Part Five
CHAPTER ONE
1
Location unknown
Time unknown
When he regained consciousness, Lang had no idea how long he had been out or where he was.
Of course, they wouldn't have wanted him to know, not if they were planning extensive questioning. They were succeeding. All he knew was that he was lying in an unusually uncomfortable bed, staring up at what appeared to be an old-fashioned canopy. And that his shoulder still hurt like hell where his arm had been wrenched upwards on the hillside.
Lang's Agency training taught total disorientation as an effective interrogation tool. Keeping a captive ignorant of day or night, the date or the hour upsets the internal clock just like jet lag. Jet lag, though, goes away once the body accepts the new schedule. To question someone effectively, you make sure nothing is done at the same time twice. Likewise, not letting the subject know where he is may open up all sort of anxieties the questioner can put to use.
Also the lights. You keep the subject in a place without windows and at the same light level twenty-four hours a day. Intensely bright light if sleep deprivation is part of the plan; low light, too dim to see well, if not.
The talk about truth serum had been just that, talk. Outside of some old spy novels, drugs are usually little help. Sodium pentothal, scopolamine, narcotics like that, inhibit the brain's ability to fabricate, to make up lies, but they also are risky. Too little and you still get lies; too much and the subject is either sound asleep or dead. Whatever the drug makes them babble is going to be incomprehensible.
Plain old-fashioned torture was less than reliable, too. It worked for confessions for the same reason it doesn't work to get information: a man will tell any lie just to stop the pain. Lang very much hoped the Templars realized that.
Lang had been taught that modern interrogation consists of simply wearing your subject down, breaking his will. A less polite word for it is a species of brainwashing.
Lang slid out of bed to the floor, some three or four feet down, and walked the perimeter of the small room. The bowed exterior wall made him curious as to the outside appearance of the building. The single window was shuttered and, no doubt, barred on the outside. The only door was fitted with a intricately cast brass lock plate. When he bent over, closed an eye and squinted through the keyhole, he saw nothing. The key had been left in the outside of the lock.
The dim overhead light cast few shadows because, other than Lang and the bed, there was nothing in the room. No pictures on the walls, no window treatment, no rug, nothing. Had it not been for the hand-pegged hard wood floor and the ornate and undoubtedly expensive wall paper, he could have been in a jail cell.
Except… He looked for a door he might have missed, an entrance to a toilet. There was none. Bending over, he saw the porcelain jar under the bed. At least he wasn't going to be the guy that had to deal with emptying that. At this point any good news was welcomed.
On his second lap around the room, he counted the pegs in the floor. Keeping the mind occupied was the best defense against disorientation.
Sixty-two pegs later, a key scratched in the lock and Lang raced for the bed, lay down and pretended he was still out cold.
"Come now, Mr. Reilly," an all too familiar voice said. "The sedative we gave you has worn off some time ago. Playing possum, as I believe you Americans call it, will do you no good."
Lang opened his eyes and gawked in surprise. He could have gone back in time. Silver Hair stood in the doorway wearing a suit of chain mail over which was a white surcoat open at the sides with a red Maltese cross emblazoned on the front. Pointed shoes of steel covered his feet.
"Don't tell me," Lang said. "You're on your way to ask the wizard for a heart."
The Templar looked at Lang blankly. "I beg your pardon?" Then he scowled. "I gather you are referring to my attire," he said stiffly. "Templars dress traditionally when in the temple."
Temple? Had Lang been kidnapped by mad Shriners?
He wished.
Silver Hair stepped aside. Behind him was another man, this one in what looked like a monk's cassock. Bare ankles were visible above the flip-flops. He was holding a plate from which came the unmistakable aroma of food. Lang suddenly remembered he hadn't eaten since breakfast of whatever day it was that he had been taken prisoner.
Silver Hair said, "You are hungry, no doubt. The cellarer had something brought up from the refectory. It is humble fare, a local dish of salt cod, but you will find it nourishing."
The man in the monk's outfit set a wooden platter on the bed. It smelled even better. White meat swimming in vegetables.
"Go ahead, eat," Silver Hair entreated. Lang looked from him to the man who had served me. "Got a fork?"
Silver Hair shook his head. "The fork was not used until the sixteenth century. We use only the knife, as did our predecessors. We try to eschew the vanities of the modern world."
That explained the chamber pot. "Okay," Lang said, eyes on the wooden trencher with the wonderful fragrance, "we won't tell Miss Manners." The man in the brown habit set the food in front of Lang.
"Afraid you'll have to do the best you can without eating implements, Mr. Reilly," Silver Hair said. "I think you can understand our reluctance to furnish you a knife."
Lang was hungry enough not to care. He scooped up a piece of the fish in his fingers and plopped it into his mouth. He hadn't eaten many things that had tasted so good. He was nearly finished as Sliver Hair and his companion backed out of the room.
"Until later, then," he said as the door closed.
A second later the lock clicked.
Lang was draining the liquid from the platter when the room began to spin. The outlines of the corners got fuzzy and the planks in the floor lost definition. His head was suddenly too heavy to hold up. They had seasoned dinner with something besides herbs.
But why, Lang wondered as his world again grew dim. They could hardly interrogate him if he was asleep.
And he was too sleepy to care.
2
Location unknown
Time unknown
Only his still-full stomach told Lang he had not been unconscious more than a few hours. A bright light was shining in his eyes. Although awake, he was lethargic, and his head weighed a ton.
"Back with us, I see," said a voice from behind the light. "Time for you to answer a question or two." Lang struggled to get up to a sitting position. "I get to make one phone call before my final answer, right?" There was no response. Clearly Silver Hair had better things to do than watch American TV.
"I want to know two things, Mr. Reilly: How did you find our secret and to whom did you send that letter?" "Right," Lang said. "And as soon as I tell you, I walk out of here. Wherever 'here' is."
"Something can be arranged, I'm sure."
Something like a bullet in the back of the head.
But Lang said, "I've got a few questions of my own. Like, if you wanted to keep the secret of Blanchefort, why have a virtual map of it painted by that guy Poussin?"
