Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  “I think I have a pretty good idea,” said Holliday. “It’s not ‘Fone’; it’s ‘F One.’”

  “Which means?” Lazarus asked.

  Holliday smiled grimly. “F One: Francis the First. It’s these people’s code for the Vatican.”

  “And Leonardo is those sukiny deti who’ve been running me,” Hannah said, her face a black scowl.

  Holliday sat back on the boxy blue couch and tried to see the big picture. It came to him relatively easily. “It’s a gigantic money-laundering scheme,” he said thoughtfully. “They’re running around buying and selling and legitimizing everything through Blackthorn and Cole.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Hannah, “what do they need me or any of the other forgers for?”

  “Because you provide the real cash. Your paintings replace the real ones thus allowing the originals to be sold on the black market. Without you and your friends, the scheme wouldn’t work.”

  “Ohooiet!” Hannah snarled. Holy fuck!

  “It also answers a question that’s been bothering me for the last two years,” said Lazarus. “I’ve been noticing a gradual decline down to almost nothing at all in the independent smuggling market. I’ll bet the small guys are frightened of getting knackered by this juggernaut. It’s beginning to make sense.”

  “Food for thought,” said Holliday, slapping his knees and standing up. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something from room service.”

  Both Holliday and Lazarus had giant sirloin cheeseburgers with fries, while Hannah settled on a small Cobb salad.

  “I don’t want to be walking down the street one day and watch my arteries explode in front of my eyes,” she said, eyeing the large, dripping pieces of meat skeptically.

  “It’s the American way of death,” said Holliday, speaking around a forkful of thick-cut French fries.

  “We must all follow our own appetites,” said Lazarus happily, crunching his way through one of the burger’s pickle slices.

  They got back to it and by midafternoon the whole process didn’t seem to be getting ahead at all. At just after three Lazarus paused and looked up. “Doesn’t this ring a bell?” he said. “‘The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East.’”

  “That was on the wall of the cave at Qumran where Peggy and Rafi died,” said Holliday, his voice tensing.

  “Well, it’s in the letter here,” said Lazarus. “It refers to ‘our friend in Mumbai’ and gives a final offer of sixty-five million U.S. dollars. The letter is from Jean-Pierre Devaux, Poste Restante, Paris Twelve, France.”

  “Who is the recipient?”

  “Post Office Box 3829, Crystal City, Virginia.”

  Holliday went to the minibar, got another can of Red Bull and took a swallow. “They’re talking about the scroll,” said Holliday. “Bingham is playing middleman to the people who actually have it. Crystal City sounds like it might be someone or some interior organization within the CIA. I know for a fact they maintain all sorts of covert operations and safe houses there.”

  Crystal City was a forest of modern, bright white high-rise buildings sprouting on Jefferson Davis Highway, close to the Pentagon and Washington D.C. It was also just a short hop to Ronald Reagan Airport. Its office buildings and its maze of tunnels weren’t solely the province of the CIA. The Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence, off-site Pentagon offices, defense contractors and off-site offices of the National Security Agency also occupied the anonymous collection of buildings. It might as well have been called Acronym City.

  “There is something a bit off there,” said Hannah Kruger. “If you assume that the owner of the Crystal City post office box is the seller and ‘our friend in Mumbai’ is the buyer, then who is the person in Paris? If Bingham is brokering the deal, how does Jean-Pierre Devaux come into the whole thing?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Holliday. “It’s like playing a shell game or three-card monte.”

  “So where is the damn scroll?” Lazarus asked.

  “Give me the letter,” said Holliday, holding out his hand.

  Lazarus handed it over and Holliday looked at it. The letter was on ordinary paper, typed and printed on a laser printer. The salutation was “My dear friend” and the closing was “Hopefully, Yours.” In other words, it was absolutely anonymous. “It doesn’t tell us much.”

  “It’s got a lot number,” said Lazarus. “Ergo, it’s an auction.”

