The Last Templar

by Raymond Khoury

  He looked at her.

  He hated the fact that she’d been in danger, hated that her daughter had been too. And he also knew he couldn’t blame her. She wasn’t an FBI agent; she was an archaeologist and a mother. He couldn’t expect her to think the same way he did, to respond to such an extreme situation coldly and rationally. Not when her daughter was concerned. Not after the day she’d had.

  After a long moment, he spoke. “Look, you did what you thought was best for your family, and no one can blame you for that. I would have probably done the same thing. The main thing is you’re all safe. That’s all that really matters.”

  Tess’s face brightened. She nodded, somewhat guiltily, flashing back to Vance, standing there in her living room. “Still…I gave him back his papers.”

  “We still have the copies,” Reilly reminded her, before adding, “The boys in the darkroom are working overtime as we speak.”

  She managed a reluctant smile. Reilly returned it along with a small nod, then glanced at his watch. “I’ll get out of your hair; I’m sure you want to get some rest. I’ll have a squad car keep an eye on the house. And make sure you lock up after I leave.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She was suddenly aware of how vulnerable she was. How vulnerable they all were. “I don’t have anything else he needs.”

  “You sure about that?” He was only half joking.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  There it was again. He really knew how to make her relax.

  “Okay. If you’re up to it,” he said, “I’d really like you to come downtown in the morning. I think it would be really useful to go over everything again in detail with the rest of the team, get all our ducks in a row.”

  “Not a problem. Just let me get Mom and Kim on a plane first.”

  “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Her eyes met his. “Yeah.” She got up to walk him back to the house.

  He had taken a few steps when he stopped and turned to her. “You know, there’s one thing I didn’t get a chance to ask you back in the city.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you take them?” He paused. “The documents. I mean, you must have been desperate to get out of there…and yet you put that thought on hold long enough to grab the papers.”

  She wasn’t sure what had gone on in her mind. It all seemed a blur. “I don’t know,” she managed. “They were just lying there.”

  “I know, but still…I guess I’m just surprised, that’s all. I would have thought the only thing on your mind would have been to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.”

  Tess glanced away. She knew what he was getting at.

  “Are you gonna be able to let go of this thing,” he insisted, “or am I gonna have to lock you up for your own safety?” He was dead serious. “How important is this for you, Tess?”

  She half smiled. “This thing, it’s…there’s something about it. That manuscript, its whole history…I feel I need to be there, I need to find out what it’s all really about. You’ve got to understand something,” she pressed. “Archaeology, it’s…it’s not the most generous of careers. Not everybody gets a Tutankhamen or a Troy. Fourteen years I was out there, digging and shoveling in the most godforsaken, mosquito-infested corners of this planet, and all the time I kept hoping that I’d get a shot at something like this, not just obscure little pieces of pottery or a partially preserved mosaic, but something big, you know? It’s every archaeologist’s dream. The real deal, one for the history books, something I could take Kim to see at the Met one day and point to proudly and say, ‘I discovered that.’” She paused, watching for his reaction. “This must be more than just a routine case for you too, isn’t it?”

  He took in what she said before lightening up. “Nah, we get wackos on horses trashing museums every week. That’s what I hate about this job. The routine. It’s a killer.” His face turned serious again. “Tess, you keep forgetting something here. This isn’t just some academic challenge, it’s not just about the manuscript and what it means…it’s a murder investigation where a lot of people have died.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s get them behind bars first. Then you can figure out what they were after. Come in tomorrow. Walk us through what you know, then let us get on with it. If we need help, you’ll be the first to know. And, I don’t know, if you want some kind of exclusive deal should anything—”

  “No, it’s not like that. It’s just…” She realized that nothing she said would make him change his mind.

  “You’re gonna have to let go of it, Tess. Please. I need you to let go of it.”

  She was moved by the way he said it.

  “Will you do that?” he continued. “It’s really not a game I want you playing at right now.”

  “I’ll try.” She nodded.

  He studied her, then let out a small chortle and shook his head.

  They both knew she had no choice in the matter.

  She was into it hook, line, and sinker.

  Chapter 42

  Shifting in his chair in the stark, glass-fronted conference room at Federal Plaza, De Angelis studied Tess Chaykin carefully. A very smart lady, he thought. That much was obvious. Of more concern was that it appeared she was also fearless. It was an intriguing yet potentially dangerous combination. But played correctly, it could also prove to be very useful. She seemed to know which questions to ask and what leads to follow.

  Glancing at the others around the table, De Angelis listened to her account of her abduction and her subsequent escape. Discreetly, he gently massaged the place where Vance’s bullet had grazed his leg. It stung with a burning twinge, especially when he walked, but the painkillers he was taking dampened the sensation to a point where he hoped any hint of a limp wouldn’t be noticeable.

  Her words made him flash back to the confrontation with Vance in the darkened crypt. He felt an anger swell inside him. He chided himself for the way he had allowed Vance to slip away. A feeble, tortured history professor, at that. Inexcusable. He wouldn’t let it happen again. Thinking about it, it occurred to him that, had he succeeded against Vance, he might have had to deal with her too, which would have been messy. He had nothing against her, at least not yet. Not as long as her motives didn’t prove antagonistic to his mission.

