The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  "Local terrorists, Father. Groups with ludicrous names like The Order or The Silent Brotherhood, mostly operating under an ideology of hate called the Christian Identity, which, I know, is a pretty strange perversion of the term ..."

  The monsignor shifted uncomfortably. "I thought these people are all fanatical Christians."

  "They are. But remember this is the Vatican we're talking about— the Catholic Church. And these guys, they're not fans of Rome, Father. Their twisted churches—none of which is even remotely Catholic, by the way—aren't recognized by the Vatican. Your people actually make it pretty clear they don't want to have anything to do with them, and with good reason. What they all have in common, apart from blaming all their troubles on blacks and Jews and homosexuals, is a hatred for organized government, ours in particular, yours by association. They think we're the great Satan—28

  which, oddly enough, is the same terminology Khomeini coined for us and which is still echoing around the Muslim world today. Remember, these guys bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Christians. Americans. And there are a lot of them around. We just picked up a guy in Philadelphia who we've been after for a long time, he's part of an Aryan Nations' spin-off group, the Church of the Sons of Yahweh. Now this guy was previously Aryan Nations' minister for Islamic liaison. In that role, he's admitted to trying to form alliances with anti-American Muslim extremists after the 9/11 attacks."

  "The enemy of my enemy," De Angelis mused.

  "Exactly," Reilly agreed. "These guys have a seriously deranged view of the world, Father. We just need to try and understand what insane mission statement they've now come up with."

  There was a brief silence in the room after Reilly finished. Jansson took over. "Okay, so you're going to run with this."

  Reilly nodded, unfazed. "Yep."

  Jansson turned to Blackburn. "Rog, you're still gonna look at the straight robbery angle?"

  "Absolutely. We've got to cover both until something breaks that points us one way or the other."

  "Okay, good. Father," he said, now turning to De Angelis, "it would really help us if you could get us a list of what was stolen, as detailed as you can. Color photographs, weight, dimensions, anything you have. We need to get some alerts set up."

  "Of course."

  "On that point, Father," Reilly interjected, "one of the horsemen seemed only interested in one thing: this," he said, as he pulled out a blowup of a vidcap from the museum's security cameras. It showed the fourth horseman holding the encoder. He handed it to the monsignor. "The exhibition's catalog lists it as a multigeared rotor encoder," he said, then asked, "any idea why one would take that, given all the gold and jewels around?"

  De Angelis adjusted his glasses as he studied the photograph, then shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know much about this . . . machine. I can only imagine it to have value as an engineering curiosity. Everybody likes to flaunt their brilliance once in a while, even, it seems, my brothers who selected what should be included in the exhibit."

  "Well, perhaps you could check with them. They might have ideas, I don't know, collectors who may have previously approached diem about it."

  "I'll look into it."

  Jansson looked around. Everyone was set. "Okay, folks," he said, arranging his papers. "Let's put these freaks out of business."

  ***

  As the others walked out of the room, De Angelis edged over to Reilly and shook his hand. "Thank you, Agent Reilly. I feel we are in good hands."

  "We'll get them, Father. Something always gives."

  The monsignor's eyes were locked on his, studying him. "You can call me Michael."

  "I'll stick to 'Father,' if that's all right. Kind of a tough habit to break."

  De Angelis looked surprised. "You're Catholic?"

  Reilly nodded.

  "Practicing?" De Angelis looked down in sudden embarrassment. "Forgive me, I shouldn't be so inquisitive. I suppose some of my habits are equally hard to break."

  "No problem. And yes, I'm in the fold."

  De Angelis seemed quietly pleased. "You know, in many ways our work is not too dissimilar. We both help people come to terms with their sins."

  Reilly smiled. "Maybe, but . . . I'm not sure you get exposed to the same caliber of sinners we get 29

  around here."

  "Yes, it is worrying . . . things are not well out there." He paused, then looked up at Reilly. "Which makes our work all the more valuable."

  The monsignor saw Jansson looking his way; he seemed to be calling him over. "I have full confidence in you, Agent Reilly. I'm sure you'll find them," the man in the collar said before walking off.

