Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  This time the image was of a building with its doors blown open and most of the facade destroyed.

  “This is the gallery of a man closely connected to Blackthorn. When they checked, Miami Police found half a dozen paintings that weren’t anywhere on his inventory. Clearly, it’s all connected. The next thing you know, we have both visual and signals intelligence that Holliday and an Interpol cop named Peter Lazarus boarded an Air India flight for Mumbai. A week later we get this from our office in Mumbai.”

  Once again a video of a crime scene came on. A man in his sixties or seventies was on the floor of his Paris laboratory. Surrounding him was photographic equipment of several different kinds and on the light table there was a single page of some kind of Aramaic scroll.

  “We had the page of the scroll checked out and it would appear that it comes from Qumran—in other words, it’s one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It looks like it was torn off its mounts and the entire scroll except this single page was carried off. We also have evidence that Holliday and his Interpol friend were there either during or shortly after the theft. In the man’s apartment there was a great deal of correspondence to both Harrison Blackthorn and an Indian man named Kota Raman, the head of the large and very influential family in Mumbai.”

  The general leaned down into the pit. “Give us the last one.”

  The final image was the most gruesome of all. Another autopsy table, but this time the man lying on it was completely headless, the remains of the neck and upper spine a gory mess.

  “This is Kota Raman. Do you still think your Colonel Holliday is so inspiring?” General Taber queried.

  “I still don’t think he would have done all of that without having pretty good goddamn reason . . . General.”

  “We have Holliday in Hannah Kruger’s house killing a man. We have Holliday connected to the auctioneer’s murder as well as to Eric Bingham in Miami. We have Holliday within twenty-five feet of the Kruger woman’s murder. We have Holliday and Lazarus in the Frenchman’s apartment in Paris and we have solid intelligence that Holliday and Lazarus met with Kota Raman and that both Holliday and Raman were interested in the scroll. You really think he’s not involved in all of this?”

  “I still stand by him, sir,” Zits Mitchell said. “He may have killed people following orders in the army, but you said it yourself—he was one hell of a soldier and soldiers don’t go around murdering people.”

  “Loyal to the last,” said the general, shaking his head. He clapped Mitchell on the shoulder. “I agree with you, Lieutenant. John Holliday is too much of a good soldier, but we know he’s involved in this, and unless I miss my bet right now, he’s somewhere looking for that scroll and he’s in a jam. It’s going to be our business to get him out of it.”

  General Taber grinned. “I can be loyal too, son.”

  25

  Holliday and Lazarus were marched down the hill by the two guards, who poked them every once in a while to keep them moving. They passed through the gates of the compound and paused in front of the door. One of the guards stepped forward and gave a shave-and-a-haircut knock. Holliday smiled at the use of such an Americanism. A few seconds later the door opened and the two men were pushed inside. It was absolutely nothing like Holliday had expected.

  Instead of the rough interior of an Afghan home, he saw absolutely nothing at all. The rough floors were made of wide planks, and there was no furniture anywhere. Out of the corner of his good eye Holliday saw a large explosive bundle connected to a switch midway down the door they had just come through. The doorway was booby-trapped. Their two guards led them through a series of rooms, all empty except for the final one. In the last room there were piles of bags smelling strongly of diesel fuel. Holliday knew he was looking at a gigantic ammonium nitrate bomb. If detonated, it would destroy the entire compound and anything within a few hundred yards of it.

  The first guard took a long hooklike device from the pocket of his jacket and thrust it into a broken knothole in the wood, revealing an almost perfectly concealed trapdoor. There was a metal ladder against one side of the man-sized hole confronting them. The guards gestured for Holliday and Lazarus to go downward. They complied, Holliday going first, followed by Lazarus. The trapdoor slammed shut overhead, leaving them in absolute darkness.

  “Alice down the rabbit hole,” said Lazarus, speaking in the darkness.

  “I’ve been in places like this before,” said Holliday. “The Vietcong had miles of tunnels and bolt-holes like this around strategic areas. They even had them approaching the outskirts of Saigon.”

  Holliday reached the bottom of the tunnel and felt his feet hit a large wooden pad. Small low-power lightbulbs suddenly switched on in the tunnel to his left. Since going back up was not an option, he waited for Lazarus to reach the bottom of the hole and then they followed the string of lights that went down the tunnel. It was no more than four feet wide; the walls and ceiling were made from hand-hewn stone. They crunched onward for what seemed an endless amount of time.

  Counting strides in his head, Holliday figured they’d traveled almost two miles before reaching the end of the tunnel and another ladder leading upward into the darkness. Since there was no other place for them to go, they climbed upward. After two hundred feet, they reached the top of the hole and climbed out.

  “Unbelievable,” said Lazarus.

  The two men were standing in an immense cave, as wide as a football field and the ceiling a hundred feet above their heads. Stalactites hung like ancient swords above them, but the floor was clean and dry. It had been divided into a number of sections, steel poles hammered into the stone with large wool rugs dividing the areas into rooms.