"You test my patience, Mr. Reilly, but I will give you an answer as a demonstration of our good faith. We have always faced a choice: risk committing the secret to writing or risk it being lost if enough of our members succumb to any number of unpleasant possibilities. Centuries ago, plague; today mass destruction by heathen terrorists the
West does not have the fortitude to destroy first. It was not unreasonable, then, in Poussin's time, the first half of the seventeenth century, to want some sort of record as to where our… discovery might be found. Along with the oral parts of our initiation rites, a picture would serve to find the precise location."
Lang's interest made him forget how groggy he was. He sat up a little straighter. "How did you know Poussin wouldn't give away your secret?"
The light shifted enough for Lang to be able to make out Silver Hair's silhouette. He seemed to be sitting but there wasn't anything in the room to sit on besides the bed. Had they brought in a chair?
"Poussin was a Freemason."
"So?"
"Freemasonry is a tool of our order, its members at our bidding. We control it worldwide, always have. Most men of prominence up until nearly the present were Masons, your George Washington, most of your country's founding fathers, for example. Through it we knew nations' most intimate secrets. We don't intend to experience another 1307.
"More directly in answer to your question, Poussin did the painting because he was commanded to do so, a slight variation upon his work that now hangs in the Louvre. He never knew its significance. We had copies made, one for each of our chapters. Last year we moved the London house, sold a number of its goods rather than move them. The movers mistakenly bundled up the picture with the items we had sold.
"Now, I've given you your answer. I want to know where that letter went."
Lang yawned, not entirely an affectation, and moved his aching arm in a slow circle. "Like I said before, so you can kill somebody else? I don't think so."
There was an audible sigh. "Very well, Mr. Reilly. We will leave you for a while to meditate on your situation. When we return… well, I fear it will be most unpleasant. We no longer use the rack, the thumbscrew. But we can do amazing things with alligator clips and automobile batteries, simple electrical cooking appliances and human skin. I warn you, though, we have limited time."
So much for Lang's theory on the demise of torture as an interrogation tool.
There was the scrape of the unseen chair as Silver Hair got up. Lang was already relaxing, slumping back onto the bed, when hands reached out from the. dark, pinioning Lang's arms behind him. His wrists were quickly handcuffed to the bed as his pants were removed. His shoulder was on fire.
"Now look," Lang said. "Surely we…"
Somebody literally had him by the balls. The scrotum's skin was stretched and he felt cold metal. Before he could say anything else, his breath evaporated in a bolt of pain that seared from his testicles throughout his body. His blood was on fire and he could see nothing but a wall of red that was one with his agony.
Lang didn't hear his own scream. Burning, searing pain had replaced the other four senses, cramping, demobilizing, anguish.
It stopped as suddenly as it started. The clamps were removed and Lang's arms released. The fire in his crotch made him forget his shoulder.
"A few volts, a low charge," the voice from the darkness said. "We will leave you to consider the effects of a larger charge, perhaps applied to a metal rod inserted in the anus up to the prostate."
They left Lang with the thought. That and pain worse than any he'd ever gotten from a dirty shot in any sport he'd ever played. Gingerly, he moved onto his side. That was when he noticed the shock had made him wet himself.
3
Location unknown
Time unknown
Lang no longer needed to count floor pegs to occupy his mind. He had to find a way out of here before the guy jump-started his balls again.
Every move set a new fire in his crotch, underlining the urgency of escape. Gritting his teeth against the constant pain, Lang tried the window. The shutters were immobile, probably secured by a bolt outside too heavy to move even if he could reach it. Besides, unless he was on the first floor, jumping out of a window might not be such a hot idea.
Trying the same tactic as with the Templar in his condo in Atlanta was a possibility he quickly discarded. They would be alert to the chance he might try to spring on them when they entered the room, and if there were more than one of them, there would be no chance at all. Lang needed to think of something else. He began another slow circuit of the room.
If there had been a chair for Silver Hair, he had taken it with him. The door was hand-hewn wood, the marks of the chisel on it and the matching frame visible even in the dim light, as were the details of the brass lock plate. Lang knelt to inspect the lock, the posture squeezing testicles already ablaze. He groaned as he peeked into the keyhole again. There was no spring latch like a modern knob would have. Like most old doors, this one would have been kept shut by a simple latch on the inside, a device that empty screw holes indicated had been removed. The keyhole was still blocked but Lang thought he could see the thinnest glimmer of light between the door and jamb. He moved his head up and down. The space extended from top to bottom, blocked only where the lock's bolt fit into the bolt plate.
Careful to jar his crotch as little as possible, he sat on the floor. Removing a shoe, he used the dirt and grime on the sole of the Mephisto to make a nearly invisible mark on the frame just even with the bolt.
The he returned to the bed, this time looking at the bottom of it. Instead of springs, it had old time slats to support the stuffed cotton ticking. For once, Lang was happy to have been uncomfortable. Those slats…
It was tempting to stretch out for a few minutes, to give into the pain, but there was no time. Working the end of one slat loose from the bed's frame, he levered the other end up and down until he heard it crack. Slipping the whole board out of place, he picked a splinter from the damaged end and returned the slat to its place.
Lang had done what he could. Now he had to depend on the fickle favors of luck.
Although it felt like he was passing fire, he urinated a slim stream of blood into the chamber pot. Then he beat on the door.
They must have had a guard outside because the click of the lock was immediate.
The doorway was filled with a large man in a white cassock, complete with a hood and a rope belt, something Pietro might have worn seven hundred years before. The light was behind him, preventing Lang from seeing the features of his face although it was adequate to make a halo of his close-cropped blond hair. And to reflect from the automatic rifle slung over a shoulder.
"The pot needs emptying;" Lang said, indicating.
Even in the dim light, Lang could see the sneer, nostrils dilating in disgust as he smelled the dry urine on Lang's clothes. "When you fill it, you will empty it, heathen… if you live that long."
The accent was Slavic, Russian or something like it. The rifle was one of the AK-47's, Russian or Chinese-made, that the collapse of the Soviets had left all over Eastern Europe. The thirty-seven-round banana clip hung in front of the trigger guard.
The man's distaste was apparent even in his back as he spun and strode from the room.
The door slammed and Lang dropped to his knees. The key was rattling as he picked up the splinter from beside the door and slipped it between door and jamb. He could feel the heavy bolt hit it and prayed the slender bit of wood would hold.
