The Last Templar

Chapter 19

The cafe on the ground level of the hospital was almost empty. After they had brought their coffees to a table, Tess was surprised when the first thing Reilly did was ask if it was her daughter who'd been with her at the museum.

"Yes, she was," she said, smiling. "Her name's Kim."

"She looks like you."

She was immediately disappointed. Even though she'd only glimpsed him fleetingly at the Met, and only actually met him minutes earlier, something about him felt comfortable. God, I've really got to get my male sensors recalibrated. She cringed as she waited for the inevitable guy-on-the-make's traditional compliment. You don't look old enough; I thought you were sisters; whatever. But he surprised her again when he asked, "Where was she when it all happened?"

"Kim? My mom had taken her to the ladies' room. While they were in there, she heard the uproar and decided to stay put."

"So they missed the bad part."

Tess nodded, curious as to his interest. "Neither of them saw anything."

"What about afterward?"

"I went to find them and made sure we stayed away until the ambulances were gone," she told him, still unsure about where he was going with this.

"So she didn't see any of the wounded or . . ."

"No, just the damage in the Great Hall."

He nodded. "Good. But she obviously knows what happened."

"She's nine, Agent Reilly. She's everyone's new best friend at school right now; they all want to know what it was like to be there."

"I can imagine. Still, you should really keep an eye on her. Even without actually witnessing it, something like this can have aftereffects, especially on someone that young. Could be just nightmares, could be more. Just keep an eye out, that's all. You never know."

Tess was totally thrown by his interest in Kim. She dazedly nodded, "Sure."

Reilly sat back. "How about you? You were right in the thick of it."

Tess was intrigued. "How'd you know that?"

"Security cameras. I saw you on the tape." He wasn't sure about whether or not that sounded mildly perverted. He hoped it didn't, but he couldn't tell from her look. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Tess flashed back to the horsemen trashing the museum and firing their guns and to the fourth horseman grabbing the encoder inches away from her, his horse literally breathing down her neck. It wasn't a sight she'd ever forget, nor would the fear she felt soon dissipate. She tried not to show it. "It was pretty intense, but . . . somehow it was so surreal that, I don't know, maybe I've tucked it away under the fiction section of my memory bank."

"Just as well." He hesitated. "I'm sorry to be nosy, it's just that I've been around circumstances like this and it's not always easy to deal with."

She looked at him, brightening. "I understand. And I do appreciate your concern," she said, mildly curious to note that while she was usually defensive when anyone talked to her about Kim, she did not take exception to this man. His concern appeared to be genuine.

"So," he said. "What's all this stuff about Templars?"

She edged closer, surprised. "You guys aren't looking into any kind of Templar angle?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

Tess felt deflated. "See, I knew it was nothing."

"Just tell me what you're thinking."

"What do you know about them?"

"Not much," he confessed.

"Well, the good news is you're not a lunatic." She smiled before quickly regretting her comment, which he didn't get, and moving on. "Okay. Let's see ... 1118. The First Crusade is over, and the Holy Land is back in Christian hands. Baldwin II is the King of Jerusalem, people across Europe are jubilant, and pilgrims are flocking to see what all the fuss was about. What the pilgrims often didn't know was that they were venturing into dangerous territory. Once they'd 'liberated' the Holy Land, the crusading knights considered their vows fulfilled and went back to their homes in Europe, taking their plundered riches with them and leaving the area precariously surrounded by hostile Islamic states. The Turks and the Muslims who had lost much of their lands to the Christian armies weren't about to forgive and forget, and a lot of the pilgrims heading there never made it to Jerusalem. They were attacked and robbed and often killed. Arab bandits were a constant threat to travelers, which kind of defeated the purpose of the Crusade in the first place."

Tess told Reilly how in a single incident that year, marauding Saracens ambushed and killed over three hundred pilgrims on the dangerous roads between the port city of Jaffa, where they landed on the coast of Palestine, and the holy city of Jerusalem. Bands of fighters soon became a fixture outside the walls of the city itself. And that's when the Templars first made their appearance. Nine pious knights led by Hughes de Payens arrived at Baldwin's palace in Jerusalem and offered their humble services to the king. They announced that they had taken the three solemn vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience but had added a fourth: a perpetual vow to protect the pilgrims on their journey from the coast to the city. Given the situation, the knights' arrival was very timely. The crusading state was in desperate need of trained fighters.

King Baldwin was very impressed by the religious knights' dedication and gave them quarters in the eastern part of his palace, which stood on the site once occupied by King Solomon's Temple. They became known as The Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon— or, more simply, the Knights Templar.

Tess leaned in. "The religious significance of the site Baldwin gave the burgeoning order is key,"

she explained. Solomon had built the first tempie in 950 BC. His father David had started the work following God's command, building a temple to house the Ark of the Covenant, a portable shrine that contained the tablets of stone that were engraved with the commandments God gave Moses.

