Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  29

  Cardinal Pierre Hébert, Archbishop of France, sat in a brasserie on the Boulevard Saint-Michel with Deputy Foreign Minister François Picard. The cardinal was eating a salade niçoise, while Picard was enjoying a plate of coquilles Saint-Jacôues. They were sharing a bottle of Côtes du Rhone.

  “I’m sure you realize by now that I am the acting secretary of state of the Vatican.”

  “Why should that interest me?” said Picard.

  “Don’t be foolish, Picard. You know exactly what that means. It means that I am now in control of the Vatican Bank. I know far too much about your friend Cardinal Ruffino’s involvement in the so-called Operation Leonardo and it means I know about your involvement with the search for the scroll and Holliday’s fortune.”

  “So what are you going to do with your newfound power?” said Picard, spearing a scallop and popping it into his mouth.

  “It means that you and I are going to exchange information about Holliday’s whereabouts or I will publicize a variety of secrets you would much rather have me keep quiet about.”

  “I have sent a man to find Holliday, but so far he has not reported back to me. I’ll be sure to let you know when he does.”

  “Excellent,” said Hébert with a smile.

  * * *

  Vijay took Holliday and Lazarus deep into Mumbai, traveling first on foot, then by bus and finally by tuk-tuk to a place called Sweeny’s American Bar.

  The bar looked exactly like its name. It was a long dark room with half a dozen long-blade fans thumping languorously from the ceiling. There were ten booths on the left, each with its own miniature jukebox, and an eighty-foot mahogany bar with a real brass rail and barstools. A tall muscular black man with a “Death from Above” tattoo on his forearm sat at the bar, with a rag over his shoulder and a glass in his hand that he was polishing with a second cloth. He finished polishing the glass, put it under the bar and went to the cash register. He sat down on a stool and picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune from the counter beside him. Half a dozen men were scattered along the bar all drinking silently.

  “This way,” said Vijay, leading them into the gloomy darkness of the bar. They reached a booth where a man was sitting, leisurely drinking a bottle of Heineken. He was small with thinning red hair and heavy frown lines. His face was sagging and tanned from years spent working outside in the sun. The man looked up and saw Holliday and Lazarus. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed Vijay two fifty-dollar bills.

  “Good job, Veej.”

  Vijay scampered off and Holliday and Lazarus sat down opposite the man.

  “So you’re the infamous Colonel John Holliday. Boy, have I heard a lot about you.”

  The barman suddenly appeared beside them. “You guys want anything?”

  “This is R. B. Sweeny,” said the man nursing the Heineken. “Two tours in Iraq One, another two in Iraq Two and three tours in Afghanistan. Made enough money playing craps to open this place. Hasn’t been back to Detroit ever since.”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” said Holliday, nodding toward the man sitting opposite him.

  “Scotch,” said Lazarus. “Preferably single malt, if you have it.”

  “Glenfiddich okay with you?” Sweeny asked.

  “Wonderful,” said Lazarus.

  Sweeny wandered off to fill their drink orders. Holliday turned to the man with the Heineken.

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks. You’re not army, you’re not navy and you’re not special forces, so that leaves CIA.”

  “So how do you figure that?” the man said.

  “You’re too small for the army or any of the others. Your shoulders are sloped, you have no tattoos and you don’t look the part.”

  “So that makes me CIA?”

  “Yes. That makes you CIA. So quit screwing around. Who the hell are you and why are we here?”

  “My name’s Ridley Neil. A lifetime ago I was showing the Taliban how to shoot stingers at Russian helicopters. After that, I was showing Kurds how to shoot stinger missiles at Iraqi helicopters. After that, I was back in Afghanistan showing our troops where the Taliban was hiding in the mountains and showing them how to kill the turbaned little bastards. After that they put me on a desk in Kabul. I saw orders coming in and going out that I knew were a lie. I saw operations that I knew were going to fail even before they had begun. In Vietnam, they were looking for body counts. In Afghanistan, all that counted was the number of operations you could put together. It was like flying bombers in World War II. You did your twenty-five missions and then you got sent home. It turned out that I was running a death machine from behind that desk, and in the end I couldn’t take it anymore. I came here. I’ve been here ever since. I still know everybody in the game in this part of the world. I knew all about you before you even crossed the Pakistan border and I know who’s looking for you now.”

