The Last Templar

by Raymond Khoury

  “You call it a miracle. I call it chance.”

  “Faith is easy when you’re standing in front of a miracle. The real test of any faith is when there aren’t any signs.”

  She was still thrown, not expecting this side to him. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, although she was predisposed not to be a huge fan of his line of thinking. “You’re serious.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She studied him as she mulled it over. “Okay, tell me something,” she then said. “How does faith—I mean real, sincere faith like yours—how does that sit with being an investigator?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She had a suspicion that he already knew what she meant; that he’d confronted it before. “An investigator can’t take anything or anyone on trust. You can’t take anything for granted. You deal in facts, in proof. Beyond a reasonable doubt and all that.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t seem at all thrown by her question.

  “So how do you reconcile that with your faith?”

  “My faith is in God, not man.”

  “Come on. It can’t be that simple.”

  “Actually,” he said with disconcerting calm, “it is.”

  She shook her head, a faint, self-deprecating smile lighting up her face. “You know, I like to think I can scope people out pretty well, but I had you all wrong. I didn’t think you would be…you know, a believer. Is that how you were brought up?”

  “No, my parents weren’t particularly religious. It kinda happened later.”

  She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. She suddenly felt embarrassed. “Look, I’m sorry, this is obviously something highly personal and here I am tactlessly bombarding you with all these questions.”

  “It’s not a problem, really. It’s just…well, my dad died when I was pretty young and I went through a tough time, and the one person who was there for me was my parish priest. He helped me find my way through it, and, after that, I guess it kinda stuck. That’s all.”

  Regardless of what he said, she sensed he didn’t want to go into too much more detail, which she understood. “Okay.”

  “What about you? I take it you didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing?”

  “Not really. I don’t know, I guess the atmosphere in the house was academic, archaeological, scientific, and it all made it hard for me to equate what I saw around me with the concept of divinity. And then I found out that Einstein didn’t believe in any of it either and I thought, well, if it wasn’t good enough for the smartest guy on the planet…”

  “That’s okay,” he deadpanned. “Some of my best friends are atheists.”

  She snapped a quick glance at him, saw that he was laughing, and said, “Good to know,” even if he wasn’t exactly right. She thought she was more agnostic than atheist. “Most of the people I know seem to equate it with being somehow morally hollow…if not bankrupt.”

  She led him back into the living room and, as they did, his eyes caught a glimpse of the TV. It was showing an episode of Smallville, the series about Superman’s travails as a teenager. Staring through the screen, he went off on a completely different tack, asking, “I need to ask you something. About Vance.”

  “Sure. What about him?”

  “You know, the whole time you were talking about what happened with him, in the cemetery, the cellar, all that…I just wasn’t sure how you felt about him.”

  Her face clouded. “When I knew him years ago, he was a really nice guy, normal, you know. And then, what happened with his wife and unborn child, I mean, it’s pretty awful.”

  Reilly looked a bit uneasy. “You feel for him.”

  She remembered feeling that confusing empathy for him before. “In a way…yes.”

  “Even after the raid, the beheading, the shootings…threatening Kim and your mom?”

  Tess felt uncomfortably exposed. He was making her aware of troubling, conflicting emotions she didn’t fully understand. “I know it sounds crazy, but, it’s strange—it’s like, at some level, I do. The way he talked, the way his mood swings made him act differently. He needs treatment, not hunting down. He needs help.”

  “We have to catch him first. Look, Tess, I just need you to remember that regardless of what he’s going through, the guy’s dangerous.”

  Tess remembered the calm look on Vance’s face when he was sitting there, chatting with her mother. Something about him, about her perception of him, was changing. “It’s weird, but…I’m not sure they weren’t hollow threats.”

  “Trust me on this. There’s stuff you don’t know.”

  She cocked her head quizzically. She thought she was ahead of the curve. “What stuff?”

  “Other deaths. The man’s dangerous, period. All right?”

  His emphatic tone didn’t leave much room for doubt, which confused her now. “What do you mean, other deaths? Who?”

  For a moment, he didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t want to. Something was distracting him. He seemed to be in a slight daze, as if he was looking beyond her. Tess was suddenly aware that he was no longer paying any attention to her. She turned, following his gaze. He seemed to be mesmerized by the TV. On the screen, the teenage Clark Kent was about to save the day yet again.

  Tess grinned. “What, did you miss that episode or something?”

  But he was already heading for the door. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “I’ve just got to go.” And in seconds, he was gone, the outer door banging shut behind him, leaving her to stare incredulously at the teenager who could see through solid walls and leap over tall buildings in a single bound.

  Which really didn’t explain anything at all.

  Chapter 45

  The evening traffic was still heavy as Reilly’s Pontiac made its way south on the Van Wyck Expressway. Gleaming wide-bodied jets screamed overhead in a seemingly endless procession of landing runs. The airport was now less than a mile away.

  Aparo, riding shotgun, rubbed his eyes as he glanced out, the crisp spring air rushing at him through the car’s open window. “What was that name again?”

  Reilly was busy scanning the barrage of signs bearing down on them from every possible angle. His eyes finally settled on the one he was looking for. He pointed at it.