It did.
Lang leaned against the oak, making sure the door had no give should the man outside test it. Careful the unbolted door did not move, he turned his back against it and slid into a sitting position, hand over his shoulder to hold the splinter in place.
How long to wait? At some point Silver Hair was coming back with the man from Autolite. He glanced at his bare wrist before remembering they had taken his watch. He began slow counts to sixty, trying to keep score of the passing minutes.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Carefully, he pushed the door slightly ajar, trying to remember if the hinges squeaked. The first thing visible in the tiny crack between door and frame was a pair of feet propped in a chair. The guard was taking it easy, maybe too easy if the deep, even breathing was any indication.
Encouraged, Lang pushed the door a little wider. He wasn't as lucky as he had hoped. His keeper was tilted back in a chair, his legs stretching to a second chair, engrossed in a magazine. The rifle was across his lap. Beyond him, a dimly lit hall stretched for maybe twenty feet, intersecting what Lang guessed was yet another hallway like a large hotel. The only thing missing were numbers on the line of doors.
Lang eased the door shut. He needed to move but couldn't chance the door swinging open. Untying a shoe, he jammed the rubber sole between floor and door. Careful to keep the splinter in place, he returned to the bed. The sheets were old linen, bordered with fine lace. Regretting the necessity of destroying something so beautiful, he ripped a couple of long strips loose before returning to the door. He wadded one strip and made a loop of the other.
The guard was still intent on his magazine. Lang opened the door a little wider. If the guard looked up, Lang was finished. With as little motion as possible, Lang lobbed a Mephisto over his keeper's head. It landed with a gratifying thunk.
The magazine fell to the floor as the guard snatched up the AK-47 and sprang to his feet.
There was only a split second before the Templar realized the source of his distraction and turned around. In a single motion, Lang shoved the door wide and lunged. His sudden weight on the other man's back knocked him down, the rifle clattering against the plank flooring. With one hand, Lang dropped the looped strip of linen over the guard's head, past his chin, and twisted it tight, stifling the yell that was beginning in his throat.
Lang's other hand stuffed the wadded cloth into the man's open mouth, giving the embroidered garotte another turn. The keeper was clawing at his throat, trying to loosen the crushing pressure on his air supply, when Lang brought up a knee to put between the man's shoulder blades and pushed down as hard as possible. The human upper esophagus is a muscular tube, hard to close completely, but the keeper's weakening efforts told Lang he was succeeding. The Templar was limp when there was the sound of approaching footsteps.
4
Sintra, Portugal
2340 hours
From across the winding, tree-shaded street, they had been watching the top two floors of old limestone that could be seen over the wall. The building's windows were tightly shuttered as though the occupants wanted none of the gentle breeze from the ocean ten or so miles distant. The structure could have been described as a castle or palace simply based on its size and the generous acreage upon which it sat. In fact, it was not much grander than its neighbors, all of which were large enough to be regal residences instead of summer homes. Indeed, three dwellings of royal origin had been built on the hillside of this small town.
In the early 1800s, Lord Byron had fallen in love with the area as had a significant segment of Europe's nobility and wealthy. In the last century, increasingly dreary socialist governments and the taxation necessary to implement the illusion of social equality had forced the sale of many of these exquisite vacation homes to the world's new elite: multinational corporations, usually those headquartered in tax havens with corporate anonymity.
Only two people were in sight tonight, ambling with careful indifference along the sidewalk as they gawked at the opulence of what was illuminated behind protective walls. They had stopped in front of one.
"Not a lot of traffic," the sniper observed. "Haven't seen the first tourist today, either." "You won't," the other person said, studying that part of the facade visible above the razor wire-topped wall. "What few there are come in by bus, eat lunch at one of those restaurants we saw in the town square this afternoon, and leave. After touring the palaces, there's not a lot for 'em to do. The hotels are priced out of the average budget and you have to have recommendations from some pretty obscure people just to get a room."
The marksman frowned. "I'd never even heard of the place until you tracked Pegasus here. How did you do that?"
By unspoken agreement, they both turned as though to resume their stroll as a large Mercedes slowed for one of the road's many turns and effortlessly accelerated up the hill.
"You did. You got someone to hack into the Froggies' air traffic control computer. Only one flight from Toulouse-Blagnac by private aircraft yesterday, the one to Lisbon."
"But this isn't Lisbon."
"No, but it's less than twenty kilometers away. This town, Sintra, has always been a place for those who would just as soon not be officially noticed. I called a Portuguese solicitor I know, had him check the tax records and, presto! Up come the chaps at Pegasus."
The Mercedes disappeared behind yet another wall as it followed the curves of the narrow street. The pair resumed their interest in the building.
"So," the marksman said, "you think he's in there, that round tower sort of thing."
It was not a question.
"Why else bring him here?"
The two hesitated a few moments before continuing the slow pace of sightseers.
"High voltage as well as the concertina wire on top of the wall," the marksman said. "And I will wager you there are motion detectors in the yard. Probably also dogs."
The other verbalized the obvious. "The two of us aren't going to get him out with a frontal assault. We're going to have to watch the place and wait for a chance."
"And if there isn't one?"
He shrugged as he dug in his pockets. "We can only do our best and hope."
The marksman frowned, unhappy with the obvious truth of the answer. "They could kill him before we…"
The sniper's companion turned back in the direction from which they had come. "For all we know, they might have already. But I doubt they would bring him all the way here just to kill him. I would imagine they'll be wanting to know how he discovered their secret first. He'll know his life will last only as long as he can keep that information. He's tough; they won't have gotten it yet."
Both moved deeper into the shadows cast by the limb of a huge oak overhanging the wall· opposite the gate of the building that held their interest.
"If he does get out," one said, "it's bloody unlikely he's going to just walk through that big iron gate. Maybe we'd better gather our things from the car and make such preparations as we can now."
"Better yet, call for reinforcements," said the other.
5
London
0123 hours the next morning
Inspector Fitzwilliam hated late night calls even more than those that interrupted his evening routine. Although he would never admit it, he was annoyed by the fact that the phone's ring had no effect on Shandon, his wife. After thirty-two years of marriage, the intrusion rarely even provoked her into rolling over.