  He needed to understand her better. Why is she doing this? What is she really after, he wondered. He would have to look into her background and, more important, her position concerning certain issues of paramount importance.

  As she finished her story, De Angelis noted something else too. It was the way that Reilly was looking at her. There was something there, he mused. Interesting. The agent clearly saw her as something more than an aid to the investigation. Not surprising on Reilly’s part, but was it reciprocated?

  He definitely needed to keep a close eye on her.

  WHEN TESS WAS DONE, Reilly stepped in, calling up an image of the ruins of the church from his laptop. It popped up on the large flat panel facing the conference table. “That’s where he was holding you,” he told her. “The Church of the Ascension.”

  Tess looked surprised. “It’s burned down.”

  “Yeah, they’re still working on raising the funds to rebuild it.”

  “The smell, the dampness…it definitely fits, but…” She seemed thrown. “He was living in the cellar of a burned-down church.” She paused, trying to correlate the picture in front of her with her recollection of Vance and what he had said. She looked at Reilly. “But he hated the Church.”

  “This wasn’t just any church. It burned down five years ago. Arson investigators didn’t find anything suspicious at the time, even though the parish priest died in the blaze.”

  She thought back, conjuring up the name of the priest Vance had mentioned. “Father McKay?”

  “Yes.”

  Reilly looked at her. It was obvious they’d reached the same conclusion.

  “The priest Vance blamed for the death of his wife.” Her im
agination was galloping ahead now, and the images it was kicking up were horrific ones.

  “And the dates match. The fire happened three weeks after he buried her.” He turned to Jansson. “We’re going to have to get that case reopened.”

  Jansson nodded. Reilly turned to Tess, who seemed lost in thought.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, as if emerging from a fog. “It’s just difficult thinking about him in such contradictory terms. He’s this charming, erudite professor on the one hand, and then the polar opposite, someone who’s capable of such violence…”

  Aparo stepped in. “Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon. It’s like the quiet, friendly neighbor with body parts in his freezer. They’re usually much more dangerous than the guys busting up bars every night.”

  Reilly took over again. “We need to understand what he’s after, or what he thinks he’s after. Tess, you were the first to see the link between Vance and the Templars, and, if you can take us through what you know so far, maybe we can figure out what his next move’s likely to be.”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  Reilly shrugged. “The beginning?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, keep us up at ten thousand feet. Anything looks interesting, we’ll go into it in more detail.”

  She briefly marshaled her thoughts before she began.

  SHE TOLD THEM ABOUT the Templars’ origins, about the nine knights showing up in Jerusalem; about their nine years in seclusion at the Temple, the theories about them digging something up in that time; about their subsequent, somewhat inexplicable rapid rise to power; about their victories in battle, and their ultimate defeat at Acre. She walked them through the Templars’ return to Europe, their power and their arrogance, and how it grated on the king of France and on his submissive pope, and about their ultimate downfall.

  “With the support of his lackey, Pope Clement V, the king starts a wave of persecutions, rounds up the Templars, accuses them of heresy. Within a few years, they’re wiped out. Mostly meeting extremely painful deaths.”

  Aparo looked confused. “Hold on, heresy? How could they justify it? I thought these guys were the defenders of the Cross, the pope’s chosen ones.”

  “These were extremely religious times we’re talking about,” Tess continued. “The devil was very much alive in people’s minds at the time.” She paused and glanced around the table. The silence egged her on. “Claims were made that when knights were received into the order, they did so by spitting and even urinating on the Cross, and by denying Jesus Christ. And that wasn’t all they were accused of. There were also claims that they worshipped a strange demon called Baphomet and that they engaged in sodomy. Basically, the usual claims of occult worship the Vatican wheeled out whenever it wanted to get rid of any competition in the religious sweepstakes.”

  She flicked a glance at De Angelis. He kept his expression benignly interested, but said nothing.

  “During the course of these final years,” Tess continued, “they confessed to a lot of these accusations, but their confessions hold as much water as those made during the Spanish Inquisition. The threat of having a red-hot spike inserted into you is enough to make anyone admit to anything. Especially when all around you, the threat is being carried out on your friends.”

  De Angelis took off his glasses and wiped them on the sleeve of his jacket, then replaced them and nodded somberly at Tess. It was very clear where her sympathies lay.

  Tess flipped the papers back into the folder. “Hundreds of Knights Templar all across France were rounded up and put through this charade. When there was no retaliation, dozens of bishops and abbots jumped on the bandwagon, and pretty soon the Knights Templar were on the run. Only here’s the thing: their wealth seems to have disappeared with them.” She told them about the stories of caskets of gold and jewels being hidden in caves or in lakes all across Europe, and about the Templars’ ships fleeing from the port of La Rochelle the night before that fateful Friday the thirteenth.

  “Is that what this is all about?” Jansson held up his copy of the coded manuscript. “A lost treasure?”

  “Nice to see some good old-fashioned greed making a comeback,” Aparo snorted. “Makes a change from the misguided wackos we’re usually hunting down.”

