The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  Something that literally shocked the life out of him. And that was it. I couldn't shake that story, I couldn't get away from the image of this priest's hair turning white, just from spending a few minutes with a dying old man. From that point onward, finding out what this manuscript was, or where it might be, became—"

  An obsession, Tess thought.

  "—a mission, of sorts." Vance smiled lighdy, his mind clearly conjuring up images of distant, cloistered libraries. "I don't know how many dusty archives I've rooted through, in museums, churches, and monasteries all across France, even across the Pyrenees in the north of Spain." He paused, then reached out a hand and rested it on the papers that sat beside the encoder. "And then one day, I found something. In a Templar castle."

  A castle with an inscription on its portal. Tess felt light-headed. She thought of the Latin words she had heard him say, about the Latin saying Clive had told her was carved into the lintel at the Chateau de Blanchefort, and took another look at the papers. She could see that they were ancient, handwritten documents. "You found the actual manuscript?" she asked, surprised at feeling some of the thrill she knew Vance must have experienced. Then a flash of enlightenment struck her. "But they were coded. That's why you needed the encoder."

  He nodded slowly, affirming her guess. "Yes. It was so frustrating. For years, I knew I was sitting on something important, I knew I had the right papers, but I couldn't read them. Simple substitution or skipping codes didn't work, but then I knew they were more clever than that. I uncovered arcane references to Templar coding devices, but couldn't find any of the machines anywhere. It really seemed hopeless. All of their possessions had been destroyed when they were rounded up in 1307.

  And then, fate intervened and brought up this little jewel from the bowels of the Vatican where it had been sitting all those years, hidden away long ago and all but forgotten."

  "And now you can read them."

  He patted the sheets. "Like the morning paper."

  Tess looked at the documents. She chided herself for the feeling of wild excitement that was coursing through her and had to remind herself that lives had been lost and that this man was quite possibly deranged and, given recent events, undoubtedly dangerous. The discovery he was working on was potentially a big one, bigger than anything she'd ever had the chance to uncover, but it was drenched in innocent blood, and she couldn't allow herself to forget that. It also had a darkness to it, something deeply unsettling about its history that she couldn't dismiss.

  She studied Vance, who again seemed lost in his own thoughts. "What are you hoping to find?"

  "Something that's been lost for too long." His eyes were narrow and intense. "Something that'll make things right."

  Something worth killing for, she wanted to add, but decided against it.

  Instead, she remembered what she had read, about Vance's suggestion that the founder of the Templars was a Cathar. Vance had just told her that he'd found the letter in the Languedoc—where he had suggested, much to the affront of the French historian whose article she'd read, that Hughes de Payens's family came from. She wanted to know more about that, but before she could speak up, she heard a jarring noise from above, like a brick scraping against a stone floor.

  Abruptly, Vance jumped to his feet. "Stay here," he ordered.

  Her eyes darted up to the ceiling, looking for its source. "What is it?"

  "Just stay here," he insisted as he moved urgently. He went behind the table and pulled out the Taser he had used on her, then decided against it and discarded it. He then rummaged through a pouch and pulled out another gun, this one a more traditional handgun, and awkwardly chambered a round as he hurried to the steps.

  He climbed them briskly and, when his legs were out of view, she heard the metallic thud as he closed and locked the door behind him.

  Chapter 35

  De Angelis cursed to himself the instant his foot nudged the charred piece of timber off its sitting and disturbed the settlement of debris around him. Moving stealthily through the burned-out church wasn't easy; scorched rafters and chunks of broken stone from the collapsed roof littered the dark, damp space around him.

  He'd been initially surprised to find that this wreck was where Plunkett had trailed Tess and her silver-haired abductor. Skulking through the silent, ghostly remains of the Church of the Ascension, he now realized it was a perfect spot for someone who wanted to work undisturbed; someone whose dedication went beyond simple matters of personal comfort. One more confirmation, not that he needed it, that the man he was after knew exactiy what it was he had taken from the Met that night.

