Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  Rusty took a few pictures, making sure that he was alone, then slipped down the embankment, opened up the camera and took out the chip. He reached into his pocket, took out a foil gum wrapper, quickly folded it around the chip, then tucked the little packet deep under the struts of the bridge above. As he climbed back up to the trail he took a green thumbtack out of his other jacket pocket, pressing it into the inside face of the bridge’s support post. He then took a few more shots, headed back down the trail to Earl Street and climbed into the car. He drove off and headed for home.

  “Go get it,” said the older of the two men hiding in the underbrush fifty yards from the bridge. He carried a 35-millimeter camera with a 350-millimeter zoom lens and had photographed all of Rusty Smart’s activities at the bridge. His name was Morton Banks and he was an ex-marine MP turned private detective who now worked for only one client.

  His companion went and fetched the chip, which Banks then downloaded onto his phone. He returned the chip to his companion, who replaced it under the bridge. Banks read the first page of the material he’d downloaded. He smiled. The boss was going to be very pleased.

  * * *

  Eddie and Carrie found themselves a safe house in Rome while Holliday and Lazarus met with Antonio Nardi in a café beneath his rooms on the Strada Statale in the Tuscan town of Albinia. A salt breeze blew in from the Tyrrhenian Sea, which was only a few kilometers to the west. Eddie and Carrie had stayed behind in Rome to buy equipment and to do whatever reconnaissance they could.

  Nardi was in his late eighties, his face seamed and brown. What little gray hair he had grew over a spotted scalp. He was wearing a zippered hoodie even though it was hot at the table of the streetside café. When he spoke his voice trembled a little, but his English was surprisingly good.

  “So tell us about your friendship with Rheinhard Huff,” said Lazarus.

  “Ah, yes,” said the old man, a half smile twitching onto his face briefly. “My good friend Rheinhard Huff.” He lit a De Nobili cigarette and sighed. “I sang in the Sistine choir. I was pretty and I was fourteen. I was also an orphan, so I had no one to turn to even if anyone would have believed me. It wasn’t the first time I had been used that way. I was almost used to it.”

  “Huff was gay?” Carrie said.

  “Huff was a sodomist. ‘Gay’ is much too pleasant a word to use for such a creature.”

  “When was the first time you met him?” Lazarus asked.

  “May 11, 1944.”

  “A month before Rome was occupied. Just in time,” Holliday said.

  “They brought the train in late that night,” said Nardi. “No one was supposed to see except the SS squad and a few of the Holy Father’s people. That night I drove Huff and the Holy Father to the train station to watch the unloading.”

  “The train?” Lazarus asked, stunned.

  “Yes. A goods train. Nine wagons, each with its own guard on the roof.”

  “How did it get into the Vatican?” Holliday asked.

  “The way any other train did.” Nardi shrugged. “Over the viaduct and then through the big iron doors where the tracks entered at Viale Vaticano.”

  “And then?”

  “Some lorries came and took dozens of crates away to the Vatican Administration Building. I never saw them after that.”

  “Dear God,” said Lazarus. “It wasn’t just the Bible—it was everything!”

  6

  May 11, 1944

  Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, sat in the rear seat of the 1939 Fiat Berlina and watched as the goods train was unloaded. Rheinhard Huff was seated beside him and Nardi, his “special” young priest, sat behind the wheel. The thin-faced Pope noted that there were two kinds of wagons making up the train, dark green French SNCF wagons and the curved-roof German freight cars carrying the spread-winged Deutsche Adler eagle above its routing numbers. The men unloading were all SS.

  “What exactly are we looking at here?” Pius asked.

  “The best of the best from four years of plunder and the Swiss ‘auctions’ before that. And I also have a special gift for you, Your Holiness.”

  “You found one?” asked Pacelli.

  “I did indeed. It was lying unnoticed and unappreciated in a French village library where nobody saw it or cared.” Huff smiled.

  “Wonderful,” said Pacelli.

