Hassan lit another cigarette, idly contemplating that this would be his last one. In a very short time this street would be a mass of confusion, drama and tears. Another strike at the mighty Americans. He smiled as he inhaled a deep puff. He didn’t know why he was doing this mission. He didn’t care. He only knew it was going to be a big deal. A very big deal indeed. Hassan would have been saddened to know his death wouldn’t promote jihad at all. He’d been bought and paid for to do a job for a very wealthy man.
He saw the infidel church, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a few blocks down the street in front of him. As the church bells began to peal the hour, Hassan looked at his watch. An alarm sounded – it was one pm. Shutting off the alarm he thanked Allah one last time for the rewards in heaven that lay in store for him only a few moments from now. Then he smiled, tossed the cigarette out the window and put the pickup into gear. Showtime.
-----
A priest stood at a counter in Bijan Rarities, New York’s most famous antiquities gallery. Dressed in a black cassock and an old-fashioned padre’s hat, he resembled the character Father Guido Sarducci who had appeared regularly on Saturday Night Live years before. He wore sunglasses even though he was indoors but none of the staff at the gallery considered it unusual. Everyone in New York was a little different. Even the clergy.
The priest had rung the front buzzer at 12:45 pm. The security guard on duty glanced at a sheet and noted that the Archdiocese was sending a representative to the store. Without a second thought the guard opened the door to admit him. The priest thanked the guard, who pointed to the back of the showroom where Collette Conning, the second-in-command to Brian Sadler, waited to meet with him.
They sat at her desk and the priest explained the reason for his visit. He produced a letter with the signature and seal of the Archbishop of New York at the bottom. Collette looked it over then rose and pointed. “I’ll meet you at the counter over there. I have to get the manuscript from Mr. Sadler’s office.”
Standing at the counter, the cleric glanced around the showroom as he waited for her return. There was only one other customer in the store. He was in a small room examining some old vases. There were also Collette and the guard. He didn’t see anyone who might have been Brian Sadler but he knew the owner could be in the back somewhere. It made no difference how many people were there. Everything would happen in a matter of minutes. He glanced at his watch. Exactly on schedule.
Collette brought a tray from the rear of the gallery. It was about the size of a large cookie sheet and on it sat a very old book. When she first had seen the manuscript she noticed it vaguely resembled medieval bibles she had seen. But it was old, ratty and torn. The other seven books that had been dropped off with it were beautiful, almost majestic. They were valuable. Like her boss, she had immediately dismissed this one as junk.
But one never knew. And now the Church was interested in it. So maybe there was more to this book after all. It wasn’t every day the Archbishop sent a representative to look at one of their consignments.
Collette set the tray on the counter in front of the priest. “You’ll need gloves to examine it yourself,” she said, putting on a pair. He declined and asked her to turn to the title page.
She opened the book. Opus Militum Xpisti, the title dimly read on the ragged page. The Work of the Soldiers of Christ.
Collette thought it was strange that he really didn’t seem to care what the page said. He barely looked at it. They both heard a muffled ding and the priest glanced at his watch. “One pm,” he said absently as he hit a button to silence the alarm.
-----
Nicole Farber had been preparing for trial for three days. If she weren’t ready now she’d never be. Criminal law was a strange animal – many times the jury made its decision based on the characters in the play – the prosecutor, the defense attorney, even the defendant – rather than on the law itself. Many times those jurors – the human beings who held the futures of others in their hands – became captivated with good-looking attorneys, likeable murderers, people who could twist the truth until you hardly believed it yourself even though irrefutable facts were laid out right in front of you.
She was one of those good-looking attorneys. The youngest partner at Carter and Wells, one of Dallas’ largest and most prestigious law firms, Nicole had made a name for herself defending those accused of white-collar crimes. She’d met her boyfriend Brian Sadler through her work. She had represented him years ago when he was a stockbroker embroiled in a massive fraud that took down the Dallas investment bank where he worked. What started as an attorney-client relationship blossomed into much more. Now that Brian lived in New York she saw much less of him but they managed to spend as much time together as they could.
She stopped working, swung her chair around and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the skyline of downtown Dallas. The city’s architecture was striking and she never tired of the view. As she took a moment to relax, her iPhone dinged a quiet reminder. It was 11:55 a.m. and a special program on Fox News Network would be broadcast in five minutes. She took a remote from her desk and turned on the TV on the wall in the opposite end of her expansive office. She didn’t want to miss this.
A panel wrapped up a heated discussion about the continuing Congressional deadlock over spending and then the moderator said, “Stay tuned for a real treat. Brian Sadler, owner of the well-known New York antiquities gallery Bijan Rarities, will be on hand for a look at the most exciting discoveries around the world over the past few months. That’s right after the break – at one pm here in Manhattan.”
Nicole grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge in a corner of her office and sat on her couch. Kicking off her shoes, she sat back to watch her boyfriend do his thing. As the Fox interviewer introduced Brian she looked closely at what he was wearing. Good for you, Brian. You’re wearing that tie I gave you for Christmas. I never knew if you liked it that much or not but I’m glad you do.