  De Angelis leaned forward, clearing his throat and glancing at Jansson. “Their treasure was never recovered, that much is generally accepted.”

  Jansson tapped his fingers on the papers. “So this manuscript could be some kind of treasure map that Vance is now able to read.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Tess interjected, suddenly feeling out of place as the faces around the table turned to face her. She turned to Reilly before continuing, propped up by what she read as a supportive look. “If Vance was after money, there was a lot more he could have taken from the Met.”

  “True,” Aparo answered, “but the stuff on show would be virtually impossible to sell. And from what you’ve told us, the treasure of the Templars has got to be worth a lot more than what was on show, plus it can be sold freely without fear of prosecution since it won’t have been stolen, just found.”

  The agents were nodding in agreement, but De Angelis noted that Tess looked doubtful, although she appeared to be wary of expressing her thoughts. “You don’t appear to be too convinced, Miss Chaykin.”

  She grimaced with unease. “It’s clear Vance wanted the encoder to be able to read the manuscript he found.”

  “The key to the treasure’s location,” Jansson confirmed, half questioning.

  “Probably,” she said, turning to him. “But it depends on how you define treasure.”

  “What else could it be?” De Angelis was hoping to see if she had gained any intimation from Vance.

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

  That was good, if she was telling the truth, De Angelis thought.

  He hoped she was.

  But then she dashed that hope and continued. “Vance seemed to be after something else than just money. It’s like he’s possessed, he’s a man on a mission.” She walked them through the more esoteric theories of the Templar treasure, including the notion of their being part of some cabal guarding Jesus’s bloodline. She glanced at De Angelis as she was saying it. He was staring at her blankly, giving nothing away.

  Once she’d finished, he waded in. “Putting all the entertaining conjecture aside,” he said, as he flashed her a slightly condescending smile, “you’re saying he’s a man who’s out for revenge, a man on a personal crusade of sorts.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” De Angelis continued with the calm, soothing manner of a worldly college professor, “money, especially a lot of it, can be a phenomenal tool. Crusades, whether in the twelfth century or today, cost a lot of money, don’t they?” He looked around the table.

  Tess didn’t answer.

  The question hung briefly until Reilly stepped in. “What I don’t get is this. We know Vance blames the priest and, by inference, the Church for his wife’s death.”

  “His wife and daughter,” Tess corrected him.

  “Right. And now he’s got hold of this manuscript that he says was, I don’t know, scary enough to turn a priest’s hair white within minutes of being told about it. And we all seem to agree that this manuscript, which is written in code, is a Templar document, right?”

  “What’s your point?” Jansson interjected.

  “I thought the Templars and the Church were on the same side. I mean, the way I understand it, these guys were the defenders of the Church. They fought bloody wars in the name of the Vatican for over two hundred years. I can imagine their descendants being ticked off at the Church for what happened to them, but the theories you’re talking about,” he said as he looked at Tess, “are about something they supposedly discovered two hundred years before they were persecuted. Why would they have anything in their possession, from day one, that would worry the Church?” />
  “It could help explain why they were burned at the stake,” Amelia Gaines offered.

  “Two hundred years later? And there’s another thing,” Reilly continued, turning to Tess now. “These guys went from defending the Cross to desecrating it. Why would they do that? Their initiation ceremonies just don’t make sense.”

  “Well, that’s what they were accused of,” Tess said. “Doesn’t mean they actually did these things. It was a standard accusation at the time. The king used the very same charges a few years earlier to get rid of an earlier pope, Boniface VIII.”

  “Okay, but it still doesn’t make sense,” Reilly went on. “Why would they spend all that time fighting for the Church if they were hiding some secret that the Vatican didn’t want exposed?”

  De Angelis finally rejoined the discussion in his usual dulcet tone. “If I may…I think that if you’re going to entertain such flights of fancy, you might as well consider another possibility that hasn’t yet been discussed.”

  The gathered group turned to face him. He paused, letting the anticipation build before proceeding calmly.

  “The whole conjecture about our Lord’s bloodline comes up every few years and never fails to generate interest, whether it’s in the realm of fiction or in the halls of academia. The Holy Grail, the San Graal, or the Sang Real, call it what you will. But, as Miss Chaykin has very articulately explained,” he pointed out, nodding graciously at her, “a lot of what happened to the Templars can simply be explained by that most basic of human traits, namely,” turning now to glance at Aparo, “greed. Not only had they gotten too powerful, but without the defense of the Holy Land to keep them occupied, they were now back in Europe—mostly in France—and they were armed, they were powerful, and they were very, very wealthy. The king of France felt threatened and rightfully so. Being virtually bankrupt and heavily indebted to them, he desperately coveted their wealth. He was a loathsome man by any account; I would be inclined to agree with Miss Chaykin on the whole affair of their arrest. I wouldn’t read too much into their accusations. They were undoubtedly innocent, true believers, and Soldiers of Christ to the death. But the accusations gave the king the excuse to get rid of them, and, by doing so, he killed two birds with one stone. He got rid of his rivals and got hold of their treasure. Or at least tried to, given that it was never found.”