The Templar Cross

24

Father Thomas called the following morning to arrange another meeting.

"We were on your turf before," said Holliday. "How about somewhere else this time?"

"Where do you suggest?" Father Thomas asked. Holliday could hear the muffled sound of traffic in the background. Thomas was on a cell phone, probably sitting in a car.

"You could come here," said Holliday.

"I think not, Colonel," the priest replied with a laugh.

"You're welcome to bring along your techno-geek with the attache case. We've got nothing to hide," said Holliday.

"As the Beatles were so fond of saying, Colonel Holliday, everyone's got something to hide except me and my monkey."

"All right then," said Holliday. "How about a restaurant? They've got a nice roof garden here."

"Again too close for comfort," said the priest. "And too well known. Somewhere a little more discreet, perhaps."

"There's a pizzeria around the corner," suggested Holliday. "On the Via Candia. It's called Piacere Molise, a little family place."

"You know Rome, Colonel?" For the first time the priest seemed surprised.

"We ate dinner there last night," explained Holliday. "The concierge at the hotel suggested it."

There was a moment's silence. Holliday could hear the up-and-down wail of a siren coming over the phone. He could also hear it coming through the open balcony doors. The priest was close by. They were being watched.

"All right," said Father Thomas. "When?"

"Early," replied Holliday. "It gets crowded quickly. Five okay?"

"Of course," answered Father Thomas.

"How many do I make reservations for?"

"I shall be bringing a colleague," said Father Thomas.

"The techno-geek?" Holliday smiled.

"Yes, but only briefly. The other man will be a principal in our discussions."

"You mind if I bring a friend along?" Holliday said.

"The more the merrier," answered the priest. There was a smile in his voice again. "It's always wise to know one's enemies."

Via Candia was a nondescript street of old apartment blocks with shops and restaurants carved out of their ground floors over the years. Piacere Molise was located in a salmon-colored building at number 60, across from a knockoff perfume store and a knockoff sportswear store. It was late summer, and by five o'clock, with the exception of the restaurants and coffee shops, most of the stores had drawn their gates and rolling shutters. The cars parked at the curb were uniformly small and relatively cheap; Via Candia appeared to cater to the middle class; the men and women on the streets were all dressed like secretaries and clerks. There didn't seem to be many children.

Once upon a time Piacere Molise had been the building concierge's apartment, located beside an old-fashioned porte-cochere that ran through to a courtyard in the back. Now it was three narrow rooms and a kitchen painted a friendly yellow with perhaps a dozen tables inside and four more on the sidewalk outside. The decor was made up of framed prints of famous impressionist painters scattered everywhere interspersed with decorative plates. The rooms were lit by a few modern chandeliers. The tablecloths were yellow and the place mats matched the rust and yellow marble checkerboard tiles on the floor. As the name suggested the restaurant was clearly informal, piacere-come as you are.

Not surprisingly Father Thomas was already there when Holliday and Rafi stepped into the little pizzeria. He was sitting at one of the double tables in the middle room along with two others. One was the bald man they'd spotted getting out of the helicopter on Santo Stefano; the other was the young priest with the attache case they'd seen at the Egyptian Museum the day before.

"I don't know if I can sit at the same table with that bastard," said Rafi softly.

"Baldy?" Holliday said. "Imagine him in his underwear."

"Imagine him dead," grunted Rafi.

As they approached the table the young man with the attache case stood up. He had a small wandlike device in his hand and a single-button headphone in his ear. He waved the wand in their direction, passing it up and down their bodies, concentrating on the sound from his earpiece. After a few moments he shook his head, opened his attache case and tossed the wand inside.

"Qualcosa?" Father Thomas demanded.

"Nulla," said the young man, shaking his head again. "Sono polito." They're clean.

"Andar via," ordered Father Thomas, making a little brushing movement with his hands. The young man nodded and snapped the attache case closed.

"Come desideri, Padre."

The young man picked up his attache case and left the restaurant. Holliday and Rafi sat down across from the priest and his companion.

Holliday got his first good look at the bald man from the helicopter. Big, muscular even in a plain dark suit. Big-knuckled hands like hammers. He wasn't bald at all; his head was shaved clean without a hint of stubble. The face was hard and Slavic, maybe Russian, the cheekbones high, the cheeks themselves slightly cavernous and the chin sharp. The eyes were a pale cornflower blue, the pupil on the right eye with a cast that made it look as though a black tear was staining the glittering iris. The man was staring at them like a butcher-bird deciding which spiky thorn it would impale them on. The stare of a true believer; the stare of a wild animal tugging at its leash. Holliday knew exactly why the priest had brought him to the meeting: he was a hound being given the scent of its prey.

Father Thomas smiled across the table at Holliday.

