The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  Rustem was still there, just as they'd left him, only he had a scared and plaintive frown on his face.

  Sitting in the second boat, watching them with a look of muted delight—almost like a professor acknowledging the success of a bright pupil, Tess thought—was William Vance.

  He was cradling a shotgun.

  Chapter 60

  A s he helped Tess clamber into Rustem's boat, Reilly shot a quick glance toward the shore.

  A brown Toyota pickup truck was now parked by their SUV. Two men were standing at the edge of the lake, and neither of them was the engineer, Okan. The first was much taller and bulkier than the small engineer, and the second, although wiry and no taller than Okan, lacked his thick nest of black hair. Reilly also spotted something else: both men were holding guns. From this far out, they looked like hunting rifles, but Reilly couldn't be sure. He guessed that Vance had bought himself some local muscle along the way. He wondered if any of them had thought to check the Pajero and, if so, if they'd found the Browning he'd tucked into the stow box under the seat.

  Reilly studied Vance, seeing him in the flesh for the first time. So this is the man behind this whole mess. He thought back to the murdered horsemen in New York, trying to reconcile the man before him with all the events that had brought them to this remote place and gauging the professor's mind-set. The threatening announcement that Reilly was, in fact, an FBI agent hadn't fazed Vance in the least. Watching his calm, controlled disposition, Reilly wondered how this sophisticated man, this respected academic, had evolved into the fugitive sitting across from him with a shotgun in his lap; how someone with his background had managed to put together that raiding party and, more to the point, how he had gone on to kill off his hired guns, one by one, and with such efficiency and ruthlessness at that.

  Something didn't fit.

  He noted that Vance was fixated on the pouch in Tess's hands.

  "Careful," Vance told her as she settled into the boat. "We wouldn't want to damage it. Not after all this." His tone sounded strangely detached as he stretched his hand out. "Please," he beckoned.

  Tess looked at Reilly, unsure of what to do. Reilly turned to Vance who, with the other hand, swung the shotgun out slowly until it was pointing in their direction. The expression on the professor's face was almost rueful, but his eyes were unflinching. Tess stood up, reached over, and handed him the pouch.

  Vance simply stowed it by his feet and motioned toward the shore with the shotgun. "Let's get back on solid ground, shall we?"

  As they climbed off the boats at the shore, Reilly could now see that Vance's men were indeed carrying hunting rifles. The taller of the two, a rough-looking man with a neck like a tree stump and a steely stare, was pointing his rifle at them, directing them away from the boats. The rifle didn't look new, but it was threatening enough. It was an odd kind of weapon for a hired thug. It occurred to Reilly that Vance almost certainly had had to make do with whomever he'd been able to find at short notice. That could work to their advantage, he thought, especially if the Browning was still in the Pajero. For the moment, though, they were too exposed, standing there dripping in their wet suits.

  Vance found an old, rickety table in Rustem's yard and rested his shotgun against it. He glanced at Tess, his face brightening slightly. "I guess I'm not the only fan of Al-Idrissi. I really did want to be the first to get to it, as you can imagine, but. . ." He trailed off, placing the bulky pouch on the table.

  He stared at it reverentially, his mind seeming to drift away for a moment. "Still," he added, "I'm glad you came. I'm not sure the local talent would have brought it up as efficiently as you did."

  His fingers reached out and settled on the pouch's bulge, feeling it gently, trying to divine what secrets it held. He started to lift its flap, then stopped, his head cocked with a sudden realization. He turned to Tess.

  "You should join me for this. In many ways, it's as much your discovery as it is mine."

  Tess glanced at Reilly, clearly conflicted. Reilly nodded for her to go ahead. She took a hesitant step forward, but the wiry, balding man tensed up, raising his rifle. Vance blurted some quick words in Turkish and the man relented, stepping aside to let her through. She joined Vance by the table.

  "Let's hope this wasn't all for nothing," he said, as he reached for the pouch and lifted its flap.

  Slowly, and using both hands, he pulled something out from inside the pouch. It was an oiled skin.

