awe his glittering outfit would instill in them—he looked out the window at the sleeping city and smiled.

  “I’m pleased, Hosius,” he told his guest. “We have accomplished a lot here. And I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Hosius, the bishop of Cordoba, nodded graciously from his seat by the large, roaring fireplace. Mild and conciliatory by nature, the priest was in his seventh decade. It had been a hard few months for him, and they had taken their toll on his mind as well as his body. Like virtually all who held high office in the Church, Hosius had suffered under the persecutions of the Roman emperors. His wrinkled skin still bore the traces of it. Then everything had changed with Constantine. The rising general had embraced the Christian faith, and as he consolidated his hold on the throne, he’d ordered an end to its suppression. Hosius’s reputation had gotten him invited to the emperor’s court, and eventually, he’d become the new emperor’s chief theologian and spiritual advisor.

  They’d come a long way since then.

  “These disputes,” Constantine said. “Arius, Athanasius, Sabellius, and the rest of them, and all their petty contentions … Was Christ divine, or was he a created being? Are the Son and the Father of one substance, or not? Was Jesus the son of God or not?” He shook his head, angered by the reports—he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes—of mosaics in Arian churches in which Jesus Christ was depicted as a man who aged to a ripe old age, white hair and all. “You know what the real problem is? These men have too much time on their hands,” he said, his tone quietly angry. “They don’t realize that besides being unanswerable, the questions they keep asking are dangerous. Which is why they had to be stopped before they ruined everything.”

  Constantine understood power.

  He had already done what no emperor had done before him: He had unified the empire. Before his ascendancy, the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western parts, each ruled by its own emperor. Betrayals and territorial wars were commonplace. Constantine changed all that. He took power through cunning political maneuvering and a series of brilliant military campaigns, defeating both emperors and proclaiming himself the sole emperor of east and west in the year 324.

  But his people were still divided.

  Beyond east and west, he had major religious chasms to bridge: pagan versus Christian and, even more troublesome, Christian versus Christian. For there were many different interpretations of the legacy of the preacher they called Jesus Christ, and the disputes between the various groups of converts were turning violent. Accusations of heresy were hurled and counter-hurled. Incidents of torture grew more gruesome. One victim—Thomas, the bishop of Marash—was particularly frightful to look at. He’d had his eyes, nose, and lips cut out. His teeth had been pulled, and he’d had his arms and legs chopped off. He’d been kept prisoner by his Christian tormentors in Armenia for more than twenty years, suffering an additional mutilation on each anniversary of his captivity.

  It had to stop.

  Which was why Constantine had called all the bishops and senior church dignitaries from across his empire to the city, to attend the first general council of the Church. Over three hundred prelates, accompanied by many more priests, deacons, and presbyters, had heeded the call of his strongly worded epistles. Only the bishop of Rome, Pope Sylvester I, wasn’t in attendance. He’d sent two of his most senior legates to represent him. Constantine didn’t mind his absence. The emperor already had enough to contend with, what with the presence of the more authoritative bishops of the East. He was happy to preside over matters himself and wave his big stick to get them to sit down, have their debates, argue over who and what Christ really was and what he did, tangle over how they were going to share in the jurisdiction of his bountiful legacy—and agree.

  On everything.

  Constantine had long been aware of the unstoppable popularity of the Christian faith. His mother was a fervent Christian.
Twenty years earlier, he’d witnessed Diocletian’s Great Persecution, when the emperor had ordered churches across his empire to be destroyed, their treasures plundered, their scriptural writings burned, acting on the advice of the oracle of Apollo—and he’d seen it fail. He’d seen the wide appeal of Christianity’s inclusive and hopeful message, and its relentless spread across the empire. He knew that painting himself as the faith’s great defender, rather than emulating his predecessors as its great persecutor, would buy him a lot of followers. Furthermore, the distant lands he’d conquered held diverse tribes of barbarians, from the Allemani to the Picts and the Visigoths. He needed to find a way to unite them all.

