The Templar Conspiracy

by Paul Christopher

  But why lug a big desk around when all you really needed was a simple, modern desk from somewhere like Ikea? It wasn’t logical, and if there was one thing he knew about Tritt and the place he lived in, it was that plain, clear logic prevailed. He started taking the empty drawers out and examining their outer surfaces, sides, backs and bottoms. He found what he was looking for on the back of the second drawer down on the right. Three phone numbers, the top two in faded pencil and the bottom one inked neatly with one of the Rapidograph pens, the sevens crossed in the European manner.

  He sat up straight in the chair, the drawer upright in his lap. He let out a shrill whistle, then took one of the pens and a sheet of paper from the middle drawer. A moment later, Peggy and Father Brennan appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s rude to whistle, even if you’re Lauren Bacall,” said Peggy, referring to the old Bogart movie based on a Hemingway book.

  “What country code is four-one?” Holliday asked.

  “No idea,” said Peggy.

  “Switzerland,” said Brennan.

  “You’re sure?” Holliday said.

  “Positive.”

  “What city code is two-two?”

  “Geneva,” answered Brennan.

  “I found three phone numbers on the back of one of the drawers,” said Holliday. “One of them has the Geneva city code, one is in France, I think, and the last one is in Switzerland, too.” He looked at Brennan. “Any ideas?”

  “Call the last one,” said the priest.

  “It’s two in the morning over there,” warned Peggy.

  “Maybe you’ll get a message.” Brennan shrugged.

  Holliday reached for the phone.

  Peggy stopped him. “Wait,” she said abruptly. She crossed to the desk. “This phone has a redial function.” She hit the speaker button, pressed REDIAL and watched as the numbers scrolled out onto the caller ID screen. Geneva again. The phone double buzzed for four rings before a sleepy voice came over the little speaker, rising and falling in the particular way associated with satellite calls.

  “Mandarin Oriental, Jean-Pierre speaking.”

  “You’re a hotel?”

  “And have been for quite some time, monsieur. I am the night manager. Would you like a reservation?”

  Holliday gently cradled the phone receiver.

  “There’s a Delta flight to New York via Atlanta in an hour and a half. . . . If we hurry we can just catch it.”

  By the time they reached New York it was all over the news. Senator Richard Pierce Sinclair stood on the broad steps of the Capitol and made his announcement.

  “It has come to my attention that the various intelligence agencies in this great country of ours have been withholding information that is fundamental to the safety of our citizens, and those citizens have a right to know where the danger lurks, believe you me.” Here the senator paused and gave the cameras one of his patented scowls.

  “According to my sources the people responsible for the assassination of the Holy Father in Rome are yet another organization of fundamentalist fanatics hell-bent on destroying the very fabric of our democratic society and the moral standards set by the founding fathers. The name of this group is Jihad al-Salibiyya, the ‘Enemies of the Cross,’ and I have it on good authority that this group of madmen intends to strike here, at the heart of America—and soon.”

  “Cat’s out of the bag,” said Holliday, staring at the monitor in the Avion Airport bar. “We don’t have much time.”

  9

  General Angus Scott Matoon sat across from Kate Sinclair in the baronial living room of her immense vineyard estate at Chateau Royale des Pins just outside the town of Aigle, Switzerland. Instead of the red wine bottled at the vineyard, the general sipped from his favorite Wood-ford Reserve Bourbon, a case of which the elder Sinclair always kept on hand especially for him. Matoon was supposedly attending a NATO conference in Brussels, but Belgium was less than an hour away by private jet and Chateau Royale des Pins had its own landing strip. He could have his meeting with the crazy old bitch and be back in Brussels before the evening session began.

  The general wasn’t at all sure that Kate Sinclair’s hare-brained scheme was going to work, but both her connections and her money were good, and he would need them in the near future. The defense industry was going down the toilet with the present wishy-washy administration in power, and there weren’t many prime jobs left for an aging and not particularly noteworthy member of the Joint Chiefs. Sinclair had already paid him well for his cooperation and promised him a top security job if things went as planned.

