The Last Templar

Chapter 42

Shifting in his chair in the stark, glass-fronted conference room at Federal Plaza, De Angelis studied Tess Chaykin carefully. A very smart lady, he thought. That much was obvious. Of more concern was that it appeared she was also fearless. It was an intriguing yet potentially dangerous combination. But played correctly, it could also prove to be very useful. She seemed to know which questions to ask and what leads to follow.

Glancing at the others around the table, De Angelis listened to her account of her abduction and her subsequent escape. Discreetly, he gently massaged the place where Vance's bullet had grazed his leg. It stung with a burning twinge, especially when he walked, but the painkillers he was taking dampened the sensation to a point where he hoped any hint of a limp wouldn't be noticeable.

Her words made him flash back to the confrontation with Vance in the darkened crypt. He felt an anger swell inside him. He chided himself for the way he had allowed Vance to slip away. A feeble, tortured history professor, at that. Inexcusable. He wouldn't let it happen again. Thinking about it, it occurred to him that, had he succeeded against Vance, he might have had to deal with her too, which would have been messy. He

had nothing against her, at least not yet. Not as long as her motives didn't prove antagonistic to his mission.

He needed to understand her better. Why is she doing this? What is she really after, he wondered.

He would have to look into her background and, more important, her position concerning certain issues of paramount importance.

As she finished her story, De Angelis noted something else too. It was the way that Reilly was looking at her. There was something there, he mused. Interesting. The agent clearly saw her as something more than an aid to the investigation. Not surprising on Reilly's part, but was it reciprocated?

He definitely needed to keep a close eye on her.

***

When Tess was done, Reilly stepped in, calling up an image of the ruins of the church from his laptop. It popped up on the large flat panel facing the conference table. "That's where he was holding you," he told her. "The Church of the Ascension."

Tess looked surprised. "It's burned down."

"Yeah, they're still working on raising the funds to rebuild it."

"The smell, the dampness ... it definitely fits, but . . ." She seemed thrown. "He was living in the cellar of a burned-down church." She paused, trying to correlate the picture in front of her with her recollection of Vance and what he had said. She looked at Reilly. "But he hated the Church."

"This wasn't just any church. It burned down five years ago. Arson investigators didn't find anything suspicious at the time, even though the parish priest died in the blaze."

She thought back, conjuring up the name of the priest Vance had mentioned. "Father McKay?"

"Yes."

Reilly looked at her. It was obvious they'd reached the same conclusion.

"The priest Vance blamed for the death of his wife." Her imagination was galloping ahead now, and the images it was kicking up were horrific ones.

"And the dates match. The fire happened three weeks after he buried her." He turned to Jansson.

"We're going to have to get that case reopened."

Jansson nodded. Reilly turned to Tess, who seemed lost in thought.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," she said, as if emerging from a fog. "It's just difficult thinking about him in such contradictory terms. He's this charming, erudite professor on the one hand, and then the polar opposite, someone who's capable of such violence ..."

Aparo stepped in. "Unfortunately, it's not uncommon. It's like the quiet, friendly neighbor with body parts in his freezer. They're usually much more dangerous than the guys busting up bars every night."

Reilly took over again. "We need to understand what he's after, or what he thinks he's after. Tess, you were the first to see the link between Vance and the Templars, and, if you can take us through what you know so far, maybe we can figure out what his next move's likely to be."

"Where do you want me to start?"

Reilly shrugged. "The beginning?"

"It's a long story."

"Well, keep us up at ten thousand feet. Anything looks interesting, we'll go into it in more detail."

She briefly marshaled her thoughts before she began.

* * *

She told them about the Templars' origins, about the nine knights showing up in Jerusalem; about their nine years in seclusion at the Temple, the theories about them digging something up in that time; about their subsequent, somewhat inexplicable rapid rise to power; about their victories in battle, and their ultimate defeat at Acre. She walked them through the Templars' return to Europe, their power and their arrogance, and how it grated on the king of France and on his submissive pope, and about their ultimate downfall.

