Part Three
CHAPTER ONE
1
London
The next day
The ping of the seat belt and "no smoking" lights woke Lang from a deep sleep. He rubbed stinging eyes and leaned across Gurt to peer out the window. A sea of dirty clouds was rising to meet the MD 880. Across the narrow aisle, a young couple of Eastern European origin were unsuccessful in comforting a howling infant. The British Airways flight attendants were scurrying to collect the last plastic drinking cups before trays were ordered back into their upright positions.
He let the seat up and ran a finger across his upper lip, making sure the moustache was still glued into place. Graying hair and thick glasses aged him a bit, Lang hoped. Bits of foam rubber stuffed into cheeks made his face match the jowly photograph of Heinrich Schneller on the German passport in his pocket.
Gurt and Lang had the picture taken at a photographer's shop a block from the embassy. The glue on it had hardly been dry when she applied a copy of the official stamp to the blank passport.
Facial hair was a new sensation for him. He had always believed it silly to cultivate on an upper lip what grew wild elsewhere.
The ticket clerk at Milan's Malpensa Airport had given their documents a cursory glance before wishing them a cheerful arrivederci. The only attention from the gray uniformed Policia with their gloss polished gun belts and boots had been appreciative stares at Gurt.
A blunt-cut dark wig and a slight stoop to minimize her height were the only disguise to which she would agree. There was, after all, no reason to think They had ever seen her face. Still, she was worth the unabashed gaping for which Italian men are notorious.
Herr Schneller and his wife, the much younger-looking Freda, had departed Milan on a flight to the relatively new City Airport in Docklands just outside London. Had anyone checked with the company whose name was on the credit card paying for the tickets, Frau Schneller was accompanying her husband on a trip to price carpet-grade wool in Milan and then London, from where they would proceed to Manchester.
Lang had no idea if the address for Herr Schneller's employer even existed, but he knew from experience the Hamburg telephone number would be answered by someone speaking credible Hochdeutsch and probably sitting in a room in Virginia. He also knew the passports and drivers' licenses would pass scrutiny. Anyone attempting to verify the Visa or American Express cards would find valid accounts, although he had had to promise not to use them for anything other than identification. Gurt had called in a number of favors to get the paperwork and plastic. Making charges to the account would overstep whatever agreements she had made. It was comforting to have the chicanery of professionals on his side.
As the aircraft trembled, Lang cinched himself tighter into the seat, a Pavlovian response to the airlines' implicit assurances that no problem could not be solved by a fastened seat belt. On a rational level, he knew the plane's bucking and groaning was due to the deployment of flaps and landing gear, and that the aircraft was the consummate product of American engineering. Still, he could take little comfort from the quality of American-made parts that would litter the countryside should something go wrong.
Lang had become no fonder of flying.
The landing and subsequent taxi to the terminal were uneventful and blood began its normal circulation through Lang's hands once he relinquished his death grip on the arm rests.
As anticipated, there were neither customs nor immigration facilities. Within minutes, Lang and Gurt were handing their bags to a smiling cabby for storage in the boot of his shiny black Austin Motors taxi. Lang gave him the destination, thankful London cab drivers were not only required to speak English but also to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the city.
It might have been April in Italy, but winter was reluctant to release its hold on England. The sky was the color of the bottom of a cookie sheet, with burned spots for clouds. The cab's wiper moaned across wet glass as they headed for the West End.
London had not been a favorite of Dawn's. That had been largely Lang's fault. He had brought her there for Christmas with visions of a Dickensesque holiday, complete with fresh snow, plum pudding and yule logs. Instead they got fog, darkness at three-thirty in the afternoon, and runny noses from a cold induced by their hotel's archaic heating system.
Even the Victorian opulence of one of the Savoy's River Suites, exquisitely furnished and oval shaped, could not compensate for the gloom that met every morning's glance from the window. Lang and his wife spent an afternoon at the Tower, watched the changing of the guard, and endured overcooked beef at Simpson's, all the tourist activities he thought she would enjoy.
The weather was a blanket that smothered any enthusiasm she could muster.
The couple had dinner with Lang's friends from MI6 at their clubs, evenings of drinks and war stories; they spent an afternoon of extravagance at Harrods. Neither lifted Dawn's mood, as dark as the view from the window.
Lang had been frustrated. London had been one of his favorite cities in the world. He and Dawn had their first and only fight. They went home early, on Boxing Day, notwithstanding Ben Jonson's observation that he who tires of London has tired of life. According to Dawn, Dr. Jonson obviously enjoyed beastly weather and worse food.
The day they left, the weather was as bad as the day they arrived.
Lang remembered that trip with particular pain, for it had been only a week later that Dawn experienced menstrual cramps that curled her into a fetal position. Another week and she was under the doctors' death sentence.
Lang had never returned to London until now.
Changes in the city were obvious. Every vista included building cranes. New office space, new dwellings for the City's new e-millionaires. Lang had recently read that London was outstripping the rest of Great Britain combined in construction, prosperity and expansion.
He watched the West End from the moisture-streaked windows of the cab until Buckingham Palace flashed by. On the other side of the car, the Victoria Monument was alive with rain slickers and umbrellas, tourists seeking a vantage point for the changing of the guard. A quick left onto St. James Street and the area of the same name. They were only blocks from Piccadilly Circus, the entrance to Soho, the shopping, restaurant and theater district. Just past the crenellated twin Tudor towers of St. James's Palace, the cab turned into a small mew, made a right and stopped in front of an unimpressive brick building, identified only by a brass plaque announcing it to be the Stafford Hotel.
Small, cheap accommodations hadn't helped Lang evade Them in Rome. He was certain he had been followed from the pensione to Orvieto. This time he· was choosing an upbeat hotel, a place Herr Schneller might stay with his wife, what the guidebooks called "moderateto expensive," well located. The deciding factor had been its location in a cul-de-sac, a short street that hosted one private club, two small hotels and a few businesses. No shops, no restaurants. Anyone loitering there would be obvious.
A doorman who could have stolen his uniform from the set of A Christmas Carol took their baggage from the cabby. While Gurt dispensed tips and checked in, Lang inspected the lobby. It was as he remembered. Past the reception area, the parlor of a Victorian manor house was set for tea. Behind it was someone's idea of an American sports bar-cum-men's club. Helmets from each NFL team were placed around the top of the bar, which faced stuffed chairs far more comfortable than anything to be found in a North American counterpart. Neckties, each displaying school or regimental colors, hung from the ceiling like striped stalactites. Photos of European athletes adorned the walls along with a single print of a 8017 landing on a snow-lined runway, presumably a British aerodrome of World War II. French doors opened onto a small courtyard. Since Lang's last visit, apartments above a garage had been built on the other side.
He wasn't happy that the only exits from the hotel were through the front door or those units. There's safety in numbers and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to ways to get out.
By the time he had completed his tour, Gurt was waiting at the elevator. Their room was small, neat, clean and well furnished. Once Gurt had hung a couple of dresses in the closet, she lit a Marlboro and headed for the bathroom.
"I'm going to change before I go to Grosvenor Square," she announced over her shoulder.
The U.S. Embassy and,· therefore, the Agency Chief of Station were in Grosvenor Square; Even on their own time, Agency employees had to check in upon arrival in a country other than that in which stationed. Conventional wisdom was that the requirement discouraged operatives from launching projects of their own just as Gurt was doing by accompanying Lang.
"Take a cab or you'll get drenched," he advised the closed bathroom door. "The nearest tube station is almost as far away as the embassy."
The door cracked open and Gurt's disembodied head appeared along with a cloud of tobacco smoke. "You know this or are you reading from a guidebook?"
"Where the nearest subway station is? I know. I used to spend a fair amount of time here." She nodded, seeming to evaluate the information.
"Thanks for the point."
"Tip."
"Whatever. It does me happy you care."
The door closed, leaving him to reflect that in English, people were happy. Or were made happy. Only in German were they done happy. The difference said something about the nationality. Someday he might take the time to figure out what.
2
London, St. James
Half an hour later, Lang stepped out of Fortnum and Mason, opened his new umbrella and thanked the top-hatted doorman who was holding the door open for him. His acquisition would not only shelter him from the persistent drizzle but it would also blend into the umbrella-toting crowd lining the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic.
To Lang's right, the neon of Piccadilly Circus bled into the wet pavement, making the black asphalt dance with color. A double-decker bus blocked then revealed the stature of Eros, the Greek god of love, who had presided over the circle for over a century.
Horns hooted as busses, trucks and cars came to a stop.
Not quite used to having to check his right, rather than his left, Lang stepped in front of a bright red Mini Cooper. The driver's hair was cut Beatles fashion, a cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he shouted into a cell phone. Lang picked his way around the rear of a Rover and two Japanese motorcycles before he got to the opposite sidewalk.
Half a block to his left was Old Bond Street. He saw the sign before number 12: Mike Jenson, Dealer in Curios, Antiquities, Etcetera. He pushed open the door and went in.
3
London, the West End
Miles away in the West End, a man scanned black-and white television screens on which pictures of city streets flickered, stopped and rolled on to various urban scenes. Occasionally a picture was commanded to freeze, a white halo surrounding a face until the controller told the machine to proceed.
Most Londoners did not know that, on average, their likenesses were transmitted forty times a day as they commuted to and from work, ran errands between buildings or simply window-shopped. The cameras were a legacy of IRA terrorism. Thousands had been posted around the city in discreet locations, cameras little different from those used as security devices in department stores. The sheer number of images" had been overwhelming, far too many to be scanned by London police.
The age of technology had come to the rescue with face-recognition software. A picture of a face could be programmed into a computer and assigned numerical values: a number for the space between the eyes, another for the length of the nose and so on. Once a face was "recognized" in the cameras' pictures, an alarm went off and the countenance in question was highlighted, its location appearing on the screen.
Since major components of facial construction-occipital arches, mandible, rhinal bones-can be altered only by surgery or trauma, the computer could, in most instances, see through changes such as hair loss, weight loss or gain, or the most relentless force of all, age.
With the reluctance of governments everywhere to relinquish power once acquired, the-London police had elected to let those few who knew of the devices forget them once the Irish Question had been temporarily resolved by tenuous agreement. On the few occasions when the subject arose, officials quickly pointed out that cameras in less-than-prosperous neighborhoods were responsible for an impressive number of arrests. Removal of surveillance equipment from "safe" areas but not from others was likely to offend the historic British sense of fair play, and, more likely, cause a political firestorm in the city council. The occasional citizen who publicly bemoaned the loss of privacy was condemned by authorities as an anarchist opposed to municipal security.
Identical technology was used by the Tampa, Florida, police as an "experiment" to identify no less than nineteen Super Bowl fans with criminal records at the 200 I game.
The London police would have been the last to admit that anything transmitted was subject to interception or, in this case, hacking.
It was just such an interception that the man in front of the screens was watching.
Lang Reilly turned just as he entered the shop, presenting both full-face and profile shots to a lens mounted unobtrusively on a rooftop. The man monitoring the screens stopped the motion in the picture and squinted at the highlighted or "haloed" area before punching numbers into a cell phone.
"You were right," he said. "He's tracked it back to Jenson. What do you want done?" He listened for a moment and disconnected without another word. He hurriedly entered another number.
"Jenson's," he said without identifying himself. "Make sure everything is sanitized, Jenson included. No, we've changed that… We want Reilly alive, see what else he knows."
4
London, Old Bond Street
A bell tinkled as Lang entered the shop, a room about twenty feet by twenty. Oils and watercolors shouldered each other for space on the simple plaster walls. Regiments of dark-wooded furniture paraded in orderly ranks and files, dividing the room into squares as neat as any formed by the British infantry. There was a smell of lemon oil.
He heard footsteps on the wooden plank floor and a curtain at the back was brushed aside. A short man in a dark suit came out, his hands clasping each other as though he were washing them. A long, pale face was topped by lifeless dark hair shot with silver. His smile revealed teeth crooked enough to make an orthodontist salivate.
"Mornin', sir," he said in an accent Lang would have attributed to Jeeves the butler. "I help you or you jus' browsin'?"
"Mr. Jenson?" Lang asked.
There was a furtive flicker of the eyes, the look of someone in need of an escape route. Lang would have bet Mr. Jenson had unhappy creditors.
"An' who might you be?" he wanted to know, his tone more defensive than curious. Lang smiled, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible. "A man looking for information." The caution in Jensen's voice was not dispelled. "An' what sort of information would that be?"
Lang admired a highboy, running a hand across mahogany drawers inlaid with satinwood. He pulled out the Polaroid, using the marble top of a commode to smooth out the creases. "I was wondering if you could tell me where you got this?"
Jenson made no effort to conceal his relief Lang wasn't there as a bill collector."Some bloody estate or winding-up sale, I'd imagine. Not some place where you can't likely get another if it's genre religious work you fancy."
"I'm a lawyer," Lang explained, his hand still on the cool marble on which the small photo lay. "I have a client to whom the origins of the painting shown there could be very important."
As Jenson inspected the snapshot, his eyes narrowed, giving his long face the appearance of a fox scenting a hen house. "Don't usually keep records of art sold lyin' about. Space considerations, and all that, y'know. Have to look it up, check my books. That'll take a spot of time, if you take my meaning."
Lang did. "I, my client, that is, would expect to pay you for your time, of course."
Jenson treated Lang to that picket-fence-in-bad-repair grin again. "I'll have it for you"-he produced a pocket watch-"after lunch. You come 'round a coupla hours from now."
5
London, St. James An hour and a half later
Lang had lunch wrapped in newspaper at a fish and chips take-away. It wasn't the best meal available, but it was the quickest. Which meant he had time to kill. Wiping the grease from his chin with a thin paper napkin, he entered the nearby Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy of Arts, where he spent half an hour staring with total lack of comprehension at the current visiting exhibition of abstract art.
Best Lang could tell, there were two schools displayed here. First were the splattists, distinguishable by paint applied by flinging it in the general direction of the canvas or whatever surface was involved. The paint splattered as it hit, forming shapes and patterns dictated by centrifugal force and gravity rather than design. The other was the smearists, artists who preferred to glob paint at random and then smear it into whorls, lines or anything else as long as it was not in a recognizable form. Then there were the truly avant-garde, who defied definition by simply coloring the canvas a single, uniform color.
All works that very much resembled the result of Jeff's efforts with finger paints at age three.
Jeff and Janet. For the last few days, Lang had concentrated on finding their killer rather than dwelling on the emptiness their deaths had left in his life. His fists clenched. By God, he would find the unknown They. He would have vengeance.
A schoolmarmish woman, her white hair gathered in a bun, gave him a frightened look and scurried away, turning her head to make sure he wasn't following. Lang realized he had spoken out loud.
Conceding he was no culture vulture and that contemporary art was beyond his ken, Lang retreated to the sculpture promenade to admire a Michelangelo relief.
After the abstractionists, it was just that: a relief.
As he started back towards Old Bond Street, it stopped misting. The sky was a little lighter with a hint if not· a promise of sunshine to come. Umbrellas were now furled, used as walking sticks or carried underarm.
Once again, the bell tinkled his entrance. Lang busied himself inspecting the furniture as he waited for Jenson to come out from behind his curtain. Machined rather than planed surfaces and cast rather than forged nails betrayed most pieces as reproductions, reflections of revivals of the past century: a Savonarola chair, its fish-rib back more likely made for the fashions of the 1920s rather than fifteenth-century Florence; an Irish Chippendale table from the craze of the fifties, its claw feet matching more perfectly than could have been done by any eighteenth-century craftsman.
Lang soon grew tired of the game and checked his watch. He had been waiting ten minutes. Jenson had to have heard the bell. Perhaps he was in the midst of a lengthy phone conversation.
"Mr. Jenson?" Lang called.
No response.
The man had to be there. He wouldn't have left his shop unlocked.
Lang called again with the same result. He was getting a little angry at the man's rudeness. Lang crossed the room and pulled back the curtain. Two naked bulbs, the low-wattage sort the English prefer, hung from the ceiling. Dust-speckled light created an archipelago of shadows around tables, chairs and chests, all in various states of repair. Ornate but empty picture frames, some large enough for life-size portraits, leaned against furniture with a haphazardness at odds with the order of the showroom. The dimness and the dark spots gave Lang the creeps.
To his right; light seeped around a door. An office, no doubt. No wonder Jenson hadn't heard him enter with the door shut. Lang made his way over, using touch as much as sight to avoid his shins colliding with some very unforgiving wood.
Lang reached the door and knocked. "Mr. Jenson?" Receiving no response, he knocked again, this time harder. The door swung open.
Lang had often heard the smell of blood described as coppery. To him it was reminiscent of the taste of steel, a smell like the taste of your tongue running across the blade of a knife. However it smelled, there was blood everywhere.
Jenson sat at an old rolltop desk that was swamped in papers. Were it not for the blood, he could have been napping, head tipped against the back of a chair. Blood covered his shirt, his jacket arid his trousers. Blood formed puddles on the desk and covered the bare planks of the floor. Blood was splattered across the wall in a display not unlike the art exhibition. An oozing gash separated Jenson's chin from his throat. Eyes not yet dull gazed in surprise into the darkness of the ceiling.
Next to the desk, a safe yawned open, a trickle of papers spilling onto the floor. More papers were scattered across the desk and floor, some already reddish as the fibers sponged up the fluid of Jenson's life. It looked as if, in a final fit, Jenson had taken every scrap of paper he could find and tossed them into the air.
Lang leaned the umbrella against a wall and touched the back of his_ hand to Jenson's slack jaw. The skin was still_ warm. Jenson hadn't been dead very long. Lang glanced nervously around the room. The killer could well have been hiding in those shadows on the other side of the door. Moving to face that way, he hurriedly sifted through the papers on the desk.
A quick peek showed mostly bills. Lang almost gagged from the overpowering stench of blood and tried to breathe through his mouth. He was probably wasting his time. Why would They kill Jenson and leave the very information they were trying to cover up?
Answer: They wouldn't, and Lang sure didn't want to be here when the next customer walked in.
He took a last sweeping look and noticed something on the floor under Jenson's chair, a sheet of paper soggy and red. It would not have been visible to someone standing over the unfortunate antique dealer. Lang picked it up gingerly, trying to get as little of Mr. Jenson's blood on his fingers as possible. These days, blood can kill, depending on what unpleasant virus it might be carrying. The paper was soaked, virtually unreadable. A DHL shipping bill. Lang was about to drop it and wipe off his fingers when the word "Poussin" made him forget his squeamishness. There were a list of items, some too blurred to read, but Lang guessed the painting had been one of a number of items of furniture and furnishings sold in bulk. The only other words were "Pegasus, Ltd" – the shipper – and an illegible address.
Either Lang was looking at a list totally unrelated to the people he was searching for-or he had gotten lucky. Which was the more likely, that Jenson had handled more than one Poussin or that his killer hadn't seen the paper Lang was now holding? Although hardly active in the art world, Lang had never heard of Poussin a month before and the shipping bill had been where someone standing over Jensen might not have seen it, particularly if Jenson had put it on the desk and pushed it over the edge onto the floor when his muscles gave their final spasms.
Lang didn't have a lot of time to decide. The bell over the door announced another arrival. Or departure. The killer could be escaping and there wasn't a lot Lang could do about it.
Or maybe there was. Stuffing the bloody paper into a pocket, he cautiously went back into the storage and repair room. Whoever had sliced Jenson's throat would be covered in blood, judging by how much had splattered the office.
Unless he had managed to steal a car, or have one waiting at the curb, Jenson's killer was going to be easy to identify if Lang could catch up to him before he could change clothes.
Of course, he could have still been in Jenson's shop, too. The possibility slowed Lang as he edged towards the showroom, his back to the wall in case the bell had meant an entry rather than the killer's departure.
As he reached the curtains separating the show area, Lang saw something on the floor. For an instant, the dim light gave the illusion of another body. He felt himself tense until he realized he was looking at nothing more than a bundle of clothes, coveralls stained red with blood.
Lang was certain he would have seen them had they been there when he came in. He picked them up, quickly searching. He would have been surprised to find anything useful, but he had to look. The idea the murderer had been there when he arrived, watched him go into the office, was enough to make the fish and chips lurch in his stomach.
Why not try to finish what They had failed to do in Atlanta?
Lang's question was answered soon enough. A police constable in the traditional four-button jacket and high, rounded hat was looking around the showroom. He held an automatic pistol pointed in Lang's direction.
Lang's first thought on seeing the weapon was that the killer had remained, disguised as a police officer. Then he remembered that the London police had abandoned tradition and begun to carry arms a few years ago.
"Someone called, said there'd been…" The cop's eyes widened and Lang realized he was still holding the bloody clothes.
"Look, I didn't…" Lang began, all too aware of how lame he sounded.
Judging by the tremor in his voice as he spoke into the radio transmitter fixed to the lapel of his jacket, the constable was more frightened than Lang was.
"Backup, more chaps 'ere in a 'urry," he shouted in an East End accent that would have done Eliza Doolittle credit. "'Urry th' bleedin' backup! I got the bugger whot done it right 'ere. Number Twelve Auld Bond Street."
Lang dropped the incriminating coveralls and backed through the curtains into the storage area, his hands extended so the policeman could see he was no threat. "I just walked in here, found him." The officer was young and clearly nervous. The muzzle of his weapon – a Glock nine-millimeter, Lang guessed – wavered. "An' I'm th' bleedin' Queen's Consort. Right where you are, Yank, 'old it right where you are."
Lang took another step backwards and came up against a large piece of furniture. The cop followed slowly. Maybe he was afraid if he let Lang get too many steps away he would miss if he had to shoot. Lang put a hand behind his back to feel his way around the obstacle. His fingers touched one of the picture frames he had seen earlier.
"'Ands up where I can see 'em," the constable demanded.
Lang was betting the cop wouldn't pull the trigger unless forced to, a risk Lang wouldn't have taken in Atlanta. Lang wasn't going to submit to arrest if he could avoid it without doing the young policeman any great harm. When and if Lang could be proved innocent, the tracks he was following would be cold. Besides, he had had more than enough experience with the criminal justice system to know it for the crapshoot it was. Lang's fingers ran along the ornately carved frame as the officer came closer. The hand that wasn't holding the gun was fumbling behind him-for handcuffs, Lang guessed.
"Both 'ands, I said…"
Lang took a deep breath and shifted his weight to his front foot. He gave a high kick that the Rockettes would have envied and the Glock spun from the officer's hand and clattered to the floor. As the officer spun to retrieve it, Lang swung the picture frame over his own head and the policeman's. It could not have fit better. The officer's arms were pinned to his sides by the gilded wood. The constable could do little more than glare.
"Trust me," Lang said, headed for the door; "I had nothing to do with this and I'd like nothing better than being able to stick around and prove it."
The constable didn't look much like he believed him.
Lang could already hear the pulsing sirens used by police all over Europe, the ones that reminded him of the movie The Diary of Anne Frank. It might as well have been the Gestapo coming for him: if he was caught, he wouldn't be sent to Auschwitz but he sure as hell would be going somewhere behind barbed wire where They could reach him at their leisure.
Lang stepped outside and walked away, resisting the impulse to run like hell. He was two blocks down the street before he realized he had left his umbrella.
6
London, St. James
Ten minutes later
There was a note waiting at the Stafford:
Gone shopping. Dinner at Pointe de Tour. Tea here at 1600 hrs.
Gurt
Attached was part of an article dipped from a magazine, informing Lang that the Pointe de Tour was one of the new London restaurants, located on the south side of Tower Bridge. French cuisine, multiple stars. Expensive.
Waiting around for Gurt didn't seem wise. He went to the room and packed his bag. He felt guilty as hell but she had no place in his plans. They had set him up, killing Jenson and calling the police to nab him virtually in flagrante delicto, as lawyers say.
Well, as some lawyers say, those who remember the phrase from law school.
Every law enforcement agency in Europe as well as the United States would have a reason to be looking for Lang once the fingerprints were lifted from the umbrella and it was traced back to Fortnum and Mason. Being part of a couple wasn't going to be sufficient cover, anyway, once the constable got to a police artist who could draw Heinrich Schneller's face.
Once run through Interpol, the fingerprints would put the Herr Schneller persona to rest for good.
Lang pocketed the cash Gurt had left in the room's safe, wrote her a note he knew was inadequate, and left.
Crossing the Mall to St. James's Park, he spent a few minutes pretending to watch the birds on Duck Island. No one else showed an interest in him or the waterfowl. He walked along Whitehall and the edge of the brown pea gravel of the Horse Guards' parade ground and the Paladin facade of Banqueting House, the site of royal revels. That princely party boy, that swinging sovereign, Charles I, had been beheaded there. Today, Lang wasn't nearly as interested in history as he was in anyone who might be following.
Of course, the fact he couldn't see Them didn't mean They weren't there. Lang appreciated Their cleverness.
Jenson's killer could have killed Lang in the shadows of the shop. In a country with fewer annual homicides than, say, Montgomery, Alabama, such a murder would have raised more questions than merely the death of the antique dealer would have. They had arranged to have Lang sought as the culprit.
Once Lang was in custody, he suspected They would know where to find him. A criminal organization with members in America and Europe would have access to police records and, quite likely, any jail in which he might be incarcerated. And what could he do? Who was going to believe a suspect· in two murders who raved about international conspiracies and secrets hidden in pictures? Clever.
Lang used a doorstep to pretend to tie his shoe, taking the -opportunity to look behind without being obvious about it. A group of Japanese, cameras clicking amid bird-chirp voices, stopped to photograph everything in sight. Lang left them behind as he turned right, hoping to disappear among the traffic, pigeons and milling crowd that was Trafalgar Square.
Lang had at least one advantage, small though it might have been. They didn't know about the bloody paper with the company name on it, presumably the source of the painting. They had killed Jenson to stifle the vary information They had overlooked.
At Charing Cross, a huge shopping plaza and office building rose over the Underground station. Lang stopped at a public phone, an uninteresting steel box similar to the ones in the States. Most of the old red phone boxes had long since become decorations in bars in the U.S., he supposed. At least that was the only place he still saw them. Unlike American phones, the directory was still attached. Lang found the number and dialed, keeping an eye on the small bag of possessions he had brought from the hotel.
By the time the brief conversation was complete, an anemic sun had broken through the clouds, its appearance more aesthetic than warming.
Once he hung up, he continued down The Strand until he reached the Temple Bar Memorial, an iron griffin that marked the place the actual City of London met Westminster, two of the municipalities generally lumped together as "London." Here The Strand became Fleet Street, the former center of London's newspaper publishers.
Lang wasn't here for newspapers. For that matter, the press had long since departed for the suburbs: shorter commutes, lower rents and more modest salary demands from unions.
One last check behind him and he turned into a narrow street, more of an alley, Middle Temple Lane. From here an even more confined byway led to a small park surrounded by the buildings of the Temple Bar, the site of the offices of almost every barrister in London.
Lang let his memory lead him up a marble staircase worn uneven by centuries of clients seeking potential rectification of injustice and certain diminution of their money. At the top, a half-glass door bore flaking gilt letters, "Jacob Annulewicz, Barrister."
Barrister Annulewicz's business spilled into the shabby waiting area. Two chairs covered in a chintz popular in the 19405, worn almost beyond recognition, overflowed with stacks of paper. Files were piled on a much-abused table. The secretary's desk was surprisingly neat, its peeling veneer visible under an over-sized computer monitor, the only indication Lang was still in the twenty-first century.
If there was one, the secretary was gone, dismissed for the duration of Lang's visit.
"Reilly!"
An older man stood in the doorway to the inner office, dressed in a black gown, a starched white split dickey at his throat and a short white periwig perched on an otherwise bald scalp like a bird's nest on a rock.
"Jacob!" Lang set his bag down to return a bear hug. "When did you join a Gilbert and Sullivan revival?"
Jacob stepped back, releasing enough pressure to allow at least shallow breathing. "Still the smartass, I see."
"And you're still defending the indefensible," Lang said, indicating the robe."What's with the costume? I thought you only wore it to court or with a mask on Guy Fawkes's Day."
"And where do you think I was just before you called, the Mayfair Club?"
"Not unless they've substantially relaxed their membership requirements."
Jacob beckoned Lang into his office, a small room that reeked from the briar pipes dead in an ashtray. "Not likely," he said without rancor. "Still no women, Jews or Labour MPs. And you have to have a letter from at least five members, two of whom must be deceased."
Jacob's office was as cluttered as the outer room. He moved a stack of files to look under it, set it down and lifted another. This time he uncovered a small wooden box into which he put the wig.
"Clubs. It is still difficult, being one of Jehovah's chosen among the Gentiles."
Lang moved papers from a chair and sat on genuine Naugahyde. "From the looks of your waistline, you haven't encountered any good pogroms lately. I take it you're still away from the Promised Land by choice."
The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Jacob had been taken to Israel as a child. He subsequently immigrated to England, becoming a British citizen, an act that did not deprive him of his Israeli citizenship but made him a prime candidate to become one of the Mossad's undercover agents stationed in friendly and unfriendly countries alike.
If history had taught the Jews anything, it was the uncertainty of alliances with goyim. Consequently, they spied on friend and foe alike with admirable evenhandedness.
Jacob's brief had been to keep an eye on Arab diplomats in London, to pass along to his handlers the snippets of information from which the tapestries of international affairs are woven. The information might or might not be passed along to the intelligence community of the United States, which hosted no Iraqi, Iranian or Liberian embassy of its own upon which to spy.
Somewhat less well known was Jacob's ability with explosives, learned during his time in the Israeli Army before his migration to England. Unconfirmed rumor had it that he was the one who had gotten into the hiding place of one of Hamas's more notorious terrorists and wired T4 to the telephone's dial. The next call blew the man's head off without so much as cracking the mirror on the wall. True or not, Jacob had the reputation of being the duke of detonation, a prestidigitator of plastique.
The Americans as well as the British had suspected his duties included spying on them as well. All potentially aggrieved parties – CIA, FBI, MIS, MI6 – agreed he was now retired, no matter how odd his choice to spend his final years in the practice of law that had been his first love, or, odder still, his preference for London drizzle over Mediterranean sun.
Jacob opened doors behind his desk, revealing a small cupboard, counter and gas ring upon which sat a teapot. "Still lemon, no sugar?"
Lang had to smile. "Age hasn't taken your memory."
Jacob poured into porcelain mugs. "Not entirely a blessing. I can still remember whom I dislike but my eyesight's gotten so bloody bad, I can't see the blokes coming." He opened a tin and shook his head sorrowfully. "Out of biscuits, I'm afraid." He extended a steaming mug and lit one of the malodorous pipes. "So brief me on the last ten years, Langford. You might include the reasons for that ridiculous moustache, what I hope are false jowls and that dreadful German-made suit."
Lang glanced around the room and touched his ear.
Jacob nodded. "Ah, yes, 'tis a lovely spring day outside. Why don't we take our tea out to the courtyard. Who knows, we might even hear a lark sing, although the last of the poor creatures I saw in London was years ago, dying of the smog, he was."
The sun had grown no warmer and Lang shivered as they entered the courtyard. "If you think your office is bugged…?"
Jacob's head bobbed solemnly. "Was it not your poet Robert Frost who observed some people believe good fences make good neighbors? In our business… our Former business, good listening devices make good neighbors. Your Agency, MIS, the others, do not fear what they think they know. So I let them listen in to what happens in my office. It must put them to sleep. I have nothing to hide anymore. Besides, had it not been for your countrymen…"
"You'd be dead," Lang finished.
Years ago, Lang's employers had known from bugging Jacob's phone that he was going to be nearby at the same time a Hamas group planned to explode a car bomb at the Israeli Embassy. Unknown to the would-be terrorists, the building had long previously been rendered impervious to anything smaller than a nuclear blast and the most serious damage would be to the surrounding neighborhood. Arresting those planning to join Allah in paradise would have tipped the fact the Arab group was seriously infiltrated. Lang had insisted no point was to be served by letting Jacob be reduced to his composite atoms and had warned him clear.
"I would indeed be dead," Jacob agreed, "a fate only marginally worse than old age. Now, the last ten years, what have you been doing that you worry about being overheard?"
Lang told him.
Jacob shook his head. "My sorrow for the loss of your family. Your sister, nephew, I didn't know. But Dawn… A name from the poetry books. You will remember I had the wisdom to ask her what she saw in you when you two visited London some years ago. Lovely person.
"Now you are a lawyer in America, wanted for murders you did not commit both here and there. How may I be of help?"
They had walked the short distance between the law offices and an old round structure, the Temple. Lang pulled open the heavy door and motioned Jacob inside.
"I'm cold," Lang said. "There's no one here and I doubt anyone has bugged this place."
The Temple was just that. Built in the twelfth century by the Order of Knights Templar, it was round with an inner circle supported by columns. In the middle of the circle, several stone effigies reposed on the worn limestone floor, swords clasped to their armored chests. No inscription gave a clue as to their identity. Lang had always assumed they were Templars.
Jacob and Lang circled the room as Lang finished his story.
"Pegasus, Limited," Lang finally said. "The only clue I have, or at least the only one I understand. If it does business in Europe, Echelon would know."
Jacob stopped. "Echelon? Your National Security Agency doesn't share that information with any agency where I might find out."
The National Security Agency was the most secretive of the secretive. Its operatives were computer jocks, its weapons high technology. It participated in no active espionage in the conventional sense but maintained a heavily guarded satellite monitoring station just outside London which had the capability to intercept every fax, e-mail and phone call made in Europe. The information was shared only among England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Lang smiled. "Of course, your retirement. Plus Mossad naturally has no means of intercepting Echelon and would be reluctant to do so if it could. I wouldn't want to impose on our friendship by asking…"
"You cannot get this information from your former employers or their friends at MI6?"
Lang shook his head. "My former employers don't owe me a favor, particularly not the London Station. It's the plumb of the service, draws all the Harvard-Yale types, guys that wouldn't dream of being seen with someone who graduated from a state college." He wrinkled his nose, giving his very best imitation of an upper-class British accent. "As for MI6, old thing, why they're just too, too. Hardly can understand the blighters, talking through their Cambridge-oxford noses, y'know. Just too tiresome, dealing with a bloody Yank. No sense of… Well, old stick, you know what I mean."
Jacob chuckled as he held up a hand in surrender. "Okay, enough. What makes you think this Pegasus can be found by Echelon?"
"Because there are no electronic transmissions it doesn't pick up. That's how Boeing beat Airbus in the bidding for new aircraft for several Mideast countries."
"You know American intelligence agencies are forbidden to do such things, Langford. They assure us all they only use such technology to keep track of terrorists, bin Laden, North Korea, sale of missiles to certain Arab nations."
Lang rolled his eyes. "And of course diverting billions of dollars to U.S. companies would not be sufficient incentive to deviate from that policy."
Jacob glanced around, making sure no one had entered the building since the conversation began. "Even if what you say is correct, how could a single name be sorted out? There must be millions of transmissions daily."
"Done easily enough by programming keywords into the computer."
"Like 'bomb'?"
"Like. Story a few years ago was that an Irish comedian was playing on stage in Soho. Opening night, called his girlfriend in Belfast, was nervous about his act. Said he was afraid he was going to bomb out. Two blocks were cordoned off before he even got to the theater. Bomb squad, dogs, the works. MIS blamed it on that all-time favorite, the anonymous tip."
Lang could hear fingernails rasping against a heavy five o'clock shadow as Jacob scratched his chin. "So, if someone were to have the ability to intercept Echelon's product, 'Pegasus' could be a keyword, any communications concerning it gathered in. A tall order, as you say, for a small, poor operation like Mossad."