  De Angelis had entered the church from a side entrance; less than forty minutes earlier, Plunkett had observed a blindfolded Tess Chaykin being helped out of the back of the gray Volvo and led through the same entrance by her abductor. She had seemed barely conscious and needed the man's assistance to take the few steps into the doorway, her arm looped over his shoulder.

  The small church was on West 114th Street, tucked in between two rows of brownstones with a narrow alleyway running alongside its east facade, which was where the Volvo and the sedan were now parked. The church had suffered a major fire in the recent past, and its reconstruction was evidently not in the cards yet. A large panel out front displayed the progress of the fund-raising efforts for the rebuilding in the form of a six-foot-high thermometer, which was graduated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to bring the church back to its former glory. The thermometer currently stood at only one-third full.

  The monsignor had made his way through a narrow passage and into the nave. Rows of columns divided it into two side aisles and a center section, which was strewn with mounds of half-burned pews. All around him, the stucco had been burned off the walls, exposing the brick masonry, which was blackened and occasionally holed. Below the ceiling, the few remaining plaster arches that spanned from the exterior walls to the columns were unrecognizable, charred and deformed by the flames. Only a hollow ring remained where the stained-glass window had proudly stood over the church's entrance, its wide opening now boarded up.

  He had crept along the edge of the nave, past the melted brass gates of the altar, and had climbed carefully up the steps and onto the sanctuary. The scorched remains of a large canopied pulpit loomed to his right. All around him, the church was silent with only the occasional noise from the street wafting in through one of the many cavities in its exposed shell. He had surmised that whoever had taken the girl must be using the back rooms. With Plunkett outside keeping watch, he now slipped quietly past the remnants of the altar and into the passage behind the sanctuary, slowly twirling a silencer onto the nozzle of his Sig Sauer handgun.

  And that was when his foot nudged the debris.

  The noise echoed around him in the darkened hallway. He froze, listening carefully, alert to any disturbance he may have triggered. Squinting, he could barely make out a door at the far end of the passage, when suddenly, from beyond the door, he heard a muffled thud, then faint footsteps coming closer. Swiftly, De Angelis stepped aside, hugging the wall, raising his handgun. Footsteps approached the hall, the door handle rattled, but instead of the door opening outward, toward him, it opened inward and all that he saw was a dark space. He was the one in the light.

  Too late and too dangerous to retreat, which was not, anyway, in his nature, he hurled himself forward into the darkness.

  + + +

  Gripping his gun with tight fingers, Vance stared through the doorway at the man who had trespassed into his sanctuary. He didn't recognize him. He glimpsed what he thought was a clerical collar. It made him hesitate.

  Then the man was leaping forward and Vance tried hastily to use his gun, but before he could pull its trigger the stranger was on him, knocking him to the floor, the handgun slipping from his hand.

  The passageway was narrow and low and Vance used the wall to thrust himself upward but the man was much stronger and down he went again. This time, he brought his knee up sh
arply, heard a satisfactory grunt of pain. Another gun, his attacker's, clattered noisily across the floor. But once again his attacker recovered quickly, swinging a fist hard against his head.

  The blow hurt Vance but didn't daze him. More important, it jarred him into a fury. Twice in one day, first by Tess Chaykin, now by this stranger, his endeavor was being jeopardized. He used his knee again, then his fist, then a barrage of punches. His blows were unschooled, but they were fired by his anger. Nothing and no one had the right to come between him and his goal.

  The intruder blocked his blows expertly and backed off, but as he did so he stumbled over some planks of wood. Vance, seeing his opportunity, kicked out, connecting savagely with the man's knee. Snatching up his gun, he leveled it and squeezed the trigger. The stranger was fast, though, throwing himself sideways as the bullets flew out. By the strained cry that followed, Vance thought one of them may have struck its intended target, but he couldn't be sure. The man was still moving, staggering backward into the sanctuary.

  Vance hesitated for just a moment.