  “The name of the terrorist group has been leaked, just as you requested,” said the general.

  “Excellent,” said Sinclair. “The stage is set; now the public has an identifiable bogeyman.”

  “You really think Holliday will come out of the woodwork?”

  “Certainly,” said Sinclair. “Despite the foolishness in Washington, at the very least the name al-Salibiyya will let him know the Templars are involved.”

  The general took a healthy belt of the smoke-and-honey-flavored Bourbon and put the glass down on the coffee table between them. “Look, I don’t like this guy any more than you do,” said Matoon. “But isn’t it sort of like poking a rattlesnake with a stick? Maybe it’d be smarter for us just to whack the guy before he can cause us more trouble.”

  Sinclair’s eyes narrowed. “He was responsible for my daughter’s death,” the old woman said, her voice full of barely contained fury. “Because of him she felt she’d failed our sacred cause. Because of him our plans for the future were shattered. I do this for her as much as I do it for our great country. Holliday must be found and brought to me before this ends.”

  The general nodded. He’d heard this rant before. He’d also met Sinclair’s daughter, the late Sister Margaret Emily. The redheaded nun had always seemed a few bricks short of a load, and she’d had that faraway look in her eyes he’d seen on guys who’d spent way too much time in a combat zone. The fiasco at the Rex Deus conclave had put her over the edge. He wasn’t surprised when she drank herself into a stupor and drove one of the family cars into a brick wall.

  “There is also the question of the notebook,” said Kate Sinclair, her fury tightly controlled now. The general smiled. Trust Kate Sinclair to reel it in and get back to the practical side of things—namely money.

  “The one the monk supposedly gave him?”

  “The monk’s name was Brother Helder Rodrigues, and the notebook is not supposed, it is very real; that much is fact. It holds the ancient secret of the Templar Knights, the key to their fortune, a fortune that rightfully belongs to the inheritors of the true bloodline of Christ, to Rex Deus, not some half-baked history teacher who stumbled on the secret.”

  “Your security people found this out?”

  “They tracked down a man Holliday talked to in France.”

  “And?” General Matoon asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Let’s just say that enhanced interrogation techniques only begin with waterboarding.”

  “And you think Holliday has it?”

  “Or at least knows where it is.” The old woman leaned closer. Matoon could see the madness boiling in her eyes. Not for the first time he found himself having second thoughts about his decision to ally himself with the Sinclair cause. It was starting to look like he’d made a deal with the devil, and the devil, it seemed, was right out of her mind.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” asked Matoon.

  “Breau, our contact in the Bahamas, said they’re on their way. They’ve been through Tritt’s place. I think they may be expecting to beard the lion in its den.”

  “What are you talking about?” General Matoon said warily.

  “I have no doubt they’ll wind up on our doorstep sooner or later.”

  “You’ll hit them here?”

  “Don’t be silly, General. As my father always told me, don’t piss where you eat.” The old woman shook her
head, eyes glinting wildly. “I have other plans for our little school teacher.”

  10

  After ten hours in the air and plane changes in three different airports, they arrived at the newly renovated Geneva International. Through the dubious magic of time zones they lost most of a day traveling, and by the time they arrived in the Swiss capital it was sunset again. In only three days Tritt would strike again, and somehow they had to stop him.

  “I don’t think we can pull this off,” said Peggy as they rode the airport shuttle into the city, only a few miles away. Snow was a blanket, piled in drifts beside the airport road. The windows of the bus were crazed with curlicues of frost. “There just isn’t time.”

  “So what do you think we should do?” Holliday asked. “Give up?”

  “Tell someone,” answered Peggy. “The authorities.”

  “What authorities would those be, dearie?” Brennan said. “The rogue CIA group that’s probably running this whole operation? The FBI, which has no jurisdiction outside the United States?”

