The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  He couldn't allow that to happen.

  Again he felt his rage rising but fought it back. He couldn't risk moving or acting rashly.

  Not now.

  And especially not down here.

  ***

  Tess had turned from the dead end and was planning to go back the way that she had come when she saw an iron door encased in a side wall. She grabbed its rusted handle and pulled. It wasn't locked, but it was jammed. With a despairing heave, she forced the door open and saw a staircase spiraling downward. Deeper and darker did not seem like a wise move, but she didn't have much choice.

  Tentatively, feeling the angled rungs before putting her weight on them, Tess worked her way down the staircase and found herself in yet another tunnel. How many tunnels were there down here, for God's sake? At least this one was even bigger than before and, even better, it was dry. For the time being. Whatever it was, at least it wasn't a sewer.

  She didn't know which way to run. She chose to go left. Ahead, she saw a glimmer of light.

  Moving, yellow light. More candles?

  Hesitantly, she edged forward.

  The light went out.

  Tess froze. Then she realized it wasn't out; someone had stepped in front of it.

  There were still noises behind her. Whoever was standing there ahead of her couldn't possibly be Vance. Or could it? Maybe he knew his way around these tunnels. He said he'd been living down 81

  here. Still, she forced herself forward and could now see not one but two figures a few yards along the tunnel. She didn't think either of them was Vance. Men or women, though, she had no idea, but down here, neither one was likely to be good news.

  "Hey, baby," a hoarse voice called out. "You lost?"

  Instantly deciding that hesitation would be bad for her health, Tess picked up her pace, awkward in the near-total darkness.

  "Looks like your lucky day, man," another voice said, this one high-pitched.

  They didn't sound particularly friendly.

  Tess kept going. Behind her came a louder noise. Her heart jumped. She was close to the two figures now. Their faces were still masked by the darkness. In the dim candlelight behind them, she could make out a clutter of cardboard boxes, rolls of what looked to be carpet, bundles of rags.

  Tess thought fast. "There are cops coming," Tess snapped as she approached them.

  "What the fuck do they want?" one of them grumbled.

  As Tess pushed past the two men, one of them reached out and grabbed at her coat.

  "Hey, come on, doll—"

  Instinctively, Tess swung around, slamming the inside of her clenched fist across the side of the man's head. He stumbled back with a startled yelp. The one with the high-pitched voice was about to try his luck, but must have seen something in Tess's eyes, glinting in the yellow light, and backed off.

  Tess turned away and put as much distance as she could between herself and the two bums. She ran, tired now, gasping for breath, the bleakness of the stygian underworld now starting to overwhelm her.

  She reached another fork in the tunnel. She had no clue as to which way to go. This time, she went right. Stumbling a few more yards, she saw a recess in the wall, a grille that opened when she pushed on it. Another runged ladder going down. She needed to go up, not down. But she had to get away from Vance and decided to go for it, hoping he wouldn't follow.

  Now she was in a much bigger tunnel, this one dry again, with straight walls. It was much darker here, and she advanced cautiously, running a hand along the wall for guidance. She couldn't hear Vance's footsteps anymore or his shouts. She breathed out. Great. Now what? Then after what was probably less than a minute but seemed like an eternity, she heard a sound behind her. Not rats this time, and not a human pursuer. What she heard was the rumble of a train.

  Shit. I'm in the subway.

  A faint, flickering light was bouncing off the walls as the screeching train approached. It lit up the rails on the ground. She ran, desperately trying to keep the live rail in sight, hoping she wouldn't hit it. The train was closing in fast, its rhythmic clatter bouncing off the tunnel walls. It had almost reached her when, cast into relief by the train's headlights, she saw a slim cavity in the wall and threw herself into it. As she squeezed into the curving space, the train hurtled past, only inches from her trembling body. Heart racing, her arms curled around her face defensively, her eyes shut tight but still aware of the strobing light as the train flashed by, she waited. The hot, sooty air pushed against her, covering every inch of her body, snaking into her mouth and nostrils. She backed herself even

  tighter against the wall. The noise was deafening, overwhelming all her other senses.

