The Last Templar

Chapter 10

"You know, I could've done without this right now," Jansson growled as Reilly dropped into a chair across from his boss. Already seated at the table in the assistant director in charge's office at Federal Plaza were Aparo and Amelia Gaines as well as Roger Blackburn, who ran the violent crimes/major offenders task force, and two of Blackburn's assistant special agents in charge.

The complex of four government buildings in lower Manhattan was just a few blocks away from Ground Zero. It housed twenty-five thousand government employees, and was also home to the New York field office of the FBI. Sitting there, Reilly was relieved to be away from the incessant noise in the main work area. In fact, the comparative tranquillity of his boss's private office was just about the only thing about Jansson's job that was even remotely tempting.

As ADIC of the New York field office, Jansson had been shouldering a huge burden over the last few years. All five areas of major concern to the Bureau—drugs and organized crime, violent crime and major offenders, financial crime, foreign counterintelligence, and, the latest black sheep of that odious herd, domestic terrorism—were firing on all cylinders. Jansson certainly seemed built for the task: the man had the imposing bulk of the former football player he was; although beneath his gray hair, his solid face had a detached, distant expression. This didn't throw the people working under him for long, as they quickly learned that one thing, beyond the proverbial death and taxes, was certain: if Jansson was on your side, you could count on him to bulldoze anything that came in your path. If, however, you made the mistake of crossing him, leaving the country was definitely worth considering.

With Jansson being so close to retirement, Reilly could understand why his boss didn't particularly appreciate having his last few months in office complicated by something as high profile as METRAID—the robbery's imaginative new case name. The media had, quite rightly, pounced on the story. This wasn't a routine armed robbery. It was a full-blown raid. Automatic machine-gun fire had raked New York's A-list. The mayor's wife was taken hostage. A man was executed in plain sight; not just shot, but beheaded, and not in a walled courtyard in some Middle Eastern dictatorship, but here, in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue.

On live television.

Reilly looked from Jansson to the flag and the Bureau insignia on the wall behind him, then back again as the ADIC rested his elbows on his desk and sucked in a barrelful of air.

"I'll make sure I tell those bastards how inconsiderate they've been when we book 'em," Reilly offered.

"You do that," Jansson said as he leaned forward, his intense glare sweeping across the faces of his assembled team. "I don't need to tell you the amount of calls I've gotten on this or from how high up they've come. Tell me where we are and where we're going with it."

Reilly glanced at the others and took the lead.

"Preliminary forensics don't point us in any particular direction. Those guys didn't leave much behind besides shell casings and the horses. The ERT guys are pulling their hair out at having so little to go on."

"For once," Aparo chimed in.

"Anyway, the casings tell us they were packing Ml 1/9 Cobrays and Micro Uzis. Rog, you guys are looking into that, right?"

Blackburn cleared his throat. He was a force of nature who had recently pulled off the dismantling of the biggest heroin distribution network in Harlem, resulting in over two hundred arrests. "Garden variety, obviously. We're going through the motions, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Not on something like this. Can't imagine these boys just bought them off the Web."

Jansson nodded. "What about the horses?"

Reilly picked up. "So far, nothing. Gray and chestnut geldings, pretty common. We're cross-checking them against records of missing horses and chasing down the saddles' points of origin, but again . . ."

"No brands or microchips?"

With over fifty thousand horses stolen each year across the country, the use of identification marks on horses was becoming more and more prevalent. The most popular method was freeze branding, which involved the use of a super-cold branding iron to alter the color-pigment-producing cells, resulting in white hair growing at the brand site, instead of colored hair. The other, less common, method involved using a hypodermic needle to inject a tiny microchip with an identification number programmed into it under the skin of the animal.

"No chips," Reilly replied, "but we're having them scanned again. The chips are so tiny that unless you know exactly where they are, it's not an easy find. Added to the fact that they're usually hidden in less obvious areas to make sure they're still there, if and when a stolen horse is recovered. On die plus side, they did have freeze brands, but they've been branded over and are now unreadable. The lab boys think they may be able to get something by separating the different passes to bring up the original mark."

"What about the outfits and the medieval hardware?" Jansson turned to Amelia Gaines, who had been following up that line of investigation.

"That's going to take more time," she said. "The typical sources for that type of kit are small specialists scattered across the country, especially when it comes to broadswords that are the real thing, not just party props. I think we'll get something here."

"So these guys just disappeared into thin air, is that it?" Jansson was clearly losing patience.

"They must have had cars waiting. There are two exits out of the park not far from where they dumped the horses. We're canvassing for witnesses, but so far, nothing," Aparo confirmed. "Four guys, splitting up, walking out of the park, that time of the evening. It's easy to go unnoticed."