  “That’s it.”

  His partner saw it too. The green sign to their right would lead the way to Airport Cargo Building 7. Underneath the main signage, and lost among the smaller logos of airlines, was the one Reilly was particularly interested in.

  Alitalia Cargo Services.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress had enacted the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Under this act, the responsibility for inspecting persons and property carried by airlines was transferred to a newly formed agency, the Transportation Security Administration. Anyone, and anything, coming into the United States would now be undergoing far more rigorous checks. Computerized tomography machines that detected explosive materials in passenger and checked luggage were deployed across the country. Travelers were even briefly X-rayed themselves, until the practice was suspended following an uproar caused not by fears of unhealthy radiation exposure, but rather by the simple fact that nothing, however private, escaped the Rapiscan machines’ scanners: they showed everything.

  An area of particular concern to the TSA was that of global cargo; it was potentially an even bigger threat to domestic security, albeit a less publicized one. Tens of thousands of containers, pallets, and crates poured into the United States every day, coming from all corners of the world. And thus, in this new age of heightened security measures, the new scanning directives weren’t limited to the luggage of travelers. They would also cover cargo shipments entering the country by air, land, or sea with large-scale cargo X-raying systems now deployed at virtually all ports of entry.

  And at this very moment, as he sat down in the operations room of the Italian national airline’s cargo terminal at JFK, Reilly was feeling p
articularly grateful for it.

  A data technician was efficiently calling up the images on his monitor. “Better make yourselves comfortable, guys. It’s a pretty big shipment.”

  Reilly settled into the worn chair. “The box we’re interested in should be pretty distinctive. You can just zoom through them, I’ll let you know when we get a hit.”

  “You got it.” The man nodded as he started scrolling through his databank.

  Images unfurled on his screen, side- and top-view X-rays of crates of various sizes. In them, one could clearly make out the skeletal images of the objects the curators at the Vatican had shipped over for the Met exhibit. Reilly, still annoyed with himself at not having thought of this before, fixed his concentration on the monitor, as did Aparo. His heartbeat raced as blue-and-gray ghosts of ornate frames, crucifixes, and statuettes cascaded before them. The resolution was surprisingly good, much better than he’d anticipated: he could even make out small details like encrusted jewels or moldings.

  And then, out of the deluge of dizzying images, it appeared.

  “Hold it.” A rush of excitement surged through Reilly.

  There, in high-resolution clarity, stripped of its cloaking carcass and displaying its glorious innards, was the encoder.

  Chapter 46

  Tess stopped in her tracks the second she stepped into the meeting room.

  She’d been happy enough to hear from Reilly after three days of frustrating silence, three days during which she was finding it increasingly difficult to dodge her mother’s insistent calls for her to join them in Arizona. She had also started to feel antsy; she realized that the investigation had taken over her life, and that, regardless of what Reilly advised, this wasn’t something she could walk away from.

  And now, seeing what was sitting on the conference table, any notion of her walking away from this was dead and buried.

  There, built of solid, transparent plastic, was an exact replica of the multigeared rotor encoder.

  She could barely manage to bring out the words. “How…?”

  She looked up at Reilly in utter amazement. He had obviously planned it that way; his call, asking her to come down to Federal Plaza, had mentioned nothing other than a mundane “going over a couple of things with you.”

  She was suddenly aware of all the other faces in the room. Jansson, Aparo, Gaines, a few others she didn’t recognize—and the monsignor. She looked again at Reilly.

  He just flashed a restrained, brief smile. “I thought you might want to be here for this.” He pointed at one of the men she hadn’t met before. The man was distributing a stapled printout to everyone in the room. “That’s Terry Kendricks. He built it.”

  “Well, my team and I,” Kendricks quickly interjected, smiling effusively at Tess. “Good to meet you.”

  Tess was finding it difficult to tear her eyes away from the machine. She perused the printout in her hands, which confirmed her hopes. She looked up at Kendricks.

  “It works?”

  “Oh yes. It all fell into place perfectly. In Latin, of course. At least, that’s what I’m told by the team of linguists who translated it.”

  Tess still didn’t get it. She turned imploringly to Reilly. “But…How?”

  “Everything gets X-rayed when it goes through Customs,” he explained. “Even when it’s on loan from the Holy See.”

  Tess had to sit down. Her knees felt like they were about to cave in under her. With slightly trembling hands, she studied the document he’d handed her. Eagerly, she concentrated on the neatly printed words.

  It was a letter, dated in May of 1291.

  “That’s the time of the fall of Acre,” she exclaimed. “The last city the Crusaders held.”

  She turned her attention back to the letter and began to read, feeling the thrill of connecting directly over the centuries with men whose exploits had become the stuff of legend.

  “It is with great sadness,” the letter began, “that I inform you that Acre is no longer under our protection. We departed the city as darkness fell, our hearts heavy as we watched it burn…”

  Chapter 47

  EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN—MAY 1291

  They had sailed north along the coast all night and, when dawn broke, the galley turned west and headed toward Cyprus and the safety of their preceptory there.