The reporter led Brian into the topic as the screen flashed pictures from remote areas worldwide. There were shots of ancient temples in jungles, ruined pyramids in a desert, building facades built into walls in the ancient city of Petra. Brian’s voiceover explained one by one the new things archaeological teams were working on. Even knowing as much as she did because of her relationship with Brian, she found the information interesting and was watching closely. The cameras turned back to Brian from time to time as he smoothly and effortlessly guided the television audience through the film clips that were being displayed.
About ten minutes into the program it was suddenly interrupted. On the screen flashed three words – Fox News Alert. One of the Fox regulars appeared behind the news desk and said, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special report from Manhattan. A truck has jumped the curb on Fifth Avenue in midtown and crashed into a building. This happened less than fifteen minutes ago only a few blocks from our studios. Our crew is en route to the scene and we’ll be bringing you live footage momentarily.”
The man stopped talking and put his hand to his ear. Nicole watched him listen into his earphone. “This situation has apparently escalated. Reports indicate a massive explosion has occurred. There appear to be fatalities and the scene is chaotic.”
The news crew arrived and suddenly a camera was capturing the scene live for viewers to see. “Oh my God,” Nicole yelled, tears running down her face as she watched her television. “Oh my God.”
Inside the Fox studios on 47th Street and Sixth Avenue Brian watched the scene on a large monitor as he waited to return to his segment. When the live shot was displayed Brian looked closely. His face turned from interest to astonishment, then horror as he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“That’s my gallery!”
-----
The Jesuit priest walked briskly away from the carnage and destruction on Fifth Avenue. He turned east at the intersection and made his way through throngs of pedestrians. Many of them were hurrying the other direction to see
what was going on. Everyone on the midtown streets had heard the massive thump of an explosion a couple of minutes ago. No one gave the priest a second glance as he crossed Madison, then Park and turned left on Lexington.
He popped into a McDonald’s restaurant a couple of blocks up and went directly to the men’s room. There was only one other person in the bathroom and he was using the urinal. The priest entered the first stall, locked the door and looked around. On the floor behind the toilet was a Macy’s shopping bag. The priest pulled out a pair of shoes, a blond wig, a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. He put the manuscript, the detonating device he had used, his hat, black cassock and shoes in the bag and put it back behind the toilet. He now wore the blue jeans and Yankees t-shirt that had been under the priest’s garb. With different shoes, the wig, hat and glasses he looked nothing like the cleric he had been only one minute ago.
As the perpetrator left, the person standing at the urinal entered the stall, retrieved the shopping bag and checked its contents. He saw the manuscript and the small detonator device. He sent a one-word text on his phone. “Go.” He nonchalantly walked out of the restaurant to the bus stop a block away. Within an hour he and the manuscript would be safely at a house in Brooklyn. The Macy’s shopping bag with the rest of its contents lay at the bottom of a curbside trash bin miles from midtown.
The priest, transformed into a tourist wearing a ball cap, looked exactly like a thousand others on the teeming Manhattan streets. As he walked toward the subway station at 53rd and Lexington a pedestrian jostled him and he felt a little sting on his arm. As he reached to rub it, he stumbled and fell to the pavement. He began convulsing as people moved aside. One yelled, “I think he’s having a seizure!”
One concerned passerby dialed 911. But it was too late. The perpetrator of the Fifth Avenue bombing was dead.
Later that day, a continent away a man watched the news report and smiled. One score settled, two to go.
Chapter Two
Rome, two years ago
It is well known that the Vatican has what is termed the “Secret Archives,” an area where Popes over hundreds of years have deposited written material of interest to the Church or otherwise historically significant. Today there are over 35,000 such documents of various types including correspondence between pontiffs and ruling monarchs of England and France. Properly vetted researchers are occasionally allowed to visit the Secret Archives to study the material.
Few are aware there is another archive, this one truly secret and accessible solely by the Pope. In the depths of the Vatican several floors below the Sistine Chapel, there is a vault. Its existence is known to only a few people – as a new Pope is elected he is told about it. Aside from His Holiness there are generally four others alive who are aware of the place. But only one of those knows the combination to the door behind which lies more than a millennium of secrets – the Pope himself.
For fifteen hundred years, only the Pope has accessed the vault, never anyone else. Many of the pontiffs had no interest in visiting the repository. In fact in the past fifty years only one Pope, Benedict XVI, had decided to go there. His first visit was to place the Bethlehem Scroll in the vault’s secure shelves in 2009 and he had been back a number of times since.
In his position as head of the Knights Templars and a confidant of the Pope, Dominic Cardinal Conti was one of only five people on Earth who knew the vault existed. Among hundreds of other things, many relics and documents relating to the Knights Templars had been placed there over hundreds of years. Even as head of the Templars Conti was not allowed to enter the area but Pope Benedict had one day taken an ancient book out of the vault, brought it to his office and showed it to the Cardinal. It was bound in leather and its pages were chipped and yellowed with age.