  Holliday shook his head. “Not a lot number that’s carried on either Bingham or Blackthorn and Cole’s books.”

  “So which one do we go after?” Hannah asked.

  Holliday pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his good eye and leaned back into the couch. A few moments passed. He sat forward and nodded to himself.

  “Let’s think this through logically,” said Holliday. “Mr. Mumbai is making an offer, so he doesn’t have it. Mr. Crystal City has mentioned that the Frenchman has just come up with the line ‘The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East.’ I’d say we go after the Frenchman.”

  * * *

  They drove the rental down to Key West, into the parking lot of the somewhat pompously named Key West International Airport. They chartered a Vulcanair P68 twin-engine high-winged monoplane. From Key West they flew to Lynden Pindling Airport in Nassau and from there flew to London Heathrow on British Airways. From Heathrow they flew a final leg to Geneva via a Swiss shuttle flight.

  They checked into the Kempinski Hotel, ate a little and then all had a good night’s sleep. In the almost ten years since Holliday had discovered the hidden Templar sword he’d been on long treks like this many times, but neither Lazarus nor Hannah was used to it. He let them sleep in and when they finally woke early in the afternoon he gave them their instructions. They were to disguise themselves by changing their hair color and purchasing plain cosmetic eyeglasses.

  While they were busy with that, Holliday went to one of several private banks he used in Geneva. He retrieved one hundred thousand euros in large denominations and took four blank passports, all current, from the stack in his safety-deposit box. Holliday returned to the hotel. They all had their passport photos taken; then Hannah and Lazarus returned to their rooms at the Kempinski.

  Holliday took the passport blanks to a man he had used several times before. All Holliday really knew about the man was that his name was Marcel and he was remarkably discreet. Marcel worked out of a small set of basement rooms beside a backstreet garage. The sign above his door read “Photo Marcel” and nothing else.

  Holliday went down three steps and knocked on the heavy, slightly pitted dark green metal door. There was a peephole in the door and Holliday knew that he was being watched. A few seconds later the door opened. A small elfin figure appeared with a broad smile on his face. Marcel looked remarkably like a garden gnome. He was short with a round face and red cheeks, a round belly and short legs. His hair was snow white and cut overly long. He wore a very old suit, long out of style, and bedroom slippers on his feet. Around his head was a metal band with a swing-up optical loupe attached to it.

  “Ah, Mr. Smith,” said Marcel, his voice quiet and pleasant. “Do come in.” He stepped back and let Holliday into his little lair. The outer room was surrounded by dozens of filing cabinets. There was a small desk for doing business with a high magnifying lamp clamped to one end. Marcel sat down behind the desk and Holliday seated himself in front of it.

  “You’re looking well, Marcel,” Holliday said.

  “Gerta tells me I drink too much schnapps, but I get along.”

  Without saying anything, Holliday took out the four passport blanks and the passport photographs.

  “British, German, Canadian.”

  “Which is which?” asked Marcel, holding up the strips of photographs.

  “I’m the German. My name is Max Shulmann. The British goes with the other
man, whose name is Paul Andrews, and the Canadian goes for the woman, whose name is Helen Manning. I’m a businessman returning to my French office after an eye operation. Paul Andrews is a travel writer and Helen Manning is a university professor.”

  Marcel nodded, making notes, and then inserted the strips of passport photos into the appropriate blanks.

  “Are you going to have trouble with mine?” Holliday asked.

  “Not at all,” said Marcel, smiling. “As you know, passport photographs are all digitized. I will simply digitize yours, take the left side and flip it over to join with the right side, and your face will be perfect. Presumably you will have a large bandage on your bad eye.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Holliday. He paused. “What about the plastic veneer?”

  Marcel smiled again. “These days passport photographs are printed directly onto the passport, which is exactly what I will do. I then add a two-micron-thick secondary veneer, which the scanners won’t pick up. It’s really quite simple.”

  Holliday reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out the money he’d taken from his safety-deposit box. He counted out fifty thousand euros and placed it on Marcel’s desk. Marcel watched, his small, thin lips moving silently as he counted along with Holliday.