  After the devastating blow of those last hours at Acre, Martin had gone below to try to rest, but the movement of the ship made that hard, and images of the dying master and of the harried escape remained locked in his mind. When he came back on deck at first light, he was shocked by what he saw. Ahead of them, bright streaks of lightning were breaking the darkness of a fast-approaching storm head, and the dim rumble of thunder could be heard over the keening of the wind in the rigging. Behind them, to the east, a strip of angry purple clouds hid the rising sun, its rays stabbing upward in a desperate attempt to lighten the grim sky.

  How is it possible? Martin thought. Two storms, one ahead of us, the other chasing us. A quick word with Hugh confirmed that the shipmaster hadn’t seen anything like it before either.

  They were boxed in.

  The wind speed quickened and with it came sudden spurts of cold, stinging rain. The sail was being whipped violently against its yard, the crewmen struggling to keep its braces under control, the mast groaning in protest. The horses in the hold neighed and pawed restlessly at the planking. Martin watched as the shipmaster feverishly consulted his chart and marked their present position before ordering the overseer to hasten the pace of the galley slaves and shouting out new headings to the steersman in a desperate effort to break away from the storms.

  Martin joined Aimard at the forecastle. The older knight was also watching the approaching storms with mounting concern. “It’s as if God Himself were willing the sea to swallow us,” he said to Martin, his eyes laced with deep-seated unease. Before long, the storm erupted around them with a savage ferocity. The sky darkened into an impenetrable black, turning the day into night, and the wind rose to a full gale. All around the ship, the roiling surface of the water suddenly broke into massive whitecaps that raced toward them, battering their starboard stern. Lightning exploded in tandem with earsplitting thunder cracks, and heavy rain lashed down at the ship in a thick veil of water that cut off the outside world.

  Hugh ordered a man aloft to scan the horizon for a possible landfall. Martin watched as the reluctant man braved the torrential rain and scrambled up to the crow’s nest. The ship plowed on as massive waves hammered against it, some of them rising high over the stern before smashing down onto the deck. The oars took on a life of their own, some of them snapping against the hull, others slamming brutally into the shackled slaves wrestling with them, injuring several, and prompting Hugh to call for the oars to be pulled in.

  The ship had been tossed helplessly through mountainous waves for hours when, over the almost deafening uproar, Martin heard a splintering crack as the aft hatch covers split open and dark blue water poured into the holds. Almost at once, the ship was wallowing dangerously when from above came the wrenching sound of timber being ripped apart. The mast had snapped, and Martin looked up in time to see it crashing down onto three crewmen while catapulting the hapless observer in the crow’s nest into the churning sea.

  Without sail or oars, the galley was at the mercy of the storm and the currents, pushed and pulled aimlessly by the angry sea. For three days and three nights, the storm didn’t let up, the Falcon Temple bending to its rampaging will, somehow managing to stay afloat and in one piece. Then on the fourth day, with the winds still not letting up, a lone voice cried out, “Land! Land!” Martin peered out and saw a man pointing dead ahead, but he couldn’t see anything apart from the rising sea. Then he spotted it: a distant, dark mass on the horizon, barely discernable.

  And then it happened.

  Cruelly, and within sight of land, the ship started to break up. The carvel-built, even planking had taken a ferocious beating, and now it was giving up. Deafening
groans were followed by what sounded like explosions as the entire hull came apart. Panic erupted among the chained oarsmen, while the horses below reared and whickered furiously.

  “The slaves,” Hugh roared. “Unshackle them before they drown!” His men scrambled to release them from their chains, but their freedom was short-lived as bursts of water thundered into the hull and swept them away.

  Hugh could no longer forestall the inevitable. “Put the longboat to sea,” he bellowed, “and abandon ship.” Martin rushed to help secure their only means for survival and saw Aimard emerge, carrying a bulky leather pouch, and head in the opposite direction toward the forecastle. Martin yelled out to him just as another massive wave struck, and Aimard was hurled helplessly across the bridge and slammed against the chart table, impaling the side of his chest on its corner. He cried out in pain but then gritted his teeth and braced himself upright, one hand clasped against his ribs. Aimard pushed aside Martin’s offer of help and wouldn’t release the pouch, even though it was clear that its bulk and weight were adding greatly to his discomfort.

  They barely managed to climb into the longboat, which was now level with the galley’s deck, and the last glimpse Martin of Carmaux had of the Falcon Temple came as the battered vessel was finally consumed by the raging sea. The huge balk of timber that ended in the carved figurehead snapped like a twig before the awful might of the storm, any sound it made overwhelmed by the demonic shrieking of the wind and the hideous screams of the drowning horses. Looking at the eight other men in the longboat, Martin saw his dread mirrored in their desolate stares as, piece by piece, the ship disappeared beneath the mountainous waves.

  It was the waves as much as the wind that drove them on, tossing the longboat as if it were made of paper, but the shipmaster soon had six of the nine survivors manning oars and dampening the wildest swings. As he rowed, Martin just looked ahead blankly, fatigue and despair dragging him down. They had been chased out of the Holy Land, and now the Falcon Temple was lost. He wondered how long they would survive, even if they did reach land. Wherever they were, they were far from home, deep in enemy territory, and barely equipped to defend themselves against the poorest foe.