  One religion, common to all, would achieve that in spades.

  Christianity, he knew, was that religion.

  And, as he’d discovered, not even he was immune to it.

  He thought back to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge more than a decade earlier, where his army had defeated that of his brother-in-law, the emperor Maxentius. He’d seen something in the lead-up to the big battle. In the sky. He was certain of it. A sign. The Chi-Rho, a monogram comprised of two superimposed Greek letters—the first letters of the word Christ. That night, he’d dreamed of victory and had a vision of a man—was it Christ himself?—telling him to go out and conquer in the name of that sign. He’d ended up having the Christogram painted on the standards carried by his troops, and he’d been blessed with a stunning victory that had given him one-half of the empire he coveted.

  The sign had kept on bringing him victories.

  Constantine understood power, but he also understood the power of myth. He was deeply steeped in religion, having been brought up around pagan and Christian thinkers in Nicomedia, in the Eastern Empire. Like all his peers, he sought out the advice of oracles and believed in the rewards of religious piety. After that fateful battle, and throughout his campaigns, Constantine claimed that a divine hand had helped him achieve his victories. And inspired by ancient scripture, he came to see himself as a messiah—a warrior-king, anointed by God to rule over the people he had united and lead them to a golden age of peace and prosperity.

  In hoc signo vinces indeed, he thought. “In this sign, conquer.” But the power of the message wasn’t just effective in conquering an enemy; it was also effective in conquering the hearts and minds of the people. And for that, it was a work of genius.

  “We have to protect this faith, Hosius,” he told the bishop. “We have to safeguard it and smother any challenges to it before they can grow. Because this faith is truly divinely inspired.” He paced around the room, his face alive with zeal, his arms sweeping the air with unbridled enthusiasm. “It welcomes all and it’s easy to join. Converts don’t need to turn their lives upside down to be part of it. They don’t need to become celibate or worry about what they can and can’t eat or chop off parts of their manhood to be allowed in. And the organization … the hierarchy in the clergy, the churches, the discipline—it’s all hugely effective at bringing in converts and keeping them in line. But most of all, its divine inspiration is in its message.” He smiled at his seated guest, a smile of deep satisfaction. “Good and evil, Heaven and Hell, eternal paradise and eternal damnation? Rewards in the next life to give hope to those who have nothing in this one and keep them from rebelling? Sin and the need to keep temptation at bay, the lot of it administered by men with divine authority and seared into the consciousness of every child from the day the child is born?” He chortled. “It’s so brilliantly conceived and brutally effective it could only have been dreamt up through divine intervention. I mean, imagine … these people out there, these Christians … my predecessors and my rivals have been hounding them and killing them just as they killed Jesus three hundred years ago. They’ve been persecuted, humiliated, shackled and spat upon, and left to rot in dungeons because they wouldn’t worship our pagan gods and perform the sacrifices required of them. They’ve been blamed for everything from famine to flooding, they’ve had their women raped and their property confiscated … and yet they still cling to their faith. They still soldier on.” He paused, marveling at the very concept he was describing. “That’s power. That’s real power. And we need to protect it if we’re going to harness its full potential.”

  The Spanish bishop cleared his throat and said, “You’ve achieved a lot, Your Majesty. You put an end to their persecution. You showered them with donations and tax breaks and gave them a chance to be part of the ruling class and prosper and spread their message.”

  “Yes,” the emperor agreed, “and it’s going to turn this empire into the greatest empire in the history of mankind. Which is why I can’t let this message—this vision—be compromised. That gentle revolutionary from three hundred years ago is my enabler, he’s the instrument that allowed me to unify this empire and rule over its people with a mandate from God himself. And I can’t let anything threaten that. It would be most unwise—and dangerous for us all.”

  Much as the pragmatic ruler within him was concerned about the disputes, the superstitious part of Constantine was just as worried. He feared that schisms within the Church were the work of the devil, and that a divided Church could offend God and incur his wrath. Constantine had to thwart the devil’s ambitions. He saw himself as a successor to the original evangelists, a man whose God-given mission was to protect Christianity and spread the word of God to the far reaches of his empire and beyond.