  “Who?” asked Holliday. “And why are you being our guardian angel now?”

  “I’m not your guardian angel now,” said Neil. “But all the fuss about you made me start thinking hard about what’s going on back at the Company. I’m not sure quite how you managed it, but it looks like you’ve inadvertently exposed a big rotting hole in that particular piece of cheese. I knew the men who came after you in Afghanistan and I also knew the whole operation was being done off the books. I used to be proud of what I did for my country. Now I’m ashamed. If you’re going to rip the skin off this whole thing, I want to help you do it.”

  “How do you expect to do that?” Holliday asked.

  “The Company’s people in Mumbai are already looking for you. Give them long enough and they’ll find you. One way or another, you’re not getting out of here on any regular flight.”

  “What other kind is there?” Lazarus asked.

  The bartender brought them their drinks and then slinked away.

  “An irregular one,” said Neil.

  * * *

  Doug Kitchen sat in his office in CIA headquarters drumming his fingers on his enormous desk. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. Sitting there, he could feel everything slipping away. The president had only a year left in his term, so he would probably make it that long. But once there was a new face in the White House, he’d be thrown out on his ass along with a great number of other people in the Company.

  There was a knock on his door. Mark Tannis entered his office with a thick file in his hand.

  “Sit down,” said Kitchen.

  Tannis sat.

  “What have you found out?” Kitchen asked.

  “Holliday and Lazarus made it out of Afghanistan. The French tried to pick him up as he was coming into Mumbai but he killed two members of the Indian railway police and maimed two more. Somewhere before the terminal, he and Lazarus managed to get off the train.”

  “What about the Ghost Squad that Rusty Smart was running out of here?”

  “Wiped out, sir. They took an off-the-books run at the Mullah Omar as a way to cover taking out Holliday, but they got beaten at their own game.”

  “Do we have any idea where they are now?”

  “Somehow they got to Ridley Neil. No one knows how, and now Neil, Holliday and Lazarus have disappeared.”

  “Neil? I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

  “Yes, sir. Very much alive. He’s an information broker.”

  Kitchen scowled. “Just what we need now, old mistakes coming back to haunt us.” Kitchen paused for a while, his fingers going back to their drumming on the desk. Finally he spoke again. “Do you like your job, Tannis?”

  “Very much, sir. I’ve been with the Company for more than fifteen years.”

  “In terms of records, you must know where a fair number of bodies are buried.”

  Tannis nodded. “More than a few, sir,” he replied.

  �
�What would it take for you to exhume them and then cremate them?”

  “Not very much, Chief. I’d like to become director of communications and also I’d like a letter from you telling me you just ordered these files destroyed.”

  “You going to hang the letter over my head?” Kitchen asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I did, you’d kill me.”

  “Then we understand each other. Get it done.”

  * * *

  In deference to his position as the voice of God on earth, Acting Cardinal Secretary of State Hébert remained standing in front of Pope Francis’s heavy oak desk in the office of his suite of rooms on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. To put the Pope somewhat off his game, Hébert spoke to him in Italian, a language the Pope was still not completely fluent in.

  “What is it you are trying to tell us, Cardinal Hébert?”

  “Just what I said, Your Holiness. The Vatican Bank is virtually bankrupt.”

  “This is not possible,” the Pope said, horror in his voice. “One of the first things I did upon ascending Peter’s throne was to audit the finances of the Holy Church. The reports all confirmed that the Vatican Bank had more than wisely invested large portions of its assets and was receiving excellent dividends.”

  “I will explain it to Your Holiness as simply as I can. In 1944, before the Vatican Bank even existed, we came into possession of more than a billion dollars worth of looted Nazi art. It was the valuation of this art which was and has been one of the basic assets of the Vatican ever since.”