Lang chuckled. "Small, yes. Poor, perhaps. Most efficient in the world, undoubtedly."
Jacob was staring somewhere past Lang. "This is all you know about these people who have killed so many, that they are somehow connected to this Pegasus?"
"And that's only a hunch." Lang reached into a pocket and showed Jacob the medallion from the truck driver. "This is the only thing I'm certain of, that the two men who tried to kill me were wearing one of these, four triangles meeting at the center of a circle. Hardly a coincidence."
Jacob squinted at the medallion. "No, no coincidence. Not four triangles, either."
He had Lang's undivided attention. "Oh?"
"Try a Maltese cross in a circle."
"How d'you get that?"
He pointed. "There, all around you."
Lang turned, half expecting another assassin. Behind him, carved into the walls, the device was evenly spaced. The centuries had almost obliterated them and he hadn't noticed until now.
Lang felt as though his jaw was hanging open. "I don't get it."
Jacob stepped over to the wall and rubbed his fingers across one of the circled crosses. "This was a Templar church, one of only two or three in the world that haven't been destroyed, let fall into ruin or radically altered. It would seem reasonable that the design has something to do with them."
"Impossible!" Lang blurted. "The Templars were fighting monks sworn to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land from Moslems. The order was disbanded by papal decree in the fourteenth century."
Jacob pursed his lips. "Impossible or not, you see the symbol, same as you have in your hand."
This was beginning to sound like time travel out of bad sci-fi. Next, Lang would discover Richard the Lion-Hearted was the one who wanted him dead. "Why would a monastic order from seven, eight hundred years ago be interested in a painting? And if they exist, they're a holy order, not murderers. How does any of that make sense?"
Jacob shook his head. "My friend, as a Jew; I have little interest in Christian holy orders. Too many of them served their religion by killing practitioners of mine. But I do have a friend who might have an answer, a fellow at Oxford, Christ Church. He teaches medieval history. Oxford is, what, an hour's train ride?"
"Great. Except I'd just as soon stay away from train stations. I'm sure the police are watching them."
Jacob scratched his chin again. "I'll call him tonight, tell him you're coming. Stay with me and tomorrow you can have my Morris. Hopefully there won't be another truck trying to run over you. Maybe I'll have some information from Echelon by the time you return."
As they walked back to Jacob's office, Lang noticed a man on a bench reading one of London's tabloids. "Murder in the West End," the headline screamed. He couldn't be sure at that distance, but Lang thought he recognized his own picture, the one from his Agency service file.
7
Westminster
1650 hours
The afternoon sun was streaking the pewter gray of the. Thames with orange, or at least that part of the Thames Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam could see from his office at Scotland Yard six floors above Broadway. He stood at the window a moment longer before returning to the papers on his desk.
After four years with the fugitive squad of the Metropolitan Police, he was fully aware how unlikely it had been that he would be able to accommodate that American chap. What was his name? Morse, yes that was it, Morse with the Atlanta police. The Met had more than enough criminals to keep it busy without larking about looking for those the Yanks had let slip through what he perceived to be rather loose fingers.
That dreadful murder of the antique dealer in the West End, Jenson. Constable had just about caught the killer in the act, red-handed, one might say if one found puns amusing. Wonder the lad hadn't slit the constable's throat as well. The description the frightened young policeman had given the artist had fit rather well with a picture in the international fugitive file in the computer if one ignored the moustache and chubby cheeks.
Overrated things, computers. Admittedly, Fitzwilliam would never have recognized the chap, not with what was a disguise making him look older, heavier. Professional job, that disguise. As it should be, turned out. The information that came from the States said that the bloke was former CIA, Yank equivalent of MI6. Didn't know what was the most surprising, that the fugitive was one of that cloak-and-dagger lot or that the CIA had admitted it. Dreadfully embarrassing that, to have one of your old mates go 'round the bend, kill two people for no apparent reason. No reason if, in fact, this Reilly chap really was no longer one of them.
Computers. Fact was, Reilly would have eventually been identified by old-fashioned, thorough police work. Even without all the modern glitz, the fingerprints on that umbrella had been confirmed by Washington. They were Reilly's. And the brelly, well, now, that had been lucky. Just bought that day, it turned out, at Fortnum and Mason, paid for with a credit card belonging to a Heinrich Schneller, nobody the chappies at Visa had ever heard of. That was a bit of information Fitzwilliam was going to keep close to his chest, as the Yanks said, quietly put out a trace to be notified if that card were used again. And make sure every copper at every major international airport had a picture of Herr Schneller, with and without his bloody moustache.
Fitzwilliam sat down with a sigh, his eyes on the face staring up at him from his desk. Amazing resolution these days-photo could have been a shot from someone's holiday last week. Pushing the picture aside, the inspector reread the material that had accompanied it.
This Reilly chap had spent some time in London before, had a list of acquaintances. And an odd lot they were. A Mossad operative, probably retired by now; a German national he had been boffing, a rather striking woman from the picture he guessed came from her service jacket; and any number of publicans where he had his pint as regular as any working-class sod. Fitzwilliam's forehead creased in a frown. It was going to be a spot of bother, pulling men off investigations to go 'round and chat up all these people.
He reached for the phone. Best get to it. The cousins were waiting and they were an impatient lot. Worse, they believed their own cinema, that Scotland Yard had the ability to do anything asked of it. He snorted as he punched in numbers. The Yard should have the resources of the sodding Yank FBI.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
An Account by Pietro of Sicily Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
3
Nothing I learned from the cellarer had prepared me for the manner of provisioning a ship. Each vessel was but ten rod1 in length and half that high at bow and stem. A single mast carried a single sail,2 all other space being crowded with as many as one hundred people. Each person required two barrels of water as well as a mat of straw, a quilt, meat, cooking utensils, and spices as would make the meat fresh to the taste such as ginger, cloves and mace. The cost of this provisioning paid to the merchants of Trapani was, according to Guillaume de Poitiers, forty ducats for a knight.
He also said the unwary paid as much for the worst as for the best, this in reference to the mat and quilt: A man paid five ducats for those items but they Were sold back to the merchants by arrivals for half that, so that many were worn and rife with vermin.
The upper stage of the vessel was desirable over the lower, the latter being smoldering hot and sultry. But it was in these lower quarters the low-born such as Phillipe and I were quartered. I was to suffer greatly, for this lower deck was also the repository for horses, oxen, swine3 and other animals, the stench of whose excrement never left this area.
The days at sea were such as to try my faith. The ship rolled and pitched in such a devilish manner as to nearly toss me into the waters when I ventured from my pallet beneath the deck. Most of my time I spent suffering from a malaise I learned to be common to many who venture upon the waters for the first time. The vapors of the sea cause the stomach to tighten, refusing to retain whatever victuals are put in it while trying to reject that it has already sent forth.
Such was my misery that the captain of our vessel, a heartless, vile man who delighted in the misery of others, took great glee in calling down to those of us ill in the lower deck, "Shall I make you meat anon?"
Then he would laugh as he told all that would hear, "They have no use for the meat they have purchased. Better we should consume it than it go bad."
It is God's mercy that after some period of time, the body develops an imperviousness to these atmospheres of the sea that cause such illness. Thanks be to heaven and its merciful Lord, such proved to be the case and I was delivered from such suffering as I had never before experienced and know now that I never shall again. The agony that I face is of a different sort.
By God's will we reached Genoa where we replenished our supplies and set out for France.
With God's kindness in abating my illness, I took note of my surroundings. I had never had the opportunity to observe the workings of a ship. Most interesting were the maps used by the navigator on which lines were drawn, dividing the portions of the earth into squares,4 in which the ship was placed by careful nocturnal observation, thereby demonstrating our position on the sea in relation to points of land. These charts gave me pause as being not those sanctioned by God.5
I was to learn this was not the only rule of God that found its exception among these Knights of the Temple.
We disembarked at Narbonne in that region of Burgundy known as the Languedoc. As we journeyed away from the sea, we traveled along a valley where the soil was as white as the Knights' surcoats. To our left the River Sals ran south to the ocean we had left.
As we progressed, I became increasingly aware of a huge castle6 crouched atop a mountain on the far side of the river. I was told this was Blanchefort, an edifice that had been in the hands of the Knights since it was given by a family of that name to Hughes de Payens, Grand Master of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in the year of his return from The Holy Land.7
"The Blancheforts were truly devout servants of God," I remarked to Guillaume de Poitiers when he trotted his charger to the rear of the train to verify that' Philippe and I were keeping up. "The gift of such an estate to the Order would surely find favor in heaven."
He leaned from his saddle to check the bindings of the load carried by one of the horses. "The abbey at Alet as well as barracks at Peyrolles. Master de Payens was a rich man indeed."
"You mean the Order was enriched," I said.
He looked at me in silence before he replied, "No, little brother, those are not the words I spoke. Master de Payens was given those lands himself so that the Order might profit as he saw fit."
"But the vow of poverty…?"
He shook his head. "Think you instead of the vow of obedience which forbids asking your betters impertinent questions."
He left me to ponder how a member of a holy order could own such riches as the properties as the aforementioned.
Once again, the monastic vows I understood did not seem paramount to this Order, We rested and encamped for the night outside the village of Serres. At daylight, we forded the river and made a rearwards turn. I could not help but note that the morning sun was on my left just as it had been on my right the day before.
"Are we not but returning from whence we came by another path?" I asked one of the older esquires.
"Indeed we are progressing to the south," he said, "just as we marched to the north yesterday. Serres was the nearest place to cross the water and now we are proceeding to the castle at Blanchefort."
Shortly thereafter, we began an ascent· up a mountain. Where vegetation failed to cover it, the soil was as chalky in colour as it had been in this region since we left sight of the sea. It was claylike to the touch and I pondered what victuals might grow in dirt so different from the loamy black humus of Sicily.
At the top, we halted in front of towering walls of white stone while the knights with us exchanged words I did not understand with those on the ramparts. During this conversation I noticed the walls were not stones crudely piled like the boundary of the abbey I had departed but carefully fitted so that each rested upon the other. I was later given to understand that the knowledge of how to make this so came from the Saracens.8
Above the grand entrance was a portal of pure travertine of almost a rod9 square upon which was graven the likeness of a winged horse rampant, so cunningly done in detail that I would have not been astonished to see it leap from the stone in which it was encased. I had seen graven images occasionally on buildings of antiquity, those edifices erected in pagan times, which Christ's Church had not yet replaced with Christian monuments, but I would have never expected such a likeness to dominate the entry to a place consecrated to a holy order.
"It is Pegasus, the mythical horse of the Greek," Guillaume de Poitiers explained. "It is the symbol of our order."
Once again, my surprise overcame my humility. "Is it not blasphemous to have a pagan symbol in such a place?"
Rather than taking offense at my boldness, he smiled. "It is the worshipping of such images our Maker proscribes, not the observation. Besides, Pegasus reminds us of our humble origins."
It was difficult for me to comprehend how an order which owned castles such as this could possess any origin not majestic. "How so, m'lord?"
He sat back in his saddle, his eyes not leaving the fixture of the horse. "When our order was young, we could afford but few horses. When two brothers traveled the same way, they shared a single animal. At a distance across the sands of the Holy Land, the two white surcoats flowing in the breeze resembled nothing so much as a winged horse. The emblem so reminds us of that humility and poverty which our order embraces as virtues."
I had observed neither among the order but for once held my tongue.
Just then the portcullis rattled open and we entered an area reminiscent less of a humble cloister such that I had departed than of the inner baileys of the few nobles I had visited while soliciting alms for the abbey or assisting one of the brothers in some task for which we had been summoned. There were no asses, horses,. or other animals at liberty therein nor the smell of the ordure of farm animals. Instead, the fragrance of orange trees greeted our entry, mixed with rosemary, thyme and lavender which grew in sculpted beds planted on the south side of the cloister to receive the sun's full warmth.
An elaborately carved fountain gave forth the musical sound of water from its place in the center of the cross formed by paths that divided the garth into quadrants. The yard was encircled by an arcade, shady and cool behind its columns and open spaces.
Windows were not shuttered against the elements but were filled with glass, an extravagance I had never witnessed outside of the cathedral at Salamis, the city on an island near the place of my birth.
The interior was richly furnished with Venetian silk and Flemish tapestries, and blessed with the most holy of relics: the roasted flesh of Saint Lawrence, albeit turned to powder by the years since his martyrdom, an arm of Saint George, an ear of Saint Paul and one of the jars holding the water which our Lord turned into wine.
As was the wont of my former order after a journey, I went to the chapel to offer thanksgiving for my safe arrival. I was surprised to discover that it was round, a complete circle rather than the shape to which I had become accustomed. I subsequently learned that all Templar churches are of this design, as was the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The room was surrounded by columns of serpentine and red marble. The altar was in the middle, a wondrously carved solid block of the purest white marble, unveined, on which devices were carved depicting scenes from the Holy City. The cross thereon reflected the lights of a hundred tapers, for it was of solid gold. The cost of this place alone would far exceed the worth of the entire abbey from which I had come.
Nor was this end of excess. The occupants of this most marvelous place greeted the return of their brethren with a feast shared even by humble esquires such as Philippe and myself. For the first time in my life, I tasted the meat of lampreys, partridge and mutton, accompanied by a wine so strong it made me giddy.
All was as or more than Guillaume de Poitiers had promised. The meat I have described. I was given a cell larger than the sum of any two at my previous abbey and a bed soft with wool stuffed with straw.
Would I had given my soul the same consideration as my flesh. Perhaps I would not be at the dismal place at which I find myself.
Translator's Notes
1. 5.029 meters.
2. He describes a typical two-decked thirteenth-fourteenth century galleon-type vessel used in the Mediterranean.
3. Medieval ships carried their own sources of food for all but the shortest voyages, as the means of preservation of meats and vegetables were uncertain at best. Servants such as Pietro would have shared quarters with both the horses and other animals as may have been aboard for purposes of food.
4. Roman cartographers devised a method roughly similar to the present system of latitude and longitude by the use of kardo maximus, which ran north-south and decumanus maximus, running east-west. Although latitude as we know it today was known by the ancients, it was not until the late eighteenth century that Thomas. Fuller, an English watchmaker, devised an accurate measure of longitude.
5. Medieval maps were absurd in their simplicity. In the seventh century, Isadore, Bishop of Seville, designed a world that was like a disk, with Asia, Europe and Africa sharing unequal quadrants with Jerusalem always at the center, based upon Ezekiel 5:5: "This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the midst of the nations and countries that are around about her." This practice or similar ideas persisted until the Renaissance. Fortunately for Western civilization, the Arabic world both admired and continued to use the Ptolemaic method of cartography, partially described in 4 above. The Templars, no doubt, learned this method while in Palestine as they did the mathematics, engineering and navigation known in the ancient world but lost or suppressed by a Church that did not trust knowledge of a pagan society.
6. The actual word used is castellum, which could include a palace as well as a castle. The translator has chosen the word with the connotation of fortifications.
7. 1127
8. See 5 above.
9. 5.029 meters. The medieval measurement was likely somewhat smaller.
1
London
The next day
The ping of the seat belt and "no smoking" lights woke Lang from a deep sleep. He rubbed stinging eyes and leaned across Gurt to peer out the window. A sea of dirty clouds was rising to meet the MD 880. Across the narrow aisle, a young couple of Eastern European origin were unsuccessful in comforting a howling infant. The British Airways flight attendants were scurrying to collect the last plastic drinking cups before trays were ordered back into their upright positions.
He let the seat up and ran a finger across his upper lip, making sure the moustache was still glued into place. Graying hair and thick glasses aged him a bit, Lang hoped. Bits of foam rubber stuffed into cheeks made his face match the jowly photograph of Heinrich Schneller on the German passport in his pocket.
Gurt and Lang had the picture taken at a photographer's shop a block from the embassy. The glue on it had hardly been dry when she applied a copy of the official stamp to the blank passport.
Facial hair was a new sensation for him. He had always believed it silly to cultivate on an upper lip what grew wild elsewhere.
The ticket clerk at Milan's Malpensa Airport had given their documents a cursory glance before wishing them a cheerful arrivederci. The only attention from the gray uniformed Policia with their gloss polished gun belts and boots had been appreciative stares at Gurt.
A blunt-cut dark wig and a slight stoop to minimize her height were the only disguise to which she would agree. There was, after all, no reason to think They had ever seen her face. Still, she was worth the unabashed gaping for which Italian men are notorious.
Herr Schneller and his wife, the much younger-looking Freda, had departed Milan on a flight to the relatively new City Airport in Docklands just outside London. Had anyone checked with the company whose name was on the credit card paying for the tickets, Frau Schneller was accompanying her husband on a trip to price carpet-grade wool in Milan and then London, from where they would proceed to Manchester.
Lang had no idea if the address for Herr Schneller's employer even existed, but he knew from experience the Hamburg telephone number would be answered by someone speaking credible Hochdeutsch and probably sitting in a room in Virginia. He also knew the passports and drivers' licenses would pass scrutiny. Anyone attempting to verify the Visa or American Express cards would find valid accounts, although he had had to promise not to use them for anything other than identification. Gurt had called in a number of favors to get the paperwork and plastic. Making charges to the account would overstep whatever agreements she had made. It was comforting to have the chicanery of professionals on his side.
As the aircraft trembled, Lang cinched himself tighter into the seat, a Pavlovian response to the airlines' implicit assurances that no problem could not be solved by a fastened seat belt. On a rational level, he knew the plane's bucking and groaning was due to the deployment of flaps and landing gear, and that the aircraft was the consummate product of American engineering. Still, he could take little comfort from the quality of American-made parts that would litter the countryside should something go wrong.
Lang had become no fonder of flying.
The landing and subsequent taxi to the terminal were uneventful and blood began its normal circulation through Lang's hands once he relinquished his death grip on the arm rests.
As anticipated, there were neither customs nor immigration facilities. Within minutes, Lang and Gurt were handing their bags to a smiling cabby for storage in the boot of his shiny black Austin Motors taxi. Lang gave him the destination, thankful London cab drivers were not only required to speak English but also to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the city.
It might have been April in Italy, but winter was reluctant to release its hold on England. The sky was the color of the bottom of a cookie sheet, with burned spots for clouds. The cab's wiper moaned across wet glass as they headed for the West End.
London had not been a favorite of Dawn's. That had been largely Lang's fault. He had brought her there for Christmas with visions of a Dickensesque holiday, complete with fresh snow, plum pudding and yule logs. Instead they got fog, darkness at three-thirty in the afternoon, and runny noses from a cold induced by their hotel's archaic heating system.
Even the Victorian opulence of one of the Savoy's River Suites, exquisitely furnished and oval shaped, could not compensate for the gloom that met every morning's glance from the window. Lang and his wife spent an afternoon at the Tower, watched the changing of the guard, and endured overcooked beef at Simpson's, all the tourist activities he thought she would enjoy.
The weather was a blanket that smothered any enthusiasm she could muster.
The couple had dinner with Lang's friends from MI6 at their clubs, evenings of drinks and war stories; they spent an afternoon of extravagance at Harrods. Neither lifted Dawn's mood, as dark as the view from the window.
Lang had been frustrated. London had been one of his favorite cities in the world. He and Dawn had their first and only fight. They went home early, on Boxing Day, notwithstanding Ben Jonson's observation that he who tires of London has tired of life. According to Dawn, Dr. Jonson obviously enjoyed beastly weather and worse food.
The day they left, the weather was as bad as the day they arrived.
Lang remembered that trip with particular pain, for it had been only a week later that Dawn experienced menstrual cramps that curled her into a fetal position. Another week and she was under the doctors' death sentence.
Lang had never returned to London until now.
Changes in the city were obvious. Every vista included building cranes. New office space, new dwellings for the City's new e-millionaires. Lang had recently read that London was outstripping the rest of Great Britain combined in construction, prosperity and expansion.
He watched the West End from the moisture-streaked windows of the cab until Buckingham Palace flashed by. On the other side of the car, the Victoria Monument was alive with rain slickers and umbrellas, tourists seeking a vantage point for the changing of the guard. A quick left onto St. James Street and the area of the same name. They were only blocks from Piccadilly Circus, the entrance to Soho, the shopping, restaurant and theater district. Just past the crenellated twin Tudor towers of St. James's Palace, the cab turned into a small mew, made a right and stopped in front of an unimpressive brick building, identified only by a brass plaque announcing it to be the Stafford Hotel.
Small, cheap accommodations hadn't helped Lang evade Them in Rome. He was certain he had been followed from the pensione to Orvieto. This time he· was choosing an upbeat hotel, a place Herr Schneller might stay with his wife, what the guidebooks called "moderateto expensive," well located. The deciding factor had been its location in a cul-de-sac, a short street that hosted one private club, two small hotels and a few businesses. No shops, no restaurants. Anyone loitering there would be obvious.
A doorman who could have stolen his uniform from the set of A Christmas Carol took their baggage from the cabby. While Gurt dispensed tips and checked in, Lang inspected the lobby. It was as he remembered. Past the reception area, the parlor of a Victorian manor house was set for tea. Behind it was someone's idea of an American sports bar-cum-men's club. Helmets from each NFL team were placed around the top of the bar, which faced stuffed chairs far more comfortable than anything to be found in a North American counterpart. Neckties, each displaying school or regimental colors, hung from the ceiling like striped stalactites. Photos of European athletes adorned the walls along with a single print of a 8017 landing on a snow-lined runway, presumably a British aerodrome of World War II. French doors opened onto a small courtyard. Since Lang's last visit, apartments above a garage had been built on the other side.
He wasn't happy that the only exits from the hotel were through the front door or those units. There's safety in numbers and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to ways to get out.
By the time he had completed his tour, Gurt was waiting at the elevator. Their room was small, neat, clean and well furnished. Once Gurt had hung a couple of dresses in the closet, she lit a Marlboro and headed for the bathroom.
"I'm going to change before I go to Grosvenor Square," she announced over her shoulder.
The U.S. Embassy and,· therefore, the Agency Chief of Station were in Grosvenor Square; Even on their own time, Agency employees had to check in upon arrival in a country other than that in which stationed. Conventional wisdom was that the requirement discouraged operatives from launching projects of their own just as Gurt was doing by accompanying Lang.
"Take a cab or you'll get drenched," he advised the closed bathroom door. "The nearest tube station is almost as far away as the embassy."
The door cracked open and Gurt's disembodied head appeared along with a cloud of tobacco smoke. "You know this or are you reading from a guidebook?"
"Where the nearest subway station is? I know. I used to spend a fair amount of time here." She nodded, seeming to evaluate the information.
"Thanks for the point."
"Tip."
"Whatever. It does me happy you care."
The door closed, leaving him to reflect that in English, people were happy. Or were made happy. Only in German were they done happy. The difference said something about the nationality. Someday he might take the time to figure out what.
2
London, St. James
Half an hour later, Lang stepped out of Fortnum and Mason, opened his new umbrella and thanked the top-hatted doorman who was holding the door open for him. His acquisition would not only shelter him from the persistent drizzle but it would also blend into the umbrella-toting crowd lining the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic.
To Lang's right, the neon of Piccadilly Circus bled into the wet pavement, making the black asphalt dance with color. A double-decker bus blocked then revealed the stature of Eros, the Greek god of love, who had presided over the circle for over a century.
Horns hooted as busses, trucks and cars came to a stop.
Not quite used to having to check his right, rather than his left, Lang stepped in front of a bright red Mini Cooper. The driver's hair was cut Beatles fashion, a cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he shouted into a cell phone. Lang picked his way around the rear of a Rover and two Japanese motorcycles before he got to the opposite sidewalk.
Half a block to his left was Old Bond Street. He saw the sign before number 12: Mike Jenson, Dealer in Curios, Antiquities, Etcetera. He pushed open the door and went in.
3
London, the West End
Miles away in the West End, a man scanned black-and white television screens on which pictures of city streets flickered, stopped and rolled on to various urban scenes. Occasionally a picture was commanded to freeze, a white halo surrounding a face until the controller told the machine to proceed.
Most Londoners did not know that, on average, their likenesses were transmitted forty times a day as they commuted to and from work, ran errands between buildings or simply window-shopped. The cameras were a legacy of IRA terrorism. Thousands had been posted around the city in discreet locations, cameras little different from those used as security devices in department stores. The sheer number of images" had been overwhelming, far too many to be scanned by London police.
The age of technology had come to the rescue with face-recognition software. A picture of a face could be programmed into a computer and assigned numerical values: a number for the space between the eyes, another for the length of the nose and so on. Once a face was "recognized" in the cameras' pictures, an alarm went off and the countenance in question was highlighted, its location appearing on the screen.
Since major components of facial construction-occipital arches, mandible, rhinal bones-can be altered only by surgery or trauma, the computer could, in most instances, see through changes such as hair loss, weight loss or gain, or the most relentless force of all, age.
With the reluctance of governments everywhere to relinquish power once acquired, the-London police had elected to let those few who knew of the devices forget them once the Irish Question had been temporarily resolved by tenuous agreement. On the few occasions when the subject arose, officials quickly pointed out that cameras in less-than-prosperous neighborhoods were responsible for an impressive number of arrests. Removal of surveillance equipment from "safe" areas but not from others was likely to offend the historic British sense of fair play, and, more likely, cause a political firestorm in the city council. The occasional citizen who publicly bemoaned the loss of privacy was condemned by authorities as an anarchist opposed to municipal security.
Identical technology was used by the Tampa, Florida, police as an "experiment" to identify no less than nineteen Super Bowl fans with criminal records at the 200 I game.
The London police would have been the last to admit that anything transmitted was subject to interception or, in this case, hacking.
It was just such an interception that the man in front of the screens was watching.
Lang Reilly turned just as he entered the shop, presenting both full-face and profile shots to a lens mounted unobtrusively on a rooftop. The man monitoring the screens stopped the motion in the picture and squinted at the highlighted or "haloed" area before punching numbers into a cell phone.
"You were right," he said. "He's tracked it back to Jenson. What do you want done?" He listened for a moment and disconnected without another word. He hurriedly entered another number.
"Jenson's," he said without identifying himself. "Make sure everything is sanitized, Jenson included. No, we've changed that… We want Reilly alive, see what else he knows."
4
London, Old Bond Street
A bell tinkled as Lang entered the shop, a room about twenty feet by twenty. Oils and watercolors shouldered each other for space on the simple plaster walls. Regiments of dark-wooded furniture paraded in orderly ranks and files, dividing the room into squares as neat as any formed by the British infantry. There was a smell of lemon oil.
He heard footsteps on the wooden plank floor and a curtain at the back was brushed aside. A short man in a dark suit came out, his hands clasping each other as though he were washing them. A long, pale face was topped by lifeless dark hair shot with silver. His smile revealed teeth crooked enough to make an orthodontist salivate.
"Mornin', sir," he said in an accent Lang would have attributed to Jeeves the butler. "I help you or you jus' browsin'?"
"Mr. Jenson?" Lang asked.
There was a furtive flicker of the eyes, the look of someone in need of an escape route. Lang would have bet Mr. Jenson had unhappy creditors.
"An' who might you be?" he wanted to know, his tone more defensive than curious. Lang smiled, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible. "A man looking for information." The caution in Jensen's voice was not dispelled. "An' what sort of information would that be?"
Lang admired a highboy, running a hand across mahogany drawers inlaid with satinwood. He pulled out the Polaroid, using the marble top of a commode to smooth out the creases. "I was wondering if you could tell me where you got this?"
Jenson made no effort to conceal his relief Lang wasn't there as a bill collector."Some bloody estate or winding-up sale, I'd imagine. Not some place where you can't likely get another if it's genre religious work you fancy."
"I'm a lawyer," Lang explained, his hand still on the cool marble on which the small photo lay. "I have a client to whom the origins of the painting shown there could be very important."
As Jenson inspected the snapshot, his eyes narrowed, giving his long face the appearance of a fox scenting a hen house. "Don't usually keep records of art sold lyin' about. Space considerations, and all that, y'know. Have to look it up, check my books. That'll take a spot of time, if you take my meaning."
Lang did. "I, my client, that is, would expect to pay you for your time, of course."
Jenson treated Lang to that picket-fence-in-bad-repair grin again. "I'll have it for you"-he produced a pocket watch-"after lunch. You come 'round a coupla hours from now."
5
London, St. James An hour and a half later
Lang had lunch wrapped in newspaper at a fish and chips take-away. It wasn't the best meal available, but it was the quickest. Which meant he had time to kill. Wiping the grease from his chin with a thin paper napkin, he entered the nearby Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy of Arts, where he spent half an hour staring with total lack of comprehension at the current visiting exhibition of abstract art.
Best Lang could tell, there were two schools displayed here. First were the splattists, distinguishable by paint applied by flinging it in the general direction of the canvas or whatever surface was involved. The paint splattered as it hit, forming shapes and patterns dictated by centrifugal force and gravity rather than design. The other was the smearists, artists who preferred to glob paint at random and then smear it into whorls, lines or anything else as long as it was not in a recognizable form. Then there were the truly avant-garde, who defied definition by simply coloring the canvas a single, uniform color.
All works that very much resembled the result of Jeff's efforts with finger paints at age three.
Jeff and Janet. For the last few days, Lang had concentrated on finding their killer rather than dwelling on the emptiness their deaths had left in his life. His fists clenched. By God, he would find the unknown They. He would have vengeance.
A schoolmarmish woman, her white hair gathered in a bun, gave him a frightened look and scurried away, turning her head to make sure he wasn't following. Lang realized he had spoken out loud.
Conceding he was no culture vulture and that contemporary art was beyond his ken, Lang retreated to the sculpture promenade to admire a Michelangelo relief.
After the abstractionists, it was just that: a relief.
As he started back towards Old Bond Street, it stopped misting. The sky was a little lighter with a hint if not· a promise of sunshine to come. Umbrellas were now furled, used as walking sticks or carried underarm.
Once again, the bell tinkled his entrance. Lang busied himself inspecting the furniture as he waited for Jenson to come out from behind his curtain. Machined rather than planed surfaces and cast rather than forged nails betrayed most pieces as reproductions, reflections of revivals of the past century: a Savonarola chair, its fish-rib back more likely made for the fashions of the 1920s rather than fifteenth-century Florence; an Irish Chippendale table from the craze of the fifties, its claw feet matching more perfectly than could have been done by any eighteenth-century craftsman.
Lang soon grew tired of the game and checked his watch. He had been waiting ten minutes. Jenson had to have heard the bell. Perhaps he was in the midst of a lengthy phone conversation.
"Mr. Jenson?" Lang called.
No response.
The man had to be there. He wouldn't have left his shop unlocked.
Lang called again with the same result. He was getting a little angry at the man's rudeness. Lang crossed the room and pulled back the curtain. Two naked bulbs, the low-wattage sort the English prefer, hung from the ceiling. Dust-speckled light created an archipelago of shadows around tables, chairs and chests, all in various states of repair. Ornate but empty picture frames, some large enough for life-size portraits, leaned against furniture with a haphazardness at odds with the order of the showroom. The dimness and the dark spots gave Lang the creeps.
To his right; light seeped around a door. An office, no doubt. No wonder Jenson hadn't heard him enter with the door shut. Lang made his way over, using touch as much as sight to avoid his shins colliding with some very unforgiving wood.
Lang reached the door and knocked. "Mr. Jenson?" Receiving no response, he knocked again, this time harder. The door swung open.
Lang had often heard the smell of blood described as coppery. To him it was reminiscent of the taste of steel, a smell like the taste of your tongue running across the blade of a knife. However it smelled, there was blood everywhere.
Jenson sat at an old rolltop desk that was swamped in papers. Were it not for the blood, he could have been napping, head tipped against the back of a chair. Blood covered his shirt, his jacket arid his trousers. Blood formed puddles on the desk and covered the bare planks of the floor. Blood was splattered across the wall in a display not unlike the art exhibition. An oozing gash separated Jenson's chin from his throat. Eyes not yet dull gazed in surprise into the darkness of the ceiling.
Next to the desk, a safe yawned open, a trickle of papers spilling onto the floor. More papers were scattered across the desk and floor, some already reddish as the fibers sponged up the fluid of Jenson's life. It looked as if, in a final fit, Jenson had taken every scrap of paper he could find and tossed them into the air.
Lang leaned the umbrella against a wall and touched the back of his_ hand to Jenson's slack jaw. The skin was still_ warm. Jenson hadn't been dead very long. Lang glanced nervously around the room. The killer could well have been hiding in those shadows on the other side of the door. Moving to face that way, he hurriedly sifted through the papers on the desk.
A quick peek showed mostly bills. Lang almost gagged from the overpowering stench of blood and tried to breathe through his mouth. He was probably wasting his time. Why would They kill Jenson and leave the very information they were trying to cover up?
Answer: They wouldn't, and Lang sure didn't want to be here when the next customer walked in.
He took a last sweeping look and noticed something on the floor under Jenson's chair, a sheet of paper soggy and red. It would not have been visible to someone standing over the unfortunate antique dealer. Lang picked it up gingerly, trying to get as little of Mr. Jenson's blood on his fingers as possible. These days, blood can kill, depending on what unpleasant virus it might be carrying. The paper was soaked, virtually unreadable. A DHL shipping bill. Lang was about to drop it and wipe off his fingers when the word "Poussin" made him forget his squeamishness. There were a list of items, some too blurred to read, but Lang guessed the painting had been one of a number of items of furniture and furnishings sold in bulk. The only other words were "Pegasus, Ltd" – the shipper – and an illegible address.
Either Lang was looking at a list totally unrelated to the people he was searching for-or he had gotten lucky. Which was the more likely, that Jenson had handled more than one Poussin or that his killer hadn't seen the paper Lang was now holding? Although hardly active in the art world, Lang had never heard of Poussin a month before and the shipping bill had been where someone standing over Jensen might not have seen it, particularly if Jenson had put it on the desk and pushed it over the edge onto the floor when his muscles gave their final spasms.
Lang didn't have a lot of time to decide. The bell over the door announced another arrival. Or departure. The killer could be escaping and there wasn't a lot Lang could do about it.
Or maybe there was. Stuffing the bloody paper into a pocket, he cautiously went back into the storage and repair room. Whoever had sliced Jenson's throat would be covered in blood, judging by how much had splattered the office.
Unless he had managed to steal a car, or have one waiting at the curb, Jenson's killer was going to be easy to identify if Lang could catch up to him before he could change clothes.
Of course, he could have still been in Jenson's shop, too. The possibility slowed Lang as he edged towards the showroom, his back to the wall in case the bell had meant an entry rather than the killer's departure.
As he reached the curtains separating the show area, Lang saw something on the floor. For an instant, the dim light gave the illusion of another body. He felt himself tense until he realized he was looking at nothing more than a bundle of clothes, coveralls stained red with blood.
Lang was certain he would have seen them had they been there when he came in. He picked them up, quickly searching. He would have been surprised to find anything useful, but he had to look. The idea the murderer had been there when he arrived, watched him go into the office, was enough to make the fish and chips lurch in his stomach.
Why not try to finish what They had failed to do in Atlanta?
Lang's question was answered soon enough. A police constable in the traditional four-button jacket and high, rounded hat was looking around the showroom. He held an automatic pistol pointed in Lang's direction.
Lang's first thought on seeing the weapon was that the killer had remained, disguised as a police officer. Then he remembered that the London police had abandoned tradition and begun to carry arms a few years ago.
