by Gregg Loomis
There was no breeze to move the string of lights, yet the darkness seemed to creep from the corners, making silhouettes of fanciful monsters on the walls. The jab of the .38 in his belt was no longer uncomfortable but reassuring.
He was about to check his watch again when he heard something other than water. Standing, he turned to get a direction as the sound became more distinct, then recognizable as footsteps on stone.
With the revolver in hand, Lang moved to the far side of the room, putting the altar between him and whoever was approaching. He wished that Gurt had had time to secure a better weapon, a large-bore automatic with a full clip rather than the puny six shots the revolver held. But at least he had the advantage of surprise.
Or so he thought.
Although darkness hid the man’s face, Lang recognized the shining silver hair as the Templar stood at the entrance to the room. “Come, Mr. Reilly, there is no need for you to hide. If I’d wanted to harm you, you would not have lived past the first level.”
Gripping the gun’s butt with both hands, Lang placed the stubby front sight of the .38 squarely on the newcomer’s chest. A miss at this range would be unlikely. “Okay, so I’m a little paranoid. You weren’t the one who got your balls singed. Now keep your hands where I can see them and away from your body, step forward and place both palms against the altar.”
The Templar did as he was told. A quick pat-down revealed no weapons.
“Now that you’re satisfied I’m no threat,” he said, “perhaps you’ll tell me why you wanted to meet.”
Lang motioned to one of the benches and sat so that Silver Hair was between him and the entrance. “Someone walks through that doorway and you’re history.”
The older man sighed deeply. “Again, Mr. Reilly, had we wanted you dead, you would not be here. Can we dispense with the threats and get down to whatever business you have in mind? I gather there is something you want from us or you would not have been the one to initiate contact.”
His eyes met Lang’s as he made a show of slowly reaching into his coat pocket, producing the silver case and taking out a cigarette. He broke the gaze only long enough to light it.
“You’re right,” Lang said. “You’ve been blackmailing the church for over seven hundred years. Now it’s your turn to pay a little hush money.”
The Templar showed no surprise. In fact, Lang was certain he had been expecting it. “How much?”
Lang had given this a lot of thought. The sum should be big enough to be punitive but not enough to make it tempting to kill him and take their chances with the letter. Lang was prepared to negotiate, something he had learned well from horse-trading with the prosecution for lower sentences for his clients. But never anything this big. It was going to be like trying to get a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.
“Half billion a year, payable to the Janet and Jeffrey Holt Foundation.”
Silver Hair lifted a gray eyebrow, either surprised or doing a good job of pretending to be. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
Lang sneezed. The cold of the stone on which they were sitting was beginning to permeate his body. Standing, he kept an eye on the entrance. “It doesn’t exist yet. Janet Holt was my sister, the one you people incinerated along with her son when you firebombed that home in Paris.”
The Templar nodded slowly. “You’ll use a foundation to channel money . . .”
“No! The foundation will be real enough.”
Lang had given this subject a lot of thought, too, ever since Jacob had convinced him that exposure of the Templar secret would do a great deal more harm than good. First he had thought of the money he could demand, the vacation homes, yachts and jets that could be his. The truth, plain and ugly, was that the idea of going the same places for every vacation was only slightly more appealing than getting seasick. His terror of flying increased in inverse proportion to the size of the aircraft involved. The Porsche was his choice of car, he lived exactly where he wanted and already made an obscenely large income doing what he enjoyed, trying cases. The only thing missing from his life was Dawn and even the Templars couldn’t give her back.
Besides, there was no way the sort of money Lang had in mind would stay a secret. It took little imagination to conjure up the hordes of solicitors lining up to inundate him with timeshares, questionable securities, even more doubtful charities and the rest of the telemarketing inventory. He could also see the IRS salivating at the prospect of taking a large part of the money to staunch the eternal government hemorrhage. A charitable foundation both memorialized Janet and Jeff and let Lang spend a huge amount wherever he thought Janet and Jeff might have wanted, perhaps for children like Jeff in poverty-ridden countries.
Sliver Hair smiled coolly. “A true philanthropist, just like your fellow Atlantan Ted Turner.”
“Better. I didn’t marry Jane Fonda.”
It was not lost on Lang that the other man hadn’t squawked about the price, a sure indication he should have asked for more. Instead, Lang said, “One more thing . . .”
“There always is,” the Templar said, his tone bristling with sarcasm.
“You got me blamed for a murder in Atlanta and another in London. I want to read in the London Times and the Atlanta Journal that those murders have been solved, the culprit arrested.”
Silver Hair was looking around for a place to drop his cigarette. He finally ground it out on the stone floor. “That might be difficult.”
“I’m not stipulating that it has to be easy. You’ve got people who’re willing jump out of windows, you can sure as hell find somebody to take those raps.”
He gave Lang a nod, an acknowledgement this request, too, would be met. “And for this, we get to know who has the letter?”
Lang shook his head. “I might have been born at night, pal, but not last night. The letter’s location stays with me. I’ve got too much to live for. Besides, you know I won’t go public with your secret; it would end the funding for the foundation.”
“We all die, Mr. Reilly. What happens then?”