  Reilly watched him go, then picked up the vidcap from the desk. As he was tucking it back into his file, he glanced at it again. In a corner of the photograph, which was grainy from the low resolution of the museum's surveillance cameras, he could clearly make out a figure crouching low behind a cabinet, peeking out in terror at the horseman and the device. He knew from the videotape that it was the blonde woman he had spotted leaving the museum that night. He thought of the ordeal she'd been through, of how terrified she must have been, and felt drawn to her. He hoped she was all right.

  He filed the photograph back in its folder. As he left the room, he couldn't help but think of the word Jansson had used.

  Freaks.

  The thought was not at all reassuring.

  Figuring out the motives when sane people committed crimes was hard enough. Getting inside the minds of the insane was often impossible.

  Chapter 11

  C live Edmondson was pale, but he didn't seem to be in too much pain, which surprised Tess as she watched him lying there in his hospital bed.

  She knew that one of the horses had backed into him, driving him to the floor, and, in the ensuing panic, he'd had three ribs broken. Their location was too close to the lungs for comfort, and, given Clive's age, his general health, and his fondness for strenuous activities, the doctors at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital had decided to keep him under observation for a few days.

  "They've got me on a really nice cocktail of stuff," he told her, glancing up at the IV pouch that was dangling from its stand. "I can't feel a thing."

  "Not exactly the kind of cocktail you were going for, was it?" she quipped.

  "I've had better."

  As he chuckled, she looked at him, wondering whether or not to bring up the more pressing reason for her visit. "You up to talking about something?"

  "Sure. As long as it doesn't involve going over what happened yet again. That's all everyone around here wants to hear about," he sighed. "Understandable, I guess, but ..."

  "Well, it's . . . related," Tess admitted sheepishly.

  Clive looked at her and smiled. "What's on your mind?"

  Tess hesitated, then decided to dive in. "When we were chatting at the museum, did you happen to notice what I was looking at?"

  He shook his head. "No."

  "It was a machine, some kind of box with buttons and levers coming out of it. The catalog calls it a multigeared rotor encoder."

  His forehead creased in thought for a moment. "No, I didn't notice it." Of course, he wouldn't have.

  Not with her there. "Why?"

  "One of the horsemen took it. He didn't take anything else."

  "So?"

  "So don't you think it's strange? That of all the priceless stuff that was there, he only took that contraption. And not only that, but when he grabbed it, it was like it was part of some ritual for him, he seemed totally consumed by the moment."

  "Okay, well, he's obviously a really keen collector of arcane encoding machines. Get Interpol on the horn. The Enigma box is probably next on his list." He cast her a wry look. "People collect worse things."

  "I'm serious," she protested. "He even said something. When he held it up. ' Veritas vos liberabit? "

  Clive looked at her. ""Veritas vos liberabit"

  "I think so. I'm pretty sure that was it."


  Clive thought about it for a moment, then smiled. "Okay. You don't just have yourself a hard-core collector of coding machines. You've got one that went to Johns Hopkins. That ought to narrow down the search."

  "Johns Hopkins?"

  "Yep."

  "What are you talking about?" She was utterly lost.

  "It's the university's motto. Veritas vos liberabit. The truth will set you free. Trust me, I ought to know. I went there. It's even in that awful song of ours, you know, 'The Johns Hopkins Ode.' " He started singing: "Let knowledge grow from more to more, and scholars versed in deepest lore . . ."

  Clive was watching Tess, enjoying her bewildered look.

  "You think . . . ?" Then she noticed his look. She knew that self-satisfied grin. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"

  Clive nodded guiltily. "Well, it's either that or he's a disgruntled ex-CIA agent. You do know it's the first thing you see when you step into their building at Langley." Heading off her question, he added, "Tom Clancy. Major fan, what can I say."

  Tess shook her head, annoyed at being so gullible. Then Clive surprised her.

  "You're not far off, though. It fits."

  "What do you mean?" She noted that Clive's face was now serious.

  "What were the knights wearing?"

  "What do you mean, what were they wearing?"

  "I asked you first."