Jansson sat back, nodding quietly, his mind collating the disparate chunks of information and ordering his thoughts. "Who do we like for this? Anyone have a favorite yet?"

Reilly glanced around the table before chiming in. "This one's more complicated. The first thing that pops to mind is a shopping list."

Art thefts, especially when the objects were well known, were often either stolen to order or presold to collectors who wanted to own things, even if they could never allow them to be seen by anyone else. But from the moment he had arrived at the museum, Reilly had pushed this angle to the back of his thinking. Shopping lists almost always went to smart thieves. Riding horseback along Fifth Avenue wasn't the action of smart people. Neither was the mayhem and least of all the execution.

"I think we're all on the same page on this," he continued. "The profilers' prelims also concur.

There's more behind this than just grabbing some priceless relics. You want to get the pieces, you choose a quiet, rainy Wednesday morning, get in before the crowds, pull out your Uzis and grab what you want. Lower visibility, lower risk. Instead, these guys chose the busiest, most heavily guarded moment possible to stage their heist. It's almost like they wanted to taunt us, to embarrass us. Sure, they got the booty, but I think they were also out to make a statement." "What kind of statement?" Jansson asked. Reilly shrugged. "We're working on it." The ADIC turned to Blackburn.

"You guys agree?" Blackburn nodded. "Put it this way. Whoever these guys are, they're heroes on the street. They've taken what all these coked-out jackasses fantasize about when they're plugged into their PlayStations and actually gone out and done it. I'm just hoping they don't start a trend here. But, yeah, I think there's more going on with these guys than cold efficiency." Jansson glanced back at Reilly. "So it looks like it's your baby after all." Reilly looked at him and quiedy nodded.

Baby wasn't exactly the first word that sprung into his mind. It was more like a two-thousand-pound gorilla, and, he mused, it was indeed all his.

***

The meeting was interrupted by the arrival of a slim, unassuming man wearing a brown tweed suit over a clerical collar. Jansson got out of his chair and offered his huge paw to shake the man's hand.

"Monsignor, glad you could make it. Please, have a seat. Everybody, this is Monsignor De Angelis.

I promised the archbishop we'd let him sit in and help out in any way."

Jansson proceeded to introduce De Angelis to the assembled agents. It was highly unusual to allow outsiders in on a meeting as sensitive as this, but the apostolic nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States, had made enough well-placed phone calls to allow it.

The man was in his late forties, Reilly guessed. He had neatly trimmed dark hair that receded in perfect arcs at the temples, with flecks of silver around the ears. His steel-rimmed spectacles were slighdy smudged, and his manner was affable and quietly unobtrusive as he acknowledged the agents' names and positions.

"Please, don't let me interrupt," he said as he sat down.

Jansson shook his head slightly, dismissing the thought. "The evidence isn't pointing us anywhere yet, Father. Without wanting to prejudice the matter—and I need to stress that this is purely an airing of ideas and gut feelings at this point—we were kicking around our thoughts about possible candidates for the raid."

"I understand," De Angelis replied.

Jansson turned to Reilly who, although uncomfortable with the idea, continued. He knew he had to bring the monsignor up to speed.

"We were just saying that this is clearly more than just a museum robbery. The way it was carried off, the timing, everything indicated more at play here than a simple armed heist."

De Angelis pursed his lips, absorbing the implications of what was said. "I see."

"The knee-jerk reaction," Reilly continued, "is to point to Muslim fundamentalists, but in this case I'm pretty sure it's way off the mark."

"Why do you think that?" De Angelis asked. "As unfortunate as it may be, they do seem to hate us.

I'm sure you remember the uproar when the museum in Baghdad was looted. The claims of double standards, the blame, the anger . . . That didn't go down too well in the area."

"Believe me, this doesn't fit their M.O.—in fact, it's nowhere close. Their attacks are typically overt; they like to take credit for their actions and they usually favor the kamikaze route. Besides, it would be anathema for any Muslim fundamentalist to wear an outfit with a cross on it." Reilly looked at De Angelis, who seemed to agree. "Of course, we'll look at it. We have to. But I'd put my money on another bunch."

"A bubba job." Jansson was using the politically incorrect shorthand for redneck bombers.

"Much more likely in my opinion," Reilly nodded with a shrug of familiarity. Individual "lone wolf extremists and violent homegrown radicals were as much a part of his daily life as were foreign terrorists.

De Angelis looked lost. "Bubbai'"

"Local terrorists, Father. Groups with ludicrous names like The Order or The Silent Brotherhood, mostly operating under an ideology of hate called the Christian Identity, which, I know, is a pretty strange perversion of the term ..."