  “I have brought you anything of value to be had from any museum or gallery, Jewish or otherwise,” said Huff. The soldier and the Pope spoke in German, which Pius had become fluent in as papal nuncio in Berlin, and they assumed Nardi didn’t understand a word of it.

  “Of which we retain fifty percent of everything sold. A fixed amount will be made available to you and your Kameraden network, ODESSA, whenever you require it,” Pacelli said.

  “Precisely,” said Huff, watching as another crate rolled down the ramp of one of the wagons. “There is also an amount of gold specie in the shipment—an amount we didn’t manage to get into Switzerland before Allied intelligence set up shop there.”

  “Things are that bad for the Reich?” Pius asked.

  “There is no Reich, Holy Father. There is only panic. The Führer thinks he can win the war by moving imaginary tanks and men across his maps, and those in high command are rats looking for holes to hide in.”

  “So the Vatican is a rathole to you, Colonel Huff?”

  “This has been planned since the Führer opened the Western Front. The war was lost on that day and most of the SS command were aware of it. The authority comes from Reichsführer Himmler himself.”

  “And if our gentle Heinrich was told the Vatican did not wish to take part in his plan?”

  Huff shrugged. “Do whatever you wish, but the Obersturmbannführer Roedel and his SS Tenth Army will be leaving Rome in two weeks. They can either do it by driving the panzers through Saint Paul’s and the Sistine Chapel on their way north, or down the Appian Way. The choice is entirely yours.”

  “You threaten the Holy See?”

  “For ODESSA and its Kameraden—certainly.”

  * * *

  “He actually threatened the Pope?” Lazarus asked. “You heard him?”

  “It was common knowledge and he left enough armed men to make good on the threat. There were soldiers dressed as priests everywhere. Huff would have shot the Holy Father in the blink of an eye.” Nardi smiled and puffed on his cigarette. “Although I think it was a ruse, a way for the Pope to give himself an excuse if the story ever was made public—which it eventually was, of course.”

  “Blackmail,” said Lazarus.

  “It was mutual, I can assure you.” Nardi smiled. “In the end both of them benefited. After Ber Ruffinono Nogara, director of the Special Administration of the Holy See, closed the doors of the administration building cellars all the gold and paintings and sculptures and priceless manuscripts no longer existed.”

  “I’m surprised with all that information you weren’t killed years ago.”

  “It’s because I never made a fuss about things. What I didn’t see that night I picked up from conversations Huff had with various people. Huff never knew it, but I spoke quite a bit of German and understood pretty much everything he and the Pope talked about that night. If you did not have any power, the Vatican and the Nazis chose to believe you were simply invisible. I made sure I was one of those people. I had my uses, but I had no power. Huff would say things with me in the room simply because he assumed I had no idea of what was being said.” The old man paused and crushed another cigarette into the stained old Cinzano metal ashtray on his bedside table. “And I’ve probably said too much now. And it’s also my bedtime, so if you gentlemen would be kind enough to leave the money you promised me on the table behind you, I can take to my bed.”

  They did as Nardi asked and left the little rooms over the café. They drove out of Tuscany and back to Rome t
he following morning.

  * * *

  The apartment Eddie and Carrie had rented was close to the Vatican and located on the top floor of a large block of flats on Via Rusticucci. It had four small bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen. Holliday took the key down from its hiding place above the door. The moment he stepped into the hallway he knew something was wrong. There was a familiar stench in the air. The metallic throat-catching odor of blood and the dark smell of human feces.

  “Oh, shit,” Holliday whispered, glancing toward Lazarus. He’d smelled that smell from the jungles of Vietnam to the hot desert sand of Iraq and the harsh mountains of Afghanistan. Somebody had died here and not too long ago.