"Someone called, said there'd been…" The cop's eyes widened and Lang realized he was still holding the bloody clothes.
"Look, I didn't…" Lang began, all too aware of how lame he sounded.
Judging by the tremor in his voice as he spoke into the radio transmitter fixed to the lapel of his jacket, the constable was more frightened than Lang was.
"Backup, more chaps 'ere in a 'urry," he shouted in an East End accent that would have done Eliza Doolittle credit. "'Urry th' bleedin' backup! I got the bugger whot done it right 'ere. Number Twelve Auld Bond Street."
Lang dropped the incriminating coveralls and backed through the curtains into the storage area, his hands extended so the policeman could see he was no threat. "I just walked in here, found him." The officer was young and clearly nervous. The muzzle of his weapon – a Glock nine-millimeter, Lang guessed – wavered. "An' I'm th' bleedin' Queen's Consort. Right where you are, Yank, 'old it right where you are."
Lang took another step backwards and came up against a large piece of furniture. The cop followed slowly. Maybe he was afraid if he let Lang get too many steps away he would miss if he had to shoot. Lang put a hand behind his back to feel his way around the obstacle. His fingers touched one of the picture frames he had seen earlier.
"'Ands up where I can see 'em," the constable demanded.
Lang was betting the cop wouldn't pull the trigger unless forced to, a risk Lang wouldn't have taken in Atlanta. Lang wasn't going to submit to arrest if he could avoid it without doing the young policeman any great harm. When and if Lang could be proved innocent, the tracks he was following would be cold. Besides, he had had more than enough experience with the criminal justice system to know it for the crapshoot it was. Lang's fingers ran along the ornately carved frame as the officer came closer. The hand that wasn't holding the gun was fumbling behind him-for handcuffs, Lang guessed.
"Both 'ands, I said…"
Lang took a deep breath and shifted his weight to his front foot. He gave a high kick that the Rockettes would have envied and the Glock spun from the officer's hand and clattered to the floor. As the officer spun to retrieve it, Lang swung the picture frame over his own head and the policeman's. It could not have fit better. The officer's arms were pinned to his sides by the gilded wood. The constable could do little more than glare.
"Trust me," Lang said, headed for the door; "I had nothing to do with this and I'd like nothing better than being able to stick around and prove it."
The constable didn't look much like he believed him.
Lang could already hear the pulsing sirens used by police all over Europe, the ones that reminded him of the movie The Diary of Anne Frank. It might as well have been the Gestapo coming for him: if he was caught, he wouldn't be sent to Auschwitz but he sure as hell would be going somewhere behind barbed wire where They could reach him at their leisure.
Lang stepped outside and walked away, resisting the impulse to run like hell. He was two blocks down the street before he realized he had left his umbrella.
6
London, St. James
Ten minutes later
There was a note waiting at the Stafford:
Gone shopping. Dinner at Pointe de Tour. Tea here at 1600 hrs.
Gurt
Attached was part of an article dipped from a magazine, informing Lang that the Pointe de Tour was one of the new London restaurants, located on the south side of Tower Bridge. French cuisine, multiple stars. Expensive.
Waiting around for Gurt didn't seem wise. He went to the room and packed his bag. He felt guilty as hell but she had no place in his plans. They had set him up, killing Jenson and calling the police to nab him virtually in flagrante delicto, as lawyers say.
Well, as some lawyers say, those who remember the phrase from law school.
Every law enforcement agency in Europe as well as the United States would have a reason to be looking for Lang once the fingerprints were lifted from the umbrella and it was traced back to Fortnum and Mason. Being part of a couple wasn't going to be sufficient cover, anyway, once the constable got to a police artist who could draw Heinrich Schneller's face.
Once run through Interpol, the fingerprints would put the Herr Schneller persona to rest for good.
Lang pocketed the cash Gurt had left in the room's safe, wrote her a note he knew was inadequate, and left.
Crossing the Mall to St. James's Park, he spent a few minutes pretending to watch the birds on Duck Island. No one else showed an interest in him or the waterfowl. He walked along Whitehall and the edge of the brown pea gravel of the Horse Guards' parade ground and the Paladin facade of Banqueting House, the site of royal revels. That princely party boy, that swinging sovereign, Charles I, had been beheaded there. Today, Lang wasn't nearly as interested in history as he was in anyone who might be following.
Of course, the fact he couldn't see Them didn't mean They weren't there. Lang appreciated Their cleverness.
Jenson's killer could have killed Lang in the shadows of the shop. In a country with fewer annual homicides than, say, Montgomery, Alabama, such a murder would have raised more questions than merely the death of the antique dealer would have. They had arranged to have Lang sought as the culprit.
Once Lang was in custody, he suspected They would know where to find him. A criminal organization with members in America and Europe would have access to police records and, quite likely, any jail in which he might be incarcerated. And what could he do? Who was going to believe a suspect· in two murders who raved about international conspiracies and secrets hidden in pictures? Clever.
Lang used a doorstep to pretend to tie his shoe, taking the -opportunity to look behind without being obvious about it. A group of Japanese, cameras clicking amid bird-chirp voices, stopped to photograph everything in sight. Lang left them behind as he turned right, hoping to disappear among the traffic, pigeons and milling crowd that was Trafalgar Square.
Lang had at least one advantage, small though it might have been. They didn't know about the bloody paper with the company name on it, presumably the source of the painting. They had killed Jenson to stifle the vary information They had overlooked.
At Charing Cross, a huge shopping plaza and office building rose over the Underground station. Lang stopped at a public phone, an uninteresting steel box similar to the ones in the States. Most of the old red phone boxes had long since become decorations in bars in the U.S., he supposed. At least that was the only place he still saw them. Unlike American phones, the directory was still attached. Lang found the number and dialed, keeping an eye on the small bag of possessions he had brought from the hotel.
By the time the brief conversation was complete, an anemic sun had broken through the clouds, its appearance more aesthetic than warming.
Once he hung up, he continued down The Strand until he reached the Temple Bar Memorial, an iron griffin that marked the place the actual City of London met Westminster, two of the municipalities generally lumped together as "London." Here The Strand became Fleet Street, the former center of London's newspaper publishers.
Lang wasn't here for newspapers. For that matter, the press had long since departed for the suburbs: shorter commutes, lower rents and more modest salary demands from unions.
One last check behind him and he turned into a narrow street, more of an alley, Middle Temple Lane. From here an even more confined byway led to a small park surrounded by the buildings of the Temple Bar, the site of the offices of almost every barrister in London.
Lang let his memory lead him up a marble staircase worn uneven by centuries of clients seeking potential rectification of injustice and certain diminution of their money. At the top, a half-glass door bore flaking gilt letters, "Jacob Annulewicz, Barrister."
Barrister Annulewicz's business spilled into the shabby waiting area. Two chairs covered in a chintz popular in the 19405, worn almost beyond recognition, overflowed with stacks of paper. Files were piled on a much-abused table. The secretary's desk was surprisingly neat, its peeling veneer visible under an over-sized computer monitor, the only indication Lang was still in the twenty-first century.
If there was one, the secretary was gone, dismissed for the duration of Lang's visit.
"Reilly!"
An older man stood in the doorway to the inner office, dressed in a black gown, a starched white split dickey at his throat and a short white periwig perched on an otherwise bald scalp like a bird's nest on a rock.
"Jacob!" Lang set his bag down to return a bear hug. "When did you join a Gilbert and Sullivan revival?"
Jacob stepped back, releasing enough pressure to allow at least shallow breathing. "Still the smartass, I see."
"And you're still defending the indefensible," Lang said, indicating the robe."What's with the costume? I thought you only wore it to court or with a mask on Guy Fawkes's Day."
"And where do you think I was just before you called, the Mayfair Club?"
"Not unless they've substantially relaxed their membership requirements."
Jacob beckoned Lang into his office, a small room that reeked from the briar pipes dead in an ashtray. "Not likely," he said without rancor. "Still no women, Jews or Labour MPs. And you have to have a letter from at least five members, two of whom must be deceased."
Jacob's office was as cluttered as the outer room. He moved a stack of files to look under it, set it down and lifted another. This time he uncovered a small wooden box into which he put the wig.
"Clubs. It is still difficult, being one of Jehovah's chosen among the Gentiles."
Lang moved papers from a chair and sat on genuine Naugahyde. "From the looks of your waistline, you haven't encountered any good pogroms lately. I take it you're still away from the Promised Land by choice."
The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Jacob had been taken to Israel as a child. He subsequently immigrated to England, becoming a British citizen, an act that did not deprive him of his Israeli citizenship but made him a prime candidate to become one of the Mossad's undercover agents stationed in friendly and unfriendly countries alike.
If history had taught the Jews anything, it was the uncertainty of alliances with goyim. Consequently, they spied on friend and foe alike with admirable evenhandedness.
Jacob's brief had been to keep an eye on Arab diplomats in London, to pass along to his handlers the snippets of information from which the tapestries of international affairs are woven. The information might or might not be passed along to the intelligence community of the United States, which hosted no Iraqi, Iranian or Liberian embassy of its own upon which to spy.
Somewhat less well known was Jacob's ability with explosives, learned during his time in the Israeli Army before his migration to England. Unconfirmed rumor had it that he was the one who had gotten into the hiding place of one of Hamas's more notorious terrorists and wired T4 to the telephone's dial. The next call blew the man's head off without so much as cracking the mirror on the wall. True or not, Jacob had the reputation of being the duke of detonation, a prestidigitator of plastique.
The Americans as well as the British had suspected his duties included spying on them as well. All potentially aggrieved parties – CIA, FBI, MIS, MI6 – agreed he was now retired, no matter how odd his choice to spend his final years in the practice of law that had been his first love, or, odder still, his preference for London drizzle over Mediterranean sun.
Jacob opened doors behind his desk, revealing a small cupboard, counter and gas ring upon which sat a teapot. "Still lemon, no sugar?"
Lang had to smile. "Age hasn't taken your memory."
Jacob poured into porcelain mugs. "Not entirely a blessing. I can still remember whom I dislike but my eyesight's gotten so bloody bad, I can't see the blokes coming." He opened a tin and shook his head sorrowfully. "Out of biscuits, I'm afraid." He extended a steaming mug and lit one of the malodorous pipes. "So brief me on the last ten years, Langford. You might include the reasons for that ridiculous moustache, what I hope are false jowls and that dreadful German-made suit."
Lang glanced around the room and touched his ear.
Jacob nodded. "Ah, yes, 'tis a lovely spring day outside. Why don't we take our tea out to the courtyard. Who knows, we might even hear a lark sing, although the last of the poor creatures I saw in London was years ago, dying of the smog, he was."
The sun had grown no warmer and Lang shivered as they entered the courtyard. "If you think your office is bugged…?"
Jacob's head bobbed solemnly. "Was it not your poet Robert Frost who observed some people believe good fences make good neighbors? In our business… our Former business, good listening devices make good neighbors. Your Agency, MIS, the others, do not fear what they think they know. So I let them listen in to what happens in my office. It must put them to sleep. I have nothing to hide anymore. Besides, had it not been for your countrymen…"
"You'd be dead," Lang finished.
Years ago, Lang's employers had known from bugging Jacob's phone that he was going to be nearby at the same time a Hamas group planned to explode a car bomb at the Israeli Embassy. Unknown to the would-be terrorists, the building had long previously been rendered impervious to anything smaller than a nuclear blast and the most serious damage would be to the surrounding neighborhood. Arresting those planning to join Allah in paradise would have tipped the fact the Arab group was seriously infiltrated. Lang had insisted no point was to be served by letting Jacob be reduced to his composite atoms and had warned him clear.
"I would indeed be dead," Jacob agreed, "a fate only marginally worse than old age. Now, the last ten years, what have you been doing that you worry about being overheard?"
Lang told him.
Jacob shook his head. "My sorrow for the loss of your family. Your sister, nephew, I didn't know. But Dawn… A name from the poetry books. You will remember I had the wisdom to ask her what she saw in you when you two visited London some years ago. Lovely person.
"Now you are a lawyer in America, wanted for murders you did not commit both here and there. How may I be of help?"
They had walked the short distance between the law offices and an old round structure, the Temple. Lang pulled open the heavy door and motioned Jacob inside.
"I'm cold," Lang said. "There's no one here and I doubt anyone has bugged this place."
The Temple was just that. Built in the twelfth century by the Order of Knights Templar, it was round with an inner circle supported by columns. In the middle of the circle, several stone effigies reposed on the worn limestone floor, swords clasped to their armored chests. No inscription gave a clue as to their identity. Lang had always assumed they were Templars.
Jacob and Lang circled the room as Lang finished his story.
"Pegasus, Limited," Lang finally said. "The only clue I have, or at least the only one I understand. If it does business in Europe, Echelon would know."
Jacob stopped. "Echelon? Your National Security Agency doesn't share that information with any agency where I might find out."
The National Security Agency was the most secretive of the secretive. Its operatives were computer jocks, its weapons high technology. It participated in no active espionage in the conventional sense but maintained a heavily guarded satellite monitoring station just outside London which had the capability to intercept every fax, e-mail and phone call made in Europe. The information was shared only among England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Lang smiled. "Of course, your retirement. Plus Mossad naturally has no means of intercepting Echelon and would be reluctant to do so if it could. I wouldn't want to impose on our friendship by asking…"
"You cannot get this information from your former employers or their friends at MI6?"
Lang shook his head. "My former employers don't owe me a favor, particularly not the London Station. It's the plumb of the service, draws all the Harvard-Yale types, guys that wouldn't dream of being seen with someone who graduated from a state college." He wrinkled his nose, giving his very best imitation of an upper-class British accent. "As for MI6, old thing, why they're just too, too. Hardly can understand the blighters, talking through their Cambridge-oxford noses, y'know. Just too tiresome, dealing with a bloody Yank. No sense of… Well, old stick, you know what I mean."
Jacob chuckled as he held up a hand in surrender. "Okay, enough. What makes you think this Pegasus can be found by Echelon?"
"Because there are no electronic transmissions it doesn't pick up. That's how Boeing beat Airbus in the bidding for new aircraft for several Mideast countries."
"You know American intelligence agencies are forbidden to do such things, Langford. They assure us all they only use such technology to keep track of terrorists, bin Laden, North Korea, sale of missiles to certain Arab nations."
Lang rolled his eyes. "And of course diverting billions of dollars to U.S. companies would not be sufficient incentive to deviate from that policy."
Jacob glanced around, making sure no one had entered the building since the conversation began. "Even if what you say is correct, how could a single name be sorted out? There must be millions of transmissions daily."
"Done easily enough by programming keywords into the computer."
"Like 'bomb'?"
"Like. Story a few years ago was that an Irish comedian was playing on stage in Soho. Opening night, called his girlfriend in Belfast, was nervous about his act. Said he was afraid he was going to bomb out. Two blocks were cordoned off before he even got to the theater. Bomb squad, dogs, the works. MIS blamed it on that all-time favorite, the anonymous tip."
Lang could hear fingernails rasping against a heavy five o'clock shadow as Jacob scratched his chin. "So, if someone were to have the ability to intercept Echelon's product, 'Pegasus' could be a keyword, any communications concerning it gathered in. A tall order, as you say, for a small, poor operation like Mossad."
Lang chuckled. "Small, yes. Poor, perhaps. Most efficient in the world, undoubtedly."
Jacob was staring somewhere past Lang. "This is all you know about these people who have killed so many, that they are somehow connected to this Pegasus?"
"And that's only a hunch." Lang reached into a pocket and showed Jacob the medallion from the truck driver. "This is the only thing I'm certain of, that the two men who tried to kill me were wearing one of these, four triangles meeting at the center of a circle. Hardly a coincidence."
Jacob squinted at the medallion. "No, no coincidence. Not four triangles, either."
He had Lang's undivided attention. "Oh?"
"Try a Maltese cross in a circle."
"How d'you get that?"
He pointed. "There, all around you."
Lang turned, half expecting another assassin. Behind him, carved into the walls, the device was evenly spaced. The centuries had almost obliterated them and he hadn't noticed until now.
Lang felt as though his jaw was hanging open. "I don't get it."
Jacob stepped over to the wall and rubbed his fingers across one of the circled crosses. "This was a Templar church, one of only two or three in the world that haven't been destroyed, let fall into ruin or radically altered. It would seem reasonable that the design has something to do with them."
"Impossible!" Lang blurted. "The Templars were fighting monks sworn to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land from Moslems. The order was disbanded by papal decree in the fourteenth century."
Jacob pursed his lips. "Impossible or not, you see the symbol, same as you have in your hand."
This was beginning to sound like time travel out of bad sci-fi. Next, Lang would discover Richard the Lion-Hearted was the one who wanted him dead. "Why would a monastic order from seven, eight hundred years ago be interested in a painting? And if they exist, they're a holy order, not murderers. How does any of that make sense?"
Jacob shook his head. "My friend, as a Jew; I have little interest in Christian holy orders. Too many of them served their religion by killing practitioners of mine. But I do have a friend who might have an answer, a fellow at Oxford, Christ Church. He teaches medieval history. Oxford is, what, an hour's train ride?"
"Great. Except I'd just as soon stay away from train stations. I'm sure the police are watching them."
Jacob scratched his chin again. "I'll call him tonight, tell him you're coming. Stay with me and tomorrow you can have my Morris. Hopefully there won't be another truck trying to run over you. Maybe I'll have some information from Echelon by the time you return."
As they walked back to Jacob's office, Lang noticed a man on a bench reading one of London's tabloids. "Murder in the West End," the headline screamed. He couldn't be sure at that distance, but Lang thought he recognized his own picture, the one from his Agency service file.
7
Westminster
1650 hours
The afternoon sun was streaking the pewter gray of the. Thames with orange, or at least that part of the Thames Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam could see from his office at Scotland Yard six floors above Broadway. He stood at the window a moment longer before returning to the papers on his desk.
After four years with the fugitive squad of the Metropolitan Police, he was fully aware how unlikely it had been that he would be able to accommodate that American chap. What was his name? Morse, yes that was it, Morse with the Atlanta police. The Met had more than enough criminals to keep it busy without larking about looking for those the Yanks had let slip through what he perceived to be rather loose fingers.
That dreadful murder of the antique dealer in the West End, Jenson. Constable had just about caught the killer in the act, red-handed, one might say if one found puns amusing. Wonder the lad hadn't slit the constable's throat as well. The description the frightened young policeman had given the artist had fit rather well with a picture in the international fugitive file in the computer if one ignored the moustache and chubby cheeks.
Overrated things, computers. Admittedly, Fitzwilliam would never have recognized the chap, not with what was a disguise making him look older, heavier. Professional job, that disguise. As it should be, turned out. The information that came from the States said that the bloke was former CIA, Yank equivalent of MI6. Didn't know what was the most surprising, that the fugitive was one of that cloak-and-dagger lot or that the CIA had admitted it. Dreadfully embarrassing that, to have one of your old mates go 'round the bend, kill two people for no apparent reason. No reason if, in fact, this Reilly chap really was no longer one of them.
Computers. Fact was, Reilly would have eventually been identified by old-fashioned, thorough police work. Even without all the modern glitz, the fingerprints on that umbrella had been confirmed by Washington. They were Reilly's. And the brelly, well, now, that had been lucky. Just bought that day, it turned out, at Fortnum and Mason, paid for with a credit card belonging to a Heinrich Schneller, nobody the chappies at Visa had ever heard of. That was a bit of information Fitzwilliam was going to keep close to his chest, as the Yanks said, quietly put out a trace to be notified if that card were used again. And make sure every copper at every major international airport had a picture of Herr Schneller, with and without his bloody moustache.
Fitzwilliam sat down with a sigh, his eyes on the face staring up at him from his desk. Amazing resolution these days-photo could have been a shot from someone's holiday last week. Pushing the picture aside, the inspector reread the material that had accompanied it.
This Reilly chap had spent some time in London before, had a list of acquaintances. And an odd lot they were. A Mossad operative, probably retired by now; a German national he had been boffing, a rather striking woman from the picture he guessed came from her service jacket; and any number of publicans where he had his pint as regular as any working-class sod. Fitzwilliam's forehead creased in a frown. It was going to be a spot of bother, pulling men off investigations to go 'round and chat up all these people.
He reached for the phone. Best get to it. The cousins were waiting and they were an impatient lot. Worse, they believed their own cinema, that Scotland Yard had the ability to do anything asked of it. He snorted as he punched in numbers. The Yard should have the resources of the sodding Yank FBI.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
An Account by Pietro of Sicily Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
3
Nothing I learned from the cellarer had prepared me for the manner of provisioning a ship. Each vessel was but ten rod1 in length and half that high at bow and stem. A single mast carried a single sail,2 all other space being crowded with as many as one hundred people. Each person required two barrels of water as well as a mat of straw, a quilt, meat, cooking utensils, and spices as would make the meat fresh to the taste such as ginger, cloves and mace. The cost of this provisioning paid to the merchants of Trapani was, according to Guillaume de Poitiers, forty ducats for a knight.
He also said the unwary paid as much for the worst as for the best, this in reference to the mat and quilt: A man paid five ducats for those items but they Were sold back to the merchants by arrivals for half that, so that many were worn and rife with vermin.
The upper stage of the vessel was desirable over the lower, the latter being smoldering hot and sultry. But it was in these lower quarters the low-born such as Phillipe and I were quartered. I was to suffer greatly, for this lower deck was also the repository for horses, oxen, swine3 and other animals, the stench of whose excrement never left this area.
The days at sea were such as to try my faith. The ship rolled and pitched in such a devilish manner as to nearly toss me into the waters when I ventured from my pallet beneath the deck. Most of my time I spent suffering from a malaise I learned to be common to many who venture upon the waters for the first time. The vapors of the sea cause the stomach to tighten, refusing to retain whatever victuals are put in it while trying to reject that it has already sent forth.
Such was my misery that the captain of our vessel, a heartless, vile man who delighted in the misery of others, took great glee in calling down to those of us ill in the lower deck, "Shall I make you meat anon?"
Then he would laugh as he told all that would hear, "They have no use for the meat they have purchased. Better we should consume it than it go bad."
It is God's mercy that after some period of time, the body develops an imperviousness to these atmospheres of the sea that cause such illness. Thanks be to heaven and its merciful Lord, such proved to be the case and I was delivered from such suffering as I had never before experienced and know now that I never shall again. The agony that I face is of a different sort.
By God's will we reached Genoa where we replenished our supplies and set out for France.
With God's kindness in abating my illness, I took note of my surroundings. I had never had the opportunity to observe the workings of a ship. Most interesting were the maps used by the navigator on which lines were drawn, dividing the portions of the earth into squares,4 in which the ship was placed by careful nocturnal observation, thereby demonstrating our position on the sea in relation to points of land. These charts gave me pause as being not those sanctioned by God.5
I was to learn this was not the only rule of God that found its exception among these Knights of the Temple.
We disembarked at Narbonne in that region of Burgundy known as the Languedoc. As we journeyed away from the sea, we traveled along a valley where the soil was as white as the Knights' surcoats. To our left the River Sals ran south to the ocean we had left.
As we progressed, I became increasingly aware of a huge castle6 crouched atop a mountain on the far side of the river. I was told this was Blanchefort, an edifice that had been in the hands of the Knights since it was given by a family of that name to Hughes de Payens, Grand Master of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in the year of his return from The Holy Land.7
"The Blancheforts were truly devout servants of God," I remarked to Guillaume de Poitiers when he trotted his charger to the rear of the train to verify that' Philippe and I were keeping up. "The gift of such an estate to the Order would surely find favor in heaven."
He leaned from his saddle to check the bindings of the load carried by one of the horses. "The abbey at Alet as well as barracks at Peyrolles. Master de Payens was a rich man indeed."
"You mean the Order was enriched," I said.
He looked at me in silence before he replied, "No, little brother, those are not the words I spoke. Master de Payens was given those lands himself so that the Order might profit as he saw fit."
"But the vow of poverty…?"
He shook his head. "Think you instead of the vow of obedience which forbids asking your betters impertinent questions."
He left me to ponder how a member of a holy order could own such riches as the properties as the aforementioned.
Once again, the monastic vows I understood did not seem paramount to this Order, We rested and encamped for the night outside the village of Serres. At daylight, we forded the river and made a rearwards turn. I could not help but note that the morning sun was on my left just as it had been on my right the day before.
"Are we not but returning from whence we came by another path?" I asked one of the older esquires.
"Indeed we are progressing to the south," he said, "just as we marched to the north yesterday. Serres was the nearest place to cross the water and now we are proceeding to the castle at Blanchefort."
Shortly thereafter, we began an ascent· up a mountain. Where vegetation failed to cover it, the soil was as chalky in colour as it had been in this region since we left sight of the sea. It was claylike to the touch and I pondered what victuals might grow in dirt so different from the loamy black humus of Sicily.
At the top, we halted in front of towering walls of white stone while the knights with us exchanged words I did not understand with those on the ramparts. During this conversation I noticed the walls were not stones crudely piled like the boundary of the abbey I had departed but carefully fitted so that each rested upon the other. I was later given to understand that the knowledge of how to make this so came from the Saracens.8
Above the grand entrance was a portal of pure travertine of almost a rod9 square upon which was graven the likeness of a winged horse rampant, so cunningly done in detail that I would have not been astonished to see it leap from the stone in which it was encased. I had seen graven images occasionally on buildings of antiquity, those edifices erected in pagan times, which Christ's Church had not yet replaced with Christian monuments, but I would have never expected such a likeness to dominate the entry to a place consecrated to a holy order.
"It is Pegasus, the mythical horse of the Greek," Guillaume de Poitiers explained. "It is the symbol of our order."
Once again, my surprise overcame my humility. "Is it not blasphemous to have a pagan symbol in such a place?"
Rather than taking offense at my boldness, he smiled. "It is the worshipping of such images our Maker proscribes, not the observation. Besides, Pegasus reminds us of our humble origins."
It was difficult for me to comprehend how an order which owned castles such as this could possess any origin not majestic. "How so, m'lord?"
He sat back in his saddle, his eyes not leaving the fixture of the horse. "When our order was young, we could afford but few horses. When two brothers traveled the same way, they shared a single animal. At a distance across the sands of the Holy Land, the two white surcoats flowing in the breeze resembled nothing so much as a winged horse. The emblem so reminds us of that humility and poverty which our order embraces as virtues."
I had observed neither among the order but for once held my tongue.
Just then the portcullis rattled open and we entered an area reminiscent less of a humble cloister such that I had departed than of the inner baileys of the few nobles I had visited while soliciting alms for the abbey or assisting one of the brothers in some task for which we had been summoned. There were no asses, horses,. or other animals at liberty therein nor the smell of the ordure of farm animals. Instead, the fragrance of orange trees greeted our entry, mixed with rosemary, thyme and lavender which grew in sculpted beds planted on the south side of the cloister to receive the sun's full warmth.
An elaborately carved fountain gave forth the musical sound of water from its place in the center of the cross formed by paths that divided the garth into quadrants. The yard was encircled by an arcade, shady and cool behind its columns and open spaces.
Windows were not shuttered against the elements but were filled with glass, an extravagance I had never witnessed outside of the cathedral at Salamis, the city on an island near the place of my birth.
The interior was richly furnished with Venetian silk and Flemish tapestries, and blessed with the most holy of relics: the roasted flesh of Saint Lawrence, albeit turned to powder by the years since his martyrdom, an arm of Saint George, an ear of Saint Paul and one of the jars holding the water which our Lord turned into wine.
As was the wont of my former order after a journey, I went to the chapel to offer thanksgiving for my safe arrival. I was surprised to discover that it was round, a complete circle rather than the shape to which I had become accustomed. I subsequently learned that all Templar churches are of this design, as was the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The room was surrounded by columns of serpentine and red marble. The altar was in the middle, a wondrously carved solid block of the purest white marble, unveined, on which devices were carved depicting scenes from the Holy City. The cross thereon reflected the lights of a hundred tapers, for it was of solid gold. The cost of this place alone would far exceed the worth of the entire abbey from which I had come.
Nor was this end of excess. The occupants of this most marvelous place greeted the return of their brethren with a feast shared even by humble esquires such as Philippe and myself. For the first time in my life, I tasted the meat of lampreys, partridge and mutton, accompanied by a wine so strong it made me giddy.
All was as or more than Guillaume de Poitiers had promised. The meat I have described. I was given a cell larger than the sum of any two at my previous abbey and a bed soft with wool stuffed with straw.
Would I had given my soul the same consideration as my flesh. Perhaps I would not be at the dismal place at which I find myself.
Translator's Notes
1. 5.029 meters.
2. He describes a typical two-decked thirteenth-fourteenth century galleon-type vessel used in the Mediterranean.
3. Medieval ships carried their own sources of food for all but the shortest voyages, as the means of preservation of meats and vegetables were uncertain at best. Servants such as Pietro would have shared quarters with both the horses and other animals as may have been aboard for purposes of food.
4. Roman cartographers devised a method roughly similar to the present system of latitude and longitude by the use of kardo maximus, which ran north-south and decumanus maximus, running east-west. Although latitude as we know it today was known by the ancients, it was not until the late eighteenth century that Thomas. Fuller, an English watchmaker, devised an accurate measure of longitude.
5. Medieval maps were absurd in their simplicity. In the seventh century, Isadore, Bishop of Seville, designed a world that was like a disk, with Asia, Europe and Africa sharing unequal quadrants with Jerusalem always at the center, based upon Ezekiel 5:5: "This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the midst of the nations and countries that are around about her." This practice or similar ideas persisted until the Renaissance. Fortunately for Western civilization, the Arabic world both admired and continued to use the Ptolemaic method of cartography, partially described in 4 above. The Templars, no doubt, learned this method while in Palestine as they did the mathematics, engineering and navigation known in the ancient world but lost or suppressed by a Church that did not trust knowledge of a pagan society.
6. The actual word used is castellum, which could include a palace as well as a castle. The translator has chosen the word with the connotation of fortifications.
7. 1127
8. See 5 above.
9. 5.029 meters. The medieval measurement was likely somewhat smaller.
CHAPTER TWO
1
London, St. James
1600 hours the same day
Gurt reread the note before she wadded it up and sent it flying into the trash can.
That bastard! She slung her purse across the room where it smashed against the far wall with gratifying violence. She had saved his ass in Italy and used her connections, not to mention her money, to get him to London.
He thanked her by dumping her like a one-night stand.
She almost wished she could cry, so great was her hurt and humiliation. She sat on the edge of the bed and lit a Marlboro, staring at the rope of smoke spiraling towards the ceiling.
As the minutes passed, her rational nature began to take control. Lang had made her no promises, had in fact tried to talk her out of coming here. How typically male: gallantly concerned about exposing her to danger while ignoring the fact someone needed to watch his back. Old fashioned chauvinism, though charming, could get him killed.
Would serve him right, too.
She could shoot better on her worst day than Lang ever could, was current on modern trade craft and, most importantly, was someone the opposition, whoever they were, probably did not know was a player. With his picture on the front of a dozen newspapers, he needed the cover of being part of a couple more than ever.
Men in general and Lang in particular were capable of phenomenal stupidity. The thought made her feel somewhat better.
You need me, Langford Reilly. You need me, Schatz. And the Dumkopf factor does not diminish this fact in the least.
She reached for the phone on the other side of the bed, stopped and stood. Stubbing out her cigarette, she left the room, trying to remember where she had seen the nearest pay phone.
2
Oxford
1000 hours the next day
Late the next morning, Lang turned the ancient Morris Minor off the M40. The sixty miles from London had been as uneventful as possible in a car the size of a shoe box. A small shoe box. His only problem, other than cramps in muscles he didn't even know existed, had been a major case of flatulence, the result of an Indian meal Rachel, Jacob's wife, had insisted on preparing for dinner. In the intelligence community of the past, Rachel had been known as one of the world's worst and most enthusiastic cooks. Her dinner invitations had inspired legendary excuses.
Last night, she had prepared a version of Bombay aloo, a fiery potato dish, the heat of which had mercifully seared Lang's taste buds, rendering him impervious to her latest culinary disaster. All in all, he had probably gotten off lightly with only gas.
The Magdalen Bridge was, with typical British disregard for the number of letters in a name, pronounced "maudin." However articulated, it gave Lang a picture-postcard view of the honey-colored spires and gothic towers that were Oxford. He could have been looking at a skyline unchanged in five hundred years. The town, of course, had changed. The Rover automobile factory, among others, was located here. Still, the town had a medieval quality that its residents, both town and gown, intended to preserve.
Unlike American universities, Oxford was a composite of any number of undergraduate and graduate colleges, all more or less independent. Christ Church was one of the oldest and largest.
Just off the Abington Road, Lang found a rare parking spot among the bicycles that are Oxford's most popular form of transportation. He entered the Tom Quad, the university's largest quadrangle, named for the huge, multiton bell that chimes the hours there. Not only do the British ignore letters, but they also like to name towers and bells.
He had written Jacob's directions down and read them over before proceeding along one of the paths that formed a giant X across the neatly trimmed grass. On the other side, two young men tossed a Frisbee.
He entered an arch and climbed stone stairs as worn by centuries of student feet as those to Jacob's office had been by lawyers and clients. Down a poorly lit corridor, he found a tarnished plaque that informed him he was standing at the entrance to the office of Hubert Stockwell, Fellow in History. He was reaching to knock when the door swung open and a young woman emerged, her arms full of books and papers. She gave Lang a startled look before dashing for the stairwell.
Lang was fairly certain the expression on her face had nothing to do with his digestive tract problems. "Come in, come in," a voice boomed from inside. "Don't stand about in the hall."
Lang did as ordered.
His first impression was that he had walked into the wake of a tornado. Papers, books and magazines were scattered across every surface, including the floor. This place was the brother to Jacob's office. There was an odor, too: the smell of old, stale documents Lang recognized from his occasional foray into the court clerk's archives at home. Bound and unbound papers were stacked on a mound he subsequently identified as a desk behind which sat a round-faced, bearded man peering at him through thick horn rims. He could have passed for a young Kris Kringle.
"You must be Jacob's friend," he said. "Look too old to be one of my students." Lang extended a hand which the man ignored. "Lang Reilly."
"Hubert Stockwell," the man behind the desk replied without getting up or reaching out his own hand. "A pleasure and all that rubbish."
He started to say something else, but stopped and his face wrinkled as he sneezed. "Bloody old buildings! Drafts, damp, cold stone floors. Bleeding wonder we don't all die of pneumonia!"
He produced a soiled handkerchief, wiped his button of a nose and returned the cloth to wherever it had come from, all in a single-motion so quick Lang was unsure he had seen a handkerchief at all. Lang would not bet on any shell game the good professor ran.
"You'd be the chap interested in the Templars."
"I understand you're an authority."
"Rubbish," Stockwell said, enjoying the compliment anyway. "But they did traipse through a period of history about which I know a little. Yank, aren't you?"
The change of subject made Lang shift mental gears before responding. "Actually, I'm from Atlanta, where a lot of people might resent being called that. Has to do with a Yankee general who was careless with fire."
Stockwell's head bobbed, reminding Lang of one of those dolls given to the first five thousand to enter a baseball game."Sherman, yes, yes. Gone With the Wind and all that. Didn't mean to offend."
"You didn't. About the Templars…"
He held up a hand. "Not me, old boy, not me at all. Had an associate, chap named Wolffe, Nigel Wolffe, was fascinated by the blokes, translated some sort of manuscript, scribblings supposedly written by a Templar before he was put to death. Beseeching God for mercy, confession of sins, contrition, all of the claptrap of the medieval church, I'd imagine."