  There were perhaps fifty men moving around the cave. Some were piling crates of weapons and bags of food, while others were tending to some penned-up goats. Somewhere there was the sound of a generator. And there was a cable running like a snake along the floor, powering several laptops set up on a metal table. From far back in the cave, they could smell food being cooked.

  Yet another man with an AK-47 pointed Holliday and Lazarus to a large cubicle on their right. The two men walked to the cubicle and pulled back the two long curtains of wool cloth that acted as doors. Seated cross-legged on several bales of cloth was Mullah Omar, reading a copy of Scientific American. He looked up as Holliday and Lazarus entered his lair. Seeing Holliday, he burst out laughing.

  “We are twins, you and I,” said the mullah. “We are each missing the same eye. It must certainly be the will of Allah that has brought us together.”

  “I’d hardly call us twins,” replied Holliday.

  “I was trying to be hospitable,” said the mullah. “If you want me to act otherwise, I assure you, it could be arranged.”

  “Was it hospitable of you to send two men with AK-47s to kidnap us?”

  “You were spying on me.”

  “And we saw you murder two people at point-blank range. Was that Allah’s doing? Is there some excuse for murder in the Koran?”

  “There are several excuses for killing in the Koran, but I wouldn’t invoke them on this occasion. Dhaliwal was a liar, a thief and a pedophile, and Bapat was simply a filthy criminal whose only god was his own greed. These are people who have no purpose in this world or any other.”

  Holliday sighed. “There must be a reason you kept us alive. Why don’t we get to the point?”

  “Have you ever heard the Arabic proverb ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ Holliday?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, that is the case here. I brought you to this place so we could discuss what to do with the Qumran scroll.”

  * * *

  The Blackhawk helicopter landed in a small canyon about ten miles from the Mullah Omar’s compound. Foster, Harris, Black, Streeter, and Smart were the first out of the chopper, followed by five men from the group based at Camp Gecko. All the men were dre
ssed as Afghan tribesmen and each carried an AK-47. The last man off the helicopter carried an Russian-made RPG rocket launcher on his back. He also was carrying the ubiquitous Kalashnikov.

  “Hang on,” said Streeter. “I’ve forgotten my pack.”

  The Ghost Squad member hauled himself back into the interior of the Blackhawk. As Streeter disappeared, Foster, Harris and Smart turned on the men from Camp Gecko and unloaded the clips of their AK-47s into the small band of men. As the Gecko squad crumbled to the stony ground, Streeter reached the cockpit of the helicopter and pushed the muzzle of the gun against the base of the pilot’s neck.

  “Who are you fuckers?” the pilot asked.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” said Streeter.

  “How the hell are you going to get anybody to fly you out of here?” asked the pilot.

  “I did two tours in Iraq flying Apaches. I think I know how to fly this thing.”

  And then, without any warning, he shot the man in the neck, angling the muzzle down so the bullet would pass through his body rather than his head, to avoid the splattering of blood, brains and other assorted bodily goop all over the windshield.

  Gripping the pilot by the back of his jacket, he hauled him out of his seat and back through the cargo section, at which point he used his foot to roll the dead man onto the ground. Before climbing down out of the helicopter, he placed a small gray package on the floor and rammed a pencil-like device into it. He then joined the other members of the Ghost Squad.

  “Helicopter all fixed?”

  “If any of our Taliban friends try to use it, they’ll be dancing with their forty virgins a split second later,” said Streeter.

  “And what happens if the helicopter is destroyed?” Smart asked. “How do we get out of here?”

  “The hard way,” said Foster. “We lose the headdress, use rags for turbans and walk across the Pakistan border. What’s the matter, Rusty? Not up for little hike?” Foster smiled.

  Smart’s expression darkened but he didn’t say anything. The four men began walking north toward the far end of the canyon and into the hills beyond.

  * * *

  General William Taber and Lieutenant Alexander Mitchell stood in the DIA’s ready room at the American embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The large room was deep in the bowels of the compound and contained a long table with one large screen occupying the far wall. Henry Kroninberg, the DIA station officer for Pakistan, stood to one side of the screen, manipulating the controls.

  “Lights, please,” he called out.

  One of his junior officers jumped up and killed the lights.

  “This is the center of the whole problem,” said Kroninberg. An aerial film taken by a high-altitude drone showed the Mullah Omar’s compound. “This compound was once occupied by Osama bin Laden and is now being used by Mullah Omar. All our sources tell us that the buildings are a cover for a complex series of tunnels and caves in the mountain you see on the right-hand side of the image.”

  Kroninberg flicked a switch and a bright blue overlay bisected the image.

  “The compound is quite clearly in Afghan territory,” he continued, “but due to long-standing issues between the Afghan and Pakistan governments, the border takes a convoluted turn to the right. Depending on exactly where the caves are located, it could be on either Afghan or Pakistani territory. If the caves are in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis won’t give a damn, but if they’re in Pakistan and we try to mount an operation, we’ll find ourselves in a shitstorm of political trouble.”

  “So how do we solve the problem here?” Taber asked, looking around the table.

  “I don’t think it is possible,” said the junior officer who had doused the lights a few moments before. “Both operations would be illegal simply because they are both launched in Afghanistan.”