  They found Eddie in the kitchen. He was slumped with his back against one of the cupboard doors beneath the sink. His shirt was bloody from the right side of his chest to his waistband. The wound bubbled slightly as Eddie breathed in and out. He was alive, but not by much. Holliday knelt down beside his dying friend.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “Una perra. She was a traitor. She was playing both sides, mi compañero. Phone.”

  Eddie smiled weakly, blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His breath was coming in harsh little gasps. “I think I gave the puta as good as she gave me.” He lifted the blood-covered butcher knife feebly and then dropped it. “Hasta luego, mi colonel.” The bubbles stopped frothing from the wound in his chest. Holliday crouched beside his friend for a moment, and then closed Eddie’s eyes.

  “Too many times, too many times,” he whispered, hard, cold tears forming at the death of his friend, a man he’d loved like a brother. The whole thing had been a setup right from the beginning. Carrie’s objective had always been the notebook. She’d led them along like the Pied Piper. He felt like an utter fool.

  They found Carrie in the bathroom. There was a Glock 19 on the tile floor beside her. With one motion Eddie had sliced her from waist to heart. Her organs and intestines spilled out on her lap as if on the floor of a slaughterhouse. Holliday rummaged around her corpse, uncaring of the blood that was getting all over his hands and arms. He eventually found her cell phone and scrolled down to the last call she’d made.

  “Seven-oh-three. McLean, Virginia. The Company.”

  “Why not the Paris division?” Lazarus asked.

  “Because she was working for a black cell inside the CIA. There’ve been rumors about it for years. The little bitch here even mentioned it to me on her way to Paris.”

  “So what do we do now?” Lazarus asked.

  “We are on the top floor of a building without elevators. We’ll have to clean them up as best we can.”

  They dragged Eddie into the bathroom and loaded him into the bathtub, followed by the body of the woman. Going back to the kitchen, Holliday rummaged around in the cupboard under the sink. He found a bottle of ammonia and a box of lye soap. He looked through the drawers and discovered two boxes of cling wrap and took it all back to the bathroom.

  “See if you can find me a dry-cleaning bag and a roll of any kind of tape, preferably duct tape.”

  Lazarus left the bathroom and Holliday started on the bodies. He filled the tub until the remains of the Pilkington woman and Eddie were covered, and then stopped the water. He poured in the half gallon of ammonia and sprinkled the box of lye over the interior of the old claw-foot tub. He took the cling wrap and covered the tub from side to side and end to end. Lazarus returned with two dry-cleaning bags and a roll of duct tape.

  “Help me with this,” Holliday said.

  They spread the bags out over the top of the bathtub as tightly as they could, taping as they went.

  “If we’re lucky, the lye and the ammonia will keep the stink down for a day or two and the dry-cleaning bags and Saran wrap should keep it down for a day or two more.”

  “Then what?” Lazarus asked.

  “We find another hidey-hole. And then we see what’s in the basement of the Vatican Administration Building.”

  7

  Rusty Smart sat in the living room of a safe house on Fort Myer Drive just across the Potomac from D.C. The room was cluttered with plasma-screen computers and printers, and there was a complex communications setup that included satellite phones and stolen image-tracking links with five Keyhole units. There were three other men in the room with him: Tom Harris, James Black and Paul Streeter—all members of a ghost unit running out of Langley headquarters.

  “They’re in Rome. Carrie shot the Cuban but he managed to kill her anyway. Holliday and his new friend found them and tried to keep the stink away,” Rusty Smart said.

  “What about Nardi?” Streeter asked.

  “We managed to find him but we were too late. Holliday and his new friend had gotten to him first.”

  “So now what do we do?” Harris asked.

  “Without the old place, they’re going to have to find a new bolt-hole,” Smart said. “First we find the bolt-hole and then we follow them. If they were talking to Nardi, they know about Huff and his train. But if we don’t get Holliday’s notebook, this whole thing is going to fall apart.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Harris. “This isn’t our kind of thing. You make Holliday sound like some kind of boogeyman. Why is he important anyway? I’ve gone over the file, and there is nothing strategic about him, or world-shaking. So what goes?”