"And of today's Catholics," Lang said. Stockwell's jaw slackened and the glasses slid to the tip of his nose. "Oh dear, I didn't mean…"
Lang smiled, an assurance they were perfectly comfortable together, just two antipapists. "You said you had an associate."
Stockwell sighed heavily. "That's right, past tense. Poor Wolffe is no longer with us. Splendid chap, played a killer hand of whist. Tragic, simply tragic."
Lang felt a chill not entirely caused by the drafts Stockwell had complained of. "I don't suppose Mr. Wolffe…"… Stockwell sneezed, doing the trick with the hankie again. "Dr. Wolffe;" "… Dr. Wolffe died of natural causes?" Stockwell stared at Lang, his eyebrows coming together like two mating caterpillars. "How's that?"
"I was asking how Dr. Wolffe died. An accident, perhaps?"
"Yes, yes. You must have read about it, seen it on the telly."
"I'm sure I did."
The professor turned to gaze out of the only window the cramped space had. There was a look of longing on his face, as though he were wishing he could go outside and play. "They said he probably left the bloody ring on after making tea. Explosion knocked out windows all the way across the Quad."
"There was a resulting fire?"
Stockwell managed to pull away from the view outside. "Extraordinary memory you have. Mr…"
"Reilly."
"Reilly, yes, yes. Surprising you would remember that from a newspaper or television account months ago." Lang leaned forward, hands on the paper-swamped desk. "His work on the Templars, it burned, too?"
Stockwell's Santa Claus face was masked with melancholy, the loss of scholarly work more lamentable than that of a colleague. "I'm afraid so. The original of the manuscript, notes, everything except his first draft."
Maybe Lang hadn't made the trip for nothing after all.
"Where might that draft be?"
"The University library."
"You mean I can just go to the library and read it?"
Stockwell stood and looked around as though he might have forgotten where he had parked his sleigh. "Not exactly, no. I mean, I'll have to get it. Poor Wolffe ran me a copy on the machine, asked for help. Chap could never edit his own work. I was working on it when he… Well, he won't be publishing anyway, not now, will he? I left it at my carrel, planned to finish it up, submit it in his memory. Let's be off, shall we?"
Lang would have been surprised had the good professor been wearing something other than a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He reached behind the door and took a tweed cap from a coat rack. His universal uniform of academia was now complete.
They dodged bicycles until they turned into Catte Street. Before them was the massive fourteenth-century Bodleian Library, the repository of an original draft of the Magna Carta, innumerable illuminated manuscripts and at least one copy of every book published in Great Britain.
Stockwell pointed to the adjacent round building of enthusiastic Italian Baroque architecture, featuring peaked pilasters, scrolled windows and a domed roof. "Radcliffe Camera," he said. "Reading room. Meet you there soon's I collect Wolffe's papers."
Lang entered through a heavy oak door, ducking to get under a lintel no more than five and a half feet high. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution should try smacking their heads on a few medieval doors, he thought grimly.
The Camera served as a general reading room. Oak tables, built to modern proportions, lined two walls. In the center, some of the library's more famous contents were on display in cloth-covered glass cases. Light struggled through opaque glass windows and filtered from miserly overhead lamps. The quiet was tangible, a dusty deafness interrupted by the occasional sound of a page being turned or the beep of a laptop. A lurch in the gastrointestine made Lang wonder where the men's might be, the loo, in Britspeak. This was not the place he could pass gas and escape undetected. He had been in noisier graveyards.
Lang waited for Stockwell, lifting the light-shielding cover from one case and another. A few Latin phrases greeted him like old friends, but most of -the writing was Saxon, Norman French or some other language he had never seen.
He was concentrating on an elaborately illustrated, hand-lettered Bible in what, he was guessing, was Gaelic when the professor appeared at his elbow so suddenly he might have dropped down a chimney.
He took a sheaf of papers from under one arm and tendered them to Lang."Here you go. Drop the lot off at my office when you're done."
Lang took them,_ scanning the first page. "Thanks." Stockwell was headed for the exit. "Pleased to do it. Friend of Jacob's and all that."
Lang sat at the nearest table, concentrating on what he was reading. For the second time in a very short period, he experienced a jolt in his stomach. But this one had nothing to do with Rachel's cooking.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
4
I shed my novice status shortly after our arrival at Blanchefort, taking my vows as a Brother of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon before the autumn harvest. I shed also my innocence and my faith, now I realize.
True to the inducements I had been offered, I supped on meat twice daily and bathed. myself twice weekly until All Hallows' Eve, when the air's chill made it impractical to do and I was subjected to the body's natural vermin once again. Even these deprivations seemed trivial, for I was allowed to change my vestments1 for clean ones weekly, thereby ridding myself of my small tormentors.
Not only did my belly grow with victuals far richer than those consumed by others in God's service, but my knowledge increased its girth as well. I know now that I should have remembered Eve's original sin in thirsting for forbidden knowledge, but like hers my mind possessed an unquenchable thirst. Uncontrolled lust for knowledge, forbidden or not, can be as deadly as carnal lust, as I was to discover all too late.
The castle had a library the likes of which I did not know existed except, perhaps, under the direct keep of the Holy Father in Rome. I had become used to one or two manuscripts illustrating both in word and picture the Holy Writ. The Brethren's collection included volumes with scribbling resembling worms with brightly coloured ornamentation, which, I was told, was the wisdom of the Ancients preserved by the heathen Saracen.
When I asked why works of pagans and heretics were allowed in consecrated quarters, I was told that writings forbidden most Christians were permitted here. It was a refrain I was to hear repeated often, that the Knights were not bound by the same dictates as the rest of Christendom.
In acting as scribe and counting house clerk, I made another discovery. The Brothers had a system by which a Christian on a pilgrimage might both protect his money while being able to use it when he wished. A traveler could deposit a certain number pieces of gold or silver with any Temple and receive therefore a piece of parchment bearing his name, the amount deposited and a secret sign known only to the Brethren. When this parchment was presented at any other Temple, be it in Britain, Iberia or the German duchies, a like amount as the pilgrim had deposited would be paid over to him, thereby preventing the common scourge of robbery upon the highways or piracy upon the seas.2
For this service, the Temple issuing the parchment and the one rendering value for it received a fee. This seemed to me like the sin of usury, a practice forbidden Christians but allowed the Knights. Worse, the Temples were in the business of letting money out for profit, the same as any heathen Israelite.3
More curious were the sums of money that came from Rome in regular increments. Unthinkable riches arrived to be placed in the Temple's treasure room. This wealth was not distributed as alms to the poor as Christ admonished but went to purchase lands, arms and such excess as the Brethren might desire. Even so, a substantial fraction of the Holy See's bounty was not spent but rather accumulated for purposes I only now understand.
At first I feared to corrupt my soul, for gluttony takes many forms, including the wanton dissipation of wealth. I sought out Guillaume de Poitiers and interrupted his gaming 'with other Knights. Indeed, gaming, eating and the consumption of wine occupied more of the day than did practice with the sword, pike or lance.
He invoked the name of several saints along with consigning to hell the wooden cubes which he and his fellows constantly rolled, wagering on the outcome. "Ah, Pietro, little brother," he said, his voice full of the aroma of the grape. "I see by your face you are disturbed. Do the figures in your counting house become amok?"
At this, there was much gaiety among his companions.
"No," I said solemnly. "I am overcome by such curiosity as I cannot bear in silence. The Holy Father sends us great sums as he does to all Temples. Yet it is the duty of the body of the Holy Church to remit to Rome what they can for the sustenance of that same Holy Father. I understand not."
"In the beginning of our Order," he said, "we had no choice but receive support from Rome were we to equip and maintain ourselves against the infidel."
"But now the Holy Land is lost, by God's unknowable will," I said. "The Order can no longer protect pilgrims to Jerusalem any more than it can attack Saracens from here."
He nodded and pointed to a nearby window. "See you Serres there? And on the other side is Rennes. It is the Holy Father's pleasure that we guard those towns. For that he sees fit to reward us."
"Guard from what?" I asked. "There are no hostile armies nearby and the time of the barbarians is long hence."4
"So you might think," he said. "But it is not our place to question Rome. Only one prideful would do so."
I took his meaning and felt my face flush with shame.
He put his hand on my shoulder; "Besides, it is not always armies or barbarians we have to apprehend. This is the area of two pernicious former heresies that could have destroyed the Holy See as surely as any band of armed men: the Gnostics and the Cathars."5
"And we must guard Cardou from their successors," spoke Tartus, a German. -"But that is but a mountain, bare and empty," I said.
Guillaume de Poitiers gave his brother Knight an abashing glare. "So it is. Brother Tartus has enjoyed God's gift of wine to excess, I fear. We guard towns, not empty hills."
Tartus appeared ready to speak again but did not. I was aware there was a secret that was being kept from me. There I should have allowed the matter to stand. Would that I had not continued so or that I had sought God's help before relying upon my own.
At the first opportunity, I repaired again to the library to ascertain who these Gnostics and Cathars might be.
I found both had their origins in the Holy Council of Nicea,6 at which the early Church adopted the four books as gospel, rejecting others. One of those rejected was that of Thomas, who wrote that Jesus instructed his followers to adhere to the leadership of James upon His death.7
This Thomas might have been he who was the doubter, insisting to touch Our Lord's wounds, for it is from him these Gnostics and Cathars drew their loathsome heresy which, though such was not their purpose, denied the Holy Scriptures, many of which were writ in the blood of martyrs.8
I was at first unable to discover the reason these apostasies found such sustenance here in the Languedoc as would require the maintenance of the Knights at such great expense.
Days later, I came upon the answer, a manuscript apparently taken from a Gnostic heretic shortly before his soul was sent to hell and his body to the stake. Rolled rather than bound, it consisted of a single scroll of vellum,9 badly spelled, poorly written and greatly faded. Had I not let my curiosity overcome my devotions, I would have realized this diabolic writing had been placed in my hands by the devil himself, just as he tempts many of the unwary with the promise of knowledge, for this document was obscene to all Christendom.
The Gnostic author of this abhorrent writing gave not his name but spoke of earlier writings which he purported merely to translate from the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. They bespoke as follows:
After the Crucifixion of Our Lord, Joseph of Arimathea,10 who was Jesus's brother, and Mary Magdalene, who was Jesus's wife,11 fearing persecution also, fled to the far end of the Roman Empire which was then called Gaul. The area was peopled by a number of Jews including the exiled Herod.12 They brought with them only that which could be carried. Included among this impedimenta was a large vessel, the nature of which they kept secret and which they hid in the hills of this region near the River Sens and the mountain called Cardou, the same as the mountain Tartus had said the Brethren guarded.
It is here that this narrative denoted its heretical source which I dared not repeat lest my soul be forever damned for such blasphemous utterances. I did, however, seek out Guillaume de Poitiers and tell him some of the things of which I had read, though not the part that would damn me forever should I speak it. He was undistressed by it, saying the ravings of madmen had naught to do with us and our duty of loving and protecting The One True God.
But they did, as I was to learn to my sorrow.
Translator's Notes
1. The Latin vestimentum meaning clothing, is the word used. Since Pietro would have worn robes, the translator has chosen a literal translation.
2. This was, no doubt, not only the first system of cheques or drafts, but the first travelers' cheques.
3. By Papal decree, only Jews were permitted to charge interest on loans. This explains the rise of the Jewish European banking houses.
4. Although he uses the Latin word for barbarian, it is likely he refers to the Vikings whose raids extended even to the Mediterranean from the eighth until the tenth century.
5. From the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. The Christian Gnostics believed that Christ was mortal, born of Mary and was touched by God. His spirit, not his corporeal body, ascended into heaven. The Cathars believed Christ was· an angel who never really existed in true human form. The potential damage either belief might have done the early or medieval Christian church, which had committed itself to the Pauline doctrine of the physical resurrection and ascension of Christ into heaven, is obvious.
6. 325 A.D. The major question addressed by this early conference of Christians was whether Jesus was created by God or was part of God. A seemingly academic distinction, the question had endless theological implications as will become apparent. The latter belief, Le., that Jesus was "begotten, not made," being of one substance with the Father prevailed.
7. The so-called Nag Hammadi gospels were unearthed in Upper Egypt in 1945, encased in terracotta jars like the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Translation of these remarkable documents, fifty-two in all, was not completed until 1977. They also refer to a Gospel of Thomas which contains such an admonition.
8. See 5 above.
9. Veelin, Frankish for lamb or lamb skin specially prepared for writing. It was not uncommon to also use calfskin or kidskin.
10. Aram, was the ancient Hebrew name for Syria but it is unlikely that a sibling of Christ could have come from there. We must assume Arimathea was a city in Palestine, the ancient name of which is lost.
11. This is not the first time the question of Christ's marital status has arisen. Jesus, as a Jew, would have followed the Jewish law's commandment to marry. In fact, the controversial Lobineau documents registered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris make the argument that Jesus arrived in the Languedoc alive and en famille and was founder of the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings.
12. The Roman province of Aquitainia, subsequently Aquitaine in southern Gaul, including today's Languedoc, was a convenient place for Roman emperors to exile those fallen from grace. Ironically, Pontius Pilate was also banished there.
1
London, St. James
1600 hours the same day
Gurt reread the note before she wadded it up and sent it flying into the trash can.
That bastard! She slung her purse across the room where it smashed against the far wall with gratifying violence. She had saved his ass in Italy and used her connections, not to mention her money, to get him to London.
He thanked her by dumping her like a one-night stand.
She almost wished she could cry, so great was her hurt and humiliation. She sat on the edge of the bed and lit a Marlboro, staring at the rope of smoke spiraling towards the ceiling.
As the minutes passed, her rational nature began to take control. Lang had made her no promises, had in fact tried to talk her out of coming here. How typically male: gallantly concerned about exposing her to danger while ignoring the fact someone needed to watch his back. Old fashioned chauvinism, though charming, could get him killed.
Would serve him right, too.
She could shoot better on her worst day than Lang ever could, was current on modern trade craft and, most importantly, was someone the opposition, whoever they were, probably did not know was a player. With his picture on the front of a dozen newspapers, he needed the cover of being part of a couple more than ever.
Men in general and Lang in particular were capable of phenomenal stupidity. The thought made her feel somewhat better.
You need me, Langford Reilly. You need me, Schatz. And the Dumkopf factor does not diminish this fact in the least.
She reached for the phone on the other side of the bed, stopped and stood. Stubbing out her cigarette, she left the room, trying to remember where she had seen the nearest pay phone.
2
Oxford
1000 hours the next day
Late the next morning, Lang turned the ancient Morris Minor off the M40. The sixty miles from London had been as uneventful as possible in a car the size of a shoe box. A small shoe box. His only problem, other than cramps in muscles he didn't even know existed, had been a major case of flatulence, the result of an Indian meal Rachel, Jacob's wife, had insisted on preparing for dinner. In the intelligence community of the past, Rachel had been known as one of the world's worst and most enthusiastic cooks. Her dinner invitations had inspired legendary excuses.
Last night, she had prepared a version of Bombay aloo, a fiery potato dish, the heat of which had mercifully seared Lang's taste buds, rendering him impervious to her latest culinary disaster. All in all, he had probably gotten off lightly with only gas.
The Magdalen Bridge was, with typical British disregard for the number of letters in a name, pronounced "maudin." However articulated, it gave Lang a picture-postcard view of the honey-colored spires and gothic towers that were Oxford. He could have been looking at a skyline unchanged in five hundred years. The town, of course, had changed. The Rover automobile factory, among others, was located here. Still, the town had a medieval quality that its residents, both town and gown, intended to preserve.
Unlike American universities, Oxford was a composite of any number of undergraduate and graduate colleges, all more or less independent. Christ Church was one of the oldest and largest.
Just off the Abington Road, Lang found a rare parking spot among the bicycles that are Oxford's most popular form of transportation. He entered the Tom Quad, the university's largest quadrangle, named for the huge, multiton bell that chimes the hours there. Not only do the British ignore letters, but they also like to name towers and bells.
He had written Jacob's directions down and read them over before proceeding along one of the paths that formed a giant X across the neatly trimmed grass. On the other side, two young men tossed a Frisbee.
He entered an arch and climbed stone stairs as worn by centuries of student feet as those to Jacob's office had been by lawyers and clients. Down a poorly lit corridor, he found a tarnished plaque that informed him he was standing at the entrance to the office of Hubert Stockwell, Fellow in History. He was reaching to knock when the door swung open and a young woman emerged, her arms full of books and papers. She gave Lang a startled look before dashing for the stairwell.
Lang was fairly certain the expression on her face had nothing to do with his digestive tract problems. "Come in, come in," a voice boomed from inside. "Don't stand about in the hall."
Lang did as ordered.
His first impression was that he had walked into the wake of a tornado. Papers, books and magazines were scattered across every surface, including the floor. This place was the brother to Jacob's office. There was an odor, too: the smell of old, stale documents Lang recognized from his occasional foray into the court clerk's archives at home. Bound and unbound papers were stacked on a mound he subsequently identified as a desk behind which sat a round-faced, bearded man peering at him through thick horn rims. He could have passed for a young Kris Kringle.
"You must be Jacob's friend," he said. "Look too old to be one of my students." Lang extended a hand which the man ignored. "Lang Reilly."
"Hubert Stockwell," the man behind the desk replied without getting up or reaching out his own hand. "A pleasure and all that rubbish."
He started to say something else, but stopped and his face wrinkled as he sneezed. "Bloody old buildings! Drafts, damp, cold stone floors. Bleeding wonder we don't all die of pneumonia!"
He produced a soiled handkerchief, wiped his button of a nose and returned the cloth to wherever it had come from, all in a single-motion so quick Lang was unsure he had seen a handkerchief at all. Lang would not bet on any shell game the good professor ran.
"You'd be the chap interested in the Templars."
"I understand you're an authority."
"Rubbish," Stockwell said, enjoying the compliment anyway. "But they did traipse through a period of history about which I know a little. Yank, aren't you?"
The change of subject made Lang shift mental gears before responding. "Actually, I'm from Atlanta, where a lot of people might resent being called that. Has to do with a Yankee general who was careless with fire."
Stockwell's head bobbed, reminding Lang of one of those dolls given to the first five thousand to enter a baseball game."Sherman, yes, yes. Gone With the Wind and all that. Didn't mean to offend."
"You didn't. About the Templars…"
He held up a hand. "Not me, old boy, not me at all. Had an associate, chap named Wolffe, Nigel Wolffe, was fascinated by the blokes, translated some sort of manuscript, scribblings supposedly written by a Templar before he was put to death. Beseeching God for mercy, confession of sins, contrition, all of the claptrap of the medieval church, I'd imagine."
"And of today's Catholics," Lang said. Stockwell's jaw slackened and the glasses slid to the tip of his nose. "Oh dear, I didn't mean…"
Lang smiled, an assurance they were perfectly comfortable together, just two antipapists. "You said you had an associate."
Stockwell sighed heavily. "That's right, past tense. Poor Wolffe is no longer with us. Splendid chap, played a killer hand of whist. Tragic, simply tragic."
Lang felt a chill not entirely caused by the drafts Stockwell had complained of. "I don't suppose Mr. Wolffe…"… Stockwell sneezed, doing the trick with the hankie again. "Dr. Wolffe;" "… Dr. Wolffe died of natural causes?" Stockwell stared at Lang, his eyebrows coming together like two mating caterpillars. "How's that?"
"I was asking how Dr. Wolffe died. An accident, perhaps?"
"Yes, yes. You must have read about it, seen it on the telly."
"I'm sure I did."
The professor turned to gaze out of the only window the cramped space had. There was a look of longing on his face, as though he were wishing he could go outside and play. "They said he probably left the bloody ring on after making tea. Explosion knocked out windows all the way across the Quad."
"There was a resulting fire?"
Stockwell managed to pull away from the view outside. "Extraordinary memory you have. Mr…"
"Reilly."
"Reilly, yes, yes. Surprising you would remember that from a newspaper or television account months ago." Lang leaned forward, hands on the paper-swamped desk. "His work on the Templars, it burned, too?"
Stockwell's Santa Claus face was masked with melancholy, the loss of scholarly work more lamentable than that of a colleague. "I'm afraid so. The original of the manuscript, notes, everything except his first draft."
Maybe Lang hadn't made the trip for nothing after all.
"Where might that draft be?"
"The University library."
"You mean I can just go to the library and read it?"
Stockwell stood and looked around as though he might have forgotten where he had parked his sleigh. "Not exactly, no. I mean, I'll have to get it. Poor Wolffe ran me a copy on the machine, asked for help. Chap could never edit his own work. I was working on it when he… Well, he won't be publishing anyway, not now, will he? I left it at my carrel, planned to finish it up, submit it in his memory. Let's be off, shall we?"
Lang would have been surprised had the good professor been wearing something other than a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He reached behind the door and took a tweed cap from a coat rack. His universal uniform of academia was now complete.
They dodged bicycles until they turned into Catte Street. Before them was the massive fourteenth-century Bodleian Library, the repository of an original draft of the Magna Carta, innumerable illuminated manuscripts and at least one copy of every book published in Great Britain.
Stockwell pointed to the adjacent round building of enthusiastic Italian Baroque architecture, featuring peaked pilasters, scrolled windows and a domed roof. "Radcliffe Camera," he said. "Reading room. Meet you there soon's I collect Wolffe's papers."
Lang entered through a heavy oak door, ducking to get under a lintel no more than five and a half feet high. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution should try smacking their heads on a few medieval doors, he thought grimly.
The Camera served as a general reading room. Oak tables, built to modern proportions, lined two walls. In the center, some of the library's more famous contents were on display in cloth-covered glass cases. Light struggled through opaque glass windows and filtered from miserly overhead lamps. The quiet was tangible, a dusty deafness interrupted by the occasional sound of a page being turned or the beep of a laptop. A lurch in the gastrointestine made Lang wonder where the men's might be, the loo, in Britspeak. This was not the place he could pass gas and escape undetected. He had been in noisier graveyards.
Lang waited for Stockwell, lifting the light-shielding cover from one case and another. A few Latin phrases greeted him like old friends, but most of -the writing was Saxon, Norman French or some other language he had never seen.
He was concentrating on an elaborately illustrated, hand-lettered Bible in what, he was guessing, was Gaelic when the professor appeared at his elbow so suddenly he might have dropped down a chimney.
He took a sheaf of papers from under one arm and tendered them to Lang."Here you go. Drop the lot off at my office when you're done."
Lang took them,_ scanning the first page. "Thanks." Stockwell was headed for the exit. "Pleased to do it. Friend of Jacob's and all that."
Lang sat at the nearest table, concentrating on what he was reading. For the second time in a very short period, he experienced a jolt in his stomach. But this one had nothing to do with Rachel's cooking.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
4
I shed my novice status shortly after our arrival at Blanchefort, taking my vows as a Brother of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon before the autumn harvest. I shed also my innocence and my faith, now I realize.
True to the inducements I had been offered, I supped on meat twice daily and bathed. myself twice weekly until All Hallows' Eve, when the air's chill made it impractical to do and I was subjected to the body's natural vermin once again. Even these deprivations seemed trivial, for I was allowed to change my vestments1 for clean ones weekly, thereby ridding myself of my small tormentors.
Not only did my belly grow with victuals far richer than those consumed by others in God's service, but my knowledge increased its girth as well. I know now that I should have remembered Eve's original sin in thirsting for forbidden knowledge, but like hers my mind possessed an unquenchable thirst. Uncontrolled lust for knowledge, forbidden or not, can be as deadly as carnal lust, as I was to discover all too late.
The castle had a library the likes of which I did not know existed except, perhaps, under the direct keep of the Holy Father in Rome. I had become used to one or two manuscripts illustrating both in word and picture the Holy Writ. The Brethren's collection included volumes with scribbling resembling worms with brightly coloured ornamentation, which, I was told, was the wisdom of the Ancients preserved by the heathen Saracen.
When I asked why works of pagans and heretics were allowed in consecrated quarters, I was told that writings forbidden most Christians were permitted here. It was a refrain I was to hear repeated often, that the Knights were not bound by the same dictates as the rest of Christendom.
In acting as scribe and counting house clerk, I made another discovery. The Brothers had a system by which a Christian on a pilgrimage might both protect his money while being able to use it when he wished. A traveler could deposit a certain number pieces of gold or silver with any Temple and receive therefore a piece of parchment bearing his name, the amount deposited and a secret sign known only to the Brethren. When this parchment was presented at any other Temple, be it in Britain, Iberia or the German duchies, a like amount as the pilgrim had deposited would be paid over to him, thereby preventing the common scourge of robbery upon the highways or piracy upon the seas.2
For this service, the Temple issuing the parchment and the one rendering value for it received a fee. This seemed to me like the sin of usury, a practice forbidden Christians but allowed the Knights. Worse, the Temples were in the business of letting money out for profit, the same as any heathen Israelite.3
More curious were the sums of money that came from Rome in regular increments. Unthinkable riches arrived to be placed in the Temple's treasure room. This wealth was not distributed as alms to the poor as Christ admonished but went to purchase lands, arms and such excess as the Brethren might desire. Even so, a substantial fraction of the Holy See's bounty was not spent but rather accumulated for purposes I only now understand.
At first I feared to corrupt my soul, for gluttony takes many forms, including the wanton dissipation of wealth. I sought out Guillaume de Poitiers and interrupted his gaming 'with other Knights. Indeed, gaming, eating and the consumption of wine occupied more of the day than did practice with the sword, pike or lance.
He invoked the name of several saints along with consigning to hell the wooden cubes which he and his fellows constantly rolled, wagering on the outcome. "Ah, Pietro, little brother," he said, his voice full of the aroma of the grape. "I see by your face you are disturbed. Do the figures in your counting house become amok?"
At this, there was much gaiety among his companions.
"No," I said solemnly. "I am overcome by such curiosity as I cannot bear in silence. The Holy Father sends us great sums as he does to all Temples. Yet it is the duty of the body of the Holy Church to remit to Rome what they can for the sustenance of that same Holy Father. I understand not."
"In the beginning of our Order," he said, "we had no choice but receive support from Rome were we to equip and maintain ourselves against the infidel."
"But now the Holy Land is lost, by God's unknowable will," I said. "The Order can no longer protect pilgrims to Jerusalem any more than it can attack Saracens from here."
He nodded and pointed to a nearby window. "See you Serres there? And on the other side is Rennes. It is the Holy Father's pleasure that we guard those towns. For that he sees fit to reward us."
"Guard from what?" I asked. "There are no hostile armies nearby and the time of the barbarians is long hence."4
"So you might think," he said. "But it is not our place to question Rome. Only one prideful would do so."
I took his meaning and felt my face flush with shame.
He put his hand on my shoulder; "Besides, it is not always armies or barbarians we have to apprehend. This is the area of two pernicious former heresies that could have destroyed the Holy See as surely as any band of armed men: the Gnostics and the Cathars."5
"And we must guard Cardou from their successors," spoke Tartus, a German. -"But that is but a mountain, bare and empty," I said.
Guillaume de Poitiers gave his brother Knight an abashing glare. "So it is. Brother Tartus has enjoyed God's gift of wine to excess, I fear. We guard towns, not empty hills."
Tartus appeared ready to speak again but did not. I was aware there was a secret that was being kept from me. There I should have allowed the matter to stand. Would that I had not continued so or that I had sought God's help before relying upon my own.
At the first opportunity, I repaired again to the library to ascertain who these Gnostics and Cathars might be.
I found both had their origins in the Holy Council of Nicea,6 at which the early Church adopted the four books as gospel, rejecting others. One of those rejected was that of Thomas, who wrote that Jesus instructed his followers to adhere to the leadership of James upon His death.7
This Thomas might have been he who was the doubter, insisting to touch Our Lord's wounds, for it is from him these Gnostics and Cathars drew their loathsome heresy which, though such was not their purpose, denied the Holy Scriptures, many of which were writ in the blood of martyrs.8
I was at first unable to discover the reason these apostasies found such sustenance here in the Languedoc as would require the maintenance of the Knights at such great expense.
Days later, I came upon the answer, a manuscript apparently taken from a Gnostic heretic shortly before his soul was sent to hell and his body to the stake. Rolled rather than bound, it consisted of a single scroll of vellum,9 badly spelled, poorly written and greatly faded. Had I not let my curiosity overcome my devotions, I would have realized this diabolic writing had been placed in my hands by the devil himself, just as he tempts many of the unwary with the promise of knowledge, for this document was obscene to all Christendom.
The Gnostic author of this abhorrent writing gave not his name but spoke of earlier writings which he purported merely to translate from the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. They bespoke as follows:
After the Crucifixion of Our Lord, Joseph of Arimathea,10 who was Jesus's brother, and Mary Magdalene, who was Jesus's wife,11 fearing persecution also, fled to the far end of the Roman Empire which was then called Gaul. The area was peopled by a number of Jews including the exiled Herod.12 They brought with them only that which could be carried. Included among this impedimenta was a large vessel, the nature of which they kept secret and which they hid in the hills of this region near the River Sens and the mountain called Cardou, the same as the mountain Tartus had said the Brethren guarded.
It is here that this narrative denoted its heretical source which I dared not repeat lest my soul be forever damned for such blasphemous utterances. I did, however, seek out Guillaume de Poitiers and tell him some of the things of which I had read, though not the part that would damn me forever should I speak it. He was undistressed by it, saying the ravings of madmen had naught to do with us and our duty of loving and protecting The One True God.
But they did, as I was to learn to my sorrow.
Translator's Notes
1. The Latin vestimentum meaning clothing, is the word used. Since Pietro would have worn robes, the translator has chosen a literal translation.
2. This was, no doubt, not only the first system of cheques or drafts, but the first travelers' cheques.
3. By Papal decree, only Jews were permitted to charge interest on loans. This explains the rise of the Jewish European banking houses.
4. Although he uses the Latin word for barbarian, it is likely he refers to the Vikings whose raids extended even to the Mediterranean from the eighth until the tenth century.
5. From the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. The Christian Gnostics believed that Christ was mortal, born of Mary and was touched by God. His spirit, not his corporeal body, ascended into heaven. The Cathars believed Christ was· an angel who never really existed in true human form. The potential damage either belief might have done the early or medieval Christian church, which had committed itself to the Pauline doctrine of the physical resurrection and ascension of Christ into heaven, is obvious.
6. 325 A.D. The major question addressed by this early conference of Christians was whether Jesus was created by God or was part of God. A seemingly academic distinction, the question had endless theological implications as will become apparent. The latter belief, Le., that Jesus was "begotten, not made," being of one substance with the Father prevailed.
7. The so-called Nag Hammadi gospels were unearthed in Upper Egypt in 1945, encased in terracotta jars like the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Translation of these remarkable documents, fifty-two in all, was not completed until 1977. They also refer to a Gospel of Thomas which contains such an admonition.
8. See 5 above.
9. Veelin, Frankish for lamb or lamb skin specially prepared for writing. It was not uncommon to also use calfskin or kidskin.
10. Aram, was the ancient Hebrew name for Syria but it is unlikely that a sibling of Christ could have come from there. We must assume Arimathea was a city in Palestine, the ancient name of which is lost.
11. This is not the first time the question of Christ's marital status has arisen. Jesus, as a Jew, would have followed the Jewish law's commandment to marry. In fact, the controversial Lobineau documents registered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris make the argument that Jesus arrived in the Languedoc alive and en famille and was founder of the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings.
12. The Roman province of Aquitainia, subsequently Aquitaine in southern Gaul, including today's Languedoc, was a convenient place for Roman emperors to exile those fallen from grace. Ironically, Pontius Pilate was also banished there.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Oxford
Lang knew he was holding Wolffe's death warrant, the reason They had killed him. The thought made him glance apprehensively around the room before he began to read. First, he forgot his digestive problems, then where he was. The only interruption was that spoor of academia, annoying footnotes.
By the time Lang finished reading, he had some theories as to the painting's riddle. The question was whether he was going to live long enough to try them out.
2
London, South Bank
1630 hours
A dirty carpet of clouds was threatening rain by the time Lang wedged the Morris into the Strand's afternoon traffic and crossed Waterloo Bridge to South Bank.
Located along the inside of the bend of the Thames, South Bank was actually east rather than south of London. Until extensive urban renewal by the Luftwaffe in World War II, the area had been warehouses and factories. For the next fifty years, little was built there. Now it displayed highrise offices, music halls, galleries and housing for those who enjoyed contemporary surroundings. The skyline could have been that of any number of American cities.
Lang went straight down Waterloo Road to St. George's Circus, one of those traffic circles the British seem to prefer to traffic lights. After two circuits, he worked his way to the outside and exited onto Lambeth Road, where the Imperial War Museum's two massive· naval guns filled his windshield.
Off Lambeth, he crowded the Morris into a rare parking spot, killed the engine and watched the rearview mirror. Like most London streets, this one was one way, giving him a clear view of approaching vehicles. After five minutes, it was clear he hadn't been followed. He was fairly certain nobody but Jacob, Rachel and the professor knew he had gone to Oxford, but in light of what he had learned there, it would be an obvious place for Them to watch.
He cranked up the Morris and drove into a parking garage beneath an apartment building that would have been at home on Riverside Drive or East Seventy-first Street. He left the car in Jacob's space and followed the signs to the lift, as the English call elevators.
Jacob opened the door. Even in the hall, Lang could smell something besides his pipe. Rachel in the kitchen.
Jacob gestured Lang inside, his glance up and down the hall more of a nervous tic than a conscious movement. "Glad you're back safely. Stockwell any help?"
"He was, yes," Lang said, handing over the keys to the Morris as he crossed the threshold.
The apartment was the antithesis of Jacob's office. The furniture was contemporary, glass and chrome that made Lang nostalgic for home. Lucite shelves along one wall held a few books and several pieces of modern sculpture that possibly had begun life as engine parts. Two walls held art that bore a resemblance to the splattist works Lang had seen the day before. The remaining wall was glass, through which Lang could see a small deck and a panorama of the Thames that, in the darkening afternoon, reminded him of Monet's Houses of Parliament.
Jacob was waiting for further explanation but Lang asked first, "What did you learn about Pegasus?"
Jacob settled onto a sofa, leather slung like a hammock on a chrome stand, and fumbled a pipe from the pocket of a shabby sweater. "Quite a bit, actually."
Lang sat and waited impatiently as Jacob went through the ritual of lighting up.
"Pegasus," Jacob said among puffs of smoke, "Pegasus, of course, was the winged horse of Greek mythology that caused the stream Hippocrene to spring from Mount Helicon with a blow from his hoof."
Lang shifted in his seat, hoping Jacob would get to the point sooner rather than later.
"I have no idea as to the relationship between a mythical animal and a commercial enterprise," Jacob admitted, "but the company is interesting in several respects. First…"
Sucking loudly, he stopped to dig in the briar with what looked like a nail. Lang suppressed an urge to throw the damn pipe out the window. "I know the relationship with the mythical animal. But the company…?"
"… A Channel Island corporation, based in Jersey." Jacob arched those buglike eyebrows in an implied question.
"You mean it has bank and corporate secrecy," Lang said. "By law, the identity of the shareholders and officers are confidential and any transactions on the Channel Islands aren't taxed."
Jacob had his pipe smoldering again. "Just so. Legally, we would have no way of knowing that the company has annual receipts of several billion dollars. Quite extraordinary considering it produces nothing, performs no ascertainable services."
