The Last Templar

Chapter 12

"That castle?" Tess was breathless.

"The Chateau de Blanchefort. In the Languedoc. The marking's right there in plain sight, carved into the porch lintel above the castle's entrance. Veritas vos liberabit. The truth will set you free." The phrase seemed to inspire a whole stream of recollections in Edmondson.

Tess frowned. Something was bothering her. "Weren't the Templars dissolved—" then cringing at her unfortunate choice of words, "—disbanded in the thirteen hundreds?"

"1314."

"Well then, it doesn't match. The catalog says the encoder's from the sixteenth century."

Edmondson mulled it over. "Well, maybe they've got their dates wrong. The fourteenth century wasn't exactiy the Vatican's proudest moment. Far from it. In 1305, the pope, Clement V, who was already little more than a puppet of the French king Philip TV, had to suffer the indignity of being forced to leave the Vatican and move the seat of the Holy See to Avignon—where he was kept on an even tighter leash, especially when it came to helping King Philip bring down the Templars. In fact, the Papacy was under complete French control for seventy years— it's referred to as the Babylonian Captivity. It lasted until Pope Gregory XI found the guts to make a break, drawn back to Rome by the mystic Catherine of Siena—but that's another story. What I mean is that if this decoder of yours was from the fourteenth century—"

"—the odds are it didn't even originate in Rome," Tess chimed in. "Especially not if it's Templar."

Edmondson smiled. "Exactly."

Tess hesitated. "Do you think I'm onto something or am I clutching at straws here?"

"No, I think there could definitely be something there. But.. . Templars aren't exactly within your area of expertise, are they?"

"Only by a couple of thousand years, give or take a continent." She grinned. Her expertise was in Assyrian history. The Templars were way off her radar.

"You need to talk to a Templar geek. The ones I know of that are knowledgeable enough to be of use to you are Marty Falkner, William Vance, and Jeb Simmons. Falkner must be eighty-something by now and probably a bit of a handful to deal with. Vance I haven't come across for ages, but I know Simmons is around—"

"Bill Vance?"

"Yes. You know him?"

William Vance had dropped in on one of her father's digs while she was there. It was around ten years ago, she remembered. She'd been working with her father in northeastern Turkey, as close as the military would allow them to get to Mount Ararat. She recalled how, rare for her father, Oliver Chaykin had treated Vance as an equal. She could visualize him clearly. A tall, handsome man, maybe fifteen years her senior.

Vance had been charming and very helpful and encouraging to her. It had been a rotten time for her.

Lousy conditions in the field. Uncomfortably pregnant. And yet, although he barely knew her, Vance had seemed to sense her unhappiness and discomfort and had treated her so kindly that he made her feel good when she felt awful, attractive when she knew she looked terrible. And there had never been the slightest hint that he had an ulterior motive. She felt mildly embarrassed now to think that she had been a little bit disappointed at his obviously platonic attitude toward her, because she had been rather attracted to him. And, toward the end of his brief stay at the camp, she had sensed that maybe, just maybe, he had started to feel the same way about her, though just how attractive a seven-months-pregnant woman could be was, in her mind, highly questionable.

"I met him once, with my dad." She paused. "But I thought his specialty was Phoenician history."

"It is, but you know how it is with the Templars. It's like archaeological porn, it's virtually academic suicide to be interested in them. It's gotten to the point where no one wants it known that they take the subject seriously. Too many crackpots obsessed with all kinds of conspiracy theories about their history. You know what Umberto Eco said, right?"

"No."

" 'A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.' "

"I'm struggling to take that as a compliment here."

"Look, I'm on your side on this. They're eminently worthy of academic research." Edmondson shrugged. "But like I said, I haven't heard from Vance in years. Last I know he was at Columbia, but, if I were you, I'd go for Simmons. I can hook you up with him pretty easily."

"Okay, great." Tess smiled.

A nurse popped her head around the door. "Tests. Five minutes."

"Wonderful," Clive groaned.

"Will you let me know?" Tess asked.

"You bet. And when I'm out of here, how about I buy you dinner and you can tell me how it's panning out?"

She remembered the last time she'd had dinner with Edmondson. In Egypt, after they'd dived together on a Phoenician shipwreck off Alexandria. He'd got drunk on arak, made a halfhearted pass, which she had gently rebuffed, and then he'd fallen asleep in the restaurant.

"Sure," she said, thinking that she had lots of time in which to come up with excuses and then felt guilty at her unkind thought.