  He laid it on the table. His brow farrowed in apparent confusion as he studied the shrouded shape.

  With hesitant fingers, he unwrapped the skin, revealing an ornate brass ring around ten inches wide.

  Its rim was intricately graduated with minute, regularly spaced notches, and it had a two-pointed rotating arm in its center, with a couple of smaller, secondary hands underneath.

  Reilly's eyes darted from the object to the big Turk, who was also glancing back and forth from the table to Reilly and Rustem, struggling to keep his curiosity at bay. Reilly's muscles tensed as he saw a potential opportunity, but the big man had the same idea and stepped back, raising his rifle menacingly. Reilly pulled back, noticing that Rustem had sensed his move and now had beads of sweat peppering his scalp.

  At the table, Tess's eyes were riveted on the device. "What is it?"

  Vance was busy examining it carefully. "It's a mariner's astrolabe," he said with a surprised look of recognition. He looked up briefly and saw her confused expression. "It's a navigational instrument, kind of like a primitive sextant," he clarified. "They didn't know about longitudes then, of course, but . . ."

  Known as "the slide rule to the heavens," the astrolabe, the earliest of all scientific instruments, had been around since 150 BC. Originally developed by Greek scholars in Alexandria, its use had eventually spread into Europe with the Muslim conquest of Spain. Widely used by Arab astronomers to help tell the time by measuring the altitude of the sun, astrolabes had evolved into a highly prized navigator's tool by the fifteenth century, with Portuguese sailors using them to locate their latitude. The mariner's astrolabe was crucial in helping Prince Henry the Navigator, the son of King John of Portugal, earn his nickname. For many years, his fleet kept its use a closely guarded secret and was the only fleet able to navigate open waters. It proved an invaluable tool throughout the Portuguese age of discovery, which culminated in Christopher Columbus's setting foot in the New World in 1492.

  It was no coincidence that Prince Henry was the Governor of the Order of Christ from 1420 until his death in 1460. A Portuguese military order, it traced its origins back to none other than the Templars.

  Vance examined it further, turning it over carefully, studying the graduations on its outer ring. "This is remarkable. If this is indeed Templar, it predates the ones we've seen by over a hundred years."

  His voice trailed off. His fingers had found something else in the pouch: a leather wrap.

  Unfolding it, he found a small sheet of parchment.

  Reilly immediately recognized the lettering: it was identical to that on the coded manuscript that 142

  had led them here. Only there seemed to be spaces between the words.

  This letter wasn't in code.

  Tess spotted the similarity too. "It's from Aimard," she exclaimed. But Vance wasn't listening. He wandered off, engrossed in the sheet of parchment in his hands. Tense seconds passed as he read it in silence, away from them. When he finally came back, a look of resignation had clouded his features. "It seems," he said somberly, "that we're not quite there yet."

  Tess fought the nausea rising in her throat. She knew she wouldn't like the answer, but still managed to ask, "What does it say?"

  Chapter 61

  Eastern Mediterranean—May 1291

  "Put that longboat to sea!"

  Despite the raging maelstrom around him, the shipmaster's shout echoed deafeningly inside Aimard's head. As another wall of water battered the galley, his only thoughts were for the reliquary as he rushed toward the s
hip's forecastle.

  I have to save it.

  He flashed back to the first night of their voyage when, after making sure the crew and the rest of his brothers were asleep, he and Hugh had quietly made their way to the forecastle, Aimard clutching the chest entrusted to him by William of Beaujeu. The Templars had enemies everywhere, and, with their defeat in Acre, they were now vulnerable. The chest had to be secured well out of sight, safe from any searches that might befall them. Aimard had shared his concerns with Hugh shortly after leaving Acre; both he and Beaujeu trusted the man implicitly. He hadn't expected the shipmaster to present him with such a perfect solution.