"I gather that Dr. Wanounou and Father Damaso have already met," said the priest.

The bald man looked at Rafi with an expressionless stare. Then his lips twitched, briefly revealing a double row of surprisingly white teeth. Rafi looked back.

"We were never formally introduced," said Rafi.

"Father Damaso was very pleased to discover that you had come to Rome. He tells me the two of you have some unfinished business."

"We're not here for a pissing contest," said Holliday.

"I'm not entirely sure what we're here for," said the priest.

A young waiter in a long apron appeared with a dish of olives and a basket of bread. He put them both down on the table, then brought a large pepper grinder out of one of the apron's deep pockets and a scratch pad from another. He put the pepper grinder on the table, then asked for their order in very broken English. The priest immediately questioned the waiter in Italian and the young man responded with a list of things that sounded as though they could be dinner entrees.

The priest turned back to Holliday.

"Molise is a very poor region of Italy but it is known for a dish that is a specialty here: zuppa di pesce alla Termolese, a sort of Italian bouillabaisse. They also carry a rather good vintage of a local white wine, Falanghina Del Molise 2005, very nice with the fish."

"We didn't come here to eat," said Holliday.

"An Italian never needs an excuse to eat," answered the priest. "There is no reason why we cannot share a meal." His smile flashed momentarily. "On me, of course," he said. Father Thomas turned away briefly and spoke to the waiter. The young man scribbled on his notepad, repeated the order back to the priest and then scurried away, heading toward the rear of the restaurant.

"Can we get down to business now?" Holliday asked, the irritation clear in his voice.

"I wasn't aware that we had any business," said Father Thomas. He spent a few seconds preparing himself a little side plate of olive oil and balsamic vinegar from the little vinaigrette decanters on the table, then tore a piece of bread in half and wiped it through the mixture. He popped the chunk of bread into his mouth and followed it up with an olive.

"You have my cousin Peggy. We want her back."

"Ah, yes," the priest said and nodded. "Dr. Wanounou's paramour." He smiled at Rafi, then dipped another piece of bread into the oil-and-vinegar mixture.

"We're offering the gold for her return," said Holliday. "You get Rauff's bullion in exchange."

"How do I know you have the gold?" Father Thomas asked.

"I never said we had it. I said we knew where it was."

"How do you know we haven't found it already?"

"It wasn't in the camp. If you'd managed to take Alhazred alive after your little raid he would have told you by now and you wouldn't be sitting here bargaining with us."

"The Church has plenty of money, Colonel Holliday. Why should we need your so-called bullion?"

"Number one, I'm not so sure that the Church has as much money as you'd have us think; you're much the same as General Motors, Ford and Chrysler; you're trying to sell an inferior product and people just aren't buying anymore. Number two, even if the Church has money, I'm willing to bet your budget isn't what it once was. And number three, if any word of the Church's involvement with Rauff and that gold became public it would put the last nail in the coffin of your continued existence. You have to get that gold back before it starts leaking onto the open market. That's why you had Pesek and Kay kill Valador in Cannes; he was skimming. You need to get those bars re-smelted and erase any connection between Rauff and the Church. A German Pope who was in the Hitler Youth is bad enough; the Church in bed with the man who invented the modern gas chamber would be a disaster."

"As you suggest, Colonel Holliday, gold is probably the easiest currency to launder. Yesterday's gold incisor is tomorrow's wedding band. But the question is irrelevant; Standartenfuhrer Rauff made an agreement with us in 1944. Through our organization he received aid and documentation allowing for his escape from prosecution. In return he promised us his hoard of Tunisian gold. We kept our part of the bargain and even posthumously he will keep his. The gold is ours by right."

"Release Peggy and you'll have it," said Holliday.

There was a pause in the conversation as the waiter reappeared with the wine, followed by a man in a chef's high hat carrying two large flattish bowls piled high with clams, mussels and seafood in an aromatic broth. The waiter set down the wine, the man in the chef's hat put down the bowls and a few seconds later a plump, pleasant-looking woman in a flowered dress appeared carrying two more bowls of the zuppa di pesce and then withdrew with a beaming Buon appetito!

The priest lifted his fork, picked out a mussel on top of the pile in his bowl and surgically removed the meat from its dark shell. He savored the morsel, then washed it down with a little wine. Nobody else at the table had touched either food or drink. Father Thomas gave a little sigh and put down his glass.

"I think perhaps you should disabuse yourself of any thought that our meeting is in any way a negotiation, Colonel Holliday. You are out-gunned, outnumbered and outmaneuvered. You have nothing to bargain with. Should you decide not to tell me about the whereabouts of the gold I shall have Father Damaso here defile your cousin in ways you could not imagine in a thousand years. Should you continue to guard the secret of the bullion's whereabouts Father Damaso will execute Miss Blackstock, slowly and painfully. And he will enjoy himself doing it, Colonel.

