The Templar throne t-3

by Paul Christopher

  "As all of you know," she began, "the True Ark is a central component of the Rex Deus mythology, a reliquary or box containing the Holy Grail, the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Shroud, and the Ring of Christ. Some of you I'm sure think the ark really is just a myth; others follow the theory that the ark is contained within the much larger golden Reliquary of the Three Kings, now on the high altar of the Cathedral in Cologne in Germany, also thought to contain the bones of the three magi who brought the infant Christ their holy offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

  "The more cynical among you may well believe that the True Ark and its journey to the New World is no more than a story, a hoax invented by Jonathan Edwards, the founder of our organization, represented at this very table by our sister in the order Jane Campbell Edwards, his descendant." She nodded toward the Big Tobacco CEO seated beside the florid- faced real estate tycoon with the extravagant hairpiece.

  "The short answer is that all of you are wrong. I know this to a certainty because after a long and sometimes dangerous journey, I and my good friend and colleague Dr. John Holliday, lately a professor of military history at the National Military Academy at West Point, both located the True Ark and excavated it from its hiding place on Sable Island, buried almost seven hundred years ago by Sir Jean de Saint-Clair and the Blessed Juliana of Navarre, Abbess of the St. Agnes of Bohemia Convent and the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene in Prague. We did this in the face of an oncoming hurricane, I might add, but that's a story for another day." Here Meg paused for the appropriate chuckles and laughter.

  Somewhere in the middle distance, muffled by the incessant driving rain, Holliday thought he heard the thrumming chug of a helicopter's rotors… a serious enough accident in Frankfort to require a medevac? Not really surprising considering the weather. He turned his attention back to Meg's suitably edited set piece about their adventures, combining her research into the Blessed Juliana and Holliday's interest in Jean de Saint-Clair.

  At the end of her speech she raised her voice slightly and in a breathless tone announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the True Ark, at last returned to its rightful heirs and owners, the gathered Brothers and Sisters of Rex Deus, last remaining members of the Desposyni in America."

  Someone must have had their ear to the door, or more likely the room was bugged, because at almost that instant two of Katherine Sinclair's dark-suited thugs brought in the ark, wrapped in a pale blue moving blanket, followed by a third man carrying the mini-torch and box cutter that Holliday had requested.

  The three men set the box down in front of both Meg Sinclair and Holliday, then silently withdrew. Meg Sinclair pulled the quilted blanket off the box and tilted the entire lead-sheathed artifact toward the assembled people at the table.

  Meg put on her scholarly eyeglasses. "As you can see," she said, "the ark is still sealed. The lid bears the ancient engrailed cross crest of the Saint-Clairs and the inscription in Greek that translates as In hoc signo vinces-By this you shall conquer-the motto of the Knights Templar."

  She looked around the table. "We kept the lid sealed so all of you here could see the opening firsthand." She nodded in Holliday's direction and he dutifully stood up. With Meg Sinclair still standing at his side he picked up the mini-torch. It was a little BernzOmatic with a burner that looked like a miniature nozzle from a service station gas pump.

  There was an automatic spark ignition in the little handle that he fitted between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. With his left hand he turned the tiny valve release knob to start the gas and squeezed the ignition trigger. He was rewarded by a hissing sound and an instant burst of bright blue flame.

  He picked up the box cutter and got down to work, melting a section of the lead solder around the lid and running the box cutter through the softened metal. It took him ten minutes to work his way around the entire lid. When he was done he put down the torch and the box cutter and silently turned to Meg.

  "You open it," she said with a smile that didn't go with the hard, almost dangerous look in her eyes. "You were just as responsible for finding it as I was."

  Holliday nodded. The group around the table watched carefully. There was a muffled cough from somewhere. The Edwards woman looked coolly skeptical and Miles Bainbridge had one eyebrow lifted in mild, patronizing disbelief. His wife just smiled with her best Dale Evans-Partridge family sidekick look. The sixty-something blonde in the red dress and the Botox face looked suspiciously like her husband had prayed for a lobotomy and got his wish.

  Holliday caught a shadowy hint of movement beyond the windows. He ignored it and carefully pulled off the lid and put it aside. The room was utterly silent. There was another muted cough. Holliday peered into the box and almost burst out laughing at what he saw.