  She wasn't with him. "They were in standard-issue medieval outfits. Wire mesh, mantles, helmets."

  "And . . . ?" he teased. "Anything more specific?"

  She knew Clive was baiting her. She tried to recall the terrifying sight of the knights rampaging in the museum. "No . . . ?"

  "White mandes with red crosses. Blood-red crosses."

  She grimaced, still not with him. "Crusaders."

  Clive wasn't done yet. "Getting warmer. Come on, Tess. Nothing special about their crosses? A red cross on the left shoulder, another on the chest? Anything?"

  And it hit her. "Templars."

  "Final answer?"

  Her mind was racing. It still didn't explain the significance. "You're absolutely right, they were dressed as Templars. But mat doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's the generic Crusader look, isn't it? For all we know, they just copied the first image of a Crusader knight they happened to come across, and the odds are it would be a Templar. They've got the most coverage."

  "I thought so too. I didn't attach any significance to it at first. The Templars are by far the most famous, or rather infamous, group of knights associated with the Crusades. But then, your little Latin catch-phrase . . . that changes things."

  Tess stared at Clive, desperate to know what he was talking about. He stayed quiet. It was driving her nuts. ". . . Because—V."

  " Veritas vos liberabit, remember? It also happens to be a marking on a casde in the Languedoc in the south of France." He paused. "A Templar castle."

  Chapter 12

  "That castle?" Tess was breathless.

  "The Chateau de Blanchefort. In the Languedoc. The marking's right there in plain sight, carved into the porch lintel above the castle's entrance. Veritas vos liberabit. The truth will set you free." The phrase seemed to inspire a whole stream of recollections in Edmondson.

  Tess frowned. Something was bothering her. "Weren't the Templars dissolved—" then cringing at her unfortunate choice of words, "—disbanded in the thirteen hundreds?"

  "1314."

  "Well then, it doesn't match. The catalog says the encoder's from the sixteenth century."

  Edmondson mulled it over. "Well, maybe they've got their dates wrong. The fourteenth century wasn't exactiy the Vatican's proudest moment. Far from it. In 1305, the pope, Clement V, who was already little more than a puppet of the French king Philip TV, had to suffer the indignity of being forced to leave the Vatican and move the seat of the Holy See to Avignon—where he was kept on an even tighter leash, especially when it came to helping King Philip bring down the Templars. In fact, the Papacy was under complete French control for seventy years— it's referred to as the Babylonian Captivity. It lasted until Pope Gregory XI found the guts to make a break, drawn back to Rome by the mystic Catherine of Siena—but that's another story. What I mean is that if this decoder of yours was from the fourteenth century—"

  "—the odds are it didn't even originate in Rome," Tess chimed in. "Especially not if it's Templar."

  Edmondson smiled. "Exactly."

  Tess hesitated. "Do you think I'm onto something or am I clutching at straws here?"

  "No, I think there could definitely be something there. But.. . Templars aren't exactly within your area of expertise, are they?"

  "Only by a couple of thousand years, give or take a continent." She grinned. Her expertise was in Assyrian history. The Templars were way off her radar.

  "You need to talk to a Templar geek. The ones I know of that are knowledgeable enough to be of use to you are Marty Falkner, William Vance, and Jeb Simmons. Falkner must be eighty-something by now and probably a bit of a handful to deal with. Vance I haven't come across for ages, but I know Simmons is around—"

  "Bill Vance?"

  "Yes. You know him?"

  William Vance had dropped in on one of her father's digs while she was there. It was around ten years ago, she remembered. She'd been working with her father in northeastern Turkey, as close as the military would allow them to get to Mount Ararat. She recalled how, rare for her father, Oliver Chaykin had treated Vance as an equal. She could visualize him clearly. A tall, handsome man, maybe fifteen years her senior.

  Vance had been charming and very helpful and encouraging to her. It had been a rotten time for her.