"Father Damaso, I might add, has been trained by some of Augusto Pinochet of Chile's most experienced torturers, and they of course were trained by the man of the hour, Standartenfuhrer Rauff. From what Father Damaso leads me to understand, Herr Rauff's methods would even have impressed the tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition."

Father Thomas picked up another clam between his fingers, sucking the muscle wetly out of the shell and into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

"So there you have it, Colonel Holliday. Not a negotiation, an ultimatum." The priest took a small square card and a Mont Blanc fountain pen from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He unscrewed the cap of the pen and wrote briefly on the card, then handed the little square of cardboard across the table to Holliday. It was a phone number.

"Call me," said Father Thomas. "You have twenty-four hours to make up your mind." He glanced meaningfully toward the bald man, who still had neither moved nor said a word. "After that things will no longer be within my control." The priest smiled pleasantly. "Now eat up before your food gets cold."

"I think I'm going to puke," said Rafi. He pushed back his chair, the legs scraping noisily on the tile floor. He stood, glared down at the bald priest Damaso, who had begun to eat his zuppe. "I'll kill you if you so much as touch her."

Damaso looked up from his bowl, a little juice dripping down to his sharp chin. His lips barely moved when he spoke.

"You could try, Jew boy," he said quietly.

Rafi stormed out of the restaurant.

"Your friend appears to have lost his appetite," said Father Thomas. "Perhaps your Egyptian colleague watching us from across the street would like to finish Dr. Wanounou's meal; he must be hungry by now." He pointed his fork toward Rafi's place at the table and the steaming bowl of aromatic seafood soup. "It would be a shame to see it go to waste."

Holliday stood up.

"I'm not hungry, either," he said.

"As you wish, Colonel Holliday, but you're missing a culinary treat." He took a sip of wine. "Twenty-four hours."

Holliday followed Rafi out of Piacere Molise.

The priest watched him go, then turned his attention back to the food before him.

Half an hour later Rafi sat fuming in one of the armchairs in the sitting room of their suite at the Alimandi Hotel. On the other side of the small elegant room Holliday sat waiting by the telephone. Through the open doors leading out to the balcony came the buzzing sound of the waspish little Vespa scooters whizzing through the traffic on the Viale Vaticano.

"Did it work?" Rafi said.

"Hold your horses," said Holliday. "We'll know in a few minutes."

"We should have heard by now. And why hasn't Tidyman called?"

"Relax," said Holliday.

"How am I supposed to relax? That bastard was talking about torturing Peggy," said Rafi hotly. "If this plan of yours doesn't work, we're screwed."

The phone rang. Rafi jumped. Holliday picked up the receiver and listened.

"Thank you," said Holliday. "Send him up." He hung up the phone and turned back to Rafi. "He's here."

"It's about time."

Holliday rose and went to the door of the suite. A few moments later there was a knock. Holliday opened the door. It was the waiter from Piacere Molise, minus the long apron and carrying a paper bag in his hand. He was grinning broadly. Holliday led the young man into the room.

"You two haven't been introduced. Rafi, this is an old student of mine, Lieutenant Vince Caruso, class of '06. I gave him a C minus, if I remember correctly. He works for the military attache here." Caruso sat down on the couch and put the paper bag on the coffee table.

"Pleased to meet you," said Rafi.

The young lieutenant opened up the bag and took out the tall pepper grinder he'd left on their table in the restaurant. He unscrewed the bottom of the grinder and eased out a flat FM microphone with a dangling wire. He reached into the bag and put something that looked like a small cassette player on the table alongside the little microphone.

"My boss would have a fit if he knew I'd borrowed his stuff," said Caruso.

"How'd we do?" Holliday said.

"They kept talking for half an hour after you guys left," said Caruso happily. "All sorts of good stuff. Kind of thing that the media eats up. These are serious bad guys." The young man shook his head. "Talk about wolves in sheep's clothing."

"The most dangerous kind," said Rafi.

"Any trouble with the owners of the restaurant?" Holliday asked.

"Are you kidding?" Caruso laughed. "He calls those people corvos nero, black crows. He was only too happy to help his amici Americano."

"Then we've got them," said Holliday, clapping his hands together with satisfaction.

"But we still don't have Peggy," said Rafi.

The phone rang on the other side of the room. Holliday got up and answered it. He listened for a few moments, then hung up.

"That was Emil," said Holliday, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes sparkling happily. "The GPS tracker you gave us worked perfectly, Vince. We nailed it."

"Where is she?" Rafi said.

"A place called Lido del Faro-Lighthouse Beach, less than twenty miles from here at the mouth of the River Tiber. They've got her stashed in some kind of old fishing shack there."