  “You’re saying we had art that was looted by the Nazis?” the Pope asked incredulously.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” responded Hébert. “More than that, Pope Pius XII knew all about it.”

  “This cannot be,” said Pope Francis, shaking his head.

  “I’m afraid it is. And it’s worse than that, I’m afraid. The art has now been removed and taken to a bank in Switzerland. If we don’t get it back, the Church will fall.”

  “But what should we do?” asked the Pope, his face taking on a cast of appalled fear.

  “Don’t fret, Your Holiness. You may be the voice of God on earth, but I am his fist.” Hébert turned away and left the ornate offices of the Pope.

  Leaving the Apostolic Palace, Hébert telephoned for his limousine and had it take him directly to Fiumicino Airport. His private jet was waiting on the tarmac, its engines idling. The limousine pulled up to the open doors and Hébert stepped out of the car and entered the plane.

  Geronimo Caserio, the silver-haired, lean-bodied assassin, was waiting for him. The killer was drinking a Campari and soda, reading the latest edition of La Repubblica. Hébert sat down across from him in a comfortable leather seat. He called the male attendant, who brought in a gin and tonic. Hébert rarely drank at this early hour, but telling the Pope that his whole world was coming down around his ears had taken quite a bit out of him.

  “You are well, Geronimo?”

  “Well enough,” said the killer. His eyes were deeply set and utterly black, his face expressionless.

  “I have a job for you,” said Hébert. “You’ve read the file on Holliday?”

  “Of course,” said Caserio. “He was my target once before, at Qumran.”

  “You missed and killed his cousin and her husband instead. Now it’s time for you to finish the job.”

  “Where can he be found?” asked the assassin.

  “It’s not where he can be found now; it’s where he will be in the future.”

  30

  They drove through the crushing streets of southern Mumbai, heading toward the outskirts of the giant city. Neil, the expat CIA agent, was behind the wheel of an ancient Morris Minor, with Holliday and Lazarus seated behind him. The street, shops, clubs and markets were as bright and alive now as they were during broad daylight.

  It felt to Holliday as though they were driving through a never-ending display of screeching fireworks. Cars honked their horns, painted buses drove by in clouds of diesel exhaust and there was always the roar and chatter of the people on the streets. If the roads of Mumbai had been the arteries of the human body, they would have clogged and led to a massive heart attack long ago.

  Eventually Neil guided the little humpbacked vehicle through the outskirts and into the countryside. They made their way down an unlit dirt road, then turned and went down another, narrower road that eventually led to a farmer’s field. Out of the shadows a shape Holliday had only ever seen in photographs appeared at the end of the field. It was a dull green DC-3, a transport aircraft that had first flown before World War II. The twin-engine plane rested at a high angle on a tricycle landing gear, one wheel under each wing and one under the tail. This was a military version, known as a Dakota. Its wide cargo doors were already open and a ladder had been let down from the interior. Two Pakistani men in overalls were turning the aircraft by the tail, swinging it into the wind.

  “This is your irregular flight?” Lazarus asked.

  “With five hundred extra gallons of fuel, it’ll get us where we want to go,” said Neil.

  They exited the old vehicle, at which point the two men who had turned the aircraft into the wind climbed into it. They drove the car to the far end of the field, then turned to face the airplane from perhaps three hundred yards away. Holliday could see that the airfield was nothing more than packed earth and grass. It was going to be a bumpy ride.

  Neil went up the ladder first and disappeared, heading toward the cockpit. Holliday and Lazarus followed. There was a huge explosive coughing sound followed by a grumbling whine. Then a second cough and then the dull low pitch sound of the propellers beginning to turn and gather speed. Neil came back out of the cockpit. He swung a flashlight into the rear compartment of the plane’s interior. There were a dozen fifty-gallon drums, all connected to a single pipe and a hand-cranked pump.