This particular call made the detective forget his pique.
When the caller gave a name, he sat upright as though on a spring.
"Who?"
The name was repeated. He had heard correctly the first time.
"Where?" he asked, frowning as he heard the answer. "Hold on." He reached into a bedside table for the pen and pad he always kept there. "Repeat those directions, please."
The caller did so and the phone went dead.
6
Sintra
0527 hours
Lang sprang for the rifle and snatched it up from the floor. Slinging it over his shoulder, he dragged the guard's body into the room and shut the door. The close smell of death and the thought that he had killed again made him gag. If there had been time, he would have felt a cold fury for these men who had not only murdered but had made him a killer, too.
The corpse felt heavy beyond its apparent weight as he dragged it to the far side of the bed. Trying to breathe only through his mouth, he stooped and tugged loose the rope at the guard's waist and pulled the robe over the still head.
Even through the thickness of the door, Lang could hear voices tinged with surprise at finding the sentry gone. He tried to move faster.
Dipping into resources of strength he didn't know he had, Lang managed to dump the limp body onto the bed and throw a sheet over it. The door was opening as he lifted the robe over his own head and let it settle over him like a large white bird coming to roost. There was only time to pull up the hood and hide the rifle under his habit before Silver Hair and another man were in the room.
Silver Hair asked something in a language Lang couldn't understand, again Slavic-sounding. Guessing at his meaning, Lang pointed to the body under the sheet and mumbled. The Templar asked again, this time with an edge to his tone. Again Lang nodded, moving around the bed toward the door.
As soon as he was between the two men and the exit, Lang whirled and lunged into the hall, slamming the door behind him. As he had hoped, the key was still in the lock. He felt, rather than heard, two bodies slam into the heavy wood on the other side as the lock's bolt clicked into place. Lang took deliberate care in putting the key in the robe's pocket.
In the hall was a small cart, the sort of thing an auto mechanic might use to carry around a car battery. That was what was on it: the battery with wires and alligator clips. The sight brought Lang's mind back to the pain he still felt and he fought the urge to go back into the room and fry someone else's balls.
Instead, he made sure the hall was empty before taking the rifle out from under the robe and checking the clip.
Full with all thirty-six rounds. Too bad the guard. hadn't had an extra magazine. Ammunition, Lang mused, was like cash on a vacation: no matter how much you brought, it was never enough.
He risked taking off the cassock long enough to sling the AK-47 muzzle down under his right arm so that, if need be, he could bring it up, firing through the cloth. He wasn't going to get any points for marksmanship that way, but the Russian-designed weapon was intended more for rapid fire at relatively close range than for competition shooting.
Keeping close to the wall, Lang sauntered down the hall as though he knew where he was going. At the intersection, both directions looked the same: dimly lit, with curving.walls and regularly spaced doors that, absent the outside latch, were identical to the one he had just locked.
Right or left?
Lang chose left so the rifle was on the outside. If he had to use it, he preferred not to have to fire across his body. Shortly, he came to an arch framing a staircase beneath an arched window, the glass black with night. The steps only went down. Lang was on the top floor.
The stairs were marble. Like the tower of Blanchefort, there was a depression worn in the middle where centuries of feet had passed that way. Also like the old castle, the risers were short, made for short legs. The steps radiated from a center column in a spiral tight enough to make him slow his descent to ease a faint sense of vertigo.
There were landings on each of the two floors he passed, each similar to the others, each with a window. He saw the color of night and an occasional streak of light shimmering through the waves of the hand-blown glass.
A sound floated up the tight circular stairway, so faint Lang was surprised that he had been unconsciously listening for some time. The further down he went, the more distinct it became until he recognized it as a Gregorian chant, Latin sung without tune, but still pleasingly melodic.
Still too distant to make out the words, Lang came to yet another landing. The stairs continued down, but through the window he could see trees, their branches limned against a streetlight. He thought he could make out a wall, too. He stopped. This place-this weird, round building probably had at least one basement, no doubt complete with dungeons. If Lang was seeing what he thought he saw outside the window, this must be the ground floor.
He stepped into another circular hallway, this one with a ceiling vaulted twenty feet. The cold gray of stone walls was abated by tapestries, their figures life size and mostly gory. In silent agony, martyrs bristled with arrows, sizzled over fires and were devoured by lions. Between the gruesome pictures, suits of chain mail held swords, empty helmet slits squinting into the dim light.
The main floor. Like the men in the lifeboat in the lawyer joke, he knew where he was but not where that was.
Steps echoed from the stone floor. Lang grasped the rifle under the robe with one hand and tugged the hood down further over his face with the other. There was no need. Like a ghost in his white habit, a figure floated past on the other side of the hallway. His hands clutched rosary beads and he was mumbling what Lang supposed was a prayer.
Once the Templar was out of sight, Lang felt like saying one of his own.
The chanting grew louder until Lang was at its source. To the right, a huge circular room was filled with men in white robes or chain mail armor. In the center of the circle, another man in robes stood before a carved marble altar faced by the standing congregation.
Just as Pietro had described the chapel at Blanchefort.
Past the chapel was what Lang guessed was the door to the outside. To call it massive hardly did it justice. Reaching almost to the ceiling, two single panels were held closed by an iron bar as thick as Lang's thighs. The hinges, shiny brass, were three or four feet in height.
Lang considered making a dash for it but quickly discarded the idea. Two men, one on each side of the door, stood guard, their AK-47's anachronisms against the white surcoats with the red crosses.
They did not appear to be purely decorative.
Both watched with little interest as Lang approached.
Their reply to his motioning for them to open the door was a question in the same Slavic tongue he had heard before. Lang gave an exaggerated shrug to say that he didn't understand. With the international character of Pegasus, surely not everyone spoke the same language, at least not this language.
The man on the left pantomimed reading something and held out his hand, a clear signal that he expected a document or writing of some sort. Apparently the good brothers had to get a hall pass to leave.
The man on the right was staring at Lang's feet. The Mephistos. After throwing the one, Lang had put the pair back on. Everyone here wore the armored solleret or Jesus shoes.
