The Last Templar

Chapter 31

A s he stared at the vidcap print before him in the privacy of his room, De Angelis fingered the golden, diamond- and ruby-encrusted statuette of a rearing horse.

Privately, he thought the antique was quite vulgar. He knew it was a gift from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Holy Father on the occasion of a papal audience in the late nineteenth century, and he also knew that it was priceless. Vulgar and ugly, but nevertheless priceless.

He studied the image more closely. It was the one Reilly had given him at their first meeting, when the agent had inquired about the importance of the multigeared encoder. The sight was still one that made his heart race. Even this grainy print managed to reawaken in him the sheer exhilaration he felt when he first witnessed the moment on the surveillance footage he'd been shown at Federal Plaza.

Knights* in shining armor pillaging a Manhattan museum in the twenty-first century.

Such audacity, he thought. Truly remarkable.

The picture showed die rider, who De Angelis now knew to be the fourth horseman, holding up tiie encoder. He stared at die man's helmet, trying to burrow through the ink and the paper and into die horseman's

thoughts. The image was a three-quarter view, taken from the rear left side. Smashed display cabinets lay all around die knight. And in the top left corner on the shot, peeking out from behind a cabinet, was a woman's face.

A female archaeologist who overheard the fourth horseman say something in Latin, De Angelis thought. She had to be close enough to hear him, and, staring at the picture, he knew it had to be her.

He focused on her face: taut witii fear, frozen. Absolutely terrified.

It had to be her.

He set the picture and the jeweled horse down on his bed next to the pendant, which he now picked up. It was made of rubies and set in silver, a gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad. Worth a prince's ransom, which is what it once had been. As he twirled it, he scowled at the dead end he had reached.

His quarry had covered his tracks well; he would have expected no less from a man of such daring.

The gang leader's minions, the desperate lowlifes that De Angelis had found, questioned, and dispatched with such ease, had proven useless.

The man himself still eluded him.

He needed a fresh tack. A divine intervention of sorts.

And now this. An annoyance.

A distraction.

He looked at her face again. He picked up his cell phone and hit a speed-dial key. Two short rings later, a gravelly, hoarse voice answered.

"Who's this?"

"Just how many people have you given this number to, exactly?" The monsignor fired back tersely.

The man exhaled audibly. "Good to hear from you, sir."

De Angelis knew the man would now be putting out a cigarette butt, while instinctively reaching for a fresh replacement. He had always found die habit repugnant, but the man's other talents more than made up for it.

"I need your help on something." As he said it, he frowned. He had hoped he wouldn't need to involve anyone else. He stared at Tess's face again. "I need you to access the FBI's database on METRAID," then added, "discreetly."

The man's answer came quickly.

"Not a problem. It's one of the perks of die war on terror. We're all in a caring, sharing mode. Just tell me what you need."