  “This group, or one like it, has existed inside the U.S. intelligence community since Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services back in World War II. Holliday’s connection is through his uncle, who was a liaison officer between the OSS and British military intelligence. He found a Templar sword at Berchtesgaden, which turned out to be part of a code that led to the collected wealth of the entire Templar system. Holliday’s initial investigations into the sword led him to one of the last true Templar monks, who, on his deathbed, gave Holliday the notebook containing every code and account number for Templar funds throughout the world. There are a lot of other people who have been chasing the notebook, including the Vatican. Our group’s thinking is that there is some connection between Huff and the Vatican and between the Vatican and Holliday. The notebook is the key to all of it for some reason. And we have to find out what that reason is before the shit hits the fan.”

  * * *

  Holliday and Lazarus found rooms in a cheap flophouse hotel on Via dei Serpenti. They found a local secondhand store, outfitted themselves and headed off to the Via di Monte d’Oro, a side street off Mercato delle Stampe. Holliday followed Lazarus down the narrow street to a four-story granite building with a plain black-and-gold sign above the door that read “Saxon Peck Rare Books, Maps, Charts and Collectibles.”

  Lazarus opened the door with the old-fashioned spoon-handle mechanism and they went inside. The interior smelled of exactly what the sign had said. Rich scents of old leather, brass and books in addition to the wonderful smell coming from the espresso machine at the rear of the shop.

  The long shop was divided into two parts, with books dominating the floor-to-ceiling oak cases and rarer objects behind glass and display tables that ran in three aisles. At the rear of the store was a small area of peace and quiet, with three leather chairs arranged around an ornate four-legged circular table, almost certainly seventeenth century and definitely British. To the left, a black cast-iron spiral staircase ran up to the floor above.

  On one of the railed wooden ladders sliding down each of the bookcases a short, heavy-set man with snow white hair was rearranging books on the upper shelves. Eventually he ran out of books to rearrange and came down the ladder. He turned and saw Lazarus. His ruddy-bearded face suddenly beamed.

  “Peter, my boy! I haven’t seen you in years. Still looking for old paintings and such?”

  “Quite a number of them, actually, Lord Peck.”

  Peck’s gaze fell on Holliday. “And you must be Colonel Holliday, the man I’ve b
een hearing about for so long.”

  “Today is the first day I’ve ever heard your name,” said Holliday.

  “I knew of you through your uncle Henry. He and I were classmates at Oxford and colleagues during the war. I was also a friend of Rodrigues.”

  Holliday was stunned. “You knew Rodrigues? How did that come to pass?”

  “It’s too complicated of a story to go into now. Let’s just say we were brothers together and that I know he gave you the notebook.”

  The old man looked at his watch. “Just about time to close up,” he said. He bolted up the door, then turned out the lights in the windows. He turned around and smiled. “The two of you look terribly tired. Now, come. I’ll make us a cup of my special espresso and we can talk all about it.”

  Lazarus had filled Holliday in about Peck on the way to his store. Peck was the second son of the Duke of Rutland, a so-called insurance heir. If his elder brother, Thomas, had died before him, Peck would have inherited everything. As it was, Thomas had lived and inherited everything instead. He had sunk millions into Rutland Abbey for the sake of appearances, and in the end was forced to sell everything. Rutland Abbey was now owned by the National Trust, which ran five-shilling tours on weekends.

  Peck, on the other hand, had met a rich Italian countess at one of his brother’s lavish summer weekends in the country. They’d fallen in love, decided to marry, and with nothing left to keep him in England, Peck moved to Rome, where he had been ever since. His dearest wife had been the light of his life for the better part of forty years. When she died, he inherited her entire fortune and opened his store. During those four decades of life with her, he had become the world’s leading expert on ecclesiastical documents, especially those regarding the Vatican. He also had what was perhaps the largest collection of Renaissance and eighteenth-century technical books.