The Templar guard was quick to unsling his rifle but not nearly as quick as Lang in raising the one under the robe. The sound of the shot inside stone walls was deafening. A neat red hole was centered on the cross on the Templar's robe, blood smudging the sterile white.
The remaining guard was as eager as his brothers to die for the cause, scrambling to bring his weapon to bear. Lang again squeezed off a single shot from the hip, aware that he had been forced to kill yet again.
Even before the sound waves reverberating from the domed ceiling stopped echoing in Lang's ears, the chanting stopped. He let the rifle's sling slip from his shoulder to use both hands on the huge latch on the door. He pushed from his mind the possibility this led into another part of the building or a closed courtyard.
Worse than up that well-known creek.
The latch weighed nearly a hundred pounds and Lang had to lift it a good three feet or so to clear the hasp. The exertion sent daggers across the shoulder that had been twisted as well as a lightning bolt to his scrotum that burned away any remorse he might have felt at leaving two more dead Templars. In fact, the pain was so great that he had an instant fantasy of sticking around to kill every one of them.
A sound behind told him he might have that opportunity. He turned to face the entire congregation from the chapel. Gritting teeth against the pain so hard that he could hear molars grinding, he gave the latch a final shove, pushing the door with his foot. The great hinges moved with what seemed glacial speed and there was a three-or four-foot gap between the doors. Through it Lang could see the gray of dawn and feel a slight breeze.
He was almost outside.
A quick glance over his shoulder saw a distinctly unhappy crowd moving toward him. Although unarmed, the intent was clearly hostile. Stooping, Lang retrieved one of the AK-47's from the floor and thumbed it onto automatic. As he slid between the giant doors, he sent a burst into the ceiling. The noise and the shower of plaster had the desired effect of making everyone duck.
Then Lang was running down steps and onto what looked like a driveway.
He had no idea where he was, so he followed the pavement. Semitropical plants, palm trees, Spanish bayonet, succulent cactus and, beyond, a high wall filled his vision.
He hadn't thought about the wall, particularly one far too high to jump and topped with razor wire. A closer look revealed electrical wiring, too. Whether these people meant to keep people in or out, they were serious about it.
If there was a driveway, there had to be an exit. Keeping in the dark, Lang paralleled the pavement until he came to the gate. Iron and every bit as tall as the doors he had just come through, it was the only way out of the compound he could see and it was guarded by two men who weren't dressed in costume. But they did carry automatic weapons and one of them held a cell phone to his ear. Lang was willing to bet he wasn't calling out for a pizza.
Squatting behind a bush, Lang surveyed the situation. The warm breeze was heavy with moisture, the smell of salt air and jasmine. Somewhere near the ocean, but what ocean?
The guard with the cell phone snapped it shut and put it in a pocket, speaking to his comrade. They took their rifles in both hands and began to scan the grounds. Lang considered two quick shots. At this distance, a miss was unlikely. No good. The sound would draw everyone and Lang wasn't sure he could get those gates to open. Steel arms on each side indicated there was some sort of mechanism that controlled the movement. If a combination was required or he couldn't find the switch, Lang would be no better off than he was now.
Make that worse off. He could hear the barking of dogs approaching. Not a lot of time. In the east, the day was brightening. It would be fully light soon.
7
Lisbon, Portela Airport
0624 hours
The twin DeHavilland turned off the runway of Lisbon's Portela Airport to taxi towards a small ramp where a number of vehicles waited. Within minutes, a parade of black Lancias was streaming along the Avenida Marechal through a city not yet quite awake.
From a tinted window, Inspector Fitzwilliam watched the night reluctantly depart Lisbon. The guidebook he had scanned on the plane told him that somewhere out there in the dark was the old city. Briefly, he let himself fantasize: he and Shandon on holiday, seated at a small restaurant with a view of the Tagus, Lisbon's magnificent harbor, castles brooding on the surrounding hills. Magnificent from the pictures.
Unfortunately, romantic trips were hardly the purpose at hand. He watched as the cavalcade flashed through Campo Grande, white-belted policia holding back the light traffic of delivery trucks from the country and homeward-bound late-night celebrants. Moments later, he was on the divided IC19. A cloverleaf and the suburb of Queluz whizzed by. Even the pink glow of dawn could not improve the monotony of white flats stacked boxlike on barren slopes.
Damnably accommodating of these chaps, the inspector thought. The Froggies would have died rather than invite him along to observe the arrest. The Dons and Krauts would have smothered him with an endless stream of paperwork. Too bad all the sodding EU didn't cooperate as easily as Portugal. And to sweeten the matter, no one needed to suffer the bother of getting a warrant, according to Carlas, his contact here. Just knock on the door and search for Mr. Langford Bloody Reilly all you bloody like.
He settled back in the seat. This was going to be a pleasure. Maybe Carlas could even get the extradition papers in order while he shopped for a gift for Shandon, bring Reilly back the same day.
Now that was day dreaming, he told himself.
If only this affair hadn't leaked to the local constabulary in time for them to warn whoever it was that had Reilly. The Sintra police, he understood, viewed their duty as protecting the local gentry. Even against, or particularly against, the national authorities.
8
Sintra
0647 hours
"You sure that you can cut that without getting electrocuted?"
The sniper held up a piece of uninsulated wire for an answer, quickly clipping it to a small black box that resembled a pocket tape recorder. "And with this, never will they detect the circuit has been interrupted. At least, not for two hours."
The pair had cut a gap in the wire and were sitting astride a section of the wall hidden from the main building by a clump of trees. The missing steel ringlets had been tossed onto the ground on the outside of the wall as soon as they had been clipped. Below the pair was a small gate almost obscured by flowering vines. Beside them was the grappling hook they had used to secure a rope to the top of the wall, a sound the guards had not heard because they had been investigating another noise, one made by pebbles tossed onto the pavement of the driveway.
"What if he doesn't get out of the house in two hours?" the other wanted to know. "We just calmly walk up to the door and ask to see him?"
The sniper was about to answer but instead held up a hand and pointed to the two guards at the gate, their features rapidly becoming visible in the increasing light. The slump of people bored by the inherent tedium of such duty was gone from the way they stood, peering into the shadows shrinking from the morning. It was obvious they had become suddenly alert, one holding a phone to his head. If either person on the wall doubted something was happening, that doubt evaporated with the sound of dogs barking.