Benedict told Conti that this large old musty book was the key to all the artifacts that were secured in the papal vault. It was a register. Line by line a Pope would enter an item’s title or description as he put it there for safekeeping. This book was the master list of everything in the vault.
The Pope commented on the register’s remarkably good condition after fifteen hundred years. He told Cardinal Conti he was going to have the register photocopied so he could refer to the vault’s contents prior to going there, saving time when he was looking for something in particular. The original would of course remain in the vault.
The first entry in that master record was dated 606 AD during the reign of Pope Boniface III. Into the newly constructed underground vault Boniface had placed a decree from Byzantine Emperor Phocas declaring Rome head of all the churches and putting rest to all conflicting claims, especially from Constantinople. In a flourishing hand, Boniface had recorded the document – the first line in a record book that by now ran to over a hundred pages and several thousand entries.
The Pope showed Conti four interesting entries in the register – four manuscripts that were the eyewitness journals of the Knights Templars. These four volumes were in fact diaries, each written at the time the events described in them occurred. They were exciting to the Cardinal. The first book encompassed the years from the Templars beginning in 1118 to the tumultuous time in the early 1300s when the group ostensibly was disbanded.
The pontiff explained to Cardinal Conti that the books were part of a private collection until around 1875 when they were donated by a wealthy Italian family to the papal collection. Pius IX, the Pope at the time, considered them so revealing and so potentially inflammatory that he locked them in the secret vault.
Since he was head of the Templars today, Conti requested to read the manuscripts. The Pope agreed to remove them, one at a time, so Conti could peruse the ancient books. Conti’s excitement grew the day he held the beautifully bound first volume in his hands and read the words on its title page. Opus Militum Xpisti. Translated from Latin, “The work of the soldiers of Christ.”
In this first volume the Cardinal read the fascinating eyewitness account of the Templars’ activities from their very beginning. It was written entirely in Latin, a language well understood by Conti.
The group had been founded on the basest Christian principle – to defend the kingdom of Christ at whatever cost. What started so nobly eventually became the subject of controversy from powerful factions within the Church. Property owned by the Templars was not subject to taxation and they accumulated substantial wealth while conquering infidels across Europe. Much of this booty was handed over to the Pope but some of it inevitably remained with the Templars themselves. They began to receive criticism from high levels.
Without a doubt the Templars accumulated many treasures. Legends grew over the centuries about the relics the Knights Templars found when they occupied the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. From pieces of the cross to skulls of saints, from clothing worn by the Apostles to the Holy Grail, many tales surrounded these crusading warriors for Christ. Dozens of books speculated on the Templar treasure horde while movies such as National Treasure and the Indiana Jones series keep the exploits of the legendary group alive. No one knows for sure what the Templars had, what they delivered to the Church and what they might have kept and hidden.
Eventually all the favors and praise lavished by the Popes on the Templars stirred jealousy and hatred among others in the Church who didn’t receive such attention. High-ranking officials worked behind the scenes to bring down the crusaders who previously had enjoyed the protection and favors of the Papacy. In the early 1300s the Templars were finally defeated, not by enemies without but by those within.
These honorable men were rounded up, horribly tortured and forced to confess to all sorts of vile criminal behavior such as idol worship and sodomy. Over fifty leaders of the Knights Templars were burned to death in 1310 while a weak, spineless Pope stood by doing nothing to stop it. To the world this signaled the end of the Knights Templars. But that was incorrect. The Order continued, secretly carrying on the work of its original members.
Thusly, the first volume of the Templar history
ended with the apparent destruction of the ancient Order. Cardinal Conti returned it and received the next one from Pope Benedict. It was interesting, Conti thought, that although the Templars were “destroyed” in the first book, three more manuscripts relating to their history were extant. Since Dominic Conti was now head of the Knights Templars, he knew that they had carried on throughout the centuries. But he had never read the group’s history written by Templar scribes on the scene. It was fascinating.
The fact that Conti was a linguist came in handy as he read page after page. The subsequent manuscripts were written mostly in Latin but also in French or medieval English. In the first book and now in the second, every so often there appeared a page of curious symbols, a coded message of unknown significance. Conti asked the Pope about what these pages might mean.
“Finish the manuscripts, Dominic,” Pope Benedict had said. “Then I have something else to show you that may explain your question.”
-----
Although the Cardinal devoted much of every day to reading the manuscripts, the laborious translations required six weeks before he was finished with the third volume. He made arrangements to see the Pope and exchange the book for the fourth and last one.
In his office he opened the final volume and began to read. It was quickly obvious that something was wrong. He left a message with the Pope’s secretary and soon received a call from the pontiff.
“Your Holiness, could there possibly be another volume? The one I just received from you doesn’t chronologically follow the third volume. It begins in the eighteenth century, whereas the last volume stopped around the mid 1400s. There’s a time gap of over two hundred years.”
“I wasn’t aware of that, but also I must admit I’ve never looked at those books. Could it be that some pages are missing from one volume or another?”
Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet Page 68