  A thirteenth apostle.

  He had to put an end to the infighting.

  All of which was why he’d invited the bishops of his empire to come to Nicaea and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they wouldn’t be leaving the imperial palace until they’d settled their disputes and agreed on what story they’d be preaching from their pulpits.

  One story.

  One dogma.

  No divergence.

  After many weeks of fierce debate, they’d finally reached a consensus. They’d agreed.

  They had their story.

  Hosius sat there in silence for a long moment, watching the emperor. Then, hesitant, he asked, “There is one last matter to be discussed, Your Majesty.”

  Constantine turned to him, curious. “Yes?”

  “The texts,” Hosius asked. “What would you like done with them?”

  Constantine frowned. The texts … the infernal works that had caused so much discord. Ancient writings, gospels and ruminations from the very dawn of the faith, opening up all kinds of questions.

  Unwelcome questions.

  “We have settled on one orthodoxy,” the emperor said. “We’ve agreed on what the gospel truth shall be from here on. I see no need to cloud the issue further.”

  “What are you saying, Your Majesty?”

  Constantine thought about it for a moment, a shiver of doubt scuttling down his spine.

  “Burn them,” he told his trusted advisor. “Burn them all.”

  HOSIUS THOUGHT BACK to the emperor’s words as he watched his two acolytes load up the carriage in the dimly lit coach house.

  He understood the emperor’s decision, even sympathized with it at many levels. It was the wise thing to do. The texts were, indeed, dangerous.

  Hosius was intimately familiar with the debates that had been raging at the heart of the faith. He’d witnessed, firsthand, the zeal with which the various Christian movements argued their views. In the last year alone, the emperor had sent him to Antioch twice to mediate such theological disputes. They hadn’t been pleasant trips.

  But he also had his doubts.

  Yes, the faith needed to be unified under one vision. Yes, a unified faith would bring about an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity.

  But at what cost?

  Hosius knew that once Constantine was done with it, Christianity would far more resemble the pagan beliefs that it was superceding, particularly Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus, than its own Judaic origins. By necessity. Most of the emperor’s subjects were pagan. To win them over, they needed to move them ov
er gently to the new faith. They couldn’t force them to drop all their previous rituals and beliefs, ones they had been prepared to die for. Even the emperor himself, Hosius knew, still harbored doubts and, deep down, didn’t want to risk displeasing the gods of his past.

  Hosius could also see another danger in what was happening. He was fully aware that the Church had been effectively giving its blessing to Constantine’s supplanting of Jesus Christ as the Messiah. The emperor was now the godsend, not Christ. He was the warrior-king with divine backing, the man who would achieve with the sword what Christ had failed to do with his words. He was the polar opposite of the peace-loving, gentle savior, and he still had the backing of all the priests, deacons, and bishops across his empire.

  Dangerous indeed.

  But if the Church was going to survive, it needed a champion.

  Constantine had embraced the faith, stopped the persecutions, and was making Christianity the newly unified empire’s official religion. He would bring about a new golden age. And, as part of that plan, he was turning the old city of Byzantium into his new capital, his New Rome. A capital that was home to great avenues, magnificent palaces, and sublime buildings. Buildings like the new Imperial Library, where a small army of calligraphers and librarians would toil at transcribing ancient texts from the fragile papyrus they’d been written on onto more durable parchment and keep the flame of knowledge alive.

  The library would also keep something else alive.

  Something Hosius felt a need to conserve.

  He watched his acolytes put the third of the chests onto the wagon bed and cover it with a tight canvas cover. He tensed up with anticipation. They would soon set off, protected by a small detail of guards, under cover of the night.

  He hoped his betrayal would never be uncovered. Even if it were, he was prepared to die to protect it.

  He couldn’t burn them.

  Even if they threatened the orthodoxy. Even if they threw up dangerous questions.