The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  "You think the guys at the museum were wearing Templar outfits?" he asked.

  "Yes. The Templars wore simple clothing, very different from the gaudy outfits other knights wore back then. Remember, they were religious monks, committed to poverty. The white robes symbolized the purity of life that was expected of them, and the red crosses, the color of blood, advertised their special relationship with the Church."

  "Okay, but if you asked me to draw a knight, I'd probably come up with something that looks pretty close to that without consciously thinking about the Templars. It's a pretty iconic look, isn't it?"

  Tess nodded. "Look, on its own, I agree, it's not conclusive. But then there's the encoder."

  "This is the object the fourth horseman took. The one you were next to."

  Tess moved in a bit closer, seeming more driven now. "Yes. I looked it up. It's far more advanced than anything that appeared for hundreds of years. I mean this thing is revolutionary. And the Templars were known to be masters of encryption. Codes were the backbone of their whole banking system. When the pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land deposited money with them, the receipts they were given were written in code, which could only be deciphered by Templars. That way, no one could forge a deposit note and cheat them. They were pioneers in this field and somehow, this encoder fits their sophisticated, secretive methods."

  "But why would a Templar encoder be part of the Vatican's treasures?"

  "Because the Vatican and the king of France both conspired to bring down the Order. They were both after its wealth. It's easy to imagine that whatever the Templars had in their preceptories ended up either at the Louvre or in the Vatican."

  Reilly looked uncertain. "You mentioned something about a Latin saying?"

  Tess visibly rallied herself. "That's what got me started. The fourth horseman, the one who took the encoder. When he had it in his hands, it was like this big religious moment for him. Like he was in a trance. And as he held it, he said something in Latin. I think he said "Veritas vos liberabit?"

  She waited to see if Reilly knew what it meant. His quizzical look indicated he didn't. "It means 'the truth will set you free.' I looked into it, and, although it's a very widely used saying, it also happens to be a marking on a Templar castle in the south of France."

  Tess could see that he was pondering what she'd just told him, but wasn't sure how to read him. She fidgeted with her cup, downing the last of her coffee, which had by now gone cold, then decided to keep going.

  "I know it probably doesn't sound like much, but that's only until you start to understand the level of interest that the Templars inspire in people. Their origins, their activities and beliefs, and their violent demise are all shrouded in mystery. They have a huge following. You wouldn't believe the amount of books and material I found about them, and I've only scratched the surface. It's just phenomenal. And here's the thing. What usually triggers off the conjecture is that their fabulous wealth was never recovered."

  "I thought that was why the king of France rounded them up," Reilly observed.

  "It's what he was after. But he never found it. No one ever did. No gold, no jewels. Nothing.

  And yet the Templars were known to have a phenomenal treasure trove. One historian claims the Templars discovered one hundred forty-eight tons of gold and silver in and around Jerusalem when they first got there, even before the donations from across Europe started pouring in."

  "And no one knows what happened to it?"

  "There are widely accepted claims that the night before die Templars were all arrested, twenty-four knights rode out of die Paris preceptory with several wagonloads of crates and escaped to the Adantic port of La Rochelle. They're supposed to have sailed away on board eighteen galleys, never to be seen again."

  Reilly pondered the information. "So you're saying the museum's raiders were really after the encoder, in order to use it to somehow help them find the Templars' treasure?"

  "Maybe. The question is, what was that treasure? Was it gold coins and jewelry, or something else, something more esoteric, something that," she hesitated, "requires a slightly bigger leap of faith."

  She waited to see how that sat with him.

  Reilly flashed her a comforting grin. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice unconsciously. "A lot of these theories claim that the Templars were part of an age-old conspiracy to discover and guard some arcane knowledge. It could be a lot of things. They were said to be the custodians of many holy relics—there's a French historian who even tiiinks they had the embalmed head of Jesus—but one theory I kept coming across and that seemed to hold more water than the others was that it has to do with the Holy Grail

  —which as you probably know isn't necessarily an actual cup or some kind of physical 'chalice' that Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper, but could well be a metaphorical reference to a secret concerning the real events surrounding His death and the survival of His bloodline into medieval times."

  "Jesus's bloodline?'

  "Heretical as it may seem, this line of thought—and it's a very popular one, believe me—claims Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child— maybe, probably more than one—that was raised in secret and hidden from the Romans, and that Jesus's bloodline has been a closely guarded secret for the last two thousand years, with all kinds of shadowy societies protecting His descendants and passing on their secret to a select group of 'illuminati.' Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, pretty much any illustrious name over the centuries—they're all supposed to have been part of this secret cabal of the holy bloodline's protectors." Tess paused and watched for Reilly's reaction. "I know it sounds ludicrous, but it's a popular story, a lot of people have worked on researching it, and we're not just talking about fiction bestsellers either, we're talking serious scholars and academics as well."

  She studied Reilly, wondering what he must be thinking. If I had him with the treasure bit, I've definitely blown it now. Leaning back, she had to admit it sounded more and more preposterous now, hearing herself verbalize it out loud.