“If the foundation is to survive me, so will your secret, a risk you’ll have to take, that I’ll make provisions not to endanger the annual funding of the charity.”
The Templar looked at Lang for a moment as if trying to make up his mind about something. “For a half billion dollars a year, Mr. Reilly, I’d think I’d be entitled to hear exactly how you found the tomb. Most of it we know. But the rest . . . I’d hate to have to be paying more money if someone else . . .”
“Fair enough,” Lang said. “You know about the Templar diary. That indicated whatever the secret was, it was located in the southwest of France. It was through the painting, or rather the picture of it, that I finally figured it out. The inscription made no sense, ETINARCADIAEGOSUM. One too many words. I guessed it might be a word puzzle, anagram, so I rearranged the letters.” Pulling a city map out of a pocket, Lang wrote on the margin. “I rearranged the letters like this:
Et in Arcadia Ego (Sum)
Arcam Dei Iesu Tango.
Arcam, tomb, objective case.
Dei, God, dative case.
Iesu, Jesus, possessive.
Tango, I touch.
“ ‘I touch the tomb of God, Jesus,’ is what I made of it. As long as the Poussin is around, somebody else is just as likely as I was to figure that out.”
“Since you, er, found our secret, all copies of the painting have been destroyed. The original is in the Louvre.”
“Okay,” Lang said, “since this is question-and-answer time, I’ve got one for you. How did you, the Templars, find out about the tomb in the first place?”
Silver Hair took out another cigarette. “Very well, then. When we held Jerusalem, one of our number came across documents, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, it’s called today, scratched on parchment, much like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A petition in which Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene asked Pilate for leave to depart for another part of the Roman Empire, taking the corpse of Jesus with them
for reburial. Written across that parchment was approval in Latin.
“Our long-ago brethren recognized the places and rivers in that document and found the tomb, something that would have been an embarrassment to the Church, as Christ’s corporeal body supposedly ascended into heaven. The Vatican saw the wisdom of—ah—paying us to guard this secret.”
“Why didn’t the Vatican simply destroy the tomb and its contents?” Lang thought he had given Gurt the correct reason but he wanted to know for sure.
The man regarded the end of his cigarette. Thinner and longer than any brand Lang had seen, he would have bet it was made to order. The Templar took a long drag before answering. “And commit the ultimate sacrilege, defiling the tomb of Christ? Better the pontiff should have exhumed Saint Peter and thrown him into the Tiber. Bad enough the body of Our Savior had not ascended, that the Gnostics had been right all along. Besides, the pope only saw part of the documents we found. Where Joseph and Mary actually went, we kept to ourselves.”
This was the weirdest conversation Lang had ever experienced. He was sitting in the ruins of an ancient temple, conversing like two baseball fans discussing batting averages with the man who had been at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of what family he had—the first person he had truly wanted to kill. And the one person he knew he would not.
“For such a valuable secret, you left a lot of clues lying around. You explained Poussin’s painting, but the cross by the side of the road that lines up with the statue?”
“A relatively modern addition, but a clue for those who know what they are searching for—only Templars until you. We may need to remove one or both markers.”
The man shifted his seat on the rock, grasped his knees and seemed to be waiting for Lang’s next question. The son of a bitch was enjoying this, bragging on the cleverness of the order. Lang not only wanted to kill him, but he would have enjoyed doing it with his hands around the bastard’s throat, watching the life leach out of that arrogant face.
Lang’s rational self told him that he would be better off to learn what he could. “You must have a pretty large organization to have tracked the painting from London to Paris to Atlanta.”
The other man exhaled smoke tinged with red from the lights. The illusion looked as though he were breathing blood. Stephen King would have loved it here. “Not large but very, very efficient. You don’t keep an international organization secret for seven centuries without being efficient.”
These people, or at least this one, weren’t overcome with humility, just as Pietro had observed seven hundred years before.
“Like the Mafia,” Lang said.
The corners of the Templar’s mouth turned down in disdain and he sniffed at the comparison, totally missing Lang’s sarcasm. “Come now, Mr. Reilly. The Mafia is hardly secret, hasn’t been for forty years. And most of its members are in prison—or about to be. No, Mr. Reilly, we are much more efficient. We have brothers in every western country, influential members of their societies. Two heads of state, leading politicians. Education, commerce, science. Any field you choose, we have members not only in it but dominant. And sufficient wealth to buy half the world’s nations, General Motors, any other large corporations you care to name. Or politician. There has been no single foreign policy in the Western world we have not orchestrated. We cause conflicts including war when it benefits us and peace when it does not.”
Now there was a comforting thought.
Or the man was crazy, megalomania on steroids. Worse, he might not be crazy. But if half of what he was saying was true, every conspiracy nut in the world was, in fact, an optimist.
Lang had forgotten how cold he was. He stood, stretching joints that were beginning to ache with the damp chill. “As soon as I see the articles in the papers, I’ll e-mail instructions about the money, where to send it. Oh yeah, if you’ve got someone on the papers, thinking about fabricating a story, don’t. I get arrested, the Templars’ll be the biggest story of the century, maybe the millennium.”