  The contents were a stroke of genius and a marvel of misdirection. He stepped aside and let Meg Sinclair do the honors since she had obviously masterminded the brilliant deception. There was another cough and this time Holliday realized it came from outside the door, but all eyes were on Meg.

  She removed the contents of the True Ark one by one and laid them out on the soft surface of the moving blanket. The Holy Grail was exactly as she'd described it, a roughly turned wooden cup that looked as though it had been made on some ancient lathe, which it probably had; the Egyptians had used bow lathes a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Easy enough to find on the archaeological black market.

  The Crown of Thorns was made of old rusted iron, a common torture device used by the early Romans. The cloth part of the device was long gone but the intent was still clear: a sack was fitted over the head coming down to the eyebrows in front and to the mid-neck in back, covering the ears. Heavy iron chain was sewn into the hem with the chain just above the eyes, around the ears and down to the middle of the neck in back.

  The purpose of this was to weigh the sack and produce eight to ten pounds of downward pressure. Inside the cloth at the eye line and going all around were inward-facing, slightly downward-pointing thorns of iron. The weight of the chain pulled the iron thorns into the flesh of the head, and sometimes even through the skull and into the brain. The device was used well into the Middle Ages and was a favorite of the Spanish Inquisition.

  The Ring of Christ was just as impossible to date for authentication as the chalice and the crown. It was a simple bronze ring, justifiably tarnished with age and with a coinlike upper surface. The Romans and the people they conquered in the Holy Land were very likely to have worn rings just like it in the first century.

  The design on the coin on the upper surface showed the Chi-Rho X-shaped symbol that was the combination of the first two letters of Christ's name in Ancient Greek. Between the arms of the X were the symbols for alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. Together the Chi-Rho symbol was used as a sigil, or magic seal, by early Christians. The ring seemed terribly familiar and Holliday suddenly remembered seeing one almost exactly like it in a little museum at Kourion on the Island of Cyprus.

  Meg Sinclair saved the best for last, reverently removing the shroud, which was actually nothing more than a large shred of rotting cloth. Holliday grinned.

  He had no doubt that if tested the cloth would show remnants of human tissue and various organic stains, and if dated would show it to be contemporary with the time of Christ. The cloth was almost certainly byssus, the fine white linen typically used for the wrappings of late Pharaonic era Egyptian burials. Taken altogether the relics were a tour de force. Meg glanced into the box one last time and pulled out something else: two interlocking pieces of wood, probably imported cedar from the mountain slopes of Syria. Jean de Saint- Clair's Instrument of God, the early Jacob's Quadrant, that had allowed him to navigate his way to the Farther Shore and an exact copy of the one he'd found in the ancient vizier's tomb in Libya the year before.

  Meg turned to him, smiling, and then she winked. Holliday paled as the truth sank in. Meg had known about the navigation instrument from the very beginning. That meant that Bernheim,
the French naval historian, had been in Rex Deus's pocket well before they'd met in La Brasserie Malakoff in Paris.

  And it was Bernheim who'd pointed him toward Brother Morvan and inevitably to his meeting with Meg Sinclair in the chapel on Mont Saint-Michel. He cursed himself for a fool. He'd been set up from the start and he hadn't seen it, even though part of him must have known that the meeting at the island fortress was too much of a coincidence, the first of many, in fact. Now it was going to cost him his life as well as Peggy and Rafi's.

  Operation Assyrian began just like Byron's poem described-like a wolf coming down on the fold, the sheep in this instance being the members of Rex Deus. The only warning was the cracking triple bark of the Galil mounted grenade launchers and the shattering sound of breaking glass. By instinct Holliday dropped to the floor, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

  Three heavily armed soldiers clad in black armored vests, black balaclava ski masks and dark goggles rolled through the ruptured stained-glass windows, following the three grenades that were still spinning down the length of the refectory table.

  Two of them were flash-bang stun grenades and the other was smoke. The flash-bangs went off first, blinding everyone at the table as every retinal receptor short-circuited along with an eardrum-rupturing blast of disorienting 180-decibel sound. A split second later the smoke grenade went off and the room began to fill with thick yellow smoke.