  “Half now, half later?” Holliday asked.

  “Perfect,” said Marcel. “When do you want them?”

  “Is tomorrow too difficult?”

  “Not at all,” said Marcel. “Come in the early afternoon.”

  Holliday shook hands with the little man, then turned and left the studio. Instead of flagging down a taxi on one of the main streets, he decided to walk back to the hotel.

  As he walked, he thought about Peggy and Rafi but mostly he thought about Eddie. He had wondered ever since his friend’s death whether that had been some sort of sign that his own time was drawing near. Now there were two others he had taken into his very dangerous way of life. There was no doubt in his mind that the deaths of Peggy, Rafi and Eddie were all his responsibility. Perhaps even the old monk Rodrigues, when you got right down to it. If he hadn’t been following the endless trail his uncle’s sword had started him on, would Rodrigues be dead? If he hadn’t gone to that tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, would he have still watched as Rodrigues’s blood seeped out onto rain-spattered ground? Would he have taken the notebook from the dying man, spurring him even farther along the road to where he was now?

  He found himself thinking, once again, that with Eddie’s death perhaps he should stop this seemingly endless adventure. But somewhere deep within his true heart he heard Amy’s soft voice from long ago saying to him: “Of course you can’t, sweetheart; you must keep on going to the end.”

  A single line of tears flowed down his cheek as he made his way back to the Kempinski Hotel.

  * * *

  They booked a flight to Orly. Orly, being almost entirely a domestic European facility, had considerably less stringent security in place, and was much less risky than Charles de Gaulle.

  They arrived at Geneva’s Cointrin Airport an hour ahead of time and lined up in front of the EasyJet ticket desk. They had separated by this time, with Holliday somewhere between Hannah and Lazarus. Holliday watched Hannah reach the head of the line and offer up her passport and her ticket. The girl behind the counter tapped out a few things on her computer, turned, smiled and handed Hannah back her passport, ticket and boarding pass. Hannah turned away from the counter.

  Out of the corner of his eye Holliday saw a nondescript man wearing a raincoat with his hands in his pockets striding forward quickly.

  He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, but he was too late. The man ran into Hannah and then quickly turned away, losing himself in the crowds of the busy airport. Hannah looked stunned and Holliday saw a huge spreading flower of blood on the chest of her blouse. She fell to her knees. Holliday bolted out of line and ran to her. The blade was still in her chest. It looked like a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife and the stab was a fatal one. Holliday saw her eyes widen and the life drain out of them.

  She spoke.

  “Get away from me,” she whispered. “We’re not supposed to know each other.”

  And then she slumped over dead onto the floor.

  With his heart pounding but sticking to his role, Holliday yelled, “Rufen Sie einen Krankenwagon!”

  The line in front of the EasyJet counter had fallen back in horror. Holliday moved away from Hannah’s body and took his place again as security police, airport medical staff and stretcher bearers arrived and took Hannah away. By that time Holliday and Lazarus had passed through the line, and with boarding passes in hand they headed to their flight. They took their separate seats on the Airbus A320 and stonily endured the flight to Paris, where all of this had begun.

  17

  Holliday and Lazarus checked into the Hôtel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli, once the headquarters for the Nazi high command in Paris. They went up to their adjoining rooms, showered and rejoined each other in the restaurant Le Dalí, where Holliday ordered an Angus rib steak and Lazarus predictably ordered fish and chips. Holliday chose a Merlot, Lazarus a Chardonnay, and they talked as they ate.

  “I can’t believe Hannah is gone,” Lazarus said sadly.

  “It’s the most terrible thing in the world. I’ve had it happen a hundred times before. Buddies dying beside you in battle—alive one minute, dead in an instant. It’s something you think you’d get used to after a while, but you never do.”