"With the support of his lackey, Pope Clement V, the king starts a wave of persecutions, rounds up the Templars, accuses them of heresy. Within a few years, they're wiped out. Mostly meeting extremely painful deaths."

Aparo looked confused. "Hold on, heresy? How could they justify it? I thought these guys were the defenders of the Cross, the pope's chosen ones."

"These were extremely religious times we're talking about," Tess continued. "The devil was very much alive in people's minds at the time." She paused and glanced around the table. The silence egged her on. "Claims were made that when knights were received into the order, they did so by spitting and even urinating on the Cross, and by denying Jesus Christ. And that wasn't all they were accused of. There were also claims that they worshipped a strange demon called Baphomet and that they engaged in sodomy. Basically, the usual claims of occult worship the Vatican wheeled out whenever it wanted to get rid of any competition in the religious sweepstakes."

She flicked a glance at De Angelis. He kept his expression benignly interested, but said nothing.

"During the course of these final years," Tess continued, "they confessed to a lot of these accusations, but their confessions hold as much water as those made during the Spanish Inquisition.

The threat of having a red-hot spike inserted into you is enough to make anyone admit to anything.

Especially when all around you, the threat is being carried out on your friends."

De Angelis took off his glasses and wiped them on the sleeve of his jacket, then replaced them and nodded somberly at Tess. It was very clear where her sympathies lay.

Tess flipped the papers back into the folder. "Hundreds of Knights Templar all across France were rounded up and put through this charade. When there was no retaliation, dozens of bishops and abbots jumped on the bandwagon, and pretty soon the Knights Templar were on the run. Only here's the thing: their wealth seems to have disappeared with them. She told them about the stories of caskets of gold and jewels being hidden in caves or in lakes all across Europe, and about the Templars' ships fleeing from the port of La Rochelle the night before that fateful Friday the thirteenth.

"Is that what this is all about?" Jansson held up his copy of the coded manuscript. "A lost treasure?"

"Nice to see some good old-fashioned greed making a comeback," Aparo snorted. "Makes a change from the misguided wackos we're usually hunting down."

De Angelis leaned forward, clearing his throat and glancing at Jansson. "Their treasure was never recovered, that much is generally accepted."

Jansson tapped his fingers on the papers. "So this manuscript could be some kind of treasure map that Vance is now able to read."

"That doesn't make sense," Tess interjected, suddenly feeling out of place as the faces around the table turned to face her. She turned to Reilly before continuing, propped up by what she read as a supportive look. "If Vance was after money, there was a lot more he could have taken from the Met."

"True," Aparo answered, "but the stuff on show would be virtually impossible to sell. And from what you've told us, the treasure of the Templars has got to be worth a lot more than what was on show, plus it can be sold freely without fear of prosecution since it won't have been stolen, just found."

The agents were nodding in agreement, but De Angelis noted that Tess looked doubtful, although she appeared to be wary of expressing her thoughts. "You don't appear to be too convinced, Miss Chaykin."

She grimaced with unease. "It's clear Vance wanted the encoder to be able to read the manuscript he found."

"The key to the treasure's location," Jansson confirmed, half questioning.

"Probably," she said, turning to him. "But it depends on how you define treasure."

"What else could it be?" De Angelis was hoping to see if she had gained any intimation from Vance.

She shook her head. "I'm not sure."

That was good, if she was telling the truth, De Angelis thought.

He hoped she was.

But then she dashed that hope and continued. "Vance seemed to be after something else than just money. It's like he's possessed, he's a man on a mission." She walked them through the more esoteric theories of the Templar treasure, including the notion of their being part of some cabal guarding Jesus's bloodline. She glanced at De Angelis as she was saying it. He was staring at her blankly, giving nothing away.

Once she'd finished, he waded in. "Putting all the entertaining conjecture aside," he said, as he flashed her a slightly condescending smile, "you're saying he's a man who's out for revenge, a man on a personal crusade of sorts."

"Yes."