  She kept her eyes shut and, as the lights were finally past her, a wailing squeal sheared the air as die train's sparking brakes bit into the wheels. Her heartbeat still throbbing in her ears, she felt a surge of relief.

  A station. I must be near a station.

  Tess drew on her last reserves of energy and stumbled the final, desperate few yards and, as the 82

  train moved off again, she came out into the bright light and dragged herself up onto the platform.

  The last few passengers were disappearing up the stairs. If anyone saw her, they didn't react.

  For a moment, Tess remained there, alone, on her hands and knees at the edge of the platform, her heart still racing with fear and exhaustion. Then, wet and filthy and still shaking, she pushed herself upright.

  Wearily and on rubbery legs, she followed the others up into civilization.

  Chapter 38

  W rapped in a blanket and cradling a huge mug of hot coffee, Tess sat in Reilly's car across the street from the subway station on 103rd and shivered. The cold had thoroughly penetrated her soaked clothing. From the waist down, she was frozen, and the rest of her didn't feel any better.

  He'd offered to take her to a hospital or straight home, but Tess had insisted that she wasn't hurt and didn't need to go home just yet. She felt she had to fill him in on her findings first.

  As she watched teams of police officers entering the station, she told him about her run-in with Vance. How Clive had suggested she consult the professor, how she'd actually met Vance years ago, how she'd taken a chance at the cemetery, hoping he could help her find a connection to what had happened at the Met. She went over what Vance had said, about his wife dying in childbirth and about how he blamed their priest for it, and about how he had said he wanted to "make things right," which seemed to intrigue Reilly. She told him the story about the dying Templar and the monk whose hair had turned white, and explained how Vance had shot her, how she'd found herself in the cellar, how they were interrupted by someone, the gunfight she'd overheard, and finally how she had escaped.

  As she talked, she envisioned the search parties fanning out into the various tunnels, looking for him in that underground nightmare, although she knew the odds were he'd be long gone.

  Thinking about the tunnels again made her shudder. It wasn't somewhere she was keen to revisit, and she hoped she wouldn't be asked to do so. She had never been so scared in her life. At least, not since the raid on the Met, which was less than a week ago. She was on a roll, a pretty unpleasant one at that.

  When she finished, Reilly was shaking his head.

  "What?" she asked.

  He was just eyeing her silently.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" she insisted.

  "Cause you're nuts, you know that?"

  She exhaled wearily. "Why?"

  "Come on, Tess. You're not supposed to be running around chasing clues and trying to solve this thing on your own. Hell, you're not even supposed to be trying to solve it, period. That's my job."

  Tess managed a grin. "You're worried I'm going to make you all look bad, is that it?"

  Reilly was having none of it. "I'm serious. You could have been badly hurt. Or worse. You don't get it, do you? People have died because of this thing. It's not a joke. I mean, for God's sake, you've got a dau
ghter to think of."

  Tess stiffened visibly at his mention of Kim. "Hey, I thought I was meeting a history professor for a little academic chitchat over a cup of coffee, all right? I didn't expect him to zap me with his—" Her mind went blank.

  "Taser."

  Whatever. "—his Taser, stuff me in the back of his car, and chase me through rat-infested sewers.

  He's a history professor, for God's sake. They're supposed to be mild-mannered, pipe-smoking introverts, not—"

  "Psychos?"

  Tess frowned and looked away. Somehow, she didn't think the term was appropriate, despite everything that had happened. "I'm not sure I'd go that far, but . . . he's definitely not in good shape." She felt a tinge of empathy for the professor, which threw her, and she heard herself saying,

  "He needs help."

  Reilly studied her, pausing for a moment. "Okay, we'll need to do a proper, in-depth debriefing as soon as you're comfortable; but right now, I need to make sure we find where he took you. You have no idea where you were being held, where that cellar is?"