  “You’ve hit the nail on the head,” said Taber. “We can’t launch an operation of any kind; ergo, we don’t launch one at all. Somebody else must.”

  “Who?” Kroninberg asked, surprised.

  “Does anybody around this table think that if the Afghans tried to blow up Mullah Omar, it would cause anybody any particular grief—even if it is Pakistani territory? I don’t think so. The present government is worried about who’s coming into power in Afghanistan, just as much as everybody else in the world is.”

  “So what does that mean to us?” Kroninberg asked.

  “It means Smart and his creepy little Ghost Squad from the CIA have to be stopped before it’s too late. Our people have to get to Holliday and Omar first—which means we move our asses right now.”

  * * *

  Holliday, Lazarus and the Mullah Omar were sitting at the narrow entrance to the cave. The sun was setting. They were eating an aromatic goat stew out of clay bowls.

  “I’m sure you are aware that I own or control more than half the opium in Afghanistan.”

  “So I’ve been told,” said Holliday.

  “Kota Raman told you this?”

  “He told me about it, but it would appear to be general knowledge.”

  “And my intentions?” asked the mullah.

  “You will use your control of the opium crops to gain power in Kabul?”

  “Nonsense,” said the mullah. “This country has been dependent on opium since the beginning of time. For my country to become anything in the world, all forms of crime, corruption and the opium trade must be done away with forever. My intention is to destroy as much of the opium crop as I can. The CIA will hate me for it, most of the people in power in Kabul will hate me for it and people like your friend Kota Raman will wither on the vine when I do it. Opium is like gangrene in my country. And like the offending limb, it must be amputated. There is no other way to bring peace to this place. When I have done this, I will vanish as though I was never here. I have no wish for personal power or personal riches. Before I left my home I was a scholar and my dearest hope is to be a scholar once more.”

  A guard went up to the Mullah Omar and whispered into the bearded man’s ear. Omar set his bowl of stew aside and got to his feet.

  “We have a problem, gentlemen. I have protectors all throughout these hills. They tell me one of your country’s Blackhawk helicopters has landed and that a squad of soldiers is coming to kill me. We must prepare ourselves.”

  26

  Cardinal Secretary of State Arturo Ruffino was wearing an exclusively cut suit made by one of Italy’s best tailors. He was sitting on the couch in his suite at Claridge’s in London enjoying a perfectly made cup of espresso along with a chocolate éclair. Across from him sat Sir Henry Maxim. Ruffino put down his coffee cup and dabbed the cream from his lips with a fine linen napkin.

  “We are faced with a problem, Sir Henry.”

  “And what would that be?” asked the MI6 operations director.

  “The problem is twofold,” the cardinal began. “Number one, we have approximately forty thousand works of art in the Vatican vaults that we have been depending on to fund out expenses at the Vatican Bank for some time now. And two, we are not in possession of the missing Qumran scroll.”

  “Why are you asking me for help?” Maxim asked. “I would have thought problems like these should be presented to the whole Leonardo group.”

  “You are the only one who has a vested interest in seeing that the Huff train and its secrets are never revealed. The others will be like vultures around a dying animal.”

  “What vested interests are you talking about?” Maxim asked.

  “Don’t be coy,” said the cardinal. “Before you got your knighthood, you were Professor Henry Maxim, one of the British contingent of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program. You were also working for MI6, looking for any documents that might be of value to British intelligence.”

  “What of it?”

  “You and several other members of the British program as well as half a do
zen more in the American section were all art experts of one kind or another. You decided to keep a number of paintings and other pieces of fine art for yourselves, shipping them to Switzerland or the United States, where you hoarded them and let them out onto the market every two or three years. Not only that, but you also ran into Rheinhard Huff in an internment camp in southern Italy when he was trying to make his escape through the Vatican ratlines established by Pope Pius XII. How am I doing at this point?”

  “There’s been a lot of water under that particular bridge,” said Maxim. “I could just deny everything.”

  “You could. But it wouldn’t get you very far.” The cardinal leaned down and picked up the attaché case that had been resting on the floor beside him. He placed it on the coffee table beside the remains of his chocolate éclair and snapped it open. He withdrew a thick manila file folder with the words “Top Secret” stamped on it in large red letters. “Do you know what this is?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea.” Maxim’s eyes locked onto the folder.

  “You know exactly what’s in here,” Ruffino said, tapping the file with his long, bony index finger. “It’s the interrogation file from the internment camp, the one that took place before you arrived and took over the conversation. It also includes your interrogation, because of course you didn’t speak German and the whole thing had to be translated. Huff bribed you with the location of his own private stash and told you everything about the material on the train. You used that information to get even more looted art by blackmailing Pius XII until his death in 1958.”

  “I had every copy of that file destroyed,” said Maxim.

  “Not quite every copy,” said the cardinal. “The man who translated it saw the value in what he had discovered and kept one copy for himself. He knew who you were and he knew that you would kill him unless he could hold this over your head. Upon his death, his oldest daughter, a devout Catholic, sent the file to my predecessor.”