  Should he follow, find out who the man was, and finish him off? Then he heard some noise coming from the far corner of the church. The man wasn't alone.

  He decided it was best to escape. Turning, he hurried back to the trapdoor that shielded his cellar.

  Chapter 36

  Tess heard a loud gunshot, which was followed by what sounded like an angry cry.

  Someone was hurt. Then footsteps were rushing back toward the trapdoor. She wasn't sure if it was Vance or someone else, but she wasn't about to just stand there and wait to find out.

  She dived across the chamber, grabbed her bag off the table, and pulled out her cell phone. In the faint glimmer of the candles, the LED screen lit up like a flashlight, only to inform her there was no signal in the cellar. It didn't really matter; she didn't know the FBI's number by heart and, while dialing 911 was an option, she knew it would take too long to explain what was happening. Besides, she didn't have a clue where she was.

  Help, Pm in a, cellar somewhere in the city.

  I think.

  Perfect.

  Still dazed, and with her heart thumping loudly in her ears, she darted nervous glances around the chamber, then remembered the shuttered opening she'd spotted by the table. On impulse, she cleared some of the clutter off its surface, scrambled up onto the table, and pulled wearily at the planks of wood covering the cavity, trying to loosen them. They wouldn't give. She pounded at

  them helplessly, but they held tight. Then she heard a sound as the cellar door opened. Turning, she saw legs beginning to descend. She recognized the shoes. It was Vance.

  Her eyes quickly scanned the room and settled on the Taser Vance had discarded. It was lying there on the corner of the table nearest to her behind a stack of books. She grabbed it and leveled it at him, her hands shaking as his face emerged from the darkness, his eyes staring calmly into hers.

  "Stay away from me!" she yelled at him.

  "Tess, please," he shot back with an urgent, calming gesture, "we need to get out of here."

  "We? What are you talking about? Just stay away from me."

  He was still moving toward her. "Tess, put the gun down."

  Panicking now, she pulled the trigger—but nothing happened. He was now less than ten feet away.

  She turned the gun, glaring at it, her eyes straining to figure out if she had missed something. He was moving faster now, coming at her. Fiddling desperately with the gun, she finally spotted the small safety and flipped it up. A small red light flashed at the back of the gun. She raised it up again and saw that she had also somehow activated its laser, which was beaming a tiny red mark onto Vance's chest. The dot danced left and right, mirroring her trembling hands. He was very close now.

  Pulse racing, she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger, which felt more like a rubber-coated button than what she imagined was the cold steel of a handgun's trigger. The Taser came to life with a loud pop, and Tess shrieked as the two metal probes and their stainless steel barbs came blasting out of its front, trailing thin wires behind them.

  The first probe just missed its mark, flying past his chest and disappearing into the darkness, but the second bit into his left thigh. Fifty thousand volts of electricity seared into him for five seconds, overriding his central nervous system and triggering incontrollable contractions in his muscles. He jerked and arched upward as the burning spasms erupted through his body and his legs gave way.

  He collapsed on himself, helpless, his face contorted with pain.

  Tess was momentarily confused by the cloud of tiny confetti-like ID disks that exploded out of the cartridge as she fired the gun, but the groans of Vance, lying there writhing in pain, soon whipped her back to her immediate predicament. She thought of stepping past him and heading up the stairs, but wasn't too keen on getting any closer to him. She also wasn't sure who Vance had confronted up there and was too scared to find out. She turned again to the shuttered opening and kicked and pulled at the panels until at last one of them loosened. She yanked it off, used it to jimmy the others loose, and looked in through the hole she'd made.

  Beyond stretched a dark tunnel.

  With nowhere else to go, she started to climb through the opening, then looked back, saw that Vance was still writhing in pain, and saw the encoder and the sheets, the manuscript, lying there, within reach.

  They were beckoning her, too enticing to resist.