  “The president,” grumbled Peggy. “He’s the one Tritt’s gunning for, after all.”

  Holliday shook his head. “We don’t have any real proof of that. Even if we had a way of getting to him, what would we bring to the Secret Service to convince them? They’d laugh us off the front porch at the White House. And who’s to say that Mama Sinclair doesn’t have a mole in the presidential detail, anyway?”

  “What about the stuff we found at Tritt’s place last night? Is that a bust, as well? Did we waste our time going out there?”

  Holliday sighed. “We found three phone numbers in Europe and a CD-ROM full of information about some corn-fed town in Kansas that no one’s ever heard of; Tom’s Hill or something. Nothing that means anything to anybody.” He shook his head. “We’re it, Peg. Either we get some hard facts about an assassination conspiracy or the president is a dead man.”

  The rest of the trip into Geneva was completed in silence. The bus took them to La Gare de Cornavin, the city’s main railway station. From there they took a taxi to the Mandarin Oriental, a modern, upscale hotel on the banks of the Rhône River. They booked themselves a trio of adjoining rooms, then reconvened in Rasoi, the Indian restaurant on the main floor.

  The entire hotel, restaurant included, was a shrine to the ultramodern, everything black granite, shining chrome and mirrors everywhere. The restaurant itself had the theatrical look of a modern Phantom of the Opera set, full of dark shadows and brilliant pools of light. It was a place to be seen and to see others. The food was supposed to be “revolutionary,” but it was hard for everyone to get their heads around the idea that they were eating tandoori chicken and tikka for breakfast.

  “I called all three of the numbers we found,” said Holliday. “The first one, and the oldest by the looks of it, was for the Gamma Bank on the Quai du Seujet.”

  “Tritt’s ill-gotten gains, presumably,” said Brennan.

  “Presumably.” Holliday nodded.

  “The others?” Peggy asked.

  “Another is for a vineyard in Aigle, and the last one is a private garage in a town called Thonon-les-Bains. Wherever that is.”

  “A bank, a vineyard and a garage. What’s that all about?” Peggy mused. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t know about the vineyard and the bank, but the garage is easy enough to figure out.”

  “Do tell,” said Peggy.

  “Switzerland is just about the only country in Western Europe that’s not a member of the EU. Once he’s in Thonon-les-Bains, he never has to go through customs again.”

  “Thonon-les-Bains,” said Brennan. “Sounds like a spa town. Lots of them on the French side of Lake Geneva, places like Evian. From there it’s just a skip and a jump to Rome.”

  “A staging base?” Peggy asked.

  “Could be,” said Holliday. “It’s the only number written in ink. It’s not a place he’s used very often.”

  “What about the vineyard?” Brennan asked. “Where does that fit in the great scheme of things?”

  “The only way to find out is to go there and see,” said Holliday.

  “I still think it’s a waste of time,” said Peggy. “As far as I can see none of this has anything to do with your friend Kate Sinclair. The only connection we have is between the CIA and Tritt, and even that’s pretty thin. When you get right down to it we have nothing. We’re not even sure about Tritt. All we have is the opinion of your friend Philpot.”

  “All the more reason to check out the only leads we have, which are those phone numbers.”

  “Maybe he has a rotten memory,” Peggy said.

  “Then why hide the numbers on the back side of a drawer?” Holliday said. “If he’s got nothing to hide, why did he hide them?”

  “Time is running out,” said Peggy. “I still think we should tell someone.”

  “So do I,” said Holliday. “Once we have something to tell them.”

  Peter Van Loan had been on the Presidential Protective Detail for eleven years and a Secret Service agent for twenty. This was the third president he’d worked for, and as presidents go, he was a bit of a wimp. Of course, his job was not to reason why; it was but to do or die and all that. But sometimes the Man was worth taking a bullet for, and for others you’d hesitate just a tad, perhaps.