  Lousy conditions in the field. Uncomfortably pregnant. And yet, although he barely knew her, Vance had seemed to sense her unhappiness and discomfort and had treated her so kindly that he made her feel good when she felt awful, attractive when she knew she looked terrible. And there had never been the slightest hint that he had an ulterior motive. She felt mildly embarrassed now to think that she had been a little bit disappointed at his obviously platonic attitude toward her, because she had been rather attracted to him. And, toward the end of his brief stay at the camp, she had sensed that maybe, just maybe, he had started to feel the same way about her, though just how attractive a seven-months-pregnant woman could be was, in her mind, highly questionable.

  "I met him once, with my dad." She paused. "But I thought his specialty was Phoenician history."

  "It is, but you know how it is with the Templars. It's like archaeological porn, it's virtually academic suicide to be interested in them. It's gotten to the point where no one wants it known that they take the subject seriously. Too many crackpots obsessed with all kinds of conspiracy theories about their history. You know what Umberto Eco said, right?"

  "No."

  " 'A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.' "

  "I'm struggling to take that as a compliment here."

  "Look, I'm on your side on this. They're eminently worthy of academic research." Edmondson shrugged. "But like I said, I haven't heard from Vance in years. Last I know he was at Columbia, but, if I were you, I'd go for Simmons. I can hook you up with him pretty easily."

  "Okay, great." Tess smiled.

  A nurse popped her head around the door. "Tests. Five minutes."

  "Wonderful," Clive groaned.

  "Will you let me know?" Tess asked.

  "You bet. And when I'm out of here, how about I buy you dinner and you can tell me how it's panning out?"

  She remembered the last time she'd had dinner with Edmondson. In Egypt, after they'd dived together on a Phoenician shipwreck off Alexandria. He'd got drunk on arak, made a halfhearted pass, which she had gently rebuffed, and then he'd fallen asleep in the restaurant.

  "Sure," she said, thinking that she had lots of time in which to come up with excuses and then felt guilty at her unkind thought.

  Chapter 13

  L ucien Boussard paced cautio
usly across the floor of his gallery. He reached the window and peered out from behind a fake ormolu clock. He stayed there for several minutes, thinking hard.

  Part of his brain registered that the clock was in need of cleaning and he carried it back to the table and stood it on the newspaper.

  The one with the pictures of the Met raid, staring up at him.

  He ran his finger over the photographs, smoothing the newspaper's folds.

  There's no way I'm getting involved in this.

  But he couldn't simply do nothing. Gus would kill him for doing nothing just as easily as he would kill him for doing something wrong.

  There was only one way out and he'd already been thinking about it while Gus was standing there in his gallery threatening him. Turning Gus in, especially knowing what he had done at the museum, was dangerous. But given Gus's swordplay outside the museum, Lucien felt reasonably sure he would be safe. There was no way the big man would be coming out of prison to take revenge on him one day. If they didn't change the law and give him the needle, Gus was looking at life without parole. Had to be.

  Just as important, Lucien had problems of his own. He had a cop on his back. A relentless salopard who'd been after him for years and was showing no signs of going away or even easing off. All because of a goddamn Dogon statuette from Mali that turned out to be more recent than Lucien had said it was and that was, consequently, worth a fraction of what he'd sold it for. Its septuagenarian buyer had, luckily for Lucien, died of a heart attack before the lawyers got their act together. Lucien had wormed his way out of a very tight spot, but Detective Steve Buchinski didn't let go of it. It was almost like a personal crusade. Lucien had tried feeding the cop a few tips, but they hadn't been enough. Nothing would ever be enough.

  But this was different. Feed him Gus Waldron and maybe, just maybe, the leech would let go.

  He looked at his watch. It was half past one.

  Sliding open a drawer, Lucien rummaged through a box of cards until he found the one he wanted.

  Then he reached for the phone and dialed.

  Chapter 14

  Poised outside the heavy, paneled door to a fifth-floor apartment on Central Park West, the leader of the FBI tactical unit held up one hand, all fingers splayed, and glanced at his team. His number two reached out a cautious arm and waited. On the opposite side of the hallway, another man brought a pump-action shotgun up to his shoulder. The fourth man in the team flicked the safety off a stun grenade. The remaining pair who completed the unit gently eased the safety catches on their Heckler & Koch MP5 machine guns.