The monsignor shifted uncomfortably. "I thought these people are all fanatical Christians."

"They are. But remember this is the Vatican we're talking about— the Catholic Church. And these guys, they're not fans of Rome, Father. Their twisted churches—none of which is even remotely Catholic, by the way—aren't recognized by the Vatican. Your people actually make it pretty clear they don't want to have anything to do with them, and with good reason. What they all have in common, apart from blaming all their troubles on blacks and Jews and homosexuals, is a hatred for organized government, ours in particular, yours by association. They think we're the great Satan—28

which, oddly enough, is the same terminology Khomeini coined for us and which is still echoing around the Muslim world today. Remember, these guys bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Christians. Americans. And there are a lot of them around. We just picked up a guy in Philadelphia who we've been after for a long time, he's part of an Aryan Nations' spin-off group, the Church of the Sons of Yahweh. Now this guy was previously Aryan Nations' minister for Islamic liaison. In that role, he's admitted to trying to form alliances with anti-American Muslim extremists after the 9/11 attacks."

"The enemy of my enemy," De Angelis mused.

"Exactly," Reilly agreed. "These guys have a seriously deranged view of the world, Father. We just need to try and understand what insane mission statement they've now come up with."

There was a brief silence in the room after Reilly finished. Jansson took over. "Okay, so you're going to run with this."

Reilly nodded, unfazed. "Yep."

Jansson turned to Blackburn. "Rog, you're still gonna look at the straight robbery angle?"

"Absolutely. We've got to cover both until something breaks that points us one way or the other."

"Okay, good. Father," he said, now turning to De Angelis, "it would really help us if you could get us a list of what was stolen, as detailed as you can. Color photographs, weight, dimensions, anything you have. We need to get some alerts set up."

"Of course."

"On that point, Father," Reilly interjected, "one of the horsemen seemed only interested in one thing: this," he said, as he pulled out a blowup of a vidcap from the museum's security cameras. It showed the fourth horseman holding the encoder. He handed it to the monsignor. "The exhibition's catalog lists it as a multigeared rotor encoder," he said, then asked, "any idea why one would take that, given all the gold and jewels around?"

De Angelis adjusted his glasses as he studied the photograph, then shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know much about this . . . machine. I can only imagine it to have value as an engineering curiosity. Everybody likes to flaunt their brilliance once in a while, even, it seems, my brothers who selected what should be included in the exhibit."

"Well, perhaps you could check with them. They might have ideas, I don't know, collectors who may have previously approached diem about it."

"I'll look into it."

Jansson looked around. Everyone was set. "Okay, folks," he said, arranging his papers. "Let's put these freaks out of business."

***

As the others walked out of the room, De Angelis edged over to Reilly and shook his hand. "Thank you, Agent Reilly. I feel we are in good hands."

"We'll get them, Father. Something always gives."

The monsignor's eyes were locked on his, studying him. "You can call me Michael."

"I'll stick to 'Father,' if that's all right. Kind of a tough habit to break."

De Angelis looked surprised. "You're Catholic?"

Reilly nodded.

"Practicing?" De Angelis looked down in sudden embarrassment. "Forgive me, I shouldn't be so inquisitive. I suppose some of my habits are equally hard to break."

"No problem. And yes, I'm in the fold."

De Angelis seemed quietly pleased. "You know, in many ways our work is not too dissimilar. We both help people come to terms with their sins."

Reilly smiled. "Maybe, but . . . I'm not sure you get exposed to the same caliber of sinners we get 29

around here."

"Yes, it is worrying . . . things are not well out there." He paused, then looked up at Reilly. "Which makes our work all the more valuable."

The monsignor saw Jansson looking his way; he seemed to be calling him over. "I have full confidence in you, Agent Reilly. I'm sure you'll find them," the man in the collar said before walking off.

Reilly watched him go, then picked up the vidcap from the desk. As he was tucking it back into his file, he glanced at it again. In a corner of the photograph, which was grainy from the low resolution of the museum's surveillance cameras, he could clearly make out a figure crouching low behind a cabinet, peeking out in terror at the horseman and the device. He knew from the videotape that it was the blonde woman he had spotted leaving the museum that night. He thought of the ordeal she'd been through, of how terrified she must have been, and felt drawn to her. He hoped she was all right.

He filed the photograph back in its folder. As he left the room, he couldn't help but think of the word Jansson had used.

Freaks.

The thought was not at all reassuring.

Figuring out the motives when sane people committed crimes was hard enough. Getting inside the minds of the insane was often impossible.