  Eleven years was a long time to be on any detail within the Secret Service, but Van Loan was well-liked, always willing to accept even the boring assignments, like taking the kids to school or standing forever on post for interminable meetings. At fifty-four he was getting a little long in the tooth for the wear and tear on the nerves and of being constantly on the alert, not to mention the fact that his knees were starting to give out, his blood pressure was too high and his bank account was too low for someone as close to retirement as he was. He had a few more years left to cash in by working in private security and he was seriously thinking about taking the early retirement option.

  Tab Hartmann, head of the detail and senior agent, was empathetic enough to throw Van Loan the occasional bone, such as being on the advance squad that vetted locations the Man was about to visit. Today it was Rome. This time Hartmann wasn’t taking any chances. He’d doubled the size of the advance team from six to twelve. The assassination of the Pope less than a week ago had everyone on edge.

  Not that Van Loan was unduly worried. Presidential security was always tight, but for this trip there’d be enough security to protect God himself. The president of Russia’s Federal Protective Service was already prowling around the Eternal City, as were Canada’s RCMP Protective Services Section, the United Kingdom’s MI6 and France’s GSPR (the Groupe de sécurité de la présidence de la République, or the Security Group of the Presidency of the Republic) and the German Bundespolizei.

  On top of that there were smaller contingents from thirty other countries and the personal bodyguards for more than three dozen celebrities and bigwigs from Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger to George Clooney and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Van Loan had been on dozens of junkets like this, including one for the death of the previous Pope, and he knew he could do the whole thing with his eyes closed.

  This is how it would go. Sometime just before midnight tomorrow two U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transports would arrive at Pratica di Mare Air Force Base, just south of Rome. The first would carry two identical presidential limousines while the second would be carrying six heavily armored Cadillac Escalades for use by the Secret Service.

  The main vehicles would be followed by White House staff and support personnel traveling in locally rented Chevrolet Suburbans and the whole procession would be headed and tailed by a dozen motorcycle police on their customized blue and white BMWs.

  Long before the arrival of Air Force One the following morning, Van Loan, as chief of the advance team and acting with the advice of the State Police, would have chosen the fastest and most discreet routes both to and from the Vatican, as well as two primary escape
routes and one alternate in case of emergencies. Manhole covers would be temporarily spot welded shut and all refuse bins, newspaper boxes and mailboxes along the chosen route would be removed.

  An Italian State Police AugustaWestland AW109 helicopter would act as aerial surveillance; it was also fitted out as a medevac unit. Trauma rooms at three local hospitals had also been reserved for the president. Nothing was too good for the Man and nothing was too mundane for his chief gofer.

  Procedures at the Vatican itself were relatively easy to deal with. All guests, regardless of their VIP status, would be funneled through metal detectors and sniffer units programmed to detect any explosive residue. Women’s purses would be checked for concealed weapons. As the requiem Mass began, the heads of state and other dignitaries would be asked to leave St. Peter’s and wait on the steps. Eventually the Pope’s plain cedar coffin would be brought out and carried to the center of Saint Peter’s Square for the final funeral rites and the liturgy. With that completed, the coffin would be taken to the grottoes beneath the immense basilica and laid to rest with his predecessors.

  For Van Loan and the other Secret Service agents, the period when the president was waiting on the steps of St. Peter’s was critical. The crowd gathered in the square would be processed through several security checkpoints, but for almost an hour the Man would be vulnerable. Whoever had assassinated the Pope the previous week had done so at a great distance. This time there were armed Italian Special Forces teams in every tower and on the roofs of tall buildings for a mile and a half around the basilica.

  It was this measure that led to the discovery of the sniper’s nest in the bell tower of the Chiesa Nuova on the Via dei Filippini, an incredible thirteen hundred yards away. The fact that the nest, the weapon and the Arabic coin had been discovered by accident only the day before didn’t do much for Van Loan’s already low expectations of Italian security measures.