  Surprising herself, she climbed back in and snatched the pile of documents, stuffing them into her bag. Something else caught her attention: her wallet, lying among the pile of clutter she'd rashly thrown off the table. She took a step to retrieve it when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Vance stir. She hesitated for a nanosecond before deciding she had taken enough of a risk as it was and had to get out of there now. She spun on her heels, clambered back into the tunnel, and hurried forward into the darkness.

  ***

  Crouched low, her head brushing the top of the tunnel, she was perhaps thirty yards in when it opened up into a wider and higher shaft. She had a sudden, disconcerting flashback to an old Mexican catacomb she had visited as a student. The air smelled even damper in here, and looking down she saw the reason. A narrow stream of black water flowed down the center. Tess stumbled along its edge, her feet slipping on the damp, worn stonework. The bitingly cold water swirled over the tops of her shoes. Then the stream ended, the water cascading down maybe five or six or more feet into another, still bigger tunnel.

  Glancing back, Tess listened. Was that just water she heard, or was it something else? Then a harrowing shout echoed in the darkness.

  "Tess!"

  Vance's voice bellowed from behind. He was back on his feet and coming after her.

  Taking a breath, she lowered herself over the ledge until her arms were at full stretch, water pouring into one sleeve of her coat, soaking her clothing and her body. Now, thankfully, the outstretched toes of her

  shoes touched solid floor and she let go. Turning, she saw that this time, the stream of water was deeper and wider. A filthy sludge was being carried along on its surface from which rose a smell so foul that she knew she was in a sewer. After a couple of attempts to walk along the edge, she gave up. The curve was too steep, the surface too slippery. Instead, closing her mind to what she knew the water carried in its oily grasp, she went down the center, the water now almost to her knees.

  From the corners of her eyes, she suddenly glimpsed movement and color and turned her head.

  Small specks of reddish light gleamed in the darkness, moving, and she heard a chittering noise.

  Rats were scurrying along the edges of the stream of sewage.

  "Tess!"

  Vance's voice thundered along the damp tunnel, bouncing off the walls, seeming to come from all sides at once.

  A few more yards, and she realized that ahead of her, the darkness wasn't quite as intense.

  Stumbling awkwardly, she kept on moving as fast
as she dared. No way could she risk falling facedown into this. When, at last, she reached the source of the light, it was coming in from above.

  From a sidewalk grille. She could hear people up above. Edging closer, she could actually see them, walking twenty feet overhead.

  She felt a surge of hope and started yelling. "Help! Help me! Down here! Help!" but no one seemed to hear her, and, if they did, they simply ignored her cries. Of course they're ignoring you. What did you expect? This is New York City. Taking deranged cries from the sewers seriously was the last 80

  thing anyone from around here would do.

  Tess realized that her shouts were echoing down the tunnel ahead of her and behind her. She listened. Some sounds were closing in on her. Sloshing sounds, and heavy splashes. She wasn't about to stand there and wait for him to reach her. She set off again, completely heedless now of the water and the filth, and almost at once reached a fork in the tunnel.

  One passageway was wider, but it was darker and looked wetter. Easier to hide in? Maybe. She chose that one. Barely fifty feet in and it looked as though she had made the wrong choice. There, in front of her, was a blank brick wall.

  It was a dead end.

  Chapter 37

  A fter he had repelled the intruder in the crypt, Vance had planned on using the tunnels as his escape route from the cellar, taking with him the encoder and the still incompletely decoded manuscript. But all he now had, clasped firmly in his arms, was the intricate machine. The papers were gone. He felt a cold fury envelop him and shouted out her name, his angry cry bellowing across the damp walls that engulfed him.

  He had no quarrel with Tess Chaykin. He remembered that he had liked her once, back when he was still capable of liking people, and he should have had no reason to dislike her now. Indeed, it had even crossed his mind to invite her to join his . . . crusade.

  But she had stolen the papers, his papers, and that infuriated him.

  Hoisting the encoder into a more comfortable position, he continued after Tess. If he didn't reach her soon, she might stumble onto one or another of several escape hatches from this tortuous maze.