  Tess shook her head. "No, I told you. When I came to in the car, I was blindfolded, and getting out of there was just one big, dark maze of tunnels. But it can't be that far from here. I mean, I walked it."

  "How many blocks, if you had to guess."

  "I don't know . . . five?"

  "Okay. Let's get some maps and see if we can find this dungeon of yours."

  Reilly was about to walk off when Tess reached out and stopped him. "There's something else, something I didn't tell you."

  "Why am I not surprised?" he chastised. "What is it?"

  Tess reached into her bag and pulled out the roll of sheets she'd taken from Vance's desk. She spread them out for Reilly to see, and now, in the light, she could see them properly for the first time. The documents, ancient vellum scrolls, were beautiful despite having no illustrations on them; they were just simply and oddly packed, virtually edge to edge, with a continuous stream of impeccably drafted letters. There were no breaks, no spaces between words or paragraphs.

  Reilly scrutinized the sheets in stunned silence, then turned to her. She grinned, her smile lighting up a face smeared with the grime of the tunnels. "They're Vance's," she told him. "The Templar manuscripts from the Languedoc. But here's the thing. I can recognize Latin, and none of this makes sense. It's gibberish. That's why he needs the encoder. They're the key to what this is all about."

  His expression clouded over. "But these pages, they're useless without the encoder."

  Tess had a self-satisfied glint in her eye. "True, but . . . the encoder is also pointless without them."

  It was a moment she would always enjoy remembering: watching Reilly all conflicted and speechless. She knew he had to be delighted, but she also knew it was probably killing him that he couldn't show it. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage her recklessness. Instead, he just stared at her before climbing out of the car and calling over one of the other agents and asking for the papers to be photographed immediately. Moments later, an agent hurried over with a large camera, and Reilly handed him the sheets.

  Tess watched as the photographer spread them out on the car's trunk and got to work. She then turned to see Reilly pick up a small two-way radio and get updated on the situation in the tunnels. There was something attractive about the urgency with which he went about his work. As she watched him mumbling cryptically into the radio, he glanced over at her, and she thought she spied a faint smile there.

  "I need to go down there," he told her after he signed off. "They've found your two friends."

  "What about Vance?"

  "No sign of him." He clearly wasn't happy with that. "I'll get someone to take you home."

  "No hurry," she told him. Which wasn't true. She was desperate to get out of her filthy, wet clothes and stand under the shower for hours, but not before the photographer was finished. She was even 84

  more desperate to take a look at the documents that had started all this.

  Reilly walked away, leaving her in his car. She watched him chat to a couple of other agents before they all headed toward the station entrance.

  Abruptly, her thoughts were interrupted by her cell phone. The caller ID displayed her home number.

  "Tess, dear, it's me." It was Eileen.

  "Mom. I'm sorry, I should have called you."

  "Called me? Why? Is anything wrong?"

  Tess breathed out with relief. There was no reason for her mother to be worried about her. The FBI would have been careful not to alarm her if they'd called to find out where Tess was. "No, of course not. What's up?"

  "I was just wondering what time you'd be home. Your friend's already here."

  Tess felt a sudden chill shoot up her spine. "My friend?"

  "Yes," her mother chirped. "He's such a lovely man. Here, have a word with him, dear. And don't be too late. I've asked him to stay for dinner."

  Tess heard the phone changing hands, and then a newly familiar voice came on.

  "Tess, darling. It's Bill. Bill Vance."

  Chapter 39

  Tess froze in her seat, a knot the size of a fist forming in her throat. He was there, in her very own house. With her mother. And—Kim?

  She turned away from the car door, clasping the phone tightly.

  "What are you—"

  "I thought you'd be here already," he interjected calmly. "I didn't get the time wrong, did I? Your message said it was rather urgent."