Lang let out a low whistle. "Jesus, that's an income larger than the gross national product of a lot of countries. Where does it come from?"
"Even more interesting: a number of sources, all either overtly Roman Catholic, like the Pope's investments and discretionary funds, or strongly influenced by the Church, like a number of Catholic relief agencies."
Lang realized he was gaping, then asked, "For what? I mean, that pays off a lot of winning bingo cards."
Jacob shrugged. "Unfortunately Mossad is an intelligence source staffed, by definition, by those unlikely to be privy to the workings of the Catholic Church, the Vatican or the Papal State. Whatever Pegasus does, it doesn't do it by phone, e-mail or fax, anything Echelon monitors. Mossad's known about it for years, never found it interesting."
Never found it threatening to the Jewish State, Lang thought. "Any idea where the money goes?"
Jacob was probing the pipe again, this time with a wooden match. "Geographically? Europe mostly. A chain of sausage restaurants. in Germany, petrol dealers in the UK., ski and sea resorts in France. Too many businesses to track just out of curiosity, and communications between them are encrypted. They don't seem to be breaking any laws, pay taxes when they can't be avoided, that sort of thing."
Lang thought for a moment. These were all businesses with high cash potentials. "Sounds like money laundering to me. Any contacts in Asia, South America, places where narcotraffic is heavy?"
Jacob was sucking on his pipe again. He shook his head.
"Any individual names?"
"As I said, Mossad isn't particularly interested. I had to call a lot of favors due to get what, I did."
"What about Jersey? Is the island just a mail drop or does Pegasus have some sort of operation there?"
"Can't say. I can tell you that a disproportionate number of communications go through a Lisbon exchange. Could be just a switching point, could mean they do business there."
Impatiently, Lang watched his friend apply yet another match to the bowl of his pipe and suck until blue smoke poured out of it.
"One really strange thing," he said at last. "Little hamlet in the southwest of France, Burgundy. Rennes-le something… Rennes-le-Château. Wire transfers there to what I'd guess is a dummy corporation. Small amounts but on a regular basis. They've got no operations there we – Echelon – could find."
Lang leaned back in his chair, more leather slung on a chrome frame. "Rennes-le-Château? Never heard of it."
"I found it in the atlas. Somewhere near the Pyrenees."
"The Languedoc region?"
Jacob was knocking the pipe's contents out into a glass ashtray that seemed fragile enough to shatter from the effort. The intensity in Lang's tone made him look up. "I think so, yes."
The American stood. "The atlas, you have it here?".. Jacob was clearly puzzled at Lang's sudden interest in geography. "Well, yes…"
The doorbell rang.
Jacob carefully laid his pipe in the ashtray and went to the door, squinting through the peephole. "Sure you weren't followed?"…
"Followed? By whom?"
Jacob's eye was still against the hole. "Coppers, by the look of 'em."
3
London, Mayfair
At the same time
The computer screen washed Gurt's face in blue light. Overhead, the glare of the unremitting fluorescent bulbs made the basement of 24 Grosvenor Square resemble an operating theater. In its own way, the room was as antiseptic as any surgery, as clear of electronic bacteria as a hospital of the conventional kind. Electronically swept daily, every inch was videotaped on a continuing twenty-four hour reel. Even so, the room was partitioned off by seamless glass, a feature that prompted its regular occupants to refer to it as "the fish bowl." It was the most secure part of the American embassy's secured sections, the part where the Agency did its work.
Gurt's security clearance was high enough to access the information she was seeking, a closed personnel file, but clearances did not impress the cybergods who dictated the time required to comply with a request of the system.
She hit the "enter" key for the second time in a fruitless effort to speed a response, impatiently muttering a curse to which her native tongue gave special emphasis. As though she had spoken a magical password, the file she sought appeared. Scanning it, she committed parts to memory. Note-taking of any sort was forbidden.
She was about to close out when a blinking red light at the bottom of the screen caught her attention. She frowned, entering another access code.
Someone had managed to hack into the system, into this specific file.-Unbelievable! The network's complexity made the Pentagon's look like a child's puzzle in comparison. Ten minutes' further investigation was useless. This was a case for the Agency's supernerds, cybergurus who, unknown to the public, had successfully traced the worldwide Love Bug and Melissa viruses of a few years back to their authors.
As with those viruses, the intruder had routed his inquiries through a number of computers belonging to individuals and companies across the globe, innocent hosts for electronic burglary. But whoever he was, the Agency's reverse cookie had made certain he had left cyberevidence of his entry and departure, the time and date. The date, she saw, was yesterday.
Presumably the hacker wanted the same information she had just garnered. Gurt exited the system hurriedly. She didn't have a lot of time. Lang's ass was slung worse than he knew.
4
London, South Dock
1645 hours
"Cops?" Lang asked, pointing to the kitchen. "Where does that lead?"
There was a loud knock, the sound of the door being struck with something harder than a human hand. A gun butt came to mind.
"Leads to a back staircase," Jacob said. "Want to wager they don't have it covered?"
Rachel had come out of the kitchen, started to ask what was going on and decided against it. Her years of marriage to Jacob had taught her to question little. She was, however, following the conversation with astonishment that Lang would be wanted by the police.
Lang stepped to the glass wall, sliding it open.
"There's no way down from…"Jacob cautioned.
On the narrow balcony, Lang climbed onto the metal railing about four feet above the cement, using a hand against the building's wall to steady himself. The balcony below was identical, too narrow. Even though it was only twelve feet or so below, it would be too easy to miss if he jumped.
From inside Jacob's apartment, Lang heard renewed and determined banging on the door, accompanied by loud and demanding voices.
Jacob shot him a glance before shouting, ''I'm coming, I'm coming!"
The adjacent balcony was too far to simply step over onto it. But a good jump… Lang didn't have a lot of choice. He resisted the urge to close his eyes as he stooped, coiling his leg muscles, and sprang into empty space.
The sole of his shoe slipped on the edge of the concrete and Lang grabbed for the iron railing as he fell. His weight yanked his arms straight with a jerk that felt as though they were tearing from the sockets. For what seemed an eternity, Lang's fingers grasped for purchase on the cement and he tried not to notice how far away the street looked twelve stories below.
Through the open glass, he could hear voices above. Jacob's sounded angry. He sensed, rather than heard, footsteps. It hadn't taken the police long to conclude Lang was no longer in Jacob's place and search elsewhere.
Like outside.
Finally Lang was able to grasp one of the railing's uprights. He tugged gently, making sure the slender metal would hold his hundred and ninety pounds. His other hand found a second upright and he slowly began to chin himself up as though on a crossbar.
As his head was coming level with the cement floor of the balcony, he heard something that made him turn his head. On Jacob's balcony, a pair of shoes were at eye level, the soles and rubber heels unevenly worn. Lang extended his arms, lowering his head below balcony-level and hoping his hands weren't visible in the growing dusk. He was hanging in a twelve-story void but they would hardly look for him beneath the adjacent balcony. Jacob's balcony would block out the rest of him unless someone came to the very edge and looked over.
Scuffed toe caps the color of butterscotch turned away and a voice announced, "Bloke's not 'ere. Sure we 'ave the right flat?"
Lang couldn't make out the words of the reply but the tone was affirmative.
He heard the glass door to Jacob's apartment slide shut, and he glanced upward, risking the paleness of his face showing against the dark background if anyone were still outside. He was alone. Once again he chinned up until one hand, then the other, could reach the top of the railing and he could pull himself up, over and onto firm footing.
The drapes on the glass were pulled, so Lang couldn't tell if there were lights burning inside. He put an ear to the cold surface. No voices, human or electronic. Either the occupants were the rare ones who didn't watch the BBC news at this time of day or the place was empty. He tugged at the grip. Locked. Who would lock a door on the twelfth floor, he asked himself as he took a credit card from his wallet. Someone seriously paranoid, came the answer as he inserted the card and pressed back the latch.
Thankful that few homeowners in England had firearms, Lang stepped into total darkness.
Guided by a sliver of light under the door to what he surmised was the common hallway, he moved forward, arms outstretched. His hands missed the low coffee table that smacked his shins so painfully he had to bite his lip to suppress a curse.
He was reaching for the door to the hall when shadows moved across the ribbon of light underneath it The click in the lock nearly immobilized him like headlights are supposed to transfix a deer. As he frantically tried to think of a hiding place in the dark, he remembered his sole experience in the matter, an encounter on a dark road in the Black Forest, had resulted not in an indecisive buck but a badly damaged Volkswagen.
Lang did the only thing he could think of: take a position next to the hinges, a place where the opening door itself would momentarily hide him. Then the lights flashed on, blinding him for an instant. When he could see again, he was looking at a woman carrying a basket, the plastic kind Europeans use for grocery shopping. She saw him as she turned to close the door.
Her eyes opened to a size Lang had thought impossible anywhere except in the comic strips. She made a sound more like a squeak than a scream. It wasn't loud enough to mask the smashing of glass when the basket slipped from her grip and hit the floor.
Lang smiled the most nonthreatening smile possible as he stepped out from behind the still-open door and into the hallway. "Sorry, wrong flat" He almost slipped on something that crunched under his foot. "Sounds real fresh. You'll have to give me the name of your greengrocer.".She found her voice, as indicated by the scream that followed him as he fled down the hall.
He decided not to use the elevator. No idea how long it would take to get down and the police might very well be responding to the poor frightened woman right now. He made a dash down the stairs. At the lobby, he summoned the stuffy dignity so dear to the English to stroll for the door outside and enter the fresh darkness of early evening.
How the hell had the cops known he was at Jacob's place, Lang wondered as he walked towards the nearest tube station. He was certain no one had followed him to Jacob's. And if they had, where did they pick him up? If he had been recognized at Oxford, why hadn't he been arrested there? Because they had somehow known he was coming here, to Jacob's.
The thought made Lang shiver more than the chill of the evening. To know he would seek out Jacob, someone would have had to look over his long-closed service record, something the Agency's pathological penchant for secrecy made unlikely. The London police, Scotland Yard, would have known that, probably wouldn't have even bothered to ask, assuming they had been aware of his former employment. But he was almost certain he had seen his photo from his service jacket in the tabloid the man on the bench had been reading at the Temple. How did the paper get it? That raised an even more disturbing possibility: Someone had exhumed his record, buried under years of bureaucratic sod, and was supplying the police with the information. They. They who wanted him arrested, imprisoned where They could tend to him in their own sweet time.
Lang's thoughts were interrupted by the protest of tires under brakes. A sedan, something the British would call a saloon car, ran onto the sidewalk, blocking his path. Two men got out, pistols pointed..
"Mr. Reilly, I believe," the taller of the two said, holding up a leather folder with a badge on one side, a photograph on the other. "Scotland Yard. You're under arrest."
"Wow!" Lang said, raising his arms. "All my life I've dreamed of this, actually meeting someone from the Yard. A real Kodak moment."
The streetlights' halogenic jaundice showed. that the larger man had suffered a bad case of acne at some point in his life. His suit was ill fitting. The look of something bought off the rack and poorly tailored? No, the jacket had been hurriedly altered to fit around the clearly visible shoulder holster. Not the tailored British look Lang associated with English inspectors. The gun was wrong, too, a Beretta. Scotland Yard, like most American police forces, favored the Glock nine-millimeter, a weapon lighter, faster and holding more rounds than the Italian-made automatic.
The other man was behind the first, shorter and heavy, Costello to his companion's Abbott. He wore the recognizable butterscotch shoes. Holstering his gun, he stepped to Lang's rear, pulling his arms behind him. Lang expected to hear the snap of handcuffs. Instead, Costello tightened his grip as Abbott put his weapon away also.
"You'll be coming with us, Mr. Reilly," Abbott said politely. "The lads at the Yard have a query or two for you."
"Don't suppose it'd do any good to tell you I didn't do it," Lang said, testing the man's grip by pretending to struggle.
"An' which would be that you didn't do, now? The one in America or the poor sod in Bond Street?" Abbott was reaching inside his suit jacket.
The light was far from good but sufficed for Lang to see Abbott produce a syringe.
"Since when did Scotland Yard start sedating its prisoners?" Lang asked.
"Easier and more humane than clubbing or pistol-whipping like your coppers do the poor black blokes," Abbott, said, concentrating on testing the needle. The lights turned the tiny stream of liquid into gold. "Now this won't hurt a bit."
Lang felt tingling along his neck just as he had when the would-be killer entered his place in Atlanta. As then, the Agency's basic training returned like a poem memorized and long forgotten.
Lang suddenly threw his weight forward. Costello's reaction was the natural impulse to resist by planting a foot forward, the better to pull Lang back. At that instant, Lang shifted his bulk to his back leg, lifted his front foot and brought the heel of his shoe and every bit of one hundred ninety pounds he could manage down on Costello's instep.
Only an instant separated the sound of crunching bone and Costello's scream. His grip relaxed and Lang hurled himself forward. Costello took a single hop and fell to the sidewalk where he lay moaning.
Abbott had dropped the needle and was reaching for his Beretta. Lang feinted with a left jab, delaying his draw by the instant it took to lean away. Crouching to make sure the blow would land where he aimed it, Lang placed a right hook right below the rib cage.
Abbott folded as neatly as a jackknife, his knees hitting the, pavement in a posture that would have resembled prayer had his hands not been trying to embrace the liver Lang hoped was ruptured by the blow. He gave Lang a baleful look before doing a face-plant on the sidewalk.
As he writhed on the ground, moaning, something fell from his shirt. Lang wasn't surprised to recognize the Maltese cross in a circle.
Lang used a foot to roll him over, stooped and picked up the Beretta before walking over to the. lamppost Costello was using to try to pull himself upright. Lang disarmed him; too, tossing his weapon into some bushes, before jamming the muzzle of Abbott's weapon into his mouth.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The only fear was Lang's when he saw none on the man's face. Just like the man who tried to kill Lang at home, death wasn't a very scary possibility to these people.
"Who sent you?" Lang could feel his frustration becoming anger. "Answer me, or by God your brains'll be splattered all over that lamppost."
His assailant's answer was a smile, or as much of one as he could manage around the gun's muzzle.
Lang's fury at Them was boiling. These pukes were from the organization that had burned Jeff and Janet to death as they slept, had tried both to kill him and frame him for two other murders. If this bastard was so willing to die, Lang was more than willing to accommodate him. His finger tightened on the trigger and his passion to bring pain, destruction and death grew. Revenge was less than a hundredth of a millimeter away.
The man's eyes moved from Lang's face, focusing for only a split second on something over Lang's shoulder. It was enough. Lang dropped to one knee and spun around. Abbott, jimbia in hand, collided with Lang, falling over the top like the victim of a shoestring tackle. Still off balance, he· imbedded the blade meant for Lang up to its hilt into his comrade's chest.
A geyser of arterial blood, black in the streetlight, spurted from the shorter man as he slumped to the ground. He made a sound that could have been a sigh had it not come from around the knife that was splitting his sternum. Eyes open but becoming lifeless stared above. The accident didn't seem to shake Abbott at all. He scrambled to his feet in the same motion with which he snatched the knife from the still body. It came free with a sucking sound that made Lang's stomach heave. Painted with his companion's blood, Abbott whirled towards Lang, the blade raised for another try.
Still on one knee, Lang raised the Beretta in both hands. "Hold it right there."
At that moment Lang became aware of three things. First, his attacker wasn't going to be intimidated by the gun. Second, he had no idea if the weapon had a bullet in the chamber. Third, there was no time to pull the Beretta's slide back or check its safety to make sure it was ready to fire.
Lang squeezed the trigger.
5
Jacob stared at the statuesque woman in his doorway. "Lang who?"
Gurt shoved past him into the apartment. "I don't have time for sport, Mr. Annulewicz. Lang is in imminent danger. I need to know where he is."
Jacob shrugged. Besides his natural suspicion, it was his instinct to evade questions asked in German accents, slight as the inflection might be. "A most popular man. Second time this evening somebody's popped 'round looking for him. Beginning to think I'd like to meet the bloke m'self."
Gurt stepped closer, maximizing her six-inch height advantage "You were Mossad; Lang, Agency. Thirteen years ago, Hamas planning to bomb the Israeli embassy. You were scheduled to be in the neighborhood. Lang convinced the Agency to let him warn you. You always joked that you wondered what he would have done if they had refused to let him."
Jacob's eyes widened. "You do know him! I'm sorry…"
Gurt gave him the briefest of smiles. "Apologize later. Right now I need to find him. He's in more trouble than he realizes."
Jacob had recovered sufficient composure to begin working on his pipe. "Not likely he doesn't know he's in a spot of bother. He left right ahead of the coppers."
"Unless he was uncharacteristically careless, I doubt that's who they were. The Agency gave his edited service records to the police but someone else accessed his service file, someone besides the police. That's how they found out about you, your friendship. Someone needs to tell him that his past, his contacts are known to these people."
Jacob sat down hard on the leather-and-chrome hammock, his pipe temporarily ignored. "Bloody hell! If they have his service records…"
"He has no place to go in London they don't know about," Gurt finished. "I need to warn him."
Jacob looked up at her. "I have no idea where he might have gone. He left here in a hurry." He pointed the pipe's stem at the balcony. "Took the quick way down."
Gurt walked over; sliding the glass open as though she expected Lang to still be there. "What did you two talk about before the 'cops' arrived?" She made quotation marks in the air.
Now Jacob remembered his pipe and was stoking. it with a match. "He'd just come back from Oxford, went to meet a chap I know, history fellow. Wanted to learn something about the Templars."
Gurt turned from the opening onto the balcony, her forehead wrinkled. "Templars? As in Knights Templar?" Apparently despairing of getting the briar going again, Jacob set it down. "The same. He found…" There were two pops from the street below, sounds distinct from the murmur of the city. Jacob and Gurt rushed onto the balcony. If the noise had come from just below, its source was masked by shrubbery and shadows. Both turned and made a dash for the door and the elevator down.
6
London, South Dock
Lang had never killed anyone before. He would never forget each tiny detail, as if everything had slowed to a dreamlike pace. The Beretta bucked as though it were trying to escape his grasp, fell back to center the sight on the dark splotch on the white shirt and jumped again, all before the first shot had echoed off the nearby buildings. Brass shell casings, catching the light, sparkled like twin shooting stars as they arched into darkness.
His attacker grunted in surprise and pain. Unlike the movies, the bullets' impact didn't even slow him down. If it hadn't been for the two red flowers blooming on his shirt, Lang would have thought he had missed. The pistol's front sight centered again and he was about to squeeze off another round when the man's knees buckled. As in a slow-motion film, his legs gave way and he hit the ground like a felled tree. His body was sprawled in a position that made Lang wonder if his bones had turned to liquid.
In any major American city, the sound of gunfire would make the neighbors burrow deeper into the safety of their homes. But not in London, where street shootings were still a novelty.
Above Lang's head, lights were coming on, windows were opening and the curious were calling out, asking each other what had happened.
Lang hurriedly checked both men's pockets, finding only the bogus police ID. Tucking the Beretta into his belt, he took one last look at the two bodies. He expected exultation or at least some degree of satisfaction for the small measure of revenge. Instead he felt a faint nausea. He made himself think of those two open graves on the hillside in Atlanta, but it didn't help much.
Three of them for the persons he had loved. Scorekeeping was useless. He turned and walked quickly in a direction away from the approach of pulsating sirens.
7
London, South Dock
Inspector Fitzwilliam arrived in a less than jovial mood. These things always seemed to happen during the BBC newscast, calls that took him away from the telly and returned him to a dinner long since gone cold.
A crowd silhouetted by flashing lights was his first view of the crime scene. His next, after shouldering his way through the throng of spectators, made him forget both news and supper. Bodies were scattered about like some red Indian massacre in one of those American Westerns he had enjoyed so much as a lad. Two victims, one bloody as a freshly butchered beef, the other with neat, round holes in the breast of his shirt.
This was London, not New York or Los Angeles where street gangs conducted wars the police were impotent to prevent. What the hell…? But the two victims didn't look like street criminals. They wore suits with ties.
The detective in charge spotted Fitzwilliam and came over, notebook in hand, wrapped in an odor of curry. The sweat glistening on his dark face made Fitzwilliam suspect this was the first truly grisly murder the young man had seen.
"'Lo, Patel," Fitzwilliam said, "Any idea what happened?"
"Like the shootout at the bloody OK Corral," Patel said; the whites of his eyes large in contrast to his brown skin. "Both poor sods had shoulder holsters, police identification. I checked, the identities are false. We found one gun, a Beretta, in the shrubs over there," he pointed. "Other pistol, if there was one, has gone missing."
Fitzwilliam nodded, digesting this information. The U.K. did not permit the carrying of handguns, let alone concealed handguns, by anyone other than police, military and a very few security types. The presence of weapons and bogus ID indicated organized crime, quite possibly the so-called Russian Mafia that threatened to overrun Europe, or, worse, a part of a Colombian drug cartel.
The inspector walked over and took a closer look at the bodies. Even in this poor light, neither had Slavic features nor the coloring or strong facial characteristics of many Latinos. "Don't suppose they had any other means of identification on them?" he asked.
At his elbow, Patel shook his head. "Not so much as a National Health card."
Fitzwilliam squatted beside the body that had been shot. Suit was off the rack as were the shoes. The Russians favored tailor-made Italian toggery; the Colombians, fancy boots. He'd bet these men were neither. The fact that both holsters were empty would indicate they hadn't been ambushed, were at least trying to defend themselves. But how do you get stabbed while you're carrying a pistol?
He stood, taking in the entire scene with weary eyes. There was something about this South Bank neighborhood off Lambeth Road. He was certain he had never been here before, yet…
Annulewicz, the former Mossad agent who had been a friend of Reilly's. Didn't he have a South Bank address? The inspector began to pat his pockets in the vain hope he might have Annulewicz's address.
"Can I help you, Inspector?" Patel offered solicitously.
Fitzwilliam gave up the search but he was sure Reilly's former friend lived around here somewhere. If the American were involved, that might explain something, although Fitzwilliam was unsure what.
"No, thank you," he said crisply, beginning to scan the growing crowd of spectators.
His search was almost immediately rewarded. A woman, blonde and tall enough to stand out. Pretty, like the photograph of Reilly's woman friend, the German. He made his way to her side just as she was moving to the outer ring of spectators, about to leave.
"Miss? Pardon me, miss." He had his identification hanging from his jacket pocket but he removed the leather wallet with the badge to hold out where she couldn't miss it. "Miss Fuchs?"
She had to hear but she gave no indication. Remarkable control, he thought."I know who you are, miss. I'd prefer to have a word with you here than at the station."
That stopped her. It was only when she turned that he realized she was a full head taller than he.
"Yes?"
"I'm Inspector Fitzwilliam, Metro Police," he began as though the badge weren't inches from her face. "We're looking for an old friend of yours, an American, Langford Reilly."
The coldness of the stare she fixed on him was undiminished by the poor light. "And what makes you think I know where he might be? If you know who I am, you also know I have not seen him in nearly ten years, maybe more."
"May I remind you, Miss Fuchs, that harboring a felon is a crime?"
She nodded slowly. "I'll bear that in mind in case he comes looking for a harbor."
Even the woman's back managed to convey indignation as she took long strides into the darkness.
Fitzwilliam motioned to one of the uniformed officers; gave him instructions and returned his attention to the two bodies.
Moments later, the constable returned, pointing towards one of the high-rise buildings. "Residents' names'r listed inside, just beside the lift. He's on the twelfth floor."
Fitzwilliam thanked the man and went inside.
In response to his ring, the door cracked open. The inspector could see a bald scalp and spectacles precariously perched on a nose. "Mr. Annulewicz?" Fitzwilliam held his badge up to the door. "Metro Police. Might I come in?"
The door shut and a chain lock rattled. The door opened again and Fitzwilliam entered a small living room in which two women sat on a couch. He guessed one was Mrs. Annulewicz. The other was Miss Fuchs. He dipped his head in recognition and introduced himself to the others.
Annulewicz shrugged in response to Fitzwilliam's question. "Haven't seen him, Inspector. What's he done that would have Scotland Yard at my door?"
"Police matter; Fitzwilliam said, willing for the moment to perpetuate the charade that they didn't know. "We'd like to talk to him:
Annulewicz turned to the German woman. "Gurt, d'know our old mate Langford Reilly was in town?" She shook her head. "Not until this gentleman asked me if I had seen him: "I see; Fitzwilliam said, as indeed he did. "And when was the last time you were in the U.K., Miss Fuchs?" She shook her head again. "I am unable to remember exactly."
"Ten years or so ago, Miss Fuchs, according to immigration records. I suppose you were suddenly overcome with nostalgia."
"It had been too long," she said.
"I don't suppose either of you have any idea what happened right outside your window, down there on the street?"
"We heard a noise and went downstairs," Annulewicz said. "I came right back up as soon as I saw someone had been hurt. But the police came before I could place a call."
Fitzwilliam reached into a coat pocket and produced a pair of business cards. "I won't bother you further, particularly since it's been so long since the two of you have seen each other. But if you hear from Mr. Reilly, ring me up."
They were both nodding as he left.
Amazing how chummy the two of them were, Fuchs and Annulewicz, Fitzwilliam thought bitterly. Truly amazing since, according to the information he had from the CIA, the two had never met.
8
London, South Dock
Lang went down the steps of the Lambeth North Underground Station at a pace unlikely to invite attention. He took the first train. There were few passengers, probably because it was after working hours in what was largely a residential neighborhood. He rode for a few minutes before checking the multicolored diagram of the Underground posted in each car. Brown, Bakerloo Line. Three or four stops and he'd be at Piccadilly Circus, only a few blocks from where Mike Jenson, Dealer in Curios, Antiquities, Etcetera had been murdered only… when? Had it been only yesterday?
Lang figured Piccadilly was as good a location as any, better than some. Dinner and theater crowds would provide protective anonymity. And maybe, just maybe, he would get lucky. Maybe an old acquaintance would still be there, one that he doubted was in his service file.
The.train shuddered to a stop. A teenaged couple boarded, he with purple hair and an intricate tattoo of a dragon writhing beneath his tank top, she with green spikes of hair along her scalp like the dorsal ridge of a dinosaur. Her gender was ascertainable only by breasts pressing brown nipples against a T-shirt that had been laundered into gossamer. Both kids dripped rings and pendants from various pierced body parts.
And Lang thought the girl at Ansley Galleries had been weird.
He might as well have been invisible. The two sat at the far end of the coach, oblivious to anything but themselves. How. they managed what the tabloids call intimate embraces without entangling body jewelry was a mystery.
The faces of the only other passengers, two middle-aged women without wedding rings, managed to express disapproval, curiosity and envy all at once.
Lang was watching what was about to become what he termed coitus terminus subterra interruptus-having sex interrupted by a subway stop – as he reviewed the information he had gained. The translation of the Templar papers indicated that area of France, the Languedoc, might be the place he needed to search. Pegasus's business in a largely rural part of Burgundy was hardly coincidental.
Pegasus.
Did a modern, multibillion dollar corporation take its name from the symbol of a monastic order that had been officially disbanded seven hundred years ago, or was it an incarnation of the Templars themselves? Pietro had described the Templar organization in terms that also fit Pegasus: receiving a shitload of money from the pope. Could a secret two millennia old account for everything, both in Pietro's time and Lang's, a secret whose key lay in a copy of a religious painting by a minor artist?
The questions were enough to make his head hurt.
Hand in hand, the adoring punkers got off at Westminster. The two spinsters looked as though they were thankful to have survived a particularly nasty epidemic.
Even with the Templar papers, as Lang mentally referred to them, he knew way too little. He had learned during his stay with the Agency, old aphorisms notwithstanding, what you didn't know was anything but benign. Classic example was Kennedy's decision to withhold air support, un-communicated until troops were already on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs. Bet you couldn't find a veteran of that fiasco who believed what you didn't know couldn't hurt you.
EDFA, the Agency's acronym for "Educate yourself as to the problem, Decide upon the desired result, Formulate the plan most likely to achieve that result, Act."
Sure. Nothing is impossible for he who doesn't have to do it.
Lang had only part of the information he needed. He knew that an organization, possibly of historic origin, certainly of vast economic power, wanted him dead, dead like Jeff and Janet. The desired result was to make the bastards wish they had never heard of Lang Reilly: a payback of cosmic proportions.
And Lang still hadn't done the hard part, formulating a plan. Time to go back to the "educate" stage and start over. Without understanding Pegasus, he would never be able to put a hurt on it. To learn if Pegasus really was somehow connected to the Templars.
Pretty heavy stuff.
Lang had never been particularly religious, probably because as a child he had been dragged out of bed every Sunday morning and forced to spend an hour on the most uncomfortable pew that ever existed in the entire Episcopal Church. Admittedly, he was a little old still to be rebelling. Even in the hours spent in involuntary worship, he didn't remember ever hearing about Jesus being married, let alone surviving the crucifixion like that Lobineau guy Dr. Wolffe mentioned in one of his footnotes.
Medieval religious orders in the twenty-first century? Pretty bogus.
Education.
So far, more questions than answers.
Like, how had They known to come to Jacob's flat? Lang was all but positive he hadn't been followed to the Temple Bar or from Oxford. But if not followed, how? What was it Sherlock Holmes said? Something like, "If you eliminate all possible solutions, only the impossible remains." Impossible someone had discovered his relationship with Jacob through his service records. Impossible.
Therefore the answer?
Lang had been thinking along those lines already when he decided to renew another old acquaintance, one who wouldn't be in any service file.
Lang checked his watch as he climbed up. the steps to street level. Quarter after nine, just after four in Atlanta. When he had called the office from Rome, Sara had referred to Chen, the client Lang had called from the pay phone downstairs in his building. With the cops in the office, she hadn't been able to expressly mention the pay phone but that would have been the only reason to name a client from four or five years ago.
From a public phone in the station, he made, a collect call, a somewhat easier job than it would. have been through an Italian-speaking operator. He assumed there was a tap on the office phone, so he made the call brief.
"Sara, remember Mr. Chen?" he asked. And hung up.
If they could trace that, technology had really improved more than he thought. Star-69, of course, didn't work with international calls. By the time computer records of calls to his office could be searched, he could go around the world on a very slow boat.
He switched phones and used Herr Schneller's Visa card to charge the call. Happily, Gurt hadn't terminated his credit quite yet. Lang was hoping he remembered the right phone number in the office building, that he wasn't calling the deli across the lobby.
"Lang?"
Sara's voice could have been an angel's, he was so happy to hear it.
"It's me. You okay?"
"Fine now. I thought that detective was going to bring his toothbrush and move into the office, much time as he spent there. What about you? I understand you've been accused of a murder in London as well as the one here."
"To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports are much exaggerated. Listen, I can't talk long. Call the priest, ask him to stand by tonight. I need to speak with him."
"You mean Father…"
"No names!" Lang almost shouted with a harshness he regretted. He could imagine Echelon's programming listening for names of his current friends. Unlikely but possible… "This call is being transmitted by satellite. It isn't secure."
Sara was willing to take his word for it. "I'll alert him. And Lang… I know you didn't kill anybody."
Lang had a vision of two bodies lying in the street, one with two bullets he had fired. "Thanks, Sara. It'll all work out."
Lang hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
1
Oxford
Lang knew he was holding Wolffe's death warrant, the reason They had killed him. The thought made him glance apprehensively around the room before he began to read. First, he forgot his digestive problems, then where he was. The only interruption was that spoor of academia, annoying footnotes.
By the time Lang finished reading, he had some theories as to the painting's riddle. The question was whether he was going to live long enough to try them out.
2
London, South Bank
1630 hours
A dirty carpet of clouds was threatening rain by the time Lang wedged the Morris into the Strand's afternoon traffic and crossed Waterloo Bridge to South Bank.
Located along the inside of the bend of the Thames, South Bank was actually east rather than south of London. Until extensive urban renewal by the Luftwaffe in World War II, the area had been warehouses and factories. For the next fifty years, little was built there. Now it displayed highrise offices, music halls, galleries and housing for those who enjoyed contemporary surroundings. The skyline could have been that of any number of American cities.
Lang went straight down Waterloo Road to St. George's Circus, one of those traffic circles the British seem to prefer to traffic lights. After two circuits, he worked his way to the outside and exited onto Lambeth Road, where the Imperial War Museum's two massive· naval guns filled his windshield.
Off Lambeth, he crowded the Morris into a rare parking spot, killed the engine and watched the rearview mirror. Like most London streets, this one was one way, giving him a clear view of approaching vehicles. After five minutes, it was clear he hadn't been followed. He was fairly certain nobody but Jacob, Rachel and the professor knew he had gone to Oxford, but in light of what he had learned there, it would be an obvious place for Them to watch.
He cranked up the Morris and drove into a parking garage beneath an apartment building that would have been at home on Riverside Drive or East Seventy-first Street. He left the car in Jacob's space and followed the signs to the lift, as the English call elevators.
Jacob opened the door. Even in the hall, Lang could smell something besides his pipe. Rachel in the kitchen.
Jacob gestured Lang inside, his glance up and down the hall more of a nervous tic than a conscious movement. "Glad you're back safely. Stockwell any help?"
"He was, yes," Lang said, handing over the keys to the Morris as he crossed the threshold.
The apartment was the antithesis of Jacob's office. The furniture was contemporary, glass and chrome that made Lang nostalgic for home. Lucite shelves along one wall held a few books and several pieces of modern sculpture that possibly had begun life as engine parts. Two walls held art that bore a resemblance to the splattist works Lang had seen the day before. The remaining wall was glass, through which Lang could see a small deck and a panorama of the Thames that, in the darkening afternoon, reminded him of Monet's Houses of Parliament.
Jacob was waiting for further explanation but Lang asked first, "What did you learn about Pegasus?"
Jacob settled onto a sofa, leather slung like a hammock on a chrome stand, and fumbled a pipe from the pocket of a shabby sweater. "Quite a bit, actually."
Lang sat and waited impatiently as Jacob went through the ritual of lighting up.
"Pegasus," Jacob said among puffs of smoke, "Pegasus, of course, was the winged horse of Greek mythology that caused the stream Hippocrene to spring from Mount Helicon with a blow from his hoof."
Lang shifted in his seat, hoping Jacob would get to the point sooner rather than later.
"I have no idea as to the relationship between a mythical animal and a commercial enterprise," Jacob admitted, "but the company is interesting in several respects. First…"
Sucking loudly, he stopped to dig in the briar with what looked like a nail. Lang suppressed an urge to throw the damn pipe out the window. "I know the relationship with the mythical animal. But the company…?"
"… A Channel Island corporation, based in Jersey." Jacob arched those buglike eyebrows in an implied question.
"You mean it has bank and corporate secrecy," Lang said. "By law, the identity of the shareholders and officers are confidential and any transactions on the Channel Islands aren't taxed."
Jacob had his pipe smoldering again. "Just so. Legally, we would have no way of knowing that the company has annual receipts of several billion dollars. Quite extraordinary considering it produces nothing, performs no ascertainable services."
Lang let out a low whistle. "Jesus, that's an income larger than the gross national product of a lot of countries. Where does it come from?"
"Even more interesting: a number of sources, all either overtly Roman Catholic, like the Pope's investments and discretionary funds, or strongly influenced by the Church, like a number of Catholic relief agencies."
Lang realized he was gaping, then asked, "For what? I mean, that pays off a lot of winning bingo cards."