  There were moans and screams all around Holliday as he climbed to his feet and peered into the smoke. People blindly stumbled into him as he struggled to find the door. There was a crashing sound and the door into the room burst open and he heard a loud voice bellowing, "Sa'al Holliday, to me!"

  Sa'al was Israeli for Lieutenant Colonel. Holliday fought his way to the door along with the rest of the dazed, blind and deafened members of Rex Deus who were still standing.

  One of them was the Pentagon general. Holliday elbowed him in the throat and the heavyset man went down. The only thing between him and the door was the reeling figure of Miles Bainbridge, the cash or credit card televangelist who was rubbing at his tear-stained cheeks and moaning. Holliday cocked his fist and punched him in the mouth as hard as he could, feeling the expensive capped teeth shattering beneath his knuckles. Finally he made it to the door.

  A black-suited figure gripped him by the arm. "Colonel Holliday?"

  "Yes."

  "Long time no see, sir. Please come with me and hurry, the clock's ticking."

  The man in black virtually dragged him out of the room. Holliday noticed a silenced Glock 17 in his hand. One of Katherine Sinclair's heavies was slouched on the floor, his own Glock on the floor beside him and his brains leaking onto the wall.

  "He drew down on me," said the man in black. They rushed down the corridor to a narrow set of stairs leading down. "We have to hurry, sir, please." They clattered down the stairs with other black-suited soldiers close behind them.

  "You're Shaldag? Unit 5101?" Holliday asked, referring to the Israeli Special Forces group. Shaldag was supposedly responsible for marking the target for Operation Babylon, the destruction of the nuclear reactor at Osirak in Iraq.

  "We don't exist, sir," answered the man, gripping his arm again. They stepped out into the big commercial-style kitchen in the basement of Poplar Hill. "And we were never here, sir." The man's voice was familiar but Holliday couldn't quite place it. They reached the tunnel leading to the stables. Holliday saw another of Katherine Sinclair's guards sprawled across the floor. The results of those strange ethereal coughing sounds Holliday had heard.

  "He draw down on you, too?" Holliday asked.

  The man led him into the stone-lined tunnel.

  "No, sir," said the man. "He fired on me. We don't fire unless absolutely necessary, but we always fire back when fired upon."

  "That sounds like something I might have said," Holliday said and grinned.

  "You did, sir. Roman Military Tactics 301, sir. Boom, Ah, USMA-Rah-Rah, USMA-Rah-Rah, Ooh, Rah, Ooh, Rah… sir." The West Point Rocket cheer. Who was this kid in the black balaclava helmet? They reached a set of stone steps and raced up them to exit in the stables.

  "Do I know you?" asked Holliday. They ran across the garage side of the stables and out into the sheeting rain. Visibility was almost zero but the man in black seemed to know where he was going.

  They ran into a grove of poplars and down a narrow, almost invisible path. He could hear the sound of gunfire behind him. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. There were a dozen black-suited men behind him.

  They reached a clearing. Two UH-1 Iroquois helicopters stood in the clearing, rotors spinning. Surprisingly the choppers sported the red and white livery of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. The sliding doors of the helicopters were open, a black- balaclava-wearing soldier standing beside each one.

  "This way," said the man at Holliday's side, grabbing his arm in an iron grip again. Holliday, his shepherd and six others crowded into the vehicle. Even before the door slammed shut they were in the air. A man seated beside the pilot turned and slipped off his headphones. His face was darkly tanned, lined and worn by too much sun and too much worrying.

  "We lose anyone, Menzer?" asked the older man.

  "No, sir. All present and accounted for."

  "Excellent," said the older man. His caretaker pulled off his balaclava.

  "Misha?" Holliday said, dumbfounded. "Misha Menzer?" The thick eyebrows, pointy chin and the beak of a nose were a dead giveaway, although the Menzer he'd known had a face spotted with pimples and wore heavy plastic glasses. His ex-student grinned.

  "That's me, sir. Thayer Hall, sir. Class of oh-five. You told me I'd wind up in the car wash at a base motor pool if I didn't pull up my socks." Menzer had been one of his exchange students back in the day. A better sense of humor than soldierly aptitude, he'd thought at the time.