  In his mind Holliday saw Hannah as the man approached and slid the dagger up between her ribs. The man was totally nondescript. A nothing in a raincoat. His thoughts jumped again, this time to Eddie and then to Peggy and Rafi, their lives so violently wasted in a single instant.

  “No, you never do,” he repeated.

  They ate in silence for a moment; then Lazarus spoke, a forkful of perfect French fries poised in front of him. “How are we going to get at this Devaux person?”

  “Either we figure out a way into Devaux’s apartment or we stake out the poste restante.”

  Holliday sliced into his steak and thought. “Or even better. We could deliver something to him.”

  Lazarus cracked open the light tempura batter on a piece of fish, then dipped it in the adjoining dish of tartar sauce. “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  “We’ll need to make a few preparations,” Holliday said, “but I think we’ll be ready by late tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “What are we looking for?” Lazarus asked.

  “A gun, a weapon, a pair of dark blue workman’s coveralls, a tennis ball, a screwdriver and a butane lighter.”

  “Very mysterious,” said Lazarus.

  “No,” said Holliday. “Necessary.”

  The weapon was the easiest. Holliday had long before purchased safety-deposit boxes in most major cities. Here it was in the BNP on the Champs-Élysées. He went to the box, opened it and took out a small Walther PPK and two extra magazines. He locked the box again, rejoined Lazarus and they went off to make their various purchases.

  By nine o’clock the following morning they were standing in front of a DHL office on a side street close to the Place de l’Opéra. Holliday was wearing a pair of blue workman’s coveralls and carrying a toolbox. Lazarus was dressed in a suit a carrying a large parcel that they had put together the previous night.

  “I want you to go in there and send that parcel to yourself,” Holliday said. “You keep the clerk busy and I’ll slip around the counter into the back. When you’re finished with the package, go around the block and I’ll be waiting.”

  Lazarus went across the street and through the door of the small DHL office. Holliday counted to fifty to give Lazarus and the clerk time to get fully involved in their transaction. It had been easy enough to see through the window that there were no other clients
in the store. Holliday crossed the street and opened the door into the office.

  Lazarus was having a conversation with the clerk, and without stopping Holliday went behind the counter and went through a doorway into a large room. Parcels were stacked on wire racks and behind the packages was a row of lockers. Holliday opened the lockers one by one and found two yellow-and-red DHL uniforms. He scooped them up, stuffed them into his empty toolbox and proceeded out the back door. He found himself in a small lot with half a dozen parked DHL vans. He first went and slid back the gate on its rollers, then chose a DHL van at random.

  The previous night they had used the butane lighter to heat up the screwdriver, punching it through the tennis ball, leaving behind a slit in the ball approximately three-quarters of an inch long. In the DHL parking lot he took the customized tennis ball out of his pocket and slipped it over the lock of the driver’s side of the van. He held the ball in place with two fingers of his left hand and with the palm of his right hand slammed the tennis ball hard.

  Almost magically the door unlocked, the pressure of the air from the tennis ball forcing the lock button up. He opened the door, slid behind the wheel, reached beneath the dashboard and quickly hot-wired the van. With the engine running, he went into the back of the empty truck, climbed out of the overalls and put on one of the DHL uniforms. He got behind the wheel again and calmly drove out of the lot.

  At the corner Holliday, spotted the waiting Lazarus. Lazarus climbed in. “Any trouble?”

  “Not a bit,” said Holliday. “Climb into the back and put on your uniform.” He waited for Lazarus to change, then headed for Avenue de Wagram and the residence of Jean-Pierre Devaux.

  Fifteen minutes later they parked in front of Le Paradis du Fruit, went through the side door and up to the top floor.

  “Package for Mr. Devaux,” said Lazarus, his French perfect.

  There was no answer. Lazarus knocked harder and repeated his statement, standing directly in front of the peephole in the center of the door. There was still no response. Holliday slipped the Walther PPK out of his uniform pocket and held it tightly along his thigh. He gestured for Lazarus to try the latch. The latch gave under Lazarus’s thumb and the door opened slightly.