The Last Templar

Chapter 45

T he evening traffic was still heavy as Reilly's Pontiac made its way south on the Van Wyck Expressway. Gleaming wide-bodied jets screamed overhead in a seemingly endless procession of landing runs. The airport was now less than a mile away.

Aparo, riding shotgun, rubbed his eyes as he glanced out, the crisp spring air rushing at him through the car's open window. "What was that name again?"

Reilly was busy scanning the barrage of signs bearing down on them from every possible angle. His eyes finally settled on the one he was looking for. He pointed at it.

"That's it."

His partner saw it too. The green sign to their right would lead the way to Airport Cargo Building 7.

Underneath the main signage, and lost among the smaller logos of airlines, was the one Reilly was particularly interested in.

Alitalia Cargo Services.

* * *

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress had enacted the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Under this act, the responsibility for inspecting persons and property carried by airlines was transferred to a newly formed agency, the Transportation Security Administration.

Anyone, and anything, coming into the United States would now be undergoing far more rigorous checks. Computerized tomography machines that detected explosive materials in passenger and checked luggage were deployed across the country. Travelers were even briefly X-rayed themselves, until the practice was suspended following an uproar caused not by fears of unhealthy radiation exposure, but rather by the simple fact that nothing, however private, escaped the Rapiscan machines' scanners: they showed everything.

An area of particular concern to the TSA was that of global cargo; it was potentially an even bigger threat to domestic security, albeit a less publicized one. Tens of thousands of containers, pallets, and crates poured into the United States every day, coming from all corners of the world. And thus, in this new age of heightened security measures, the new scanning directives weren't limited to the luggage of travelers. They would also cover cargo shipments entering the country by air, land, or sea with large-scale cargo X-raying systems now deployed at virtually all ports of entry.

And at this very moment, as he sat down in the operations room of the Italian national airline's cargo terminal at JFK, Reilly was feeling particularly grateful for it.

A data technician was efficiently calling up the images on his monitor. "Better make yourselves comfortable, guys. It's a pretty big shipment."

Reilly settled into the worn chair. "The box we're interested in should be pretty distinctive. You can just zoom through them, I'll let you know when we get a hit."

"You got it." The man nodded as he started scrolling through his databank.

Images unfurled on his screen, side- and top-view X-rays of crates of various sizes. In them, one could clearly make out the skeletal images of the objects the curators at the Vatican had shipped over for the Met exhibit. Reilly, still annoyed with himself at not having thought of this before, fixed his concentration on the monitor, as did Aparo. His heartbeat raced as blue-and-gray ghosts of ornate frames, crucifixes, and statuettes cascaded before them. The resolution was surprisingly good, much better than he'd anticipated: he could even make out small details like encrusted jewels or moldings.

And then, out of the deluge of dizzying images, it appeared.

"Hold it." A rush of excitement surged through Reilly.

There, in high-resolution clarity, stripped of its cloaking carcass and displaying its glorious innards, was the encoder.