Red Templar

15

Wearing white gloves, as required, Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican secretary of state, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, better known as the Holy Inquisition, sat in the private manuscript reading room of the Vatican Library, carefully turning the pages of the original manuscript on vellum of The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya wa’l-Mahasin al-Yusufiyya by Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad.

Seated across from the hawk-faced cardinal, smelling like an ashtray as usual, was Father Thomas Brennan, head of Vatican foreign intelligence, once known as Sodalitium Pianum, its name now changed to that of a much more bureaucratic and thus anonymous group, the Committee for Doctrinal Research and Investigation.

“North, south, east and west,” murmured Cardinal Spada. “Four holy swords, Polaris, Octanis, Aos and Hesperios. Hesperios, the Sword of the West, was given to Adolf Hitler by Mussolini after it had been discovered on an archaeological dig near Naples, and eventually found its way into Colonel John Holliday’s hands seventy-odd years after it was dug up. Aos, Sword of the East, was held by the monk Helder Rodriques, in the Azores. Polaris was hidden in a Bulgarian monastery; in 1944 it was given to Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD, who in turn gave it to Stalin. They have learned nothing from these three swords, and what is worse, we have learned nothing.”

“So the secret must lie with the fourth, Octanis, Sword of the South,” said Brennan. “Sounds like something out of Harry Potter or Lord of the bloody Rings-four swords to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.” The Irish priest snorted. “What a load of bleeding bollocks, boyo,” he said. He scratched at the gray-white stubble on his cheeks with three stubby fingers yellowed with nicotine. “It’s fantasy, Your Eminence. Fecking silly fairy tales from a thousand years ago. A Thousand and One Arabian fecking Nights, yeah?”

Spada frowned, staring across the old scarred table at Brennan, wondering what on earth could have called such a man to God and holy orders, and, even more dumbfounding, what seminary could have educated him, and what bishop could have possibly seen fit to ordain such an uncouth, foulmouthed lout from the wilds of County Offaly.

Brennan caught the look and smiled, showing off his small and nicotine-stained teeth. “I know what I am, and who I am, and where I came from, and where I am now, Your Eminence, believe you me. I know all that and I know what you think of me. But that doesn’t matter, really; does it, Your Eminence? Because when you get right down to it, you and me are the very same. I know all your dirty secrets and you know mine.”

“That wouldn’t be a threat, would it, Father Brennan?” Spada said mildly.

“Certainly not, Your Eminence!” Brennan said in mock horror. “God’s blood, Cardinal! It’s just my way of saying I know who the shark is and who the feckin’ remora is in this relationship, and I’ll happily clean the bits of flesh from between the shark’s teeth, and I’ll be your Gollum searching for your precious Sword of the South for as long as you want me to, because that’s my fecking job, yeah?”

“That may not be necessary, in point of fact,” said Spada. He nodded toward the old vellum manuscript on the table in front of him. “This particular book of Arabian Nights, which is a biography of Saladin by one of his closest advisers, mentions not only the Four Swords of Pelerin; it also mentions a gift of Saladin to the eighth grand master of the Templars, Odo de St. Amand. It was a fifth sword, Al Husam Min Warda, the Sword of the Rose. When Odo and King Baldwin the Leper, king of Jerusalem, were trapped after a battle, Odo gifted it to Reginald of Sidon, the man who rescued them. The Sword of the Rose was never heard of again.”

“More fairy tales,” said Brennan.

The cardinal could see that Brennan desperately wanted a cigarette, so he kept on talking, just to draw things out a little longer. Brennan could do with a dose of history anyway. Spada smiled. “Sidon was a territory in the Holy Land during the Crusades. But what you may not know, Father Brennan, is that it is also the origin for the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the fictitious Prieure de Sion, the Priory of Sion, and half a dozen other misuses, large and small. The misinterpreting of a single word can sometimes be very important.” He gestured at the book on the table in front of him. “For instance, Saladin’s biographer was very careful to use the word ‘husam’ for sword, rather than ‘saif.’Husam is the word used for an ordinary soldier’s weapon, a real sword, while saif could be misinterpreted as a metaphorical sword-Saif al-Haqq, the Sword of Truth. Saif al-Islam, the Sword of Islam. The Christian Sword of the Lord. He was telling us that the fifth sword, the Sword of the Rose, is very real.”

“We’re in Dan Brown territory now-seeing things that aren’t there, weaving conspiracies out of thin air,” scoffed Brennan.

“He’s a storyteller; that’s his business,” answered Spada. “And he’s obviously doing something right, no matter what you think of his abilities.” The cardinal paused. “That’s hardly the point, though, Father Brennan.”

“Well, what the hell is the point?” said the Irish priest and spymaster. He waved a hand at the stacks of ancient manuscripts and bound volumes all around them in the large, rectangular room. “This dry stuff is the past-our problems are in the present and in the future.”

“This dry stuff, as you call it, Father Brennan, is history. Within the walls of the Vatican is every secret ever whispered from lips to ears or written down for the last two thousand years and even farther into the distant past. Almost everyone has heard the aphorism from George Santayana, who said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but very few heed his cautionary warning.” The cardinal paused for a moment, his eyes scanning the stacks. Finally he spoke again.