9
Sintra
0648 hours
Lang didn't have many choices. With any luck at all, he thought, he should have two or three minutes before the dogs picked up the scent and either led his pursuers right to him or, more likely, attacked. Any reservations he had had about shooting the two guys at the gate were more than outweighed by the thought of becoming Kibbles and Bits. He'd have to get both men with one burst before either could return fire, though. Flipping the switch back to automatic, he took a deep breath and centered the AK's front sight on the chest of the nearest man, exhaled and squeezed.
Nothing.
When his fingers touched the cocking mechanism, a chill of dread went all the way to his feet. The action was open, ready for a full dip. He had picked up the weapon of one of the men inside and hadn't had time to check the magazine. The rifle was empty, useless.
Well, maybe not entirely useless. Maybe he could at least use the butt as a club. Flitting from shadow to dark spot, he made a quick but indirect run for the gate. Behind, it sounded as if the hounds of hell were on his trail. More likely the Dobermans of doom.
Lang was crouching, ready to make a final sprint across fifty feet or so of open space, when he heard something to his rear besides the dogs. As he spun around, he saw a dark object, felt a sharp blow to his head and everything went dark.
10
Sintra
0649 hours
Six cars squealed to a stop outside a ten-foot iron gate.
Before Inspector Fitzwilliam could climb out of the backseat, two men were pounding the butts of what looked like Yank-made M16 rifles against the steel. He saw Carlas speak into a grille beside the gate, and the iron slowly began to swing open.
11
Sintra
0700 hours
Though stunned by the blow, Lang could feel the throbbing pain. as though the back of his head might have a meat cleaver in it. He was being dragged to his feet by two men carrying rifles.
Excited voices were shouting. He was being hauled towards the back of what looked like a medieval castle. The sound of engines made him twist in his captors' grasp. Five or six long black cars were gliding up the driveway. Either Lang was witnessing a Mafia state funeral, a pimp's convention was in town, or somebody really important had arrived. His head hurt too much for him to care which.
Then he saw two guys in khaki, either militia or police. Sometimes in Europe it was hard to tell the difference. Even with the pain fogging his thought process, it hit him: Somehow the cops had found him. This time, the cavalry had come to Little Big Horn in time.
His relief didn't last long enough to enjoy. He was being taken away from his rescuers. One of his escorts pressed a rifle against Lang's throbbing head. The unspoken message was clear: if he made any sound that attracted attention, it would be his last. Despair replaced elation. The building in front of them was big enough to hide Lang easily. The cops would never find him.
"Lang! Here!" Lang recognized the voice calling to him from somewhere along the wall. Was he hallucinating?
If so, the guys on either side of him were, too. They both whirled to their right, rifles pointing away from Lang. He took what seemed to be the only chance he had and made a headlong lunge.
They spun back around, weapons coming to bear. Lang could see the dark hole of the muzzles; was expecting to see a flash, likely the last thing he would see on this earth.
Instead one, then both, of the men pitched forward as though struck with an invisible hammer. At the same time, the whipcrack of the rifle that had killed them bounced from wall to wall.
Stooping, he intended to grab both their weapons, but the same voice urged him on. "Run for it, Lang!"
Ahead, he could see a rope dangling tantalizingly over the wall. He would later come to believe that with proper encouragement a man can equal or break any track record in the books. He knew he did in reaching that rope. Winding hands around it, he used his feet against the wall to climb faster than Tarzan ever had. He didn't even notice the pain in his twisted shoulder.
Painfully aware that he made an inviting target, a dark body against the white wall, he expected the sound of shots any minute. Then he almost sighed his relief. There would be no gunfire. The Templars wouldn't dare shoot unless they wanted a war with the whole Portuguese police force.
There was growling below and something struck at his feet as he pulled himself up. He could only hope the dogs weren't particularly good jumpers. Someone was pulling on the rope, reeling it up, by the time Lang reached the top of the wall.
He wasn't surprised to see Gurt, her cheek pressed against the rifle stock in the standard sitting position for competition shooting. He had recognized not only her voice but also her marksmanship. He was, however, astonished to see Jacob beside her.
"You're too old for this," Lang blurted.
"I appreciate your bloody gratitude," the Israeli said, calmly dropping the rope down the other side of the wall, "but you can express it fully when we get down from here." He wrinkled his nose. "And are those your mates down there?"
Below them was a milling, barking, growling mass of fur and teeth.
Gurt held her sniper's rifle in one hand and reached for the rope with the other. "You two may here sit and all day talk. For me, I am getting gone."
She disappeared feet first as she rappelled down the outside of the wall. Lang followed, this time fully aware of the needles of pain jabbing into his shoulder. Supporting even part of his weight tensed his crotch muscles, sending jolts of burning agony from scrotum to stomach.
The three stood in a wooded area beside the wall as Jacob twitched the rope until the hook disengaged. Gurt disassembled her weapon and stowed the parts in an attaché case.
"Shouldn't we hurry?" Lang asked. "I mean, I don't want you guys to do anything that's uncool like running, but shouldn't we be getting the hell out of here?"
They looked at each other and Jacob shrugged. "Possibly, but I doubt it. I expect the lads from the police and Inspector Fitzwilliam will keep your former hosts quite busy for some time. I don't know Portuguese law, but I'll book someone's going to have to explain a lot of illegal arms."
As an American, Lang had forgotten how difficult it is to legally possess anything other than sporting firearms in Europe. "Who's Fitzwilliam?" he asked.
As they crossed a meadowlike area, Gurt and Jacob took turns explaining that and how they had followed Lang to the Languedoc and then to Sintra. Lang had never before been unaware of what country he was in. He found the experience disorienting.
Beyond the open area was another wall, this one without razor wire. They climbed it, coming down in front of the Templars' next-door neighbor's estate, about a quarter of a mile away.
By the time the trio reached the Fiat 1200 parked a street further up the hill, the pulsating of sirens seemed to come from all directions. Two police cars, lights flashing, wailed past.
1
Location unknown
Time unknown
When he regained consciousness, Lang had no idea how long he had been out or where he was.