  He remembered how when they had reached the ship's bow, Hugh had raised a flaming torch to expose a deep cavity, slighdy larger uhan the chest, that had been hacked into the back of the bird's head. Hugh climbed up and sat astride the ship's figurehead. Aimard took one last look at the ornate chest before lifting it and handing it to the shipmaster, who carefully placed it into the opening. Close at hand, a brazier burned beneadi a small vat of molten resin, the surface of which rocked slowly in keeping with the increasingly heavy swell on which the Falcon Temple was riding.

  With the chest jammed firmly into the hiding place prepared for it, Aimard carefully used a long-handled metal pot to scoop up resin that he handed up to Hugh, who then poured it into the gaps between the chest and the sides of die cavity. After a moment, a bucket of water was dashed over the hot resin, sending up a sizzling cloud of steam. Hugh nodded to Aimard, who then handed him die final stage of the reliquary's concealment. A piece of thick wood, chiseled to the curve of the figurehead, was laid over the opening. Hugh hammered it into place using wooden pegs, each thicker than a man's thumb, then all this too was sealed with molten resin that was quickly hardened with water. The task completed, Aimard watched for a moment longer until Hugh scrambled from the figurehead to die safety of die deck.

  Looking around, Aimard saw that no one had observed their actions. He thought about Martin of Carmaux, who was resting down below. There was no need to tell his protege what he had done.

  Later, when they reached port, it might become necessary, but until then he would let the whereabouts of the reliquary remain known only to himself and Hugh. As for the contents of the chest—that was something for which die young Martin wasn't yet ready.

  A lightning bolt snapped Aimard back to his present predicament. He pushed his way through the rainsqualls and almost reached the forecastle when another mountainous wave slammed into the Falcon Temple, its brutal force lifting him off his feet and hurling him back against the chart table, impaling him on its corner. Martin was quickly with him and, despite Aimard's garbled pleas, the young knight helped him up and dragged him over into the waiting longboat.

  Aimard fell into the barge and, despite the searing pain in his side, righted himself in time to see Hugh clambering over the edge and joining them. The shipmaster was clutching a bizarre circular device, a navigational instrument that Aimard had seen him use, and was busy locking it into position. The knight pounded his fist angrily at the side of the boat and looked on, helplessly, at the figurehead, which stood proudly resisting the remorseless battering of the angry sea before snapping like a twig and disappearing under the foaming water.

  Chapter 62

  Tess's heart sank as she felt the air leave her lungs. She looked incredulous. "So that's it? After all this, it's at the bottom of the sea?"

  She felt a surge of anger. Not again. Her mind was a confused jumble. "So why all the mystery?"

  she blurted out, grim-faced. "Why the coded letter? Why not just let the Templars in Paris know they'd lost it irretrievably?"

  "To keep up the bluff," Vance ventured. "As long as it was within their reach, the cause was alive. And they were safe."

  "Until their bluff was called . . . ?"

  The professor nodded. "Exactly. Remember, this thing, whatever it is, is of paramount importance to the Templars. You wouldn't expect Aimard to just leave its position unrecorded, regardless of whether or not they could get to it during their lifetimes."

  Tess heaved a ponderous sigh and plunked herself down on one of the wooden chairs by the table.

  She rubbed her eyes as images of an arduous, centuries-old journey and of men being dragged to burning pyres flooded her consciousness. She opened her eyes and they settled on the astrolabe again. All this way, all these risks, she thought . . . for this.

  "They were so close." Vance was in his own world, examining the navigation instrument more closely. "If the Falcon Temple had only held together a few hours longer, they would have made it to shore, hugged the coastline, and used their oars to reach one of the nearby Greek islands, which were in friendly hands. There, they would have been able to repair the mast and sail on, free from the fear of attack, either back to Cyprus or, more likely, to France." He paused, then added, almost to himself, "And we'd probably be living in a very different world . . ."

  Reilly, sitting on a small batch of concrete blocks, couldn't hold back any longer. The frustration was unbearable. He'd felt he stood a good chance of taking out the Turks and Vance if he moved fast, but he didn't want to endanger Tess or Rustem. But there was more to it than just a bruised ego. At the back of his mind, something else was vying for attention. Somewhere, this had evolved from a straightforward manhunt into something far more insidious; he felt personally threatened, but it wasn't physical. He couldn't quite put a finger on it. Deeper, more fundamental questions had been gnawing at him ever since they had decoded the manuscript, and he suddenly felt troubled and strangely vulnerable. "A different world?" he scoffed. "All because of, what, a magic formula to make gold?"