Jacob shrugged. "Unfortunately Mossad is an intelligence source staffed, by definition, by those unlikely to be privy to the workings of the Catholic Church, the Vatican or the Papal State. Whatever Pegasus does, it doesn't do it by phone, e-mail or fax, anything Echelon monitors. Mossad's known about it for years, never found it interesting."
Never found it threatening to the Jewish State, Lang thought. "Any idea where the money goes?"
Jacob was probing the pipe again, this time with a wooden match. "Geographically? Europe mostly. A chain of sausage restaurants. in Germany, petrol dealers in the UK., ski and sea resorts in France. Too many businesses to track just out of curiosity, and communications between them are encrypted. They don't seem to be breaking any laws, pay taxes when they can't be avoided, that sort of thing."
Lang thought for a moment. These were all businesses with high cash potentials. "Sounds like money laundering to me. Any contacts in Asia, South America, places where narcotraffic is heavy?"
Jacob was sucking on his pipe again. He shook his head.
"Any individual names?"
"As I said, Mossad isn't particularly interested. I had to call a lot of favors due to get what, I did."
"What about Jersey? Is the island just a mail drop or does Pegasus have some sort of operation there?"
"Can't say. I can tell you that a disproportionate number of communications go through a Lisbon exchange. Could be just a switching point, could mean they do business there."
Impatiently, Lang watched his friend apply yet another match to the bowl of his pipe and suck until blue smoke poured out of it.
"One really strange thing," he said at last. "Little hamlet in the southwest of France, Burgundy. Rennes-le something… Rennes-le-Château. Wire transfers there to what I'd guess is a dummy corporation. Small amounts but on a regular basis. They've got no operations there we – Echelon – could find."
Lang leaned back in his chair, more leather slung on a chrome frame. "Rennes-le-Château? Never heard of it."
"I found it in the atlas. Somewhere near the Pyrenees."
"The Languedoc region?"
Jacob was knocking the pipe's contents out into a glass ashtray that seemed fragile enough to shatter from the effort. The intensity in Lang's tone made him look up. "I think so, yes."
The American stood. "The atlas, you have it here?".. Jacob was clearly puzzled at Lang's sudden interest in geography. "Well, yes…"
The doorbell rang.
Jacob carefully laid his pipe in the ashtray and went to the door, squinting through the peephole. "Sure you weren't followed?"…
"Followed? By whom?"
Jacob's eye was still against the hole. "Coppers, by the look of 'em."
3
London, Mayfair
At the same time
The computer screen washed Gurt's face in blue light. Overhead, the glare of the unremitting fluorescent bulbs made the basement of 24 Grosvenor Square resemble an operating theater. In its own way, the room was as antiseptic as any surgery, as clear of electronic bacteria as a hospital of the conventional kind. Electronically swept daily, every inch was videotaped on a continuing twenty-four hour reel. Even so, the room was partitioned off by seamless glass, a feature that prompted its regular occupants to refer to it as "the fish bowl." It was the most secure part of the American embassy's secured sections, the part where the Agency did its work.
Gurt's security clearance was high enough to access the information she was seeking, a closed personnel file, but clearances did not impress the cybergods who dictated the time required to comply with a request of the system.
She hit the "enter" key for the second time in a fruitless effort to speed a response, impatiently muttering a curse to which her native tongue gave special emphasis. As though she had spoken a magical password, the file she sought appeared. Scanning it, she committed parts to memory. Note-taking of any sort was forbidden.
She was about to close out when a blinking red light at the bottom of the screen caught her attention. She frowned, entering another access code.
Someone had managed to hack into the system, into this specific file.-Unbelievable! The network's complexity made the Pentagon's look like a child's puzzle in comparison. Ten minutes' further investigation was useless. This was a case for the Agency's supernerds, cybergurus who, unknown to the public, had successfully traced the worldwide Love Bug and Melissa viruses of a few years back to their authors.
As with those viruses, the intruder had routed his inquiries through a number of computers belonging to individuals and companies across the globe, innocent hosts for electronic burglary. But whoever he was, the Agency's reverse cookie had made certain he had left cyberevidence of his entry and departure, the time and date. The date, she saw, was yesterday.
Presumably the hacker wanted the same information she had just garnered. Gurt exited the system hurriedly. She didn't have a lot of time. Lang's ass was slung worse than he knew.
4
London, South Dock
1645 hours
"Cops?" Lang asked, pointing to the kitchen. "Where does that lead?"
There was a loud knock, the sound of the door being struck with something harder than a human hand. A gun butt came to mind.
"Leads to a back staircase," Jacob said. "Want to wager they don't have it covered?"
Rachel had come out of the kitchen, started to ask what was going on and decided against it. Her years of marriage to Jacob had taught her to question little. She was, however, following the conversation with astonishment that Lang would be wanted by the police.
Lang stepped to the glass wall, sliding it open.
"There's no way down from…"Jacob cautioned.
On the narrow balcony, Lang climbed onto the metal railing about four feet above the cement, using a hand against the building's wall to steady himself. The balcony below was identical, too narrow. Even though it was only twelve feet or so below, it would be too easy to miss if he jumped.
From inside Jacob's apartment, Lang heard renewed and determined banging on the door, accompanied by loud and demanding voices.
Jacob shot him a glance before shouting, ''I'm coming, I'm coming!"
The adjacent balcony was too far to simply step over onto it. But a good jump… Lang didn't have a lot of choice. He resisted the urge to close his eyes as he stooped, coiling his leg muscles, and sprang into empty space.
The sole of his shoe slipped on the edge of the concrete and Lang grabbed for the iron railing as he fell. His weight yanked his arms straight with a jerk that felt as though they were tearing from the sockets. For what seemed an eternity, Lang's fingers grasped for purchase on the cement and he tried not to notice how far away the street looked twelve stories below.
Through the open glass, he could hear voices above. Jacob's sounded angry. He sensed, rather than heard, footsteps. It hadn't taken the police long to conclude Lang was no longer in Jacob's place and search elsewhere.
Like outside.
Finally Lang was able to grasp one of the railing's uprights. He tugged gently, making sure the slender metal would hold his hundred and ninety pounds. His other hand found a second upright and he slowly began to chin himself up as though on a crossbar.
As his head was coming level with the cement floor of the balcony, he heard something that made him turn his head. On Jacob's balcony, a pair of shoes were at eye level, the soles and rubber heels unevenly worn. Lang extended his arms, lowering his head below balcony-level and hoping his hands weren't visible in the growing dusk. He was hanging in a twelve-story void but they would hardly look for him beneath the adjacent balcony. Jacob's balcony would block out the rest of him unless someone came to the very edge and looked over.
Scuffed toe caps the color of butterscotch turned away and a voice announced, "Bloke's not 'ere. Sure we 'ave the right flat?"
Lang couldn't make out the words of the reply but the tone was affirmative.
He heard the glass door to Jacob's apartment slide shut, and he glanced upward, risking the paleness of his face showing against the dark background if anyone were still outside. He was alone. Once again he chinned up until one hand, then the other, could reach the top of the railing and he could pull himself up, over and onto firm footing.
The drapes on the glass were pulled, so Lang couldn't tell if there were lights burning inside. He put an ear to the cold surface. No voices, human or electronic. Either the occupants were the rare ones who didn't watch the BBC news at this time of day or the place was empty. He tugged at the grip. Locked. Who would lock a door on the twelfth floor, he asked himself as he took a credit card from his wallet. Someone seriously paranoid, came the answer as he inserted the card and pressed back the latch.
Thankful that few homeowners in England had firearms, Lang stepped into total darkness.
Guided by a sliver of light under the door to what he surmised was the common hallway, he moved forward, arms outstretched. His hands missed the low coffee table that smacked his shins so painfully he had to bite his lip to suppress a curse.
He was reaching for the door to the hall when shadows moved across the ribbon of light underneath it The click in the lock nearly immobilized him like headlights are supposed to transfix a deer. As he frantically tried to think of a hiding place in the dark, he remembered his sole experience in the matter, an encounter on a dark road in the Black Forest, had resulted not in an indecisive buck but a badly damaged Volkswagen.
Lang did the only thing he could think of: take a position next to the hinges, a place where the opening door itself would momentarily hide him. Then the lights flashed on, blinding him for an instant. When he could see again, he was looking at a woman carrying a basket, the plastic kind Europeans use for grocery shopping. She saw him as she turned to close the door.
Her eyes opened to a size Lang had thought impossible anywhere except in the comic strips. She made a sound more like a squeak than a scream. It wasn't loud enough to mask the smashing of glass when the basket slipped from her grip and hit the floor.
Lang smiled the most nonthreatening smile possible as he stepped out from behind the still-open door and into the hallway. "Sorry, wrong flat" He almost slipped on something that crunched under his foot. "Sounds real fresh. You'll have to give me the name of your greengrocer.".She found her voice, as indicated by the scream that followed him as he fled down the hall.
He decided not to use the elevator. No idea how long it would take to get down and the police might very well be responding to the poor frightened woman right now. He made a dash down the stairs. At the lobby, he summoned the stuffy dignity so dear to the English to stroll for the door outside and enter the fresh darkness of early evening.
How the hell had the cops known he was at Jacob's place, Lang wondered as he walked towards the nearest tube station. He was certain no one had followed him to Jacob's. And if they had, where did they pick him up? If he had been recognized at Oxford, why hadn't he been arrested there? Because they had somehow known he was coming here, to Jacob's.
The thought made Lang shiver more than the chill of the evening. To know he would seek out Jacob, someone would have had to look over his long-closed service record, something the Agency's pathological penchant for secrecy made unlikely. The London police, Scotland Yard, would have known that, probably wouldn't have even bothered to ask, assuming they had been aware of his former employment. But he was almost certain he had seen his photo from his service jacket in the tabloid the man on the bench had been reading at the Temple. How did the paper get it? That raised an even more disturbing possibility: Someone had exhumed his record, buried under years of bureaucratic sod, and was supplying the police with the information. They. They who wanted him arrested, imprisoned where They could tend to him in their own sweet time.
Lang's thoughts were interrupted by the protest of tires under brakes. A sedan, something the British would call a saloon car, ran onto the sidewalk, blocking his path. Two men got out, pistols pointed..
"Mr. Reilly, I believe," the taller of the two said, holding up a leather folder with a badge on one side, a photograph on the other. "Scotland Yard. You're under arrest."
"Wow!" Lang said, raising his arms. "All my life I've dreamed of this, actually meeting someone from the Yard. A real Kodak moment."
The streetlights' halogenic jaundice showed. that the larger man had suffered a bad case of acne at some point in his life. His suit was ill fitting. The look of something bought off the rack and poorly tailored? No, the jacket had been hurriedly altered to fit around the clearly visible shoulder holster. Not the tailored British look Lang associated with English inspectors. The gun was wrong, too, a Beretta. Scotland Yard, like most American police forces, favored the Glock nine-millimeter, a weapon lighter, faster and holding more rounds than the Italian-made automatic.
The other man was behind the first, shorter and heavy, Costello to his companion's Abbott. He wore the recognizable butterscotch shoes. Holstering his gun, he stepped to Lang's rear, pulling his arms behind him. Lang expected to hear the snap of handcuffs. Instead, Costello tightened his grip as Abbott put his weapon away also.
"You'll be coming with us, Mr. Reilly," Abbott said politely. "The lads at the Yard have a query or two for you."
"Don't suppose it'd do any good to tell you I didn't do it," Lang said, testing the man's grip by pretending to struggle.
"An' which would be that you didn't do, now? The one in America or the poor sod in Bond Street?" Abbott was reaching inside his suit jacket.
The light was far from good but sufficed for Lang to see Abbott produce a syringe.
"Since when did Scotland Yard start sedating its prisoners?" Lang asked.
"Easier and more humane than clubbing or pistol-whipping like your coppers do the poor black blokes," Abbott, said, concentrating on testing the needle. The lights turned the tiny stream of liquid into gold. "Now this won't hurt a bit."
Lang felt tingling along his neck just as he had when the would-be killer entered his place in Atlanta. As then, the Agency's basic training returned like a poem memorized and long forgotten.
Lang suddenly threw his weight forward. Costello's reaction was the natural impulse to resist by planting a foot forward, the better to pull Lang back. At that instant, Lang shifted his bulk to his back leg, lifted his front foot and brought the heel of his shoe and every bit of one hundred ninety pounds he could manage down on Costello's instep.
Only an instant separated the sound of crunching bone and Costello's scream. His grip relaxed and Lang hurled himself forward. Costello took a single hop and fell to the sidewalk where he lay moaning.
Abbott had dropped the needle and was reaching for his Beretta. Lang feinted with a left jab, delaying his draw by the instant it took to lean away. Crouching to make sure the blow would land where he aimed it, Lang placed a right hook right below the rib cage.
Abbott folded as neatly as a jackknife, his knees hitting the, pavement in a posture that would have resembled prayer had his hands not been trying to embrace the liver Lang hoped was ruptured by the blow. He gave Lang a baleful look before doing a face-plant on the sidewalk.
As he writhed on the ground, moaning, something fell from his shirt. Lang wasn't surprised to recognize the Maltese cross in a circle.
Lang used a foot to roll him over, stooped and picked up the Beretta before walking over to the. lamppost Costello was using to try to pull himself upright. Lang disarmed him; too, tossing his weapon into some bushes, before jamming the muzzle of Abbott's weapon into his mouth.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The only fear was Lang's when he saw none on the man's face. Just like the man who tried to kill Lang at home, death wasn't a very scary possibility to these people.
"Who sent you?" Lang could feel his frustration becoming anger. "Answer me, or by God your brains'll be splattered all over that lamppost."
His assailant's answer was a smile, or as much of one as he could manage around the gun's muzzle.
Lang's fury at Them was boiling. These pukes were from the organization that had burned Jeff and Janet to death as they slept, had tried both to kill him and frame him for two other murders. If this bastard was so willing to die, Lang was more than willing to accommodate him. His finger tightened on the trigger and his passion to bring pain, destruction and death grew. Revenge was less than a hundredth of a millimeter away.
The man's eyes moved from Lang's face, focusing for only a split second on something over Lang's shoulder. It was enough. Lang dropped to one knee and spun around. Abbott, jimbia in hand, collided with Lang, falling over the top like the victim of a shoestring tackle. Still off balance, he· imbedded the blade meant for Lang up to its hilt into his comrade's chest.
A geyser of arterial blood, black in the streetlight, spurted from the shorter man as he slumped to the ground. He made a sound that could have been a sigh had it not come from around the knife that was splitting his sternum. Eyes open but becoming lifeless stared above. The accident didn't seem to shake Abbott at all. He scrambled to his feet in the same motion with which he snatched the knife from the still body. It came free with a sucking sound that made Lang's stomach heave. Painted with his companion's blood, Abbott whirled towards Lang, the blade raised for another try.
Still on one knee, Lang raised the Beretta in both hands. "Hold it right there."
At that moment Lang became aware of three things. First, his attacker wasn't going to be intimidated by the gun. Second, he had no idea if the weapon had a bullet in the chamber. Third, there was no time to pull the Beretta's slide back or check its safety to make sure it was ready to fire.
Lang squeezed the trigger.
5
Jacob stared at the statuesque woman in his doorway. "Lang who?"
Gurt shoved past him into the apartment. "I don't have time for sport, Mr. Annulewicz. Lang is in imminent danger. I need to know where he is."
Jacob shrugged. Besides his natural suspicion, it was his instinct to evade questions asked in German accents, slight as the inflection might be. "A most popular man. Second time this evening somebody's popped 'round looking for him. Beginning to think I'd like to meet the bloke m'self."
Gurt stepped closer, maximizing her six-inch height advantage "You were Mossad; Lang, Agency. Thirteen years ago, Hamas planning to bomb the Israeli embassy. You were scheduled to be in the neighborhood. Lang convinced the Agency to let him warn you. You always joked that you wondered what he would have done if they had refused to let him."
Jacob's eyes widened. "You do know him! I'm sorry…"
Gurt gave him the briefest of smiles. "Apologize later. Right now I need to find him. He's in more trouble than he realizes."
Jacob had recovered sufficient composure to begin working on his pipe. "Not likely he doesn't know he's in a spot of bother. He left right ahead of the coppers."
"Unless he was uncharacteristically careless, I doubt that's who they were. The Agency gave his edited service records to the police but someone else accessed his service file, someone besides the police. That's how they found out about you, your friendship. Someone needs to tell him that his past, his contacts are known to these people."
Jacob sat down hard on the leather-and-chrome hammock, his pipe temporarily ignored. "Bloody hell! If they have his service records…"
"He has no place to go in London they don't know about," Gurt finished. "I need to warn him."
Jacob looked up at her. "I have no idea where he might have gone. He left here in a hurry." He pointed the pipe's stem at the balcony. "Took the quick way down."
Gurt walked over; sliding the glass open as though she expected Lang to still be there. "What did you two talk about before the 'cops' arrived?" She made quotation marks in the air.
Now Jacob remembered his pipe and was stoking. it with a match. "He'd just come back from Oxford, went to meet a chap I know, history fellow. Wanted to learn something about the Templars."
Gurt turned from the opening onto the balcony, her forehead wrinkled. "Templars? As in Knights Templar?" Apparently despairing of getting the briar going again, Jacob set it down. "The same. He found…" There were two pops from the street below, sounds distinct from the murmur of the city. Jacob and Gurt rushed onto the balcony. If the noise had come from just below, its source was masked by shrubbery and shadows. Both turned and made a dash for the door and the elevator down.
6
London, South Dock
Lang had never killed anyone before. He would never forget each tiny detail, as if everything had slowed to a dreamlike pace. The Beretta bucked as though it were trying to escape his grasp, fell back to center the sight on the dark splotch on the white shirt and jumped again, all before the first shot had echoed off the nearby buildings. Brass shell casings, catching the light, sparkled like twin shooting stars as they arched into darkness.
His attacker grunted in surprise and pain. Unlike the movies, the bullets' impact didn't even slow him down. If it hadn't been for the two red flowers blooming on his shirt, Lang would have thought he had missed. The pistol's front sight centered again and he was about to squeeze off another round when the man's knees buckled. As in a slow-motion film, his legs gave way and he hit the ground like a felled tree. His body was sprawled in a position that made Lang wonder if his bones had turned to liquid.
In any major American city, the sound of gunfire would make the neighbors burrow deeper into the safety of their homes. But not in London, where street shootings were still a novelty.
Above Lang's head, lights were coming on, windows were opening and the curious were calling out, asking each other what had happened.
Lang hurriedly checked both men's pockets, finding only the bogus police ID. Tucking the Beretta into his belt, he took one last look at the two bodies. He expected exultation or at least some degree of satisfaction for the small measure of revenge. Instead he felt a faint nausea. He made himself think of those two open graves on the hillside in Atlanta, but it didn't help much.
Three of them for the persons he had loved. Scorekeeping was useless. He turned and walked quickly in a direction away from the approach of pulsating sirens.
7
London, South Dock
Inspector Fitzwilliam arrived in a less than jovial mood. These things always seemed to happen during the BBC newscast, calls that took him away from the telly and returned him to a dinner long since gone cold.
A crowd silhouetted by flashing lights was his first view of the crime scene. His next, after shouldering his way through the throng of spectators, made him forget both news and supper. Bodies were scattered about like some red Indian massacre in one of those American Westerns he had enjoyed so much as a lad. Two victims, one bloody as a freshly butchered beef, the other with neat, round holes in the breast of his shirt.
This was London, not New York or Los Angeles where street gangs conducted wars the police were impotent to prevent. What the hell…? But the two victims didn't look like street criminals. They wore suits with ties.
The detective in charge spotted Fitzwilliam and came over, notebook in hand, wrapped in an odor of curry. The sweat glistening on his dark face made Fitzwilliam suspect this was the first truly grisly murder the young man had seen.
"'Lo, Patel," Fitzwilliam said, "Any idea what happened?"
"Like the shootout at the bloody OK Corral," Patel said; the whites of his eyes large in contrast to his brown skin. "Both poor sods had shoulder holsters, police identification. I checked, the identities are false. We found one gun, a Beretta, in the shrubs over there," he pointed. "Other pistol, if there was one, has gone missing."
Fitzwilliam nodded, digesting this information. The U.K. did not permit the carrying of handguns, let alone concealed handguns, by anyone other than police, military and a very few security types. The presence of weapons and bogus ID indicated organized crime, quite possibly the so-called Russian Mafia that threatened to overrun Europe, or, worse, a part of a Colombian drug cartel.
The inspector walked over and took a closer look at the bodies. Even in this poor light, neither had Slavic features nor the coloring or strong facial characteristics of many Latinos. "Don't suppose they had any other means of identification on them?" he asked.
At his elbow, Patel shook his head. "Not so much as a National Health card."
Fitzwilliam squatted beside the body that had been shot. Suit was off the rack as were the shoes. The Russians favored tailor-made Italian toggery; the Colombians, fancy boots. He'd bet these men were neither. The fact that both holsters were empty would indicate they hadn't been ambushed, were at least trying to defend themselves. But how do you get stabbed while you're carrying a pistol?
He stood, taking in the entire scene with weary eyes. There was something about this South Bank neighborhood off Lambeth Road. He was certain he had never been here before, yet…
Annulewicz, the former Mossad agent who had been a friend of Reilly's. Didn't he have a South Bank address? The inspector began to pat his pockets in the vain hope he might have Annulewicz's address.
"Can I help you, Inspector?" Patel offered solicitously.
Fitzwilliam gave up the search but he was sure Reilly's former friend lived around here somewhere. If the American were involved, that might explain something, although Fitzwilliam was unsure what.
"No, thank you," he said crisply, beginning to scan the growing crowd of spectators.
His search was almost immediately rewarded. A woman, blonde and tall enough to stand out. Pretty, like the photograph of Reilly's woman friend, the German. He made his way to her side just as she was moving to the outer ring of spectators, about to leave.
"Miss? Pardon me, miss." He had his identification hanging from his jacket pocket but he removed the leather wallet with the badge to hold out where she couldn't miss it. "Miss Fuchs?"
She had to hear but she gave no indication. Remarkable control, he thought."I know who you are, miss. I'd prefer to have a word with you here than at the station."
That stopped her. It was only when she turned that he realized she was a full head taller than he.
"Yes?"
"I'm Inspector Fitzwilliam, Metro Police," he began as though the badge weren't inches from her face. "We're looking for an old friend of yours, an American, Langford Reilly."
The coldness of the stare she fixed on him was undiminished by the poor light. "And what makes you think I know where he might be? If you know who I am, you also know I have not seen him in nearly ten years, maybe more."
"May I remind you, Miss Fuchs, that harboring a felon is a crime?"
She nodded slowly. "I'll bear that in mind in case he comes looking for a harbor."
Even the woman's back managed to convey indignation as she took long strides into the darkness.
Fitzwilliam motioned to one of the uniformed officers; gave him instructions and returned his attention to the two bodies.
Moments later, the constable returned, pointing towards one of the high-rise buildings. "Residents' names'r listed inside, just beside the lift. He's on the twelfth floor."
Fitzwilliam thanked the man and went inside.
In response to his ring, the door cracked open. The inspector could see a bald scalp and spectacles precariously perched on a nose. "Mr. Annulewicz?" Fitzwilliam held his badge up to the door. "Metro Police. Might I come in?"
The door shut and a chain lock rattled. The door opened again and Fitzwilliam entered a small living room in which two women sat on a couch. He guessed one was Mrs. Annulewicz. The other was Miss Fuchs. He dipped his head in recognition and introduced himself to the others.
Annulewicz shrugged in response to Fitzwilliam's question. "Haven't seen him, Inspector. What's he done that would have Scotland Yard at my door?"
"Police matter; Fitzwilliam said, willing for the moment to perpetuate the charade that they didn't know. "We'd like to talk to him:
Annulewicz turned to the German woman. "Gurt, d'know our old mate Langford Reilly was in town?" She shook her head. "Not until this gentleman asked me if I had seen him: "I see; Fitzwilliam said, as indeed he did. "And when was the last time you were in the U.K., Miss Fuchs?" She shook her head again. "I am unable to remember exactly."
"Ten years or so ago, Miss Fuchs, according to immigration records. I suppose you were suddenly overcome with nostalgia."
"It had been too long," she said.
"I don't suppose either of you have any idea what happened right outside your window, down there on the street?"
"We heard a noise and went downstairs," Annulewicz said. "I came right back up as soon as I saw someone had been hurt. But the police came before I could place a call."
Fitzwilliam reached into a coat pocket and produced a pair of business cards. "I won't bother you further, particularly since it's been so long since the two of you have seen each other. But if you hear from Mr. Reilly, ring me up."
They were both nodding as he left.
Amazing how chummy the two of them were, Fuchs and Annulewicz, Fitzwilliam thought bitterly. Truly amazing since, according to the information he had from the CIA, the two had never met.
8
London, South Dock
Lang went down the steps of the Lambeth North Underground Station at a pace unlikely to invite attention. He took the first train. There were few passengers, probably because it was after working hours in what was largely a residential neighborhood. He rode for a few minutes before checking the multicolored diagram of the Underground posted in each car. Brown, Bakerloo Line. Three or four stops and he'd be at Piccadilly Circus, only a few blocks from where Mike Jenson, Dealer in Curios, Antiquities, Etcetera had been murdered only… when? Had it been only yesterday?
Lang figured Piccadilly was as good a location as any, better than some. Dinner and theater crowds would provide protective anonymity. And maybe, just maybe, he would get lucky. Maybe an old acquaintance would still be there, one that he doubted was in his service file.
The.train shuddered to a stop. A teenaged couple boarded, he with purple hair and an intricate tattoo of a dragon writhing beneath his tank top, she with green spikes of hair along her scalp like the dorsal ridge of a dinosaur. Her gender was ascertainable only by breasts pressing brown nipples against a T-shirt that had been laundered into gossamer. Both kids dripped rings and pendants from various pierced body parts.
And Lang thought the girl at Ansley Galleries had been weird.
He might as well have been invisible. The two sat at the far end of the coach, oblivious to anything but themselves. How. they managed what the tabloids call intimate embraces without entangling body jewelry was a mystery.
The faces of the only other passengers, two middle-aged women without wedding rings, managed to express disapproval, curiosity and envy all at once.
Lang was watching what was about to become what he termed coitus terminus subterra interruptus-having sex interrupted by a subway stop – as he reviewed the information he had gained. The translation of the Templar papers indicated that area of France, the Languedoc, might be the place he needed to search. Pegasus's business in a largely rural part of Burgundy was hardly coincidental.
Pegasus.
Did a modern, multibillion dollar corporation take its name from the symbol of a monastic order that had been officially disbanded seven hundred years ago, or was it an incarnation of the Templars themselves? Pietro had described the Templar organization in terms that also fit Pegasus: receiving a shitload of money from the pope. Could a secret two millennia old account for everything, both in Pietro's time and Lang's, a secret whose key lay in a copy of a religious painting by a minor artist?
The questions were enough to make his head hurt.
Hand in hand, the adoring punkers got off at Westminster. The two spinsters looked as though they were thankful to have survived a particularly nasty epidemic.
Even with the Templar papers, as Lang mentally referred to them, he knew way too little. He had learned during his stay with the Agency, old aphorisms notwithstanding, what you didn't know was anything but benign. Classic example was Kennedy's decision to withhold air support, un-communicated until troops were already on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs. Bet you couldn't find a veteran of that fiasco who believed what you didn't know couldn't hurt you.
EDFA, the Agency's acronym for "Educate yourself as to the problem, Decide upon the desired result, Formulate the plan most likely to achieve that result, Act."
Sure. Nothing is impossible for he who doesn't have to do it.
Lang had only part of the information he needed. He knew that an organization, possibly of historic origin, certainly of vast economic power, wanted him dead, dead like Jeff and Janet. The desired result was to make the bastards wish they had never heard of Lang Reilly: a payback of cosmic proportions.
And Lang still hadn't done the hard part, formulating a plan. Time to go back to the "educate" stage and start over. Without understanding Pegasus, he would never be able to put a hurt on it. To learn if Pegasus really was somehow connected to the Templars.
Pretty heavy stuff.
Lang had never been particularly religious, probably because as a child he had been dragged out of bed every Sunday morning and forced to spend an hour on the most uncomfortable pew that ever existed in the entire Episcopal Church. Admittedly, he was a little old still to be rebelling. Even in the hours spent in involuntary worship, he didn't remember ever hearing about Jesus being married, let alone surviving the crucifixion like that Lobineau guy Dr. Wolffe mentioned in one of his footnotes.
Medieval religious orders in the twenty-first century? Pretty bogus.
Education.
So far, more questions than answers.
Like, how had They known to come to Jacob's flat? Lang was all but positive he hadn't been followed to the Temple Bar or from Oxford. But if not followed, how? What was it Sherlock Holmes said? Something like, "If you eliminate all possible solutions, only the impossible remains." Impossible someone had discovered his relationship with Jacob through his service records. Impossible.
Therefore the answer?
Lang had been thinking along those lines already when he decided to renew another old acquaintance, one who wouldn't be in any service file.
Lang checked his watch as he climbed up. the steps to street level. Quarter after nine, just after four in Atlanta. When he had called the office from Rome, Sara had referred to Chen, the client Lang had called from the pay phone downstairs in his building. With the cops in the office, she hadn't been able to expressly mention the pay phone but that would have been the only reason to name a client from four or five years ago.
From a public phone in the station, he made, a collect call, a somewhat easier job than it would. have been through an Italian-speaking operator. He assumed there was a tap on the office phone, so he made the call brief.
"Sara, remember Mr. Chen?" he asked. And hung up.
If they could trace that, technology had really improved more than he thought. Star-69, of course, didn't work with international calls. By the time computer records of calls to his office could be searched, he could go around the world on a very slow boat.
He switched phones and used Herr Schneller's Visa card to charge the call. Happily, Gurt hadn't terminated his credit quite yet. Lang was hoping he remembered the right phone number in the office building, that he wasn't calling the deli across the lobby.
"Lang?"
Sara's voice could have been an angel's, he was so happy to hear it.
"It's me. You okay?"
"Fine now. I thought that detective was going to bring his toothbrush and move into the office, much time as he spent there. What about you? I understand you've been accused of a murder in London as well as the one here."
"To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports are much exaggerated. Listen, I can't talk long. Call the priest, ask him to stand by tonight. I need to speak with him."
"You mean Father…"
"No names!" Lang almost shouted with a harshness he regretted. He could imagine Echelon's programming listening for names of his current friends. Unlikely but possible… "This call is being transmitted by satellite. It isn't secure."
Sara was willing to take his word for it. "I'll alert him. And Lang… I know you didn't kill anybody."
Lang had a vision of two bodies lying in the street, one with two bullets he had fired. "Thanks, Sara. It'll all work out."
Lang hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
London, Piccadilly
1740 hours
Cloaked in Piccadilly's evening crowd, Lang stopped to look at window displays every few feet. He didn't see any faces reflected more than once. He circled the block delineated by Regent Street and Jermyn Street twice, pausing to examine an equestrian stature of William of Orange apparently in the dress of a Roman emperor. Despite. his problems, Lang smiled. The king in drag. Before the royal scandals of the late nineties – Di, Fergie, the lot – the English took their monarchs way too seriously.
Lang still recognized no faces from a few minutes earlier.
He checked his watch and hurried along like a man suddenly realizing his wife is waiting at dinner or the theater. At 47 Jermyn, he stopped at an unmarked door. A column of names and bell buttons were to the left next to the rusted grille of a speaker. Lang had to squint to see the names. He was in luck; she was still here. When he pressed a button, a woman's voice, tinny over the wire but Cockney accent nevertheless clear, replied, "'Oo's there?"
Lang leaned close to the speaker, both not wanting to be overheard by people on the street but to be sure to be understood by the voice at the other end. "Tell Nellie an old friend, the one who looked but didn't touch."
The speaker clicked off.
Nellie O'Dwyer, formerly Neleska Dwvorsik, had been the madam of one of London's more exclusive call-girl rings since before Lang had known her. Although prostitution was technically illegal, the Brits were smart enough not to waste time and money battling a business no government had ever completely suppressed. As long as Nellie's girls caused no complaints, she was left alone to operate her "escort" service.
Once safely out of some East European workers' paradise, a significant number of defectors' first wish was a woman. Whisky came in a distant second. A relaxed and happy man was a lot easier to debrief than one tense and resentful. When Lang had first been stationed in London, it had fallen his lot as low man on the pole to find a regular source to satisfy the need. The item was creatively entered under "counseling" in the expense accounts that were subject to Congressional oversight.
It was unlikely this service to his country appeared in Lang's service jacket. If somebody had his file, he doubted they would see Nellie's name in it.
As one formerly accustomed to the machinations of Marxist-Leninist states, Nellie had expected Lang to demand a percentage, or at least a sample of the goods. It didn't take a genius to see the downside of being a partner – or a customer – of a brothel keeper. Not smart when employed by a nation with Ozzie and Harriet morality.
Instead, Lang had thanked Nellie for what she had perceived as generosity, even if it would have been at her girls' expense. ''I'll just look and not touch," he had said.
The phrase had become a joke in more languages than Lang cared to count, as scantily-clad women repeated it in accented English every time he came to pick up a "date" for the Agency's most recent acquisition.
Nellie still thought it was funny. Her voice squealed with an enthusiasm little diminished by the age of the electronics. "Lang! You have come back to your Nellie!"There was a buzz and the bolt clicked back. Lang swung the door open as Nellie's voice commanded, "You come up here right this minute!"
He could only hope Nellie and her girls were too busy to pay attention to the news on the telly, or at least not enough to have seen him on it. As he climbed the wooden stairs, his fingers closed around the Beretta still in his belt.
What if Pegasus had learned about Jacob through some means other than his records? Would they also know about Nellie? Lang glanced back down the stairs at the only escape route. Once he stepped into Nellie's parlor, even that would be closed.
If They were waiting for him…
2
London, South Dock
By the time Jacob and Gurt exited the elevator of his apartment building, blue lights were swirling through the night. Without exchanging a word, they shoved through the growing circle of people. Four uniformed constables, their faces towards the crowd, kept the inquisitive at a distance from where two men in suits were kneeling beside two bodies on-the sidewalk. A third was writing in a notebook as an elderly woman spoke.
Gurt strained to hear. "… One man ran away… too dark… looked out the window soon's I rang up the police."
Gurt turned her attention to the two forms sprawled on the pavement. The closest to her was far too bulky to be Lang. The other was facedown. Damning the morbidly curious who were blocking her view, she pushed to one side.
"Look 'ere…" a man growled over his shoulder. He turned, took in her size and expression, and got out of her way without regard to how many of his fellow spectators had to be jostled.
The taste of blood surprised Gurt. She had no idea how hard she had been biting her lip. She had had no chance to see the bodies before that policeman had accosted her, sending her back to Jacob's apartment before he could see how upset she was. She had been in torment until she could get back outside, see for herself. Damn Lang Reilly! Leaving her without so much as a good-bye when he obviously needed help. Serve him right if that were him there. She lifted her eyes for an instant. No, she didn't really mean that. Please don't let that body be his.
"Not him," Jacob whispered at her elbow, startling her. She hadn't realized he had followed in the wake she had left in the crowdlike a passing ship."Neither one of 'em."
"How can you be sure?" she asked quietly.
"Those are the pair that came to my flat looking for him, the ones you doubt were the police. Looks like they caught up with him, after all."
Gurt had not been aware she had been holding her breath. "Gott sei danke!" she muttered in an uncharacteristic lapse into German.