"Well," De Angelis continued with the calm, soothing manner of a worldly college professor, "money, especially a lot of it, can be a phenomenal tool. Crusades, whether in the twelfth century or today, cost a lot of money, don't they?" He looked around the table.

Tess didn't answer.

The question hung briefly until Reilly stepped in. "What I don't get is this. We know Vance blames the priest and, by inference, the Church for his wife's death."

"His wife and daughter," Tess corrected him.

"Right. And now he's got hold of this manuscript that he says was, I don't know, scary enough to turn a priest's hair white within minutes of being told about it. And we all seem to agree that this manuscript, which is written in code, is a Templar document, right?"

"What's your point?" Jansson interjected.

"I thought the Templars and the Church were on the same side. I mean, the way I understand it, these guys were the defenders of the Church. They fought bloody wars in the name of the Vatican for over two hundred years. I can imagine their descendants being ticked off at the Church for what happened to them, but the theories you're talking about," he said as he looked at Tess, "are about something they supposedly discovered two hundred years before they were persecuted. Why would they have anything in their possession, from day one, that would worry the Church?"

"It could help explain why they were burned at the stake," Amelia Gaines offered.

"Two hundred years later? And there's another thing," Reilly continued, turning to Tess now.

"These guys went from defending the Cross to desecrating it. Why would they do that? Their initiation ceremonies just don't make sense."

"Well, that's what they were accused of," Tess said. "Doesn't mean they actually did these things. It was a standard accusation at the time. The king used the very same charges a few years earlier to get rid of an earlier pope, Boniface VIII."

"Okay, but it still doesn't make sense," Reilly went on. "Why would they spend all that time fighting for the Church if they were hiding some secret that the Vatican didn't want exposed?"

De Angelis finally rejoined the discussion in his usual dulcet tone. "If I may ... I think that if you're going to entertain such flights of fancy, you might as well consider another possibility that hasn't yet been discussed."

The gathered group turned to face him. He paused, letting the anticipation build before proceeding calmly.

"The whole conjecture about our Lord's bloodline comes up every few years and never fails to generate interest, whether it's in the realm of fiction or in the halls of academia. The Holy Grail, the San Graal, or the Sang Real, call it what you will. But, as Miss Chaykin has very articulately explained," he pointed out, nodding graciously at her, "a lot of what happened to the Templars can simply be explained by that most basic of human traits, namely," turning now to glance at Aparo, "greed. Not only had they gotten too powerful, but without the defense of the Holy Land to keep them occupied, they were now back in Europe—mostly in France—and they were armed, they were powerful, and they were very, very wealthy. The king of France felt threatened and rightfully so.

Being virtually bankrupt and heavily indebted to them, he desperately coveted their wealth. He was a loathsome man by any account; I would be inclined to agree with Miss Chaykin on the whole affair of their arrest. I wouldn't read too much into their accusations. They were undoubtedly innocent, true believers, and Soldiers of Christ to the death. But the accusations gave the king the excuse to get rid of them, and, by doing so, he killed two birds with one stone. He got rid of his rivals and got hold of their treasure. Or at least tried to, given that it was never found."

"This is physical treasure we're talking about now, not some kind of esoteric 'knowledge'?" Jansson asked.

"Well, I like to think so, but then I've never been blessed with a great sense of fantasy, although I do understand the appeal of all the colorful, alternative conspiracy theories. But the physical and the esoteric could be related in another way. You see, a lot of the interest in the Templars stems from the fact that no one can unequivocally explain how they got to be so rich and so powerful in such a short time. I believe it's simply the result of the abundance of donations they received once their mission was widely publicized. But then, who knows? Perhaps they did find some buried secret that made them incredibly wealthy in record time. But what was it? Was it related to the mythical descendants of Christ, proof that our Lord fathered a child or two a thousand years earlier . . ."he scoffed lightly, "or was it something much less controversial, but potentially far more lucrative?"

He waited, making sure they were all still following his line of thought.

"I'm talking about the secrets of alchemy, about the formula to turn ordinary metals," he calmly announced, "into gold."