Silver Hair also stood, again crushing his cigarette butt under the sole of a very expensive Italian loafer. “May I send you the papers?”
“I’ll see ’em. In fact, I’ll assume our deal is off, I don’t read about it in the next month.”
Silver Hair shook his head, tsk-tsking. “You don’t give much leeway, do you, cut us a little slack as you Americans say.”
“We also say a tit for a tat. Your people didn’t cut my sister or nephew a hell of a lot, either.”
“Simply business, Mr. Reilly, a matter of survival. Nothing personal.” He smiled benignly as though justifying the smallest of transgressions.
The son of a bitch meant it, just like that. Pure animal hatred provided more than enough heat to dispel the damp. Lang fought back the urge to lunge for his throat right there. Only the realization that, if Lang killed him, he would still be a fugitive and there would still be an order of Templars stopped him.
“Well, it’s been swell.” Lang stepped aside to walk past and out of the room.
“Yes,” the Templar said, “I enjoyed our chat, too.”
Lang snorted. You can recognize a vampire because they don’t cast a reflection in a mirror. You can tell a Templar because, they don’t get sarcasm.
Lang was out of the room before he turned, giving in to curiosity. “One last question.”
Silver Hair nodded. “By all means.”
“You are all men. How do you . . . ?”
The older man’s smile was visible even from where Lang stood. “How do we provide a continuing membership without procreation? The same way the Dominicans, Franciscans or any other holy order does: by men joining. The difference is, we recruit, search out the brightest all over the world.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Remember: Celibacy in the church of the fourteenth century was more form than function. Even the popes had mistresses and children. We . . . well, I suppose I’ve more than answered your question.”
There were a thousand other questions but Lang wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was interested.
Shadows were beginning to stretch across the Via di San Giovanni as Lang left San Clemente. Even the delicate light of late afternoon made him wince after the twilight underground. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see he had been gone only half an hour.
Lang felt as though he had arisen from a tomb himself.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Lake Maggiore
A week later
Sara groused when Lang refused to tell her where he was. He wasn’t willing to bet his freedom that the line wasn’t still tapped. She did agree to send a copy of the Atlanta Journal story of his exoneration to Jacob when it appeared. Jacob would e-mail a code word when both articles had run.
When it came, the storyline common to the papers was that both murders had occurred as an attempt to steal a priceless painting by Nicolas Poussin, a French painter who had a small room of the Louvre dedicated to his work. Having possessed it, Lang had been suspected of its theft until the real culprit was identified and apprehended in London. It came as no surprise to Lang that the purported thief likely died in an escape attempt. The hulk of the car in which he had fled was too badly charred from the unusual explosion, resulting from a high-speed crash, to distinguish human remains. Neither piece mentioned that the art dealer in London had been killed after the man in Atlanta nor what a doorman was doing with such a treasure.
Foolish consistences may be the hobgoblin of little minds, Lang thought with a wry grin, but not of newspapers. Otherwise, why would their editorials tout a candidate, then excoriate him a year later?
Lang was almost sorry to learn that the need to hide was over.
He and Gurt had spent the time on the shores of Lake Maggiore at the cluster of summer homes and a gas station called Ranco, hardly a town or even a village. The only inn had but five guest rooms. It had thirty seats for dinner, however, and each was full every night. Lang gained at least a p
ound a day.
They made love every morning. Afterwards, they lay exhausted, postponing getting up, watching the rising sun paint the snowy tops of the Swiss Alps across the water a blood red. The scene was reflected in the bottomless black waters of the lake until the picture was streaked by the morning ferry.
The days were spent walking like young lovers, which Lang guessed they were, along the shore, admiring the handsome homes built by people who had declined the commercial development of Italy’s more popular Como.
After a far too sumptuous dinner, the couple sat on the deck outside the room and watched the stars until the lake’s mist reached like fingers to extinguish the celestial show. As soon as one would stand, the other would make a dash for bed where they tore at each others’ clothes and made love again until they fell into an exhausted sleep.
Who would want that to end?
It was only on the way to Malpensa that Lang sat up in the seat of the old taxi with a jolt. He had just spent the first day in years when Dawn had not been in his thoughts. The realization made him feel guilty.
But not for long.
2
Atlanta
Two weeks later
Gurt adored Atlanta. She gaped at the huge homes on West Paces Ferry, marveling that any single person could own such acreage solely for a residence. She loved the variety of restaurants in Buckhead. The high-end malls, Lenox Square, Phipps Plaza, were her nirvana, supermarkets her promised land. The multiplicity of choices both delighted and confounded her. On her first grocery shopping trip with Lang, she was unable to make a selection of anything that had more than three alternatives.
They went to a Braves game. The game did not hold as much interest as the beer and hot dogs. She came away viewing America’s national pastime as a large, hot, outdoor Oktoberfest.
She adored Grumps, too, an affection equally returned. Once returned from Sara’s care, the dog missed Lang’s secretary not at all, wriggling with spasms of joy whenever Gurt returned to the condominium from her outings with Lang, leaving him to muse that if the Germans had loved their fellow man anywhere near as much as they loved their dogs, the past century would have gone a lot more smoothly.