She was equally thankful she was not viewing the mortal remains of Langford Reilly and shocked at the thought he could have killed anybody. Lang had taken the Agency's training in self-defense, even learned to kill, but he definitely was not the lethal type. He was a wiseass, not an assassin.
"We need to find him," she said, turning away from the corpses. "Any ideas?"
Jacob was patting his pockets, no doubt searching for the pipe he had left in his apartment. "No more than I had a few minutes ago. I'm afraid."
Gurt closed her eyes, a gesture several bystanders mistook for a horrified reaction to American like violence on the streets. Shit. She had left her cigarettes in her purse in Jacob's flat. If ever she could have used a Marlboro…
3
London, Piccadilly
The door at the top of Nellie's stairs opened into what could have been the lobby of a tourist-class hotel: unmatched chairs scattered in view of a cheap television set, a certain worn quality to the few end tables, magazines carelessly tossed about. The girls were the ones who relaxed here. Customers rarely saw the room.
Had the place been done in antiques, the furniture still wouldn't have gotten Lang's first attention. Young women, most in their teens or early twenties, lounged. Every skin color the world had to offer was on display with a minimum of cover. Most wore short pajamas or bra and panties. A few were done up in more exotic garb such as embroidered kimonos or shifts in vibrant African colors. Nellie's inventory reflected the ethnic diversity London embraced.
None of them gave Lang more than a bored glance.
Nothing like being ignored by a roomful of partially dressed women to shrink the old ego.
Nellie emerged from a hallway opposite from him, squinting at Herr Schneller's moustache and jowls. They inspected each other as warily as a couple of dogs meeting on the street. Lang was surprised she looked pretty much the same as he remembered. Not a thread of silver streaked the blue-black hair that seemed to sparkle with green and amber like a crow's wing in the sun. Her face was smooth, devoid of the little wrinkles years try to sneak by. Her chin was sharp, unblunted by the wattles of age. Her only concession to the passage of time was a dress that reached her knees, instead of the microskirts Lang remembered. Even so, her calves were slender, well-turned and without the mapping of varicose veins.
Her important parts had defied gravity as well as old age.
Lang took her gently in his arms and planted a wet one on her cheek. "You're still a young girl, Nellie."
She displayed teeth that must have put at least one orthodontist's kids through university. "You compliment both me and my unbelievably expensive plastic surgeon."
There was still a trace of the Balkans in her voice. She cocked her head, leaned back and regarded him like a specimen in a jar. "But you… you don't look the same."
"Not all of us age as well as you."
Her rich, thick hair had always been her best feature or at least of those Lang could see. She shook her head, the silky strands caressing her shoulders. "That's not what I mean, luv."
Lang touched the moustache and padded cheeks. "Let's just say you're the only person in London I want to recognize me."
A smile twitched the corners of a sensuous mouth. "I thought you had left your position with…"
He let her go and managed to drag his eyes off her long enough to make sure there wasn't anybody there who didn't belong. A little late. If Pegasus had been waiting for him, he'd be dead. He'd been far too interested in the scenery to notice potential danger. Death by carnal desire.
Lang stepped back and shut the door. "I did. It's the cops I'm dodging."
She treated him to those teeth again. "The police, is it, luv? You've come to the right place."
"That's what I hoped you'd say."
A second look around the room and he didn't see any familiar faces, faces from the past. Attrition was fierce in Nellie's line of work.
"I'd like to spend the night," Lang said. "Make a telephone call if I could."
She raised manicured eyebrows. "Make a call and spend the night, would you?" She swept a hand in an arc. "Are my girls so ugly you need to call in talent?"
Lang grinned sheepishly. "No, no. I need to speak with a friend in the States, a priest, actually."…
Nellie laughed, a blunt coughing sound. "A priest? We know about priests, what they do. No wonder you never wanted any of my girls."
She said it loud enough to get the attention of several of the young women nearby. If he hadn't been so occupied with Pegasus, Lang might have blushed.
She took him by the hand to lead him into the hall she had come out of. It was lined with doors like a corridor in a hotel, except there were no numbers. They stopped in front of one while Nellie fished around in her blouse. Lang was about to make the obvious crude comment when she produced a key and unlocked the door.
"Sue Lee's room," she explained. "She's on the coast of Spain with a client."
She wrinkled her nose at a faint odor Lang couldn't identify. "Been cooking in here on her wok. Vietnamese, Japanese, something like that. You'll get used to the smell."
She ushered him inside. "Sure you don't want company, luv?"
The room looked like one in a girls' dorm. A vanity with light-studded mirror was built into one wall. A plain wooden chair, a metal chest of drawers and a single bed completed the furnishings. It wasn't exactly the place Lang would have imagined a high-price hooker spending her off time.
Nellie had been following his appraising look around. "The girls don't entertain in their rooms. The traffic would make it hard for the coppers to look the other way. They use hotel rooms or have their own flats. She pointed to a door on the other side of the vanity. "The loo. Connects with the next room. Mind that unless you want a surprise. Help yourself to the telephone."
"Thanks."
She started to close the door and stopped. "Sure there's nothing I can get you?"
Lang smiled. "Thanks, but no."
She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. "On the run from the law, bet you haven't eaten. Some of the girls always get fish and chips, Chinese, some sort of take-away. No trouble to get something for you."
The mention of food reminded him he hadn't eaten since… since Rachel's gut-cramping Indian fare the night before. He must have fully recovered because he was suddenly hungry enough to risk another had it been available. Fortunately, it wasn't.
"You talked me into it," he said, pulling some bills out of his pocket. "Surprise me."
Finally alone, Lang reached for the telephone, one of those cutesy ivory-and-gold ones that is supposed to look like an antique. He picked it up, happy to hear a very contemporary dial tone. He dialed 00, international, 1 for North America, and 404, one of Atlanta's area codes, and then information. Never before had he paid particular notice to the toneless voice of the computerized information service. It had an American accent.
After a series of astral clicks and whirs, a familiar voice was on the line, words so clear they might have been spoken from across the room rather than across the Atlantic. "Lang?"
"It's me, Francis, your favorite heretic."
Francis's chuckle was audible an ocean away. "Glad to hear from you, although I've been reading some pretty disturbing things in the local fish-wrapper."
Lang was thankful the phone's cord extended to the bed. He stretched out. This was going to take awhile. "Forno volat, Frances, rumor travels fast. Besides, you know the media: accused on page one-A, acquitted somewhere in the obituaries."
"I suppose," the priest said, a rueful note clearly detectable. "They publish accusations but not the rebuttal." "If it bleeds, it leads," Lang said. "Gotta pump the ratings for the six o'clock news and sell advertising for the paper."
"Somehow, I don't think you had your secretary have me wait for your call just so you could tell me you didn't do it."
Lang took a deep breath and exhaled. "No, you're right as usual." "You've recognized your feet are set upon the road to hell and you want me to hear your confession."
Even the fatigue that was beginning to fog Lang's mind couldn't suppress a chuckle. "You don't have enough time left on this earth to hear my full confession."
"Then it's my pastoral skill and brilliant intellect you seek."
"Don't you guys take some sort of vow of humility? But, yeah, sort of. First, listen to what I have to tell you. Pay attention. There'll be a test later."
It took Lang the better part of twenty minutes to explain. He only paused to answer an occasional question and thank the young woman who brought him chopsticks, a box of steaming rice and another box of food, the contents of which he tried not to speculate about.
Lang finished his meal and story about the same time.
"Templars?" Francis asked skeptically. "Over a billion dollars a year from the Vatican?"
Lang was licking his fingers, more an effort to remove the inevitable grease than because he had enjoyed the meal. "I don't suppose you know anything about that?"
"The money from the Vatican? Not likely that sort of thing would be shared with a lowly parish priest. I know a little about the Templars and this area of France, the…"
"Languedoc."
"The Languedoc and the castle this monk Pietro mentions, Blanchefort. Some people think the holy grail is hidden somewhere in that area."
Lang forgot greasy fingers. "Holy grail? Like, the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper?"
"That's what it was to Richard Wagner and Steven Spielberg. Remember the opera and the Indiana Jones movie? It was a cup in Arthurian legend, too. But it could be anything. The earliest legends describe it as a stone with mystical properties and some scholars think it relates to the ark of the Covenant which disappeared from Jerusalem a thousand years before Christ. Hitler thought it was the lance of Longinus, the spear that pierced Christ's side. No reason it couldn't be the 'vessel' your friend Pietro found in the Gnostic document."
"But you don't think such a thing exists?" Lang asked.
Francis was just warming up. He always saved the best part of his arguments for last. "I don't know the Church's position on the subject, guess they haven't had to address the matter in a few hundred years. Me, I say, why not? What I do know, there was a parish priest in the area we're talking about, a little town called, called Rennes-le-Château, I think. I'm fairly sure the man's name was Saunière and he lived around the middle, last part of the nineteenth century."
"You remember all this like you do your catechism? I mean, that's remarkable you could recall all that along with all the mumbo-jumbo you have to memorize."
"I'll ignore that, although it might calm your heathen breast to know I actually went to the place a couple of year ago, was in France as part of an international Church council and I traveled around for a couple of days until I could get the cheap airfare home. Saunière was pretty much a tourist industry. If you can keep still, I'll tell you why."
"I'm quieted, I'm quieted."
"He, Saunière, was a poor priest in a poor parish. He was doing some minor restoration work in the church building himself because they couldn't afford professional help. Anyway, part of the altar came loose. Inside was a sheaf of old parchments. He seemed excited, showed them around but wouldn't let anyone read them. Not that the locals could have; they were supposedly in Latin or Hebrew or something. Maybe the Gnostic document that Templar was talking about.
"Almost immediately his little parish had funds to repair the church, build a hotel-size guest house, more money than anyone ever thought was in the whole Languedoc. A steady procession of cardinals began visiting. We're talking about the ecclesiastical equivalent of Podunk, a place those cardinals would never have heard of a year earlier. Saunière's personal lifestyle crossed the poverty line like a rocket on the way up, too. New vestments, housekeeper, wine cellar. All of those things a true prince of the church might have."
"Like a choice of little boys or concubines?" Lang couldn't help it. Francis was too easy a target for the church's peccadillos.
"Any more vulgarities from infidels and I'm gonna hang up and say my rosary. Anyway, Saunière never revealed the source of his sudden wealth. He died under mysterious circumstances as did his housekeeper."
"Don't tell me," Lang said, "let me guess: He died in some sort of accident involving fire."
He could tell Francis was puzzled. "Actually, he drowned when a small boat turned over. Nobody ever knew what he was doing in the middle of a river. Why?"
"Pietro mentioned the four ancient elements of fire, wind, water and earth. Go on."
"The locals speculate the parchments were some sort of treasure map, but they were never found. Once he died, both money and church dignitaries were never seen again in the area."
Lang stretched, fighting the urge to simply go to sleep. "So the man got lucky, found a buried treasure or the altar was full of winning lottery tickets. What does that tell me about the Templars?"
Lang could barely hear Francis's throaty chuckle. "Oh ye of little faith! The story goes on. In the sixties, the nineteen sixties, that is, somebody published a book speculating that Saunière had found treasure belonging to the Templars. They were active in that part of the Languedoc and this castle Pietro describes is one of theirs. Saunière could well have found some of the immense wealth those dead white boys left when they had to make a fast getaway."
"Wealth? Treasure?" Lang asked. "Until I read that Oxford fellow's translation, I had always thought the Templars were a monastic order, sworn to poverty, chastity and other unpleasantness."
"They were, at least initially. They went to the Holy Land to protect pilgrims from the Moslems, joined in the Crusades and all that. Order was founded in the early eleven hundreds, I think. Like other monks, they took a vow of poverty. Things changed in the next two hundred years. The Order acquired wealth, I mean a lot of it. Nobody really knows how or from where.
"A number of Europe's kings noticed these fighting monks had castles, lands, even their own ships. By the time the last Christian outpost in· Palestine fell and the Templars all returned to Europe, they were pretty much a nation unto themselves. A lot of rulers, Philip of France, the pope, were both covetous and a little fearful.
"In 1307, Philip had his sheriffs seize Templar castles in France and imprison the knights. The pope, Clement V, knew which side of his bread had the butter on it. Philip was the most powerful monarch in Europe and Clement wanted to make sure he stayed on the right side of him. So he issued a bull condemning the Templars on a number of trumped-up charges.
"As you can imagine, most of the other kings and emperors were eager to follow suit, since the Order's holdings would become theirs. A number of the brothers were rounded up and tortured until they confessed to all sorts of things, homosexuality to blasphemy. Eventually, those who had been caught were burned at the stake, at least in France. Edward of England and Henry of Germany weren't into confessions produced by torture and the Templars' holdings there weren't as rich as in France.
"A number of brothers escaped by disappearing before Philip's order, no doubt had advance warning. Anyway, their private fleet and whatever treasure they had were never found."
Lang was quiet a moment, thinking. "And people think they left that treasure around the Languedoc?"
"People who really are into the subject are all over the board. Some think the escaped Templars made it to Scotland where the king, Robert the Bruce, was already excommunicated and therefore not on particularly good terms with Clement. Others think they took their treasure with them and sailed to an island off what's now Nova Scotia. Even others don't believe there ever was a treasure as such, that the Templars' riches were their real estate holdings."
"And what do you think?"
There was a sigh on Francis's end of the line. "I've never really had an opinion. The Templars are an interesting bit of history as far as I'm concerned, but no more than that. As for their treasure, I think you could make a better investment in time and money by buying one of those reproductions of a map to the place Captain Kidd supposedly hid his treasure on Long Island Sound."
"At least Captain Kidd isn't killing people."
"And the Templars are just as dead, although the Masons and Rosicrucians claim some relationship with the Order. They both have secrets supposedly guarded by members' lives."
Lang snorted in derision. "I don't think I'm up against guys in funny hats or nutcases upset about Prozac and I haven't read about throats slit at your neighborhood Masonic Temple. No, these Pegasus guys are serious. They very much have something they're willing to kill to keep to themselves. I'd bet it has something to do with the money from the Vatican. And that just might be related somehow to this place in France where this guy…"
"Saunière."
"Saunière. Where Saunière hit the local lotto."
"Maybe," Francis agreed, "but what about the picture, the shepherds? That's supposed to be in Arcadia, Greece, not France." He paused for a moment. "But then, Arcadia's also used in poetry as a synonym for any place of pastoral beauty and peace. Could be metaphoric rather than geographic."
Lang knew from the intelligence business that only in fiction do all the pieces of a puzzle fit. There was almost always some bit of information that turned out to be unrelated to the problem at hand, perhaps to another, perhaps useless. But here? The Poussin had tripped whatever wire was set to guard a secret Pegasus wanted to protect.
"Could be anywhere," Lang agreed, "but that Templar, Pietro, and what you're telling me now both point to the Languedoc. I'm not sure how the painting fits in, although it must have some connection. Otherwise, Pegasus wouldn't kill to prevent anyone from understanding whatever the hell it means."
Francis grunted affirmatively. "Yeah, but what?"
"Think maybe it has something to do with the Gnostic heresy, Joseph of Arimathea being Jesus's brother and Mary Magdalene His wife?"
"That's two questions," Francis said. "First, the Scriptures, at least the ones the Church recognizes as gospels, are silent about Jesus's brothers and sisters. Since Jews of biblical times tended to have large families, it's more likely than not that He had siblings. There's always been speculation about a wife. Hebrew law required young men, particularly a rabbi as Jesus must have been, to marry. Some scholars speculate the wedding in Cana, the one where He turned water into wine, to be his own. Problem with siblings and a spouse is that they raise troubling questions about lateral and direct descendants, questions the Church had rather not deal with. That professor Wolffe who did the translation is correct about the Merovingian dynasty who ruled that area of France for a century or two after the collapse of Rome. They claimed to be descendants of Christ, no small problem for the papacy back then.
"The Gnostics were a group of heretics who believed God created Christ mortal, that after His death; His spirit, not his body, ascended into heaven, contrary to Jewish Messianic prophecy. No physical resurrection, no Messiah. The Gnostic view had been specifically rejected by the Council of Nicea along with proposed gospels supporting it, hence the heresy in proclaiming the doctrine."
Lang nodded to the priest on the other side of the ocean as he struggled against weariness to understand what he was hearing. His jaws stretched in a monumental yawn. "Interesting church history, but I don't see how it fits whatever the painting portrays. If it means anything at all. Pegasus seems to think it does. Whatever. I intend to solve the puzzle of the picture, or at least find out what Pegasus is trying to protect. Only way to get even for what they did."
There was an audible sigh, the sound of disapproval. "Lang, revenge can backfire. I wish you'd let the police handle it."
"Francis, you dream," Lang snapped back. "The Paris police are clueless. I want results, not a murder case gone cold. You seem to forget those people, Pegasus, tried to kill me in Atlanta and I'm fairly certain it wasn't friendly conversation they wanted this evening. And let's not forget they managed to get me accused of a couple or murders. I'd say l owe 'em big time."
"You know you should give yourself up to the authorities before you have to kill someone else, before anyone else dies. God will see you through."
"Rumor has it He helps those who help themselves, Padre."
"How about advice from a friend, forget the Padre business?"
"I am, as they say, all ears."
"Illigitimi non carborundum."
"Francis, you can do better than some sort of liberated Latin for 'don't let the bastards wear you down: "
"Then watch your ass."
Despite his problems, Lang was grinning when he hung up the phone. He was waging a losing battle with sleep but found enough reserves to take the Polaroid of the painting from his wallet. Crumpled from wear, the figures were still as enigmatic as the Latin inscription.
He yawned again, wondering when he might be sleeping in his own bed again. The thought of home triggered a seemingly unrelated thought. He wanted to sit out on his balcony with his morning coffee, looking out over the city and reading the paper.
The paper.
Lang routinely worked a syndicated puzzle where letters were scrambled. If solved, a familiar phrase appeared. What if the Latin inscription were like the puzzle in the paper, an anagram in which a seemingly superfluous word supplied letters necessary for the message?
ETINARCADIAEGOSUM.
ETINARCADIAEGO (SUM).
His exhausted body and mind protested as he got up from the bed to rummage through the chest of drawers until he found a sales receipt from Harrods. Further search located the stub of an eyebrow pencil on the vanity. Using the blank back of the sales slip, he began rearranging letters. He started with the one the shepherd's finger was touching, so that each version began with the letter A.
Twenty minutes later, Lang was staring at what he had written, sleep forgotten. Could he be reading this correctly? His Latin was good enough for competitive aphorisms but he had to be sure he had this right.
He snatched the door open so fast he startled a young woman walking the hall in a fire-engine-red teddy.
"Where can I find Nellie?" he asked as if the world depended on the answer.
Recovering with the aplomb demanded by her profession, she pointed, speaking with an accent Lang didn't recognize. "The office, end of the hall."
Nellie's face had an unhealthy pallor, a reflection of the blue of the computer screen inches from her eyes. The world's latest technology was now in the service of its oldest profession.
She swiveled around, the casters on her chair squeaking. "Change your mind about… Bloody hell! Look like you seen a ghost, you do."
Lang guessed the office had previously been a closet.
There wasn't room for both of them, so he stood in the doorway. "In a way, I suppose I have. I've got a really strange request."
She gave him a lopsided smile, a conspiratorial nod and said, "Strange requests are part of the business, luv. Leather, chains?"
"Even stranger. Any place you could put your hands on a Latin-English dictionary this time of night?'
She was shocked, quite possibly for the first time in her professional career. "Latin? I'm running a university now, am I?" She thought for a moment. "There's a bookstore down by the university, though it's not likely open this hour."
Lang was too excited to wait. If he was right… The prospect overcame his better judgment. ''I'll go see. Keep the room open for me."
She put a restraining hand on his arm. "Don't bother, luv.
I've got a girl visiting a customer in Bloomsbury. She'll ring in shortly 'n' I'll have her pop over to Museum Street. No need you riskin' bumpin' into the law, now is there?"
Museum Street was a collection of cafes and small shops selling old books and prints. Many of them kept hours as eclectic as their inventory.
"Thanks."
An hour later, Lang put down a tattered paperback Latin-English dictionary, shocked to discover he had been right. The painting was an enigma no more, although it was going to take an Olympic-quality broad jump of faith to believe its message. But Pegasus sure as hell did. That was why they were willing to kill.
Pietro's narrative and the enigmatic inscription said the same thing, as unbelievable as it might be. Now all Lang had to do was evade the cops and some very nasty people long enough to locate a specific spot among thousands of square miles and verify the tale of a monk dead seven hundred years.
He was on his way to France.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
An Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
5
And so did the days fly by on the wings of falcons. Such time as I could spare from assisting the cellarer as his seneschal, doing sums on the abacus and making inventory of such produce as the Temple's serfs produced.1 Such time as I could, I stole from my labours to spend in the library, learning more about the Gnostics and their pernicious apostasy, documents so vile that at least one was secreted not in the library but in a hollow column. Its existence was revealed to only a few brothers. How I wish I had not been one of them! I was not amused by the irreverence shown the Holy Gospels as much as I was curious as to the contents of the vessel mentioned in those ancient volumes. I also was curious as to the reason the Holy See would send what amounted to tribute to a single Temple whose only duty was to guard Serres and Rennes, two simple villages which appeared to apprehend no danger.
Thus did the Gnostic documents tempt me as the serpent did Eve, induce me to seek knowledge of that better left in obscurity.
One sin begot another and I began to journey far from the Temple, my peregrinations taking me even beyond the boundaries of the Temple's fiefdom and along the River Sals and among the hills and mountains, particularly the white mountain called Cardou. I chose this path because it was the one most similar to the one described in the writings of the heretics as being the ancient Roman road and the one taken by Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene when they came into these parts.2 I compounded these derelictions of my duties to my brethren and to God by wantonly lying to my superiors, falsely testifying that I was but walking the metes and bounds of the Temple's estates. Much more the sin because I was seeking forbidden knowledge.
Directions could not be had from the villeins thereabout, for they spoke in a dialect I could not comprehend. Had they been conversant in Frankish or Latin, it is improbable they could have answered the queries that filled my head. Caked as they were with the dirt in which they lived, reeking of sweat and their own excrement, I found it difficult to remember that they, too, were children of God. Even more uncomfortable was the knowledge that I had come from stock such as these. Clean clothes, meat each day and a fresh bed at night had engendered the sin of pride which had attached itself to my soul like a lamprey upon some hapless fish.
It was from one of these journeys I was returning one day in October. The earth was still dust, for winter's rains had not yet begun. The orchards were ablaze both with ripening fruit and autumnal foliage and the vines were no more than twisted twigs, having already been harvested and pruned. A cold wind blew from the west, the breath of the new snow I could see on those mountains known as Pyrenees at which the Languedoc ends and the Iberian country of Catalonia begins. I wondered at that time why the knights did not free the lands on the other side of those mountains from the heathen.3
On the slope of the mountain called Cardou, I paused for a moment to give thanks to God for a spectacle so rich and to wonder at the majesty that created it in six days' time. I had barely said my "Amen" when a hare, large and fat no doubt from a summer of repasts at the expense of the Brothers' gardens, ran nearly over my feet. It stopped a short distance upwards and away and looked at me with an insolent eye.
The animal robbed me of all thoughts of Him who made us both. Instead, I remembered the summer months which had passed without the spicy flesh I saw before me. I raised my staff and moved forward with caution.
My second step did not stop with what I thought to be firmament beneath wild berry bushes. Instead, I had stepped into a void to the extent that I fell forward. When I stood, reaching for the staff I had dropped, I observed that the bushes obscured an opening in the earth much larger than that into which I had stumbled.
I was facing no mere animal burrow but a cave or shaft in the stone white as the distant snow, a hole so cleverly concealed that, had I not fallen, I would have walked past without notice. Without moving from where I stood, the marks of stonecutters were visible upon the walls. This was, then, no natural crevice or fault in the mountain but one brought about by the hand of man.
Had I but turned and sought explanation of my discovery, I would go to the fate that awaits me in peace. As it is, Satan himself fueled the curiosity that led me forward.
From the light outside, I could see I was in a chamber, a cave, perhaps, crudely enlarged. Darkness prohibited my taking its exact measure, but I could stand upright and my extended arms touched neither side nor ceiling.
In the dimness, I perceived an object in the middle of the rough floor, a block of stone of about the size of a bound manuscript.4 On this stone were carvings, letters I scarcely could make out which appeared to be of Hebrew characters, perhaps Aramaic, and Latin. I let my fingers explore since there was insufficient light to see clearly.
Could this be the vessel spoken of in the Gnostic heresies? The stone was of a texture like the white of the Languedoc, so it likely had been carved where I found it,5 a more believable occurrence than transporting such a heavy object from the Holy Land. Without reading the inscriptions, I would not know and I was filled with a lust for that knowledge no less carnal than that which drives a man to seek a harlot.
I needed light by which I could probe the mystery of what I had found. The Temple was but a quarter of an hour away and could be seen from the mouth of the cavern. The light of a single taper would assuage a hunger for knowledge more acute than any my belly had ever felt for victuals.
I ran as though hell itself were behind me, as indeed it turned out to be. I dashed through the portcullis, hardly extending a greeting to those who guarded. the entrance. I crossed the cloister at a run that drew the attention of all and did not care of the opprobrium such conduct would bring.6 Such was my haste that I neglected to cleave to the walls of the arcade surrounding the garth, thereby demonstrating my humility by surrendering the wider path. Instead, I dashed along the middle, caring not which of my brethren were forced to give way. Inside, I suppressed the instinct to snatch the first lighted candle I saw from its sconce. Instead, I found one in my own cell and I stopped in the chapel to light it from those that eternally burn there. In such a haste was I, I nearly neglected to genuflect upon my departure.
My return to the cave was at a more sedate pace than my departure, for, should an errant breeze or a sudden move extinguish the candle, I would have to return to the Temple to light it anew.
Inside the cavern, I knelt beside the stone. edifice and shielded my candle. The Latin inscription was of a dialect so archaic I found it difficult to decipher. The stone into which it was carved badly crumbled.
As I contemplated what was written, it was as if the cold hand of Satan squeezed my heart and I swooned into darkness. I know not how long I was oblivious to the physical world but when I awoke, I wished I had not. According to the label carved thereon, this stone contained that which even now I dare not mention. The fire to which I will shortly be consigned will not be hot enough to expurgate my soul of the perdition engraved upon that stone.
I was distraught, knowing not what to do. I must have been possessed by demons, for I first tried to lift the top from the stone. God's mercy made it far too well lodged to come free. Had I succeeded, I would surely have suffered a fate not unlike Lot's wife, for my eyes would have beheld that far more odious to God than the end of Sodom. My next thought was to share my find with those far wiser and more dedicated to God than I, who could surely explain what I had found. I now realize this was the same urge Satan fostered upon Eve to share her sin with Adam, spreading the disease of sinful knowledge like the plague.7
I know my mind was not my own, for I left the unused potion of the taper, an extravagance but one of the lesser sins I was to commit because of the curiosity the devil inspired in my soul.
As I gained sight of the Temple, I witnessed an outpouring of men on horseback, among them most of the knights, all clad as though for battle. Among them I recognized Guillaume de Poitiers, Tartus the German and others, being most of the Temple skilled in the arts of war. With them were asses, burdened as if for a long campaign. They were gone before I reached the walls, their memory being little but a cloud of choking dust.
I was surprised to find the portcullis raised and unmanned, for if the brethren had ridden forth to vanquish the invaders feared by the Holy See, they most surely would have secured their own source of supply.
Inside the walls, all was confusion. Swine and oxen were unfettered, running freely through the cloister gardens as ducks and chickens flapped and scattered underfoot. I could not find Phillipe and presumed he had gone with his master. The cellarer was in the storage area off the refectory, musing over provisions strewn across the floor – wine barrels, their staves crushed – and the litter of haste predominant.
The cellarer was an old man, his love the order in which he kept his charge. His voice quavered as though broken by sorrow.
"They are gone," he said before I could inquire into the tumult and disorder. "A rider from Paris, from Brother de Malay himself.8 All the brothers otherwise unoccupied were ordered to collect the holy relics, empty the treasury and take such provisions as they would need for seven days. For what purpose, I know not."
This was exceeding strange. Brothers "otherwise unoccupied" would pertain to those knights trained in the art of war, leaving those charged with the actual sustenance of this Temple. Were the departing knights sallying forth to battle, they would certainly not be ordered to subject the Temple's holy relics and treasury to the vagaries of conflict. So full of my virulent discovery was I that I held the whimsy of the Master of the Order to be of little consequence. I only pondered in whom, if at all, I should confide.
It was after Vespers that the wisdom of the Master became apparent. We were gathered in the chapter house, each seated on the stone benches that were carved into its walls, discussing what little business might be left upon the departure of so many of our number. I had in my robes ink, quill and paper, planning to return to my duties when our meeting concluded, though verily my mind had so succumbed to my discovery, I doubt I could have added two figures. I knew not to whom, if anyone, I should confide. The first chapter of the rules of the Order had been read,9 when the door slammed open. Therein stood the king's bailie for Serres and Rennes. With him were a host of men-at-arms.
"What say you, good brother?" asked the cellarer. As the senior brother present, he was, under the rules of the Order, acting as abbot.
"I am no brother to you," the bailie said.
I knew not his name but seen him at the Temple before, his little swine-eyes peering from a face of corpulence as if he were a merchant about to offer a price for a bolt of cloth.
"What means this intrusion?" the cellarer asked.
The bailie motioned so that the various men-at-arms filled the room and blocked all exit therefrom, though in truth the only exit was into the store closet to which I have referred. "In the name of Philip, by Grace of God King of the French, larder you to stand forth, for you, all of you, are under arrest and all goods herein forfeit."
A murmur of protest ran its course before the cellarer said, "So it cannot be, for we are of the Church, not subject to the laws of God's servant Philip."
The bailie was undismayed. He let out a laugh like the bark of a dog, reading from a document that bore the royal seal, "You are accused by your king of such crimes as idolatry, blasphemy and such physical atrocities as fondling each other, kissing each other upon the fundament and other private places, of burning the bodies of deceased brothers to make powder of the ashes which you then mix in the food of younger brothers, of roasting infants and anointing idols with the fat therefrom, of celebrating hidden rites and mysteries to which young and tender virgins are introduced, and a variety of abominations too absurd and horrible to be named.10 As such you are forfeit any rights to heard by ecclesiastical courts."
"You will answer to His Holiness," someone said. "His Holiness does King Philip's bidding," the bailie replied.
With this pronouncement we were roughly shoved and dragged outside, placed in ass-drawn carts and taken away from the Temple and into a night illuminated by a waning moon. The darkness that gripped my spirit was without even this poor light, for the charges made against us were so far from the realm of truth as to be the product of certain perjury. My only consolation was that many of my brothers had been forewarned that very afternoon and I had witnessed their escape.
I could but ponder if the king's men had found the document or if it was still safe in its hiding place. Mere possession of such a writing could have condemned us all.
I knew not whence we were being taken but I had little hope for what would happen once we arrived. I was well aware of the treatment accorded witches, sorcerers and heretics. The heaviest part to bear, though, was that I had just gained the hurtful knowledge in the cave that redemption was not certain. In my own heart, I was a heretic more virulent than had I been guilty as charged.
Translator's Notes
1. Over the two centuries of their existence, the Templars had been given vast estates, most of which contained serfs. Each Temple so invested thereby became a feudal landlord.
2. Though not suitable for motorized vehicles, the course of this old Roman road is quite ascertainable. The first attempt at an accurate survey of France (1733-1789, undertaken by the father and son Jacques and Cesar-François Cassini de Thury) shows it as the main access to the area.
3. Parts of Spain were occupied by the Moors, Berbers, until 1492, although at the time of Pietro's writing Andalus, not Catalonia, was the province under Moslem rule.
4. There was no standard size for the manuscripts monks copied by hand, but a good guess in comparison to the average size would be sixty centimeters by forty and perhaps thirty thick.
5. The writer uses the Latin in situ, meaning the original or natural position. Since a carved block of stone is hardly natural or original, the translator has taken a liberty in departing from the original text.
6. Medieval monastic orders frequently had rules of the order prohibiting running, hurrying or other rash conduct that was not conducive to an air of contemplation in the monastery itself. Whether this was true of the Temple is unknown. Perhaps Pietro is thinking about the former monastery.
7. The Black Death, bubonic plague, which wiped out nearly a third of Europe, was still fifty years in the future. More limited outbreaks were not unknown in Pietro's time.
8. Jacques de Molay, Master of the Order 1293-1314. De Molay had, only three years before he succeeded in having Pope Boniface VIII grant the Order exemptions from taxation in England by directive to Edward I, had been given a papal promise that the "moveable goods of the Order will never be seized by secular jurisdiction, nor will their immovables ever be wasted or destroyed."
9. The chapter house was the room where the various chapters of the rules of the Order were read to the brothers and such business matters as concerned the Order were discussed.
10. The original draft of the complete charges, eighty-seven in number, is preserved in the Tresor des Chartres and includes various forms of idolatry such as animal worship and imbuing the Grand Master with the ability to forgive sins.
1
London, Piccadilly
1740 hours
Cloaked in Piccadilly's evening crowd, Lang stopped to look at window displays every few feet. He didn't see any faces reflected more than once. He circled the block delineated by Regent Street and Jermyn Street twice, pausing to examine an equestrian stature of William of Orange apparently in the dress of a Roman emperor. Despite. his problems, Lang smiled. The king in drag. Before the royal scandals of the late nineties – Di, Fergie, the lot – the English took their monarchs way too seriously.
Lang still recognized no faces from a few minutes earlier.
He checked his watch and hurried along like a man suddenly realizing his wife is waiting at dinner or the theater. At 47 Jermyn, he stopped at an unmarked door. A column of names and bell buttons were to the left next to the rusted grille of a speaker. Lang had to squint to see the names. He was in luck; she was still here. When he pressed a button, a woman's voice, tinny over the wire but Cockney accent nevertheless clear, replied, "'Oo's there?"
Lang leaned close to the speaker, both not wanting to be overheard by people on the street but to be sure to be understood by the voice at the other end. "Tell Nellie an old friend, the one who looked but didn't touch."
The speaker clicked off.
Nellie O'Dwyer, formerly Neleska Dwvorsik, had been the madam of one of London's more exclusive call-girl rings since before Lang had known her. Although prostitution was technically illegal, the Brits were smart enough not to waste time and money battling a business no government had ever completely suppressed. As long as Nellie's girls caused no complaints, she was left alone to operate her "escort" service.
Once safely out of some East European workers' paradise, a significant number of defectors' first wish was a woman. Whisky came in a distant second. A relaxed and happy man was a lot easier to debrief than one tense and resentful. When Lang had first been stationed in London, it had fallen his lot as low man on the pole to find a regular source to satisfy the need. The item was creatively entered under "counseling" in the expense accounts that were subject to Congressional oversight.
It was unlikely this service to his country appeared in Lang's service jacket. If somebody had his file, he doubted they would see Nellie's name in it.
As one formerly accustomed to the machinations of Marxist-Leninist states, Nellie had expected Lang to demand a percentage, or at least a sample of the goods. It didn't take a genius to see the downside of being a partner – or a customer – of a brothel keeper. Not smart when employed by a nation with Ozzie and Harriet morality.
Instead, Lang had thanked Nellie for what she had perceived as generosity, even if it would have been at her girls' expense. ''I'll just look and not touch," he had said.