Of course, they wouldn't have wanted him to know, not if they were planning extensive questioning. They were succeeding. All he knew was that he was lying in an unusually uncomfortable bed, staring up at what appeared to be an old-fashioned canopy. And that his shoulder still hurt like hell where his arm had been wrenched upwards on the hillside.
Lang's Agency training taught total disorientation as an effective interrogation tool. Keeping a captive ignorant of day or night, the date or the hour upsets the internal clock just like jet lag. Jet lag, though, goes away once the body accepts the new schedule. To question someone effectively, you make sure nothing is done at the same time twice. Likewise, not letting the subject know where he is may open up all sort of anxieties the questioner can put to use.
Also the lights. You keep the subject in a place without windows and at the same light level twenty-four hours a day. Intensely bright light if sleep deprivation is part of the plan; low light, too dim to see well, if not.
The talk about truth serum had been just that, talk. Outside of some old spy novels, drugs are usually little help. Sodium pentothal, scopolamine, narcotics like that, inhibit the brain's ability to fabricate, to make up lies, but they also are risky. Too little and you still get lies; too much and the subject is either sound asleep or dead. Whatever the drug makes them babble is going to be incomprehensible.
Plain old-fashioned torture was less than reliable, too. It worked for confessions for the same reason it doesn't work to get information: a man will tell any lie just to stop the pain. Lang very much hoped the Templars realized that.
Lang had been taught that modern interrogation consists of simply wearing your subject down, breaking his will. A less polite word for it is a species of brainwashing.
Lang slid out of bed to the floor, some three or four feet down, and walked the perimeter of the small room. The bowed exterior wall made him curious as to the outside appearance of the building. The single window was shuttered and, no doubt, barred on the outside. The only door was fitted with a intricately cast brass lock plate. When he bent over, closed an eye and squinted through the keyhole, he saw nothing. The key had been left in the outside of the lock.
The dim overhead light cast few shadows because, other than Lang and the bed, there was nothing in the room. No pictures on the walls, no window treatment, no rug, nothing. Had it not been for the hand-pegged hard wood floor and the ornate and undoubtedly expensive wall paper, he could have been in a jail cell.
Except… He looked for a door he might have missed, an entrance to a toilet. There was none. Bending over, he saw the porcelain jar under the bed. At least he wasn't going to be the guy that had to deal with emptying that. At this point any good news was welcomed.
On his second lap around the room, he counted the pegs in the floor. Keeping the mind occupied was the best defense against disorientation.
Sixty-two pegs later, a key scratched in the lock and Lang raced for the bed, lay down and pretended he was still out cold.
"Come now, Mr. Reilly," an all too familiar voice said. "The sedative we gave you has worn off some time ago. Playing possum, as I believe you Americans call it, will do you no good."
Lang opened his eyes and gawked in surprise. He could have gone back in time. Silver Hair stood in the doorway wearing a suit of chain mail over which was a white surcoat open at the sides with a red Maltese cross emblazoned on the front. Pointed shoes of steel covered his feet.
"Don't tell me," Lang said. "You're on your way to ask the wizard for a heart."
The Templar looked at Lang blankly. "I beg your pardon?" Then he scowled. "I gather you are referring to my attire," he said stiffly. "Templars dress traditionally when in the temple."
Temple? Had Lang been kidnapped by mad Shriners?
He wished.
Silver Hair stepped aside. Behind him was another man, this one in what looked like a monk's cassock. Bare ankles were visible above the flip-flops. He was holding a plate from which came the unmistakable aroma of food. Lang suddenly remembered he hadn't eaten since breakfast of whatever day it was that he had been taken prisoner.
Silver Hair said, "You are hungry, no doubt. The cellarer had something brought up from the refectory. It is humble fare, a local dish of salt cod, but you will find it nourishing."
The man in the monk's outfit set a wooden platter on the bed. It smelled even better. White meat swimming in vegetables.
"Go ahead, eat," Silver Hair entreated. Lang looked from him to the man who had served me. "Got a fork?"
Silver Hair shook his head. "The fork was not used until the sixteenth century. We use only the knife, as did our predecessors. We try to eschew the vanities of the modern world."
That explained the chamber pot. "Okay," Lang said, eyes on the wooden trencher with the wonderful fragrance, "we won't tell Miss Manners." The man in the brown habit set the food in front of Lang.
"Afraid you'll have to do the best you can without eating implements, Mr. Reilly," Silver Hair said. "I think you can understand our reluctance to furnish you a knife."
Lang was hungry enough not to care. He scooped up a piece of the fish in his fingers and plopped it into his mouth. He hadn't eaten many things that had tasted so good. He was nearly finished as Sliver Hair and his companion backed out of the room.
"Until later, then," he said as the door closed.
A second later the lock clicked.
Lang was draining the liquid from the platter when the room began to spin. The outlines of the corners got fuzzy and the planks in the floor lost definition. His head was suddenly too heavy to hold up. They had seasoned dinner with something besides herbs.
But why, Lang wondered as his world again grew dim. They could hardly interrogate him if he was asleep.
And he was too sleepy to care.
2
Location unknown
Time unknown
Only his still-full stomach told Lang he had not been unconscious more than a few hours. A bright light was shining in his eyes. Although awake, he was lethargic, and his head weighed a ton.
"Back with us, I see," said a voice from behind the light. "Time for you to answer a question or two." Lang struggled to get up to a sitting position. "I get to make one phone call before my final answer, right?" There was no response. Clearly Silver Hair had better things to do than watch American TV.
"I want to know two things, Mr. Reilly: How did you find our secret and to whom did you send that letter?" "Right," Lang said. "And as soon as I tell you, I walk out of here. Wherever 'here' is."
"Something can be arranged, I'm sure."
Something like a bullet in the back of the head.
But Lang said, "I've got a few questions of my own. Like, if you wanted to keep the secret of Blanchefort, why have a virtual map of it painted by that guy Poussin?"
"You test my patience, Mr. Reilly, but I will give you an answer as a demonstration of our good faith. We have always faced a choice: risk committing the secret to writing or risk it being lost if enough of our members succumb to any number of unpleasant possibilities. Centuries ago, plague; today mass destruction by heathen terrorists the
West does not have the fortitude to destroy first. It was not unreasonable, then, in Poussin's time, the first half of the seventeenth century, to want some sort of record as to where our… discovery might be found. Along with the oral parts of our initiation rites, a picture would serve to find the precise location."