  Reilly seemed to think about it for a moment, then a faint smile crossed his lips. "Jesus's bloodline, huh? If He did have a kid or two, and assuming they then had children of their own, and so on . . .

  after two thousand years—which is, what, something like seventy or eighty generations later—it's exponential, there'd be thousands of them, the planet would be crawling with His descendants, wouldn't it?" He chuckled. "People really take this stuff seriously?"

  "Absolutely. The Templars' missing treasure is one of the great unsolved mysteries of all time. It's 51

  easy to see why people are drawn to it. The premise itself has a great hook: nine knights show up in Jerusalem, claiming to want to defend thousands of pilgrims. Just nine of them. Seems pretty ambitious by any standard outside of The Magnificent Seven, don't you think? On hearing this, King Baldwin gives them a prime slice of Jerusalem real estate, the Temple Mount, the site of the second Temple of Solomon that was destroyed by Titus's legions in 70 AD, its treasure plundered and brought back to Rome. So here's the big what if: what if the Temple's priests hid something there when they knew the Romans were about to pounce, something the Romans didn't find?"

  "But the Templars did."

  She nodded. "Perfect fodder for myths. It stays buried there for a thousand years, and then they dig it up. Then there's the so-called Copper Scroll they found in Qumran."

  "The Dead Sea Scrolls are part of this too?"

  Slow down, Tess. But she couldn't help herself, and kept plowing on.

  "One of the scrolls specifically mentions huge quantities of gold and other valuables buried under the Temple itself, supposedly in twenty-four hoards. But it also mentions a treasure of an unspecified kind. What was it? We don't know. It could be anything."

  "Okay, so where does the Turin Shroud figure into all this?" Reilly mused.

  For a fleeting moment, an irritated look crossed her fine features
before she composed her face into a gracious smile. "You're not buying into any of this, are you?"

  Reilly raised his hands, looking slightly contrite. "No, look, I'm sorry. Please, keep going."

  Tess collected her thoughts. "These nine ordinary knights are given part of a royal palace with stables, which were apparently big enough to accommodate two thousand horses. Why was Baldwin so generous toward them?"

  "I don't know, maybe he was a forward thinker. Maybe he was blown away by their dedication."

  "But that's the thing," she argued, undeterred. "They hadn't done anything yet. They get given this huge base to work from, and what do our magnificent nine do? Do they go out and perform all sorts of heroic deeds and make sure the pilgrims get to their destinations, like they're supposed to? No.

  They spend their first nine years in the Temple. They don't leave it. They don't go out, they don't take on any new recruits. They just stay locked up there. For nine years."

  "They either turned agoraphobic, or . . ."

  "Or it was one big scam. The most widely accepted theory—and personally, I think it makes sense

  —is they were digging. Looking for something buried there."

  "Something the priests hid from Titus's legionnaires a thousand years earlier."

  She sensed that she was finally getting through to him, and her eyes were ablaze with conviction.

  "Exactly. The fact is that they lie low for nine years, then all of a sudden they burst onto the scene and start growing in stature and wealth at a dizzying rate, with the Vatican backing them wholeheartedly. Maybe they found something there, something buried under the Temple that made it all possible. Something that made the Vatican bend over backward to keep them happy—and evidence of Jesus having fathered a child or two would certainly fit the bill."

  Reilly's face clouded over. "Hold on, you think they were blackmailing the Vatican? I thought they were soldiers of Christ? Doesn't it make more sense that they found something that really pleased the Vatican, and the pope decided to reward them for their discovery?"

  Her face scrunched inward. "If that was the case, wouldn't they have announced it to the world?"

  She eased back, seeming a bit lost as well. "I know, I'm still missing a piece to this puzzle. They did go on to fight for Christianity for two hundred years. But you've got to admit, it's pretty intriguing."

  She paused, studying him. "So do you think there's anything in it?"

  Reilly weighed the information she'd so eagerly laid out for him. Regardless of how ridiculous it all sounded, he couldn't simply dismiss it entirely. The attack at the Met was clearly symptomatic of something frighteningly warped; there was more behind its extreme staging than a simple heist, that much everyone agreed on. He knew how radical extremists latched onto some mythology, some core belief, and how they made it theirs; how gradually that mythology got twisted and distorted until its devotees completely lost touch with reality and went off the deep end. Could this be the link he was looking for? The Templar legends certainly seemed rife with distortion. Was someone out there so infatuated with the terrible fate of the Templars that they identified with them to the point of dressing up like them, taking revenge on the Vatican on their behalf, and perhaps even trying to recover their legendary treasure?

  Reilly's eyes settled on her. "Do I think the Templars were the keepers of some big secret—good or bad—relating to the early days of the Church? I have no idea."

  Tess glanced away, trying to smother any visible signs of her dismay, when Reilly leaned in and continued. "Do I think there's a possible link between the Templars and what happened at the Met?"

  He let it hang for a moment, nodding almost imperceptibly, before a faint smile crossed his lips. "I definitely think it's worth looking into."

  Chapter 22

  Gus Waldron was definitely not having one of his best days. He remembered waking up a while ago. How long, he couldn't tell. Hours, minutes—and then he'd drifted off again. Now he was back, a little more alert.