The phrase had become a joke in more languages than Lang cared to count, as scantily-clad women repeated it in accented English every time he came to pick up a "date" for the Agency's most recent acquisition.
Nellie still thought it was funny. Her voice squealed with an enthusiasm little diminished by the age of the electronics. "Lang! You have come back to your Nellie!"There was a buzz and the bolt clicked back. Lang swung the door open as Nellie's voice commanded, "You come up here right this minute!"
He could only hope Nellie and her girls were too busy to pay attention to the news on the telly, or at least not enough to have seen him on it. As he climbed the wooden stairs, his fingers closed around the Beretta still in his belt.
What if Pegasus had learned about Jacob through some means other than his records? Would they also know about Nellie? Lang glanced back down the stairs at the only escape route. Once he stepped into Nellie's parlor, even that would be closed.
If They were waiting for him…
2
London, South Dock
By the time Jacob and Gurt exited the elevator of his apartment building, blue lights were swirling through the night. Without exchanging a word, they shoved through the growing circle of people. Four uniformed constables, their faces towards the crowd, kept the inquisitive at a distance from where two men in suits were kneeling beside two bodies on-the sidewalk. A third was writing in a notebook as an elderly woman spoke.
Gurt strained to hear. "… One man ran away… too dark… looked out the window soon's I rang up the police."
Gurt turned her attention to the two forms sprawled on the pavement. The closest to her was far too bulky to be Lang. The other was facedown. Damning the morbidly curious who were blocking her view, she pushed to one side.
"Look 'ere…" a man growled over his shoulder. He turned, took in her size and expression, and got out of her way without regard to how many of his fellow spectators had to be jostled.
The taste of blood surprised Gurt. She had no idea how hard she had been biting her lip. She had had no chance to see the bodies before that policeman had accosted her, sending her back to Jacob's apartment before he could see how upset she was. She had been in torment until she could get back outside, see for herself. Damn Lang Reilly! Leaving her without so much as a good-bye when he obviously needed help. Serve him right if that were him there. She lifted her eyes for an instant. No, she didn't really mean that. Please don't let that body be his.
"Not him," Jacob whispered at her elbow, startling her. She hadn't realized he had followed in the wake she had left in the crowdlike a passing ship."Neither one of 'em."
"How can you be sure?" she asked quietly.
"Those are the pair that came to my flat looking for him, the ones you doubt were the police. Looks like they caught up with him, after all."
Gurt had not been aware she had been holding her breath. "Gott sei danke!" she muttered in an uncharacteristic lapse into German.
She was equally thankful she was not viewing the mortal remains of Langford Reilly and shocked at the thought he could have killed anybody. Lang had taken the Agency's training in self-defense, even learned to kill, but he definitely was not the lethal type. He was a wiseass, not an assassin.
"We need to find him," she said, turning away from the corpses. "Any ideas?"
Jacob was patting his pockets, no doubt searching for the pipe he had left in his apartment. "No more than I had a few minutes ago. I'm afraid."
Gurt closed her eyes, a gesture several bystanders mistook for a horrified reaction to American like violence on the streets. Shit. She had left her cigarettes in her purse in Jacob's flat. If ever she could have used a Marlboro…
3
London, Piccadilly
The door at the top of Nellie's stairs opened into what could have been the lobby of a tourist-class hotel: unmatched chairs scattered in view of a cheap television set, a certain worn quality to the few end tables, magazines carelessly tossed about. The girls were the ones who relaxed here. Customers rarely saw the room.
Had the place been done in antiques, the furniture still wouldn't have gotten Lang's first attention. Young women, most in their teens or early twenties, lounged. Every skin color the world had to offer was on display with a minimum of cover. Most wore short pajamas or bra and panties. A few were done up in more exotic garb such as embroidered kimonos or shifts in vibrant African colors. Nellie's inventory reflected the ethnic diversity London embraced.
None of them gave Lang more than a bored glance.
Nothing like being ignored by a roomful of partially dressed women to shrink the old ego.
Nellie emerged from a hallway opposite from him, squinting at Herr Schneller's moustache and jowls. They inspected each other as warily as a couple of dogs meeting on the street. Lang was surprised she looked pretty much the same as he remembered. Not a thread of silver streaked the blue-black hair that seemed to sparkle with green and amber like a crow's wing in the sun. Her face was smooth, devoid of the little wrinkles years try to sneak by. Her chin was sharp, unblunted by the wattles of age. Her only concession to the passage of time was a dress that reached her knees, instead of the microskirts Lang remembered. Even so, her calves were slender, well-turned and without the mapping of varicose veins.
Her important parts had defied gravity as well as old age.
Lang took her gently in his arms and planted a wet one on her cheek. "You're still a young girl, Nellie."
She displayed teeth that must have put at least one orthodontist's kids through university. "You compliment both me and my unbelievably expensive plastic surgeon."
There was still a trace of the Balkans in her voice. She cocked her head, leaned back and regarded him like a specimen in a jar. "But you… you don't look the same."
"Not all of us age as well as you."
Her rich, thick hair had always been her best feature or at least of those Lang could see. She shook her head, the silky strands caressing her shoulders. "That's not what I mean, luv."
Lang touched the moustache and padded cheeks. "Let's just say you're the only person in London I want to recognize me."
A smile twitched the corners of a sensuous mouth. "I thought you had left your position with…"
He let her go and managed to drag his eyes off her long enough to make sure there wasn't anybody there who didn't belong. A little late. If Pegasus had been waiting for him, he'd be dead. He'd been far too interested in the scenery to notice potential danger. Death by carnal desire.
Lang stepped back and shut the door. "I did. It's the cops I'm dodging."
She treated him to those teeth again. "The police, is it, luv? You've come to the right place."
"That's what I hoped you'd say."
A second look around the room and he didn't see any familiar faces, faces from the past. Attrition was fierce in Nellie's line of work.
"I'd like to spend the night," Lang said. "Make a telephone call if I could."
She raised manicured eyebrows. "Make a call and spend the night, would you?" She swept a hand in an arc. "Are my girls so ugly you need to call in talent?"
Lang grinned sheepishly. "No, no. I need to speak with a friend in the States, a priest, actually."…
Nellie laughed, a blunt coughing sound. "A priest? We know about priests, what they do. No wonder you never wanted any of my girls."
She said it loud enough to get the attention of several of the young women nearby. If he hadn't been so occupied with Pegasus, Lang might have blushed.
She took him by the hand to lead him into the hall she had come out of. It was lined with doors like a corridor in a hotel, except there were no numbers. They stopped in front of one while Nellie fished around in her blouse. Lang was about to make the obvious crude comment when she produced a key and unlocked the door.
"Sue Lee's room," she explained. "She's on the coast of Spain with a client."
She wrinkled her nose at a faint odor Lang couldn't identify. "Been cooking in here on her wok. Vietnamese, Japanese, something like that. You'll get used to the smell."
She ushered him inside. "Sure you don't want company, luv?"
The room looked like one in a girls' dorm. A vanity with light-studded mirror was built into one wall. A plain wooden chair, a metal chest of drawers and a single bed completed the furnishings. It wasn't exactly the place Lang would have imagined a high-price hooker spending her off time.
Nellie had been following his appraising look around. "The girls don't entertain in their rooms. The traffic would make it hard for the coppers to look the other way. They use hotel rooms or have their own flats. She pointed to a door on the other side of the vanity. "The loo. Connects with the next room. Mind that unless you want a surprise. Help yourself to the telephone."
"Thanks."
She started to close the door and stopped. "Sure there's nothing I can get you?"
Lang smiled. "Thanks, but no."
She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. "On the run from the law, bet you haven't eaten. Some of the girls always get fish and chips, Chinese, some sort of take-away. No trouble to get something for you."
The mention of food reminded him he hadn't eaten since… since Rachel's gut-cramping Indian fare the night before. He must have fully recovered because he was suddenly hungry enough to risk another had it been available. Fortunately, it wasn't.
"You talked me into it," he said, pulling some bills out of his pocket. "Surprise me."
Finally alone, Lang reached for the telephone, one of those cutesy ivory-and-gold ones that is supposed to look like an antique. He picked it up, happy to hear a very contemporary dial tone. He dialed 00, international, 1 for North America, and 404, one of Atlanta's area codes, and then information. Never before had he paid particular notice to the toneless voice of the computerized information service. It had an American accent.
After a series of astral clicks and whirs, a familiar voice was on the line, words so clear they might have been spoken from across the room rather than across the Atlantic. "Lang?"
"It's me, Francis, your favorite heretic."
Francis's chuckle was audible an ocean away. "Glad to hear from you, although I've been reading some pretty disturbing things in the local fish-wrapper."
Lang was thankful the phone's cord extended to the bed. He stretched out. This was going to take awhile. "Forno volat, Frances, rumor travels fast. Besides, you know the media: accused on page one-A, acquitted somewhere in the obituaries."
"I suppose," the priest said, a rueful note clearly detectable. "They publish accusations but not the rebuttal." "If it bleeds, it leads," Lang said. "Gotta pump the ratings for the six o'clock news and sell advertising for the paper."
"Somehow, I don't think you had your secretary have me wait for your call just so you could tell me you didn't do it."
Lang took a deep breath and exhaled. "No, you're right as usual." "You've recognized your feet are set upon the road to hell and you want me to hear your confession."
Even the fatigue that was beginning to fog Lang's mind couldn't suppress a chuckle. "You don't have enough time left on this earth to hear my full confession."
"Then it's my pastoral skill and brilliant intellect you seek."
"Don't you guys take some sort of vow of humility? But, yeah, sort of. First, listen to what I have to tell you. Pay attention. There'll be a test later."
It took Lang the better part of twenty minutes to explain. He only paused to answer an occasional question and thank the young woman who brought him chopsticks, a box of steaming rice and another box of food, the contents of which he tried not to speculate about.
Lang finished his meal and story about the same time.
"Templars?" Francis asked skeptically. "Over a billion dollars a year from the Vatican?"
Lang was licking his fingers, more an effort to remove the inevitable grease than because he had enjoyed the meal. "I don't suppose you know anything about that?"
"The money from the Vatican? Not likely that sort of thing would be shared with a lowly parish priest. I know a little about the Templars and this area of France, the…"
"Languedoc."
"The Languedoc and the castle this monk Pietro mentions, Blanchefort. Some people think the holy grail is hidden somewhere in that area."
Lang forgot greasy fingers. "Holy grail? Like, the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper?"
"That's what it was to Richard Wagner and Steven Spielberg. Remember the opera and the Indiana Jones movie? It was a cup in Arthurian legend, too. But it could be anything. The earliest legends describe it as a stone with mystical properties and some scholars think it relates to the ark of the Covenant which disappeared from Jerusalem a thousand years before Christ. Hitler thought it was the lance of Longinus, the spear that pierced Christ's side. No reason it couldn't be the 'vessel' your friend Pietro found in the Gnostic document."
"But you don't think such a thing exists?" Lang asked.
Francis was just warming up. He always saved the best part of his arguments for last. "I don't know the Church's position on the subject, guess they haven't had to address the matter in a few hundred years. Me, I say, why not? What I do know, there was a parish priest in the area we're talking about, a little town called, called Rennes-le-Château, I think. I'm fairly sure the man's name was Saunière and he lived around the middle, last part of the nineteenth century."
"You remember all this like you do your catechism? I mean, that's remarkable you could recall all that along with all the mumbo-jumbo you have to memorize."
"I'll ignore that, although it might calm your heathen breast to know I actually went to the place a couple of year ago, was in France as part of an international Church council and I traveled around for a couple of days until I could get the cheap airfare home. Saunière was pretty much a tourist industry. If you can keep still, I'll tell you why."
"I'm quieted, I'm quieted."
"He, Saunière, was a poor priest in a poor parish. He was doing some minor restoration work in the church building himself because they couldn't afford professional help. Anyway, part of the altar came loose. Inside was a sheaf of old parchments. He seemed excited, showed them around but wouldn't let anyone read them. Not that the locals could have; they were supposedly in Latin or Hebrew or something. Maybe the Gnostic document that Templar was talking about.
"Almost immediately his little parish had funds to repair the church, build a hotel-size guest house, more money than anyone ever thought was in the whole Languedoc. A steady procession of cardinals began visiting. We're talking about the ecclesiastical equivalent of Podunk, a place those cardinals would never have heard of a year earlier. Saunière's personal lifestyle crossed the poverty line like a rocket on the way up, too. New vestments, housekeeper, wine cellar. All of those things a true prince of the church might have."
"Like a choice of little boys or concubines?" Lang couldn't help it. Francis was too easy a target for the church's peccadillos.
"Any more vulgarities from infidels and I'm gonna hang up and say my rosary. Anyway, Saunière never revealed the source of his sudden wealth. He died under mysterious circumstances as did his housekeeper."
"Don't tell me," Lang said, "let me guess: He died in some sort of accident involving fire."
He could tell Francis was puzzled. "Actually, he drowned when a small boat turned over. Nobody ever knew what he was doing in the middle of a river. Why?"
"Pietro mentioned the four ancient elements of fire, wind, water and earth. Go on."
"The locals speculate the parchments were some sort of treasure map, but they were never found. Once he died, both money and church dignitaries were never seen again in the area."
Lang stretched, fighting the urge to simply go to sleep. "So the man got lucky, found a buried treasure or the altar was full of winning lottery tickets. What does that tell me about the Templars?"
Lang could barely hear Francis's throaty chuckle. "Oh ye of little faith! The story goes on. In the sixties, the nineteen sixties, that is, somebody published a book speculating that Saunière had found treasure belonging to the Templars. They were active in that part of the Languedoc and this castle Pietro describes is one of theirs. Saunière could well have found some of the immense wealth those dead white boys left when they had to make a fast getaway."
"Wealth? Treasure?" Lang asked. "Until I read that Oxford fellow's translation, I had always thought the Templars were a monastic order, sworn to poverty, chastity and other unpleasantness."
"They were, at least initially. They went to the Holy Land to protect pilgrims from the Moslems, joined in the Crusades and all that. Order was founded in the early eleven hundreds, I think. Like other monks, they took a vow of poverty. Things changed in the next two hundred years. The Order acquired wealth, I mean a lot of it. Nobody really knows how or from where.
"A number of Europe's kings noticed these fighting monks had castles, lands, even their own ships. By the time the last Christian outpost in· Palestine fell and the Templars all returned to Europe, they were pretty much a nation unto themselves. A lot of rulers, Philip of France, the pope, were both covetous and a little fearful.
"In 1307, Philip had his sheriffs seize Templar castles in France and imprison the knights. The pope, Clement V, knew which side of his bread had the butter on it. Philip was the most powerful monarch in Europe and Clement wanted to make sure he stayed on the right side of him. So he issued a bull condemning the Templars on a number of trumped-up charges.
"As you can imagine, most of the other kings and emperors were eager to follow suit, since the Order's holdings would become theirs. A number of the brothers were rounded up and tortured until they confessed to all sorts of things, homosexuality to blasphemy. Eventually, those who had been caught were burned at the stake, at least in France. Edward of England and Henry of Germany weren't into confessions produced by torture and the Templars' holdings there weren't as rich as in France.
"A number of brothers escaped by disappearing before Philip's order, no doubt had advance warning. Anyway, their private fleet and whatever treasure they had were never found."
Lang was quiet a moment, thinking. "And people think they left that treasure around the Languedoc?"
"People who really are into the subject are all over the board. Some think the escaped Templars made it to Scotland where the king, Robert the Bruce, was already excommunicated and therefore not on particularly good terms with Clement. Others think they took their treasure with them and sailed to an island off what's now Nova Scotia. Even others don't believe there ever was a treasure as such, that the Templars' riches were their real estate holdings."
"And what do you think?"
There was a sigh on Francis's end of the line. "I've never really had an opinion. The Templars are an interesting bit of history as far as I'm concerned, but no more than that. As for their treasure, I think you could make a better investment in time and money by buying one of those reproductions of a map to the place Captain Kidd supposedly hid his treasure on Long Island Sound."
"At least Captain Kidd isn't killing people."
"And the Templars are just as dead, although the Masons and Rosicrucians claim some relationship with the Order. They both have secrets supposedly guarded by members' lives."
Lang snorted in derision. "I don't think I'm up against guys in funny hats or nutcases upset about Prozac and I haven't read about throats slit at your neighborhood Masonic Temple. No, these Pegasus guys are serious. They very much have something they're willing to kill to keep to themselves. I'd bet it has something to do with the money from the Vatican. And that just might be related somehow to this place in France where this guy…"
"Saunière."
"Saunière. Where Saunière hit the local lotto."
"Maybe," Francis agreed, "but what about the picture, the shepherds? That's supposed to be in Arcadia, Greece, not France." He paused for a moment. "But then, Arcadia's also used in poetry as a synonym for any place of pastoral beauty and peace. Could be metaphoric rather than geographic."
Lang knew from the intelligence business that only in fiction do all the pieces of a puzzle fit. There was almost always some bit of information that turned out to be unrelated to the problem at hand, perhaps to another, perhaps useless. But here? The Poussin had tripped whatever wire was set to guard a secret Pegasus wanted to protect.
"Could be anywhere," Lang agreed, "but that Templar, Pietro, and what you're telling me now both point to the Languedoc. I'm not sure how the painting fits in, although it must have some connection. Otherwise, Pegasus wouldn't kill to prevent anyone from understanding whatever the hell it means."
Francis grunted affirmatively. "Yeah, but what?"
"Think maybe it has something to do with the Gnostic heresy, Joseph of Arimathea being Jesus's brother and Mary Magdalene His wife?"
"That's two questions," Francis said. "First, the Scriptures, at least the ones the Church recognizes as gospels, are silent about Jesus's brothers and sisters. Since Jews of biblical times tended to have large families, it's more likely than not that He had siblings. There's always been speculation about a wife. Hebrew law required young men, particularly a rabbi as Jesus must have been, to marry. Some scholars speculate the wedding in Cana, the one where He turned water into wine, to be his own. Problem with siblings and a spouse is that they raise troubling questions about lateral and direct descendants, questions the Church had rather not deal with. That professor Wolffe who did the translation is correct about the Merovingian dynasty who ruled that area of France for a century or two after the collapse of Rome. They claimed to be descendants of Christ, no small problem for the papacy back then.
"The Gnostics were a group of heretics who believed God created Christ mortal, that after His death; His spirit, not his body, ascended into heaven, contrary to Jewish Messianic prophecy. No physical resurrection, no Messiah. The Gnostic view had been specifically rejected by the Council of Nicea along with proposed gospels supporting it, hence the heresy in proclaiming the doctrine."
Lang nodded to the priest on the other side of the ocean as he struggled against weariness to understand what he was hearing. His jaws stretched in a monumental yawn. "Interesting church history, but I don't see how it fits whatever the painting portrays. If it means anything at all. Pegasus seems to think it does. Whatever. I intend to solve the puzzle of the picture, or at least find out what Pegasus is trying to protect. Only way to get even for what they did."
There was an audible sigh, the sound of disapproval. "Lang, revenge can backfire. I wish you'd let the police handle it."
"Francis, you dream," Lang snapped back. "The Paris police are clueless. I want results, not a murder case gone cold. You seem to forget those people, Pegasus, tried to kill me in Atlanta and I'm fairly certain it wasn't friendly conversation they wanted this evening. And let's not forget they managed to get me accused of a couple or murders. I'd say l owe 'em big time."
"You know you should give yourself up to the authorities before you have to kill someone else, before anyone else dies. God will see you through."
"Rumor has it He helps those who help themselves, Padre."
"How about advice from a friend, forget the Padre business?"
"I am, as they say, all ears."
"Illigitimi non carborundum."
"Francis, you can do better than some sort of liberated Latin for 'don't let the bastards wear you down: "
"Then watch your ass."
Despite his problems, Lang was grinning when he hung up the phone. He was waging a losing battle with sleep but found enough reserves to take the Polaroid of the painting from his wallet. Crumpled from wear, the figures were still as enigmatic as the Latin inscription.
He yawned again, wondering when he might be sleeping in his own bed again. The thought of home triggered a seemingly unrelated thought. He wanted to sit out on his balcony with his morning coffee, looking out over the city and reading the paper.
The paper.
Lang routinely worked a syndicated puzzle where letters were scrambled. If solved, a familiar phrase appeared. What if the Latin inscription were like the puzzle in the paper, an anagram in which a seemingly superfluous word supplied letters necessary for the message?
ETINARCADIAEGOSUM.
ETINARCADIAEGO (SUM).
His exhausted body and mind protested as he got up from the bed to rummage through the chest of drawers until he found a sales receipt from Harrods. Further search located the stub of an eyebrow pencil on the vanity. Using the blank back of the sales slip, he began rearranging letters. He started with the one the shepherd's finger was touching, so that each version began with the letter A.
Twenty minutes later, Lang was staring at what he had written, sleep forgotten. Could he be reading this correctly? His Latin was good enough for competitive aphorisms but he had to be sure he had this right.
He snatched the door open so fast he startled a young woman walking the hall in a fire-engine-red teddy.
"Where can I find Nellie?" he asked as if the world depended on the answer.
Recovering with the aplomb demanded by her profession, she pointed, speaking with an accent Lang didn't recognize. "The office, end of the hall."
Nellie's face had an unhealthy pallor, a reflection of the blue of the computer screen inches from her eyes. The world's latest technology was now in the service of its oldest profession.
She swiveled around, the casters on her chair squeaking. "Change your mind about… Bloody hell! Look like you seen a ghost, you do."
Lang guessed the office had previously been a closet.
There wasn't room for both of them, so he stood in the doorway. "In a way, I suppose I have. I've got a really strange request."
She gave him a lopsided smile, a conspiratorial nod and said, "Strange requests are part of the business, luv. Leather, chains?"
"Even stranger. Any place you could put your hands on a Latin-English dictionary this time of night?'
She was shocked, quite possibly for the first time in her professional career. "Latin? I'm running a university now, am I?" She thought for a moment. "There's a bookstore down by the university, though it's not likely open this hour."
Lang was too excited to wait. If he was right… The prospect overcame his better judgment. ''I'll go see. Keep the room open for me."
She put a restraining hand on his arm. "Don't bother, luv.
I've got a girl visiting a customer in Bloomsbury. She'll ring in shortly 'n' I'll have her pop over to Museum Street. No need you riskin' bumpin' into the law, now is there?"
Museum Street was a collection of cafes and small shops selling old books and prints. Many of them kept hours as eclectic as their inventory.
"Thanks."
An hour later, Lang put down a tattered paperback Latin-English dictionary, shocked to discover he had been right. The painting was an enigma no more, although it was going to take an Olympic-quality broad jump of faith to believe its message. But Pegasus sure as hell did. That was why they were willing to kill.
Pietro's narrative and the enigmatic inscription said the same thing, as unbelievable as it might be. Now all Lang had to do was evade the cops and some very nasty people long enough to locate a specific spot among thousands of square miles and verify the tale of a monk dead seven hundred years.
He was on his way to France.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
An Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
5
And so did the days fly by on the wings of falcons. Such time as I could spare from assisting the cellarer as his seneschal, doing sums on the abacus and making inventory of such produce as the Temple's serfs produced.1 Such time as I could, I stole from my labours to spend in the library, learning more about the Gnostics and their pernicious apostasy, documents so vile that at least one was secreted not in the library but in a hollow column. Its existence was revealed to only a few brothers. How I wish I had not been one of them! I was not amused by the irreverence shown the Holy Gospels as much as I was curious as to the contents of the vessel mentioned in those ancient volumes. I also was curious as to the reason the Holy See would send what amounted to tribute to a single Temple whose only duty was to guard Serres and Rennes, two simple villages which appeared to apprehend no danger.
Thus did the Gnostic documents tempt me as the serpent did Eve, induce me to seek knowledge of that better left in obscurity.
One sin begot another and I began to journey far from the Temple, my peregrinations taking me even beyond the boundaries of the Temple's fiefdom and along the River Sals and among the hills and mountains, particularly the white mountain called Cardou. I chose this path because it was the one most similar to the one described in the writings of the heretics as being the ancient Roman road and the one taken by Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene when they came into these parts.2 I compounded these derelictions of my duties to my brethren and to God by wantonly lying to my superiors, falsely testifying that I was but walking the metes and bounds of the Temple's estates. Much more the sin because I was seeking forbidden knowledge.
Directions could not be had from the villeins thereabout, for they spoke in a dialect I could not comprehend. Had they been conversant in Frankish or Latin, it is improbable they could have answered the queries that filled my head. Caked as they were with the dirt in which they lived, reeking of sweat and their own excrement, I found it difficult to remember that they, too, were children of God. Even more uncomfortable was the knowledge that I had come from stock such as these. Clean clothes, meat each day and a fresh bed at night had engendered the sin of pride which had attached itself to my soul like a lamprey upon some hapless fish.
It was from one of these journeys I was returning one day in October. The earth was still dust, for winter's rains had not yet begun. The orchards were ablaze both with ripening fruit and autumnal foliage and the vines were no more than twisted twigs, having already been harvested and pruned. A cold wind blew from the west, the breath of the new snow I could see on those mountains known as Pyrenees at which the Languedoc ends and the Iberian country of Catalonia begins. I wondered at that time why the knights did not free the lands on the other side of those mountains from the heathen.3
On the slope of the mountain called Cardou, I paused for a moment to give thanks to God for a spectacle so rich and to wonder at the majesty that created it in six days' time. I had barely said my "Amen" when a hare, large and fat no doubt from a summer of repasts at the expense of the Brothers' gardens, ran nearly over my feet. It stopped a short distance upwards and away and looked at me with an insolent eye.
The animal robbed me of all thoughts of Him who made us both. Instead, I remembered the summer months which had passed without the spicy flesh I saw before me. I raised my staff and moved forward with caution.
My second step did not stop with what I thought to be firmament beneath wild berry bushes. Instead, I had stepped into a void to the extent that I fell forward. When I stood, reaching for the staff I had dropped, I observed that the bushes obscured an opening in the earth much larger than that into which I had stumbled.
I was facing no mere animal burrow but a cave or shaft in the stone white as the distant snow, a hole so cleverly concealed that, had I not fallen, I would have walked past without notice. Without moving from where I stood, the marks of stonecutters were visible upon the walls. This was, then, no natural crevice or fault in the mountain but one brought about by the hand of man.
Had I but turned and sought explanation of my discovery, I would go to the fate that awaits me in peace. As it is, Satan himself fueled the curiosity that led me forward.
From the light outside, I could see I was in a chamber, a cave, perhaps, crudely enlarged. Darkness prohibited my taking its exact measure, but I could stand upright and my extended arms touched neither side nor ceiling.
In the dimness, I perceived an object in the middle of the rough floor, a block of stone of about the size of a bound manuscript.4 On this stone were carvings, letters I scarcely could make out which appeared to be of Hebrew characters, perhaps Aramaic, and Latin. I let my fingers explore since there was insufficient light to see clearly.
Could this be the vessel spoken of in the Gnostic heresies? The stone was of a texture like the white of the Languedoc, so it likely had been carved where I found it,5 a more believable occurrence than transporting such a heavy object from the Holy Land. Without reading the inscriptions, I would not know and I was filled with a lust for that knowledge no less carnal than that which drives a man to seek a harlot.
I needed light by which I could probe the mystery of what I had found. The Temple was but a quarter of an hour away and could be seen from the mouth of the cavern. The light of a single taper would assuage a hunger for knowledge more acute than any my belly had ever felt for victuals.
I ran as though hell itself were behind me, as indeed it turned out to be. I dashed through the portcullis, hardly extending a greeting to those who guarded. the entrance. I crossed the cloister at a run that drew the attention of all and did not care of the opprobrium such conduct would bring.6 Such was my haste that I neglected to cleave to the walls of the arcade surrounding the garth, thereby demonstrating my humility by surrendering the wider path. Instead, I dashed along the middle, caring not which of my brethren were forced to give way. Inside, I suppressed the instinct to snatch the first lighted candle I saw from its sconce. Instead, I found one in my own cell and I stopped in the chapel to light it from those that eternally burn there. In such a haste was I, I nearly neglected to genuflect upon my departure.
My return to the cave was at a more sedate pace than my departure, for, should an errant breeze or a sudden move extinguish the candle, I would have to return to the Temple to light it anew.
Inside the cavern, I knelt beside the stone. edifice and shielded my candle. The Latin inscription was of a dialect so archaic I found it difficult to decipher. The stone into which it was carved badly crumbled.
As I contemplated what was written, it was as if the cold hand of Satan squeezed my heart and I swooned into darkness. I know not how long I was oblivious to the physical world but when I awoke, I wished I had not. According to the label carved thereon, this stone contained that which even now I dare not mention. The fire to which I will shortly be consigned will not be hot enough to expurgate my soul of the perdition engraved upon that stone.
I was distraught, knowing not what to do. I must have been possessed by demons, for I first tried to lift the top from the stone. God's mercy made it far too well lodged to come free. Had I succeeded, I would surely have suffered a fate not unlike Lot's wife, for my eyes would have beheld that far more odious to God than the end of Sodom. My next thought was to share my find with those far wiser and more dedicated to God than I, who could surely explain what I had found. I now realize this was the same urge Satan fostered upon Eve to share her sin with Adam, spreading the disease of sinful knowledge like the plague.7
I know my mind was not my own, for I left the unused potion of the taper, an extravagance but one of the lesser sins I was to commit because of the curiosity the devil inspired in my soul.
As I gained sight of the Temple, I witnessed an outpouring of men on horseback, among them most of the knights, all clad as though for battle. Among them I recognized Guillaume de Poitiers, Tartus the German and others, being most of the Temple skilled in the arts of war. With them were asses, burdened as if for a long campaign. They were gone before I reached the walls, their memory being little but a cloud of choking dust.
I was surprised to find the portcullis raised and unmanned, for if the brethren had ridden forth to vanquish the invaders feared by the Holy See, they most surely would have secured their own source of supply.
Inside the walls, all was confusion. Swine and oxen were unfettered, running freely through the cloister gardens as ducks and chickens flapped and scattered underfoot. I could not find Phillipe and presumed he had gone with his master. The cellarer was in the storage area off the refectory, musing over provisions strewn across the floor – wine barrels, their staves crushed – and the litter of haste predominant.
The cellarer was an old man, his love the order in which he kept his charge. His voice quavered as though broken by sorrow.
"They are gone," he said before I could inquire into the tumult and disorder. "A rider from Paris, from Brother de Malay himself.8 All the brothers otherwise unoccupied were ordered to collect the holy relics, empty the treasury and take such provisions as they would need for seven days. For what purpose, I know not."
This was exceeding strange. Brothers "otherwise unoccupied" would pertain to those knights trained in the art of war, leaving those charged with the actual sustenance of this Temple. Were the departing knights sallying forth to battle, they would certainly not be ordered to subject the Temple's holy relics and treasury to the vagaries of conflict. So full of my virulent discovery was I that I held the whimsy of the Master of the Order to be of little consequence. I only pondered in whom, if at all, I should confide.
It was after Vespers that the wisdom of the Master became apparent. We were gathered in the chapter house, each seated on the stone benches that were carved into its walls, discussing what little business might be left upon the departure of so many of our number. I had in my robes ink, quill and paper, planning to return to my duties when our meeting concluded, though verily my mind had so succumbed to my discovery, I doubt I could have added two figures. I knew not to whom, if anyone, I should confide. The first chapter of the rules of the Order had been read,9 when the door slammed open. Therein stood the king's bailie for Serres and Rennes. With him were a host of men-at-arms.
"What say you, good brother?" asked the cellarer. As the senior brother present, he was, under the rules of the Order, acting as abbot.
"I am no brother to you," the bailie said.
I knew not his name but seen him at the Temple before, his little swine-eyes peering from a face of corpulence as if he were a merchant about to offer a price for a bolt of cloth.
"What means this intrusion?" the cellarer asked.
The bailie motioned so that the various men-at-arms filled the room and blocked all exit therefrom, though in truth the only exit was into the store closet to which I have referred. "In the name of Philip, by Grace of God King of the French, larder you to stand forth, for you, all of you, are under arrest and all goods herein forfeit."
A murmur of protest ran its course before the cellarer said, "So it cannot be, for we are of the Church, not subject to the laws of God's servant Philip."
The bailie was undismayed. He let out a laugh like the bark of a dog, reading from a document that bore the royal seal, "You are accused by your king of such crimes as idolatry, blasphemy and such physical atrocities as fondling each other, kissing each other upon the fundament and other private places, of burning the bodies of deceased brothers to make powder of the ashes which you then mix in the food of younger brothers, of roasting infants and anointing idols with the fat therefrom, of celebrating hidden rites and mysteries to which young and tender virgins are introduced, and a variety of abominations too absurd and horrible to be named.10 As such you are forfeit any rights to heard by ecclesiastical courts."
"You will answer to His Holiness," someone said. "His Holiness does King Philip's bidding," the bailie replied.
With this pronouncement we were roughly shoved and dragged outside, placed in ass-drawn carts and taken away from the Temple and into a night illuminated by a waning moon. The darkness that gripped my spirit was without even this poor light, for the charges made against us were so far from the realm of truth as to be the product of certain perjury. My only consolation was that many of my brothers had been forewarned that very afternoon and I had witnessed their escape.
I could but ponder if the king's men had found the document or if it was still safe in its hiding place. Mere possession of such a writing could have condemned us all.
I knew not whence we were being taken but I had little hope for what would happen once we arrived. I was well aware of the treatment accorded witches, sorcerers and heretics. The heaviest part to bear, though, was that I had just gained the hurtful knowledge in the cave that redemption was not certain. In my own heart, I was a heretic more virulent than had I been guilty as charged.
Translator's Notes
1. Over the two centuries of their existence, the Templars had been given vast estates, most of which contained serfs. Each Temple so invested thereby became a feudal landlord.
2. Though not suitable for motorized vehicles, the course of this old Roman road is quite ascertainable. The first attempt at an accurate survey of France (1733-1789, undertaken by the father and son Jacques and Cesar-François Cassini de Thury) shows it as the main access to the area.
3. Parts of Spain were occupied by the Moors, Berbers, until 1492, although at the time of Pietro's writing Andalus, not Catalonia, was the province under Moslem rule.
4. There was no standard size for the manuscripts monks copied by hand, but a good guess in comparison to the average size would be sixty centimeters by forty and perhaps thirty thick.
5. The writer uses the Latin in situ, meaning the original or natural position. Since a carved block of stone is hardly natural or original, the translator has taken a liberty in departing from the original text.
6. Medieval monastic orders frequently had rules of the order prohibiting running, hurrying or other rash conduct that was not conducive to an air of contemplation in the monastery itself. Whether this was true of the Temple is unknown. Perhaps Pietro is thinking about the former monastery.
7. The Black Death, bubonic plague, which wiped out nearly a third of Europe, was still fifty years in the future. More limited outbreaks were not unknown in Pietro's time.
8. Jacques de Molay, Master of the Order 1293-1314. De Molay had, only three years before he succeeded in having Pope Boniface VIII grant the Order exemptions from taxation in England by directive to Edward I, had been given a papal promise that the "moveable goods of the Order will never be seized by secular jurisdiction, nor will their immovables ever be wasted or destroyed."
9. The chapter house was the room where the various chapters of the rules of the Order were read to the brothers and such business matters as concerned the Order were discussed.
10. The original draft of the complete charges, eighty-seven in number, is preserved in the Tresor des Chartres and includes various forms of idolatry such as animal worship and imbuing the Grand Master with the ability to forgive sins.
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