  Vance let out a dismissive chortle. "Please, Agent Reilly. Don't sully the Templars' legacy with petty myths of alchemy. It's a well-documented fact that they gained their wealth from the donations of noblemen across Europe, all of it given with the full blessing of the Vatican. They threw land and money at them, because they were the valiant defenders of the pilgrims . . . but there was more to it than that. You see, their mission was thought to be sacred. Their supporters believed that the Templars were seeking something that would be of immeasurable benefit to mankind." A hint of a smile broke through his stern features. "What they didn't know was that had the Templars been successful, it would have benefited all of mankind, not just the 'chosen ones,' as the Christians of Europe arrogantly deemed themselves."

  "What are you talking about?" Reilly blurted.

  "Among the accusations that led to the Templars' downfall was that they had gotten close to the other inhabitants in the Holy Land—the Muslims, and the Jews. Our dear knights were said to have been seduced by their contacts with them, to have shared mystical insights with them. On that front, the accusations were actually correct, although they were

  quickly swept aside in favor of the more colorful ones I'm sure you're both familiar with.

  The pope and the king—who was, after all, anointed by God, no less, and was desperate to prove he was the most Christian of kings—were understandably keen to smother that idea, the notion of their champions actually fraternizing with the heathens, than to use it as further ammo in bringing down the Templars, however damning it was. But it wasn't just about them all sharing mystical insights.

  In fact, it was far more pragmatic than that. They were planning something incredibly daring, brave, and far-reaching, an act of lunacy perhaps but also one of breathtaking courage and vision." Vance paused, seemingly moved by the very notion, before his eyes settled on Reilly again and tightened.

  "They were," he announced, "plotting to unify the three big religions."

  He looked up at the mountains framing them and waved his hands expansively. "The unification of the three faiths," he laughed. "Just imagine it. Christians, Jews, and Muslims—all joined in one faith. And why not? We all worship the same God, after all. We're all the children of Abraham, aren't we?" he mocked. His expression hardened. "Think about it. Imagine what a diffe
rent world we'd be living in, if that were the case. An infinitely better world . . . think of all the pain and bloodshed we would have avoided over the years—today more than ever. Millions of people, none of whom would have had to die senselessly. No inquisitions, no holocaust, no wars in the Balkans or in the Middle East, no planes plowing into skyscrapers . . ."A fleeting glance of mischief crossed his features. "You'd probably be out of a job, Agent Reilly."

  Reilly's mind was racing, trying to make sense of the revelations. Could it be possible . . . ? He flashed to his conversation with Tess about the nine years the Templars spent in seclusion in the Temple, their rapid rise in power and wealth, and the Latin inscription Tess had told him about.

  Veritas vos liberabit.

  The truth will set you free.

  He looked up at Vance. "You think they were blackmailing the Church. You think the Vatican allowed the Templars to gain power at their expense."

  "They were scared out of their wits. They had no choice."

  "But . . . with what?"

  Vance took a step closer, reached out, and fingered the crucifix that hung in the unzipped V of Reilly's wet suit before suddenly ripping it off his neck. Holding it in his fingers, the chain dangling off the back of his hand, he looked at it with scornful eyes that turned to ice. "With the truth about this fairy tale."

  Chapter 63

  Vance's words hung over them like the blade of a guillotine. His eyes took on a life of their own as they glared at the small, shiny object held in the palm of his hand. Then his expression darkened. "It's amazing, isn't it? Here we are, two thousand years later, with everything we've accomplished, everything we know, and yet this little talisman still rules the way billions of people live . . . and die."

  Sitting in his damp wetsuit, Reilly felt a shiver of unease. He darted a glance at Tess. She was looking at Vance with a rapt expression that Reilly couldn't read.

  "How do you know this?" she asked hesitandy.