  He knew he was in bad shape. He winced as he remembered the crash. His body felt like it had taken more pounding than a veal chop at Cipriani's. And the irritating, incessant beeps from the monitors around him weren't helping either.

  He knew he was in a hospital—the beeping and the ambient noise were clear indications of that. He had to rely on his hearing, as he couldn't see a goddamn thing. His eyes stung like hell. When he tried to move, he couldn't. There was something around his chest. They've got me strapped to the bed. Not real tight, though. So the strap was there for hospital reasons, not cop reasons. Good. His hands moved over his face, feeling bandages and finding other things. They had him stuck full of tubes.

  There was no point in fighting it, not right now. He had to know how bad he was hurt, and he would definitely need his eyes back if he was to get out of there. So until he knew the score, he would try to cut a deal with the cops. But what did he have to offer? He needed something big, because

  they wouldn't like the fact that he'd chopped the head off that fucking guard. He really shouldn't have done that. It was just that, riding up there, dressed like Prince-fucking-Valiant, he had gotten to wondering what it would be like to take a swing at some guy. And it had felt real good; there was no denying it.

  What he could do was rat out Branko Petrovic. He was already pissed off at that dick for not telling him the name of the guy who had hired him, rambling on about how cool it was, this idea of blind cells. Now he saw why. He'd been hired by Petrovic, who'd been hired by someone else, who'd been hired by some other asshole. Who could tell how many blind fucking cells there were before you reached the guy the cops were out to nail?

  The hospital sounds rose slightly for a moment, then fell again. The door must have opened and closed. He heard footsteps, squeaky on the floor, as someone approached his bed. Then whoever it was lifted Gus's hand, fingertips resting on the inside of his wrist. Some doctor or nurse taking his pulse. No, a doctor. The fingers felt rougher, stronger than a nurse's would. At least the kind of nurse he would fantasize about.

  He needed to know how badly hurt he was. "Who's that? Doc?"

  Whoever was there didn't answer. Now the fingers were lifting the bandages where they went around his head and over his ears.

  Gus opened his mouth to ask a question but as he did so he felt a strong hand clamp down over his mouth and immediately there came a searingly painful jab in his neck. His whole body jerked against the restraint.

  The hand covered his mouth tightly, turning Gus's shouts into a muffled whine. There was a hot feeling spreading inside his neck, around his throat. Then, slowly, the hand pressing down on his mouth released its hold.

  A man's voice, very soft, whispered close to his ear. He could feel his hot breath on him.

  "The doctors won't allow anyone to question you for a while. But I can't wait that long. I need to know who hired you."

  What the fuck . . . ?

  Gus tried to sit up, but the strap held his body and a hand pressed against his head kept him in place.

  "Answer the question," the voice said.

  Who was that? It couldn't be a cop. Some shithead trying to cut himself in on some of the stuff he'd taken from the museum? But then why ask about who'd hired him?

  "Answer me." The voice was still very quiet, but sharper now.

  "Fuck you," Gus said.

  Except that, he didn't say it. Not really. His mouth formed the words, and he heard them in his head.

  But no sound came out.

  Where's my fucking voice gone?

  "Ah," the voice whispered. "That's the Lidocaine's effect. Just a small dose. Enough to numb your vocal chords. It's annoying in that you can't talk. The upside of it is that, well, you can't scream either."

  Scream?

  The fingers that had felt so gentry for his pulse landed on his left hip, right where the cop's bullet struck. They rested there for a moment before suddenly bursting alive and pressing in. Hard.

  Pai
n seared through his body like he was being branded from the inside, and he screamed.

  Silently.

  Blackness threatened to overwhelm his brain before the pain receded slightly and saliva pooled at the back of his throat. He thought he was about to throw up. Then the man's hands touched him again and he flinched, only this time the touch was gentle.

  "Are you right- or left-handed?" the soft voice asked.

  Gus was now sweating profusely. Right- or left-handed? What the fuck difference does that make?

  He lifted his right hand feebly, and soon felt something being placed between his fingers. A pencil.

  "Just write the names down for me," the voice told him, guiding the pencil toward what felt like a notepad.

  His eyes bandaged shut and his voice gone, Gus felt completely cut off from the world and alone, more so than he'd ever imagined. Where is everybody? Where are the doctors, the nurses, the fucking cops, for Chrissake?

  The fingers seized the flesh around his wound and squeezed again, this time harder and for longer.

  An excruciating pain shot through him. Every nerve in his body seemed to ignite as he bucked against the strap, screaming in silent agony.

  "This doesn't have to take all night," the man stated calmly. "Just give me the names."

  There was only one name he could write. Which he did.

  "Branko . . . Petrovic?" the man asked softly.

  Gus nodded hurriedly.

  "And the others?"

  Gus shook his head as best he could. That's all I know, for fuck's sake.

  The fingers again.

  Pressing in, harder, deeper. Squeezing.

  The pain.

  The silent screams.

  Jesus fucking Christ. Gus lost track of time. He managed to write the name of a place where Branko worked. Other than that, all that he could do was shake his head and mouth, No.

  Over and over and over again.

  Eventually, thankfully, he felt the pencil being taken away from him. At last the man believed that he was telling the truth.