  “That’s our reserve,” said Neil. “You guys will have to do the pumping when the wing tanks are empty.”

  “Where do we sit?” Holliday asked.

  “There are two jump seats on this side of the bulkhead. Strap yourself in for takeoff, and if we actually get this old bus into the air, you can either come up to the cockpit or get some sleep on those two mattresses on the floor.” He swung the flashlight toward the jump seats and two wads of bedding and a pair of rolled-up sleeping bags. “Okay. Get in the seats and strap yourselves in.”

  Holliday and Lazarus did as they were told. Neil vanished into the cockpit. The sound of the engines rattled up to a high grumbling thunder and they began to move, gathering speed with every second, using the headlights of the Morris Minor as a marker for the end of the runway. Two hundred feet from the car, the Dakota lifted into the air and made a broad swinging turn, no more than a hundred feet above the ground.

  Out of nowhere there was a sudden slash of heavy machine-gun fire. An instant later there were heavy thumping sounds as the large bullets pierced the side of the airplane just above their heads. Holliday unstrapped himself and crawled on hands and knees into the cockpit. He squeezed into the copilot’s chair and sat down.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Holliday asked as the sound of the machine-gun fire faded behind them.

  “Pakistani army, I’d guess,” said Neil. “You’re not allowed to fly out of an unlicensed field, for one thing.”

  Neil guided the lumbering old airplane to the northeast, never exceeding five hundred feet in altitude.

  “Where are we going?” Holliday asked.

  “The Seychelles. Scuba diving is pretty good this time of year, or so I’m told.”

  For the first five hours they flew on without incident, always at an altitude low enough to see the waves beneath their wings. At the sixth hour, at Neil’s command, they began pumping and transferring the gas in the fifty-gallon dr
ums into the wing tanks. After an hour and a half, the wing tanks were full and Holliday and Lazarus were able to climb into their sleeping bags and get some much needed rest.

  Holliday fell asleep almost instantly and had no idea of how much time had passed before he awoke, startled. There was an unpleasant ratcheting sound coming from the left engine, and then it stopped. Holliday climbed out of his sleeping bag and went forward to the cockpit.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Left wing tank is empty. I had to flutter the engine, or we’d have had a fire.”

  “How much time do we have?” Holliday asked.

  “Hard to tell,” said Neil. “We should be pretty close now, but I’m going to climb to get us some altitude. This old bird can glide for miles, especially if I’ve got a bit of altitude.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Holliday asked.

  “You’ll notice a big barrel-shaped thing clamped to the bulkhead across from the jump seats. It’s a rubber life raft. Take the container down and pull out the raft. When you hear the second engine go out, inflate the raft and take it down to the cargo doors. We either reach land or we go down on the water. I think it’s probably going to be the water.”

  Forty-five minutes later the engine fluttered out and there was an eerie silence as the ancient aircraft began a slow, curving dive. The silence went on for another ten or twelve minutes, the air whistling over the wings like an Arctic wind. Suddenly the plane’s nose pulled up and a call came from the cockpit.

  “We’re going in now. I can see the lights of Victoria.” Neil’s voice rose with excitement. “We may just get this old girl down after all.”

  They didn’t.

  The DC-3 hit the water at slightly more than a hundred miles an hour. It slid across the calm seas for a few seconds and then the nose and one wing hit an invisible reef just under the surface. The aircraft swung around on the ruined wing, digging the nose even deeper into the water. It was clearly Ridley Neil’s last flight.

  The plane came to an absolute halt at a twenty-five-degree angle, water rushing into the cockpit and then pouring into the fuselage. Holliday and Lazarus struggled to open the cargo doors as the water came up to their waists. They managed to open the doors and toss the lifeboat out. Grabbing the edges of the door, they pulled themselves up until they were hanging above the water. Holliday closed his eyes and prayed they wouldn’t drop over the reef. They let go of the airplane and dropped, tumbling into the water on the far side of the reef. They resurfaced, coughing and gagging, and swam a few yards to the bobbing lifeboat.