“Alexander the Great could not conquer Afghanistan, but more than two thousand years later the Russians and the Americans tried and both failed. Napoleon invaded Russia, only to be defeated by winter, but Hitler thought he could do better, for some reason. Mussolini called himself caesar, and instead of being stabbed to death on the Ides of March he was hung upside down on an Esso station sign at the end of April.” Spada shook his head wearily.

“Christ said: ‘He who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.’ But that didn’t stop people from building Pompeii under a volcano, or New Orleans on a swamp, where hurricanes were a yearly event.” The aging cardinal sighed. “History is not just who we were, Father Brennan; history is who we are.”

“That’s all well and good, Your Eminence, but how does history help us with our problem with Kirill the First and all his nefarious pally-wallies in the bloody Kremlin?”

Spada shrugged and closed the book in front of him, then slipped off the white gloves. A young priest came shimmering out of nowhere and gathered up the book on a special neutral-pH plastic tray and scurried off. When he had vanished again the cardinal spoke, his voice angry.

“We barely have a foothold in Russia-less than three-quarters of a million people, only a few thousand more than the Jews. Putin has made the Orthodox metropolitans into political oligarchs, while our churches are stoned and shot at. He’s using the Church as a tool for expansion into foreign territories-our territories. The world has been fooled into thinking that the Russian bear is sleeping peacefully and that today’s problem is the Middle East or China, but it’s not. It was Russia before the Cold War, and it is still Russia. Russia and her schismatic, unholy, image-worshiping Mafia of a religion is still the problem. They have a stranglehold on Europe’s gas and oil, they bring more gold out of the ground than Canada and Africa combined and they still have twenty-two thousand tanks that are designed for the autobahns of Germany and the autoroutes of France and the rest of Europe. The Russian bear has one eye open even when it’s dozing.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” Brennan asked.

“You’ve had a watch on Holliday since Washington; am I right?”

“Yes, not closely, but we’re aware of his movements.”

“And?”

“He was with his niece and her husband in Ethiopia and then vanished into the interior for several weeks. He reappeared in Khartoum nine days ago and flew to Istanbul. He had two others with him, one a Russian named Genrikhovich, a curator of documents at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the other a black man. We don’t know who he is.”

“An African? American?”

“Not unless Africans speak fluent Russian, as this one does.”

“Cuban, perhaps?”

“Could be. Anyway, after they crossed into Bulgaria we seem to have lost track of him.”

“Find Holliday,” said Spada. “We know he is a formidable adversary and he may well be on the trail of Al Husam Min Warda. Find him and we may well find the Sword of the Rose and its secrets.”

“But what secrets are we talking about?”

“The rose is a potent symbol in many religions. To us it is representative of the early Christian martyrs and the Holy Mother. In other religions it is the symbol of silence. In Rome, a rose laid by the doorstep once indicated that there was a secret meeting in progress. There is the symbolism for the five petals-the five wounds of Christ and the five panes in the rose window of a cathedral.” The cardinal paused.

“The fifth sword of the sorrow piercing the Holy Mother’s heart is mentioned in Matthew as the great darkness that fell upon the Earth as Christ was raised upon the cross.” Spada lifted his shoulders wearily. “It could mean a hundred different things or a hundred different places.”

“The book in Arabic gave you no answers?” Brennan asked.

“One,” said the cardinal, his voice thoughtful. “In the Koran there is a verse-‘If you wish to see the glory of God, contemplate a red rose.’” Spada pushed back his chair and stood. “There are also those who say that the rose is the symbol of the prophet’s blood.”

Brennan nodded as though he understood, which Spada knew he did not. The Irishman patted the pockets of his frayed black priest’s jacket, no doubt assuring himself that cigarettes and a lighter were there and ready the moment he stepped outside the library’s ancient doors. He turned away, but the cardinal’s dark, forbidding words stopped him, and Brennan turned to listen.

“Remember this, Thomas Brennan: that while you serve me, remora to the shark, so I in turn serve others much more powerful. More powerful than the Holy Father, more powerful than any president or king.

“Memento puteus, sacerdotis,” Spada said in Latin. “Remember this well, priest.”

More fatuous philosophy, Brennan thought. “I’ll remember, Eminence, if you tell me just what exactly it is that you want me to do.”

“I want you to call the Peseks, for one thing. He’s a Czech who was brought up in the Communist era; he almost certainly speaks Russian. I don’t know about his psychopathic wife and her ghastly hatpin. Whatever the case, Holliday must be dealt with once and for all, and you must bring the Sword of the Rose out of Kirill’s grasp.”

“And Kirill himself?”

“If we are to survive this, Brennan, the Orthodox Church must be shattered to its core, its hegemony over the Russian people destroyed. To kill a serpent you do not cut off the tail, Father Brennan; you lop off the head.”

“‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’” the Irish priest quoted with a smile.

“Why, Thomas,” said the cardinal. “You know your history after all.”