The glorious reign of Solomon came to a close with his death, when eastern nations moved in and conquered the Jewish lands. The Temple itself was destroyed in 586 BC by the invading Chaldeans, who proceeded to take the Jews back to Babylon as slaves. More than five hundred years later, the Temple was rebuilt by Herod in an attempt to ingratiate himself with his Jewish subjects and demonstrate to them that their king, despite his Arab origins, was a devout follower of his adopted religion. It would be his crowning achievement: prominently dominating the Kidron Valley, the new Temple was a magnificent and elaborate building of a far grander design than its predecessor.

Its inner sanctum, reached by two huge golden doors, housed the Holy of Holies, which was accessible only to the Jewish High Priest.

After Herod's death, the Jewish rebelliousness was rekindled, and by 66 AD, the insurgents were back in control of Palestine. The Roman emperor Vespasian dispatched his son Titus to put down the rebellion. After fierce fighting for over six months, Jerusalem finally fell to the Roman legions in 70 AD. Titus commanded that the city, whose population was by now totally annihilated, be razed. And so, "the most wonderful edifice ever seen or heard of," as it was described at the time by the historian Josephus, was lost again.

A second Jewish rebellion, less than a hundred years later, was also crushed by the Romans. This time, all Jews were banned from Jerusalem and sanctuaries to Zeus and to the Roman god-emperor Hadrian were built on the Temple Mount. Six hundred years later, the site would see the building of another holy shrine: with the rise of Islam and the conquering of Jerusalem by the Arabs, the location of the holiest site of Judaism was to be redefined as the place from which the prophet Mohammed's horse ascended to heaven. And so in 691 AD, the Dome of the Rock was built on the site by the Caliph Abd El-Malik. It has remained a shrine to Islam ever since, except for the period during which the Crusaders controlled the Holy Land when the Dome of the Rock was converted into a Christian church called the Templum Domini, the "Temple of our Lord," and when the Al-Aqsa mosque, built in the same compound, was turned into the headquarters of the burgeoning Knights Templar.

The heroic idea of nine brave knights valiantly defending the vulnerable pilgrims quickly captured people's imaginations across Europe. Many soon regarded the Templars with romantic reverence and offered themselves as new recruits. Nobles across Europe also paid generously to support them, showering them with gifts of money and land. This was all helped greatly by the fact that they were given papal blessings, a rare occurrence that meant a great deal at a time when all kings and all nations looked to the Papacy as the ultimate authority in Christendom. And so the Order grew, slowly at first, then much more rapidly. They were highly trained as fighters, and, as their successes in the field mounted, their activities widened. From their original mission of protecting the pilgrims, they gradually came to be regarded as the military defenders of the Holy Land.

In less than a hundred years, the Templars became one of the wealthiest and most influential bodies in Europe, second only to the Papacy itself, owning huge tracts of land in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Austria. And with such an extensive network of territories and castles, they soon established themselves as the world's first international bankers, arranging credit facilities for bankrupt royals across Europe, safeguarding the pilgrims' funds, and effectively inventing the concept of the traveler's check. Money in those days was just gold or silver, which was simply worth what it weighed. Instead of taking it with them and risking getting robbed, the pilgrims could deposit their money at a Templar house or castle anywhere in Europe, where they would be given a coded note for it. Once they reached their destination, they would go to the local Templar house, present the note, which would be decoded using their tightly guarded encryption practices, and draw that amount of money there.

***

Tess looked at Reilly to make sure he was still with her. "What started off as a small team of nine well-intentioned noblemen dedicated to defending the Holy Land from the Saracens quickly became the most powerful and most secretive organization of its time, rivaling the Vatican in terms of wealth and influence."

"Then it all went wrong for them, didn't it?" Reilly asked.

"Yes. In a big way. The Muslim armies finally recaptured the Holy Land in the thirteenth century and sent the Crusaders packing, this time for good. There were no further Crusades. The Templars were the last to leave, after their defeat at Acre in 1291. When they got back to Europe, their whole raison d'etre was gone. There were no pilgrims to escort, no Holy Land to defend. They had no home, no enemy, and no cause. And they didn't have too many friends either. All that power and wealth had gone to their heads, the poor soldiers of Christ weren't so poor anymore and had grown arrogant and greedy. And many royals, the king of France in particular, owed them a lot of money."

"And they came crashing down to earth."

"Crashed and burned," Tess nodded. "Literally." Tess took a sip from her coffee and told Reilly how a whisper campaign had started about the Templars, no doubt facilitated by the ritualistic secrecy with which the Order had conducted its initiation rites over the years. Soon, a shocking and outrageous litany of heresy charges was leveled at them.

"What happened then?"

"Friday the thirteenth," Tess answered wryly. "The original version."