  "Nothing I like better than being proven wrong," said Holliday. He reached out and clapped his ex-student on the shoulder. "Especially when I get my ass pulled out of the fire."

  "My pleasure, sir," said Menzer. "Pulling asses is our business, sir. They needed someone who'd recognize you. I volunteered. Orders from the boss." He nodded toward the man beside the pilot and said something in Hebrew to the other men on the chopper and they laughed. Holliday glanced out the window. He was vaguely aware of flying over hills and forest land but that was about it. He tapped the man in the front seat on the arm. The older man turned and slipped off his headphones.

  "They said they'd kill my cousin and her husband if I didn't cooperate. We have to get them before it's too late," Holliday said urgently, yelling over the whickering clatter of the rotors and the roar of the big turbine.

  "No need," yelled back the man. "We got a heads-up that they were going to be snatched, from the Vatican of all places. A man named Father Thomas Brennan, of all people. Head of the Vatican Secret Service," said the older man. Sodalitium Pianum. Holliday had butted heads with Brennan once before, also about a kidnapping.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  "We snatched them first," said the man in the copilot's seat. "They're safe and sound. We've got them at Ramat David Air Base up near Haifa in the north, waiting to fly over here and meet you."

  Holliday felt his heart swell with relief.

  "Thank you," he said gratefully.

  "Tsu gezunt," said the older man. "You're welcome."

  "I take it you're Mossad," said Holliday. "Misha wouldn't say."

  "Misha is a good boy, a good shot, too," said the older man. "We had a man infiltrating Quince's group. Turns out they're an outsourcing operation the CIA uses for black bag operations in so-called friendly countries. Our man GPS-tagged your shoes and the Sinclair woman's cell phone with data-pulling chips. We've been following you ever since."

  "That doesn't answer the question."

  "Some questions shouldn't be asked," said the older man.

  "You don't exist." Hol
liday smiled.

  "You catch on quickly, my boy." The older man smiled back, and they flew on through the falling rain.

  33

  Peggy Blackstock, her husband, Rafi, Doc Holliday and Arnie Gallant were fishing with hand lines in the placid waters of Bedford Basin at the inner end of Halifax Harbour. It was a perfect summer day, bright sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. Gallant had provided the dory, obscurely named the Geoffrey G., and an endless stream of local lore, out-and-out fabrications and tall tales and an equally endless monologue on the best method of bait fishing. It was R amp; R for everyone, but especially for Peggy, who'd had a miscarriage, almost certainly brought on by recent events.

  "What exactly are we fishing for?" asked Peggy.

  "Bull fish and mackerel mostly," said Gallant. "Eels, maybe."

  "Gross," said Peggy.

  "Can you eat them?" Rafi asked.

  "The mackerel, I s'pose," Gallant said and shrugged. "The bull fish if you were desperate. Eels if you like that sort of thing."

  "What does bull fish taste like?" Peggy asked.

  "Whatever its last meal was," said Gallant.

  "What does it eat?" Rafi asked.

  "Mostly chaetognatha Sagitta elegans," responded Gallant.

  "Elegant spear," said Holliday abstractedly. He was staring thoughtfully at absolutely nothing.

  "Pardon?" Peggy said.

  "Sagitta elegans. That's what it means when you translate the Latin."

  "Arrow worms," said Gallant, jigging his line a little. "They look like hairy horse penises with a big jaw on the end. And they're slimy." He nodded toward the placid water. "There's billions of them down there."

  "And we're fishing here?" Peggy said. "Eee- ewe. Gross."

  Gallant laughed, then turned to Holliday, who was still staring out across the water. "A penny for them," said the lobsterman.

  "Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm, Royal Navy."

  "And who might he be?"

  "Commander of HMS Royal Oak, the ship that delivered Major General John Ross and his troops to the shores of Maryland. In August of 1814. Ross went on to rout the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg. The Americans lost so badly it allowed Ross and his men to march on Washington and burn it to the ground. He was the first person credited with defeating an entire U.S. Army in the field. A month later he was picked off by a pair of teenage snipers. His body was pickled in a barrel of Jamaican rum and the Royal Oak took him to Halifax. The Royal Oak was probably anchored in Bedford Basin. Somewhere right around here."