  Message? Tess's mind was racing. He's in my house and he's playing games. An anger swelled inside her. "If you hurt them, I swear—"

  "No, no, no," he interrupted, "it's not a problem. But I really can't stay too long. Much as I'd love to take up your lovely mother's invitation and have dinner with you all, I have to get back up to Connecticut. You said you had something for me. Something you wanted me to have a look at."

  Of course. The papers. He wants his papers back. She realized he didn't want to cause her mom or Kim any distress. He was posing as a friend, and was acting accordingly. Her mother wouldn't know anything was wrong. Good. Let's keep it that way.

  "Tess?" he asked with disturbing serenity. "Are you still there?"

  "Yes. You want me to bring you the documents."

  "That would be great."

  Her mind flashed on her wallet, lying among the clutter on the floor of Vance's cellar, and she chided herself for not retrieving it. She looked out the car window nervously. Only the photographer was near, still taking pictures of the documents. Feeling a constriction in her chest, Tess took a deep breath and turned away from the photographer. "I'm on my way. Please, don't do anything—"

  "Of course not," he chortled. "I'll wait for you, then. Is anyone else joining us?"

  Tess frowned. "No."

  "Perfect." He paused for a moment. Tess wondered what he was doing. "It'll be nice to spend some time and get to know them a bit better," he continued. "Kim is such a delightful little girl."

  So she was there after all. That bastard. He lost his daughter, now he's threatening mine.

  "I'll come alone, don't worry," Tess said firmly.

  "Don't be long."

  She heard the phone click off, and for a moment she continued to hold the cell phone to her ear, running through the conversation again, trying to come to terms with what was happening.

  She had a huge decision to make. Do I tell Reilly? She knew the answer to that: of course. Anyone who'd ever watched a TV show knew that, regardless of whatever a kidnapper said, you called the cops. You always called the cops. But that was TV, and this was real life. This was about her family in the hands of a demolished man. Much as she wanted to tell Reilly, she didn't want to risk triggering some kind of hostage situation. Not given the state of mind Vance was in.

  Grasping at straws, she tried to convince herself he wouldn't hurt them. He hadn't hurt her, had he?

  He was even apologetic about what he'd done to her. But now, she had crossed him, and she had his documen
ts, the ones that were crucial to his mission. The documents, as Reilly had rightly put it, that people had died for.

  She couldn't risk it. Her family was in harm's way.

  She sneaked another look at the photographer. He was done. Still holding the cell phone to her ear, she edged toward him. "Yes," she said loudly, into the dead line. "He's just finished photographing them." She nodded to the photographer, dredging up a smile. "Sure, I'll bring them right over," she continued. "You go ahead and start setting up the equipment."

  Clicking the phone shut, she addressed the photographer. "Are you sure they'll come out?"

  Her question surprised him. "I hope so. It's what I'm paid for."

  She rolled up the papers as he reflexively moved away from them. "I've got to race these over to the lab." There was always a lab involved. She just hoped it sounded remotely credible. She glanced at the camera and added. "Reilly wants those shots developed fast. Can you do that for him?"

  "Sure, it's not a problem—given that they're digital," he deadpanned.

  Tess grimaced at her error as she walked as confidently as she could back to Reilly's car, resisting the urge to run. When she got to the driver's door, she glanced inside and saw that the key was still there, where she had seen Reilly leave it. She got in and flicked the ignition.

  She scanned the faces at the scene, searching for Reilly, hoping not to see him. He wasn't around, nor was his partner. She nursed the car out of its double-parked spot and slowly navigated through the other sedans and police cars, inching forward, smiling sheepishly at the couple of officers who waved her through, hoping the sheer terror inside her wasn't breaking through to the surface.

  Once she was clear, she pulled away, checking the rearview mirror, and, moments later, she was speeding up the street, headed for Westchester.

  Chapter 40

  A s she pulled into the driveway outside her house, Tess misjudged the curb and hit it hard before squealing to a halt.