Lang's interest made him forget how groggy he was. He sat up a little straighter. "How did you know Poussin wouldn't give away your secret?"
The light shifted enough for Lang to be able to make out Silver Hair's silhouette. He seemed to be sitting but there wasn't anything in the room to sit on besides the bed. Had they brought in a chair?
"Poussin was a Freemason."
"So?"
"Freemasonry is a tool of our order, its members at our bidding. We control it worldwide, always have. Most men of prominence up until nearly the present were Masons, your George Washington, most of your country's founding fathers, for example. Through it we knew nations' most intimate secrets. We don't intend to experience another 1307.
"More directly in answer to your question, Poussin did the painting because he was commanded to do so, a slight variation upon his work that now hangs in the Louvre. He never knew its significance. We had copies made, one for each of our chapters. Last year we moved the London house, sold a number of its goods rather than move them. The movers mistakenly bundled up the picture with the items we had sold.
"Now, I've given you your answer. I want to know where that letter went."
Lang yawned, not entirely an affectation, and moved his aching arm in a slow circle. "Like I said before, so you can kill somebody else? I don't think so."
There was an audible sigh. "Very well, Mr. Reilly. We will leave you for a while to meditate on your situation. When we return… well, I fear it will be most unpleasant. We no longer use the rack, the thumbscrew. But we can do amazing things with alligator clips and automobile batteries, simple electrical cooking appliances and human skin. I warn you, though, we have limited time."
So much for Lang's theory on the demise of torture as an interrogation tool.
There was the scrape of the unseen chair as Silver Hair got up. Lang was already relaxing, slumping back onto the bed, when hands reached out from the. dark, pinioning Lang's arms behind him. His wrists were quickly handcuffed to the bed as his pants were removed. His shoulder was on fire.
"Now look," Lang said. "Surely we…"
Somebody literally had him by the balls. The scrotum's skin was stretched and he felt cold metal. Before he could say anything else, his breath evaporated in a bolt of pain that seared from his testicles throughout his body. His blood was on fire and he could see nothing but a wall of red that was one with his agony.
Lang didn't hear his own scream. Burning, searing pain had replaced the other four senses, cramping, demobilizing, anguish.
It stopped as suddenly as it started. The clamps were removed and Lang's arms released. The fire in his crotch made him forget his shoulder.
"A few volts, a low charge," the voice from the darkness said. "We will leave you to consider the effects of a larger charge, perhaps applied to a metal rod inserted in the anus up to the prostate."
They left Lang with the thought. That and pain worse than any he'd ever gotten from a dirty shot in any sport he'd ever played. Gingerly, he moved onto his side. That was when he noticed the shock had made him wet himself.
3
Location unknown
Time unknown
Lang no longer needed to count floor pegs to occupy his mind. He had to find a way out of here before the guy jump-started his balls again.
Every move set a new fire in his crotch, underlining the urgency of escape. Gritting his teeth against the constant pain, Lang tried the window. The shutters were immobile, probably secured by a bolt outside too heavy to move even if he could reach it. Besides, unless he was on the first floor, jumping out of a window might not be such a hot idea.
Trying the same tactic as with the Templar in his condo in Atlanta was a possibility he quickly discarded. They would be alert to the chance he might try to spring on them when they entered the room, and if there were more than one of them, there would be no chance at all. Lang needed to think of something else. He began another slow circuit of the room.
If there had been a chair for Silver Hair, he had taken it with him. The door was hand-hewn wood, the marks of the chisel on it and the matching frame visible even in the dim light, as were the details of the brass lock plate. Lang knelt to inspect the lock, the posture squeezing testicles already ablaze. He groaned as he peeked into the keyhole again. There was no spring latch like a modern knob would have. Like most old doors, this one would have been kept shut by a simple latch on the inside, a device that empty screw holes indicated had been removed. The keyhole was still blocked but Lang thought he could see the thinnest glimmer of light between the door and jamb. He moved his head up and down. The space extended from top to bottom, blocked only where the lock's bolt fit into the bolt plate.
Careful to jar his crotch as little as possible, he sat on the floor. Removing a shoe, he used the dirt and grime on the sole of the Mephisto to make a nearly invisible mark on the frame just even with the bolt.
The he returned to the bed, this time looking at the bottom of it. Instead of springs, it had old time slats to support the stuffed cotton ticking. For once, Lang was happy to have been uncomfortable. Those slats…
It was tempting to stretch out for a few minutes, to give into the pain, but there was no time. Working the end of one slat loose from the bed's frame, he levered the other end up and down until he heard it crack. Slipping the whole board out of place, he picked a splinter from the damaged end and returned the slat to its place.
Lang had done what he could. Now he had to depend on the fickle favors of luck.
Although it felt like he was passing fire, he urinated a slim stream of blood into the chamber pot. Then he beat on the door.
They must have had a guard outside because the click of the lock was immediate.
The doorway was filled with a large man in a white cassock, complete with a hood and a rope belt, something Pietro might have worn seven hundred years before. The light was behind him, preventing Lang from seeing the features of his face although it was adequate to make a halo of his close-cropped blond hair. And to reflect from the automatic rifle slung over a shoulder.
"The pot needs emptying;" Lang said, indicating.
Even in the dim light, Lang could see the sneer, nostrils dilating in disgust as he smelled the dry urine on Lang's clothes. "When you fill it, you will empty it, heathen… if you live that long."
The accent was Slavic, Russian or something like it. The rifle was one of the AK-47's, Russian or Chinese-made, that the collapse of the Soviets had left all over Eastern Europe. The thirty-seven-round banana clip hung in front of the trigger guard.
The man's distaste was apparent even in his back as he spun and strode from the room.
The door slammed and Lang dropped to his knees. The key was rattling as he picked up the splinter from beside the door and slipped it between door and jamb. He could feel the heavy bolt hit it and prayed the slender bit of wood would hold.
It did.
Lang leaned against the oak, making sure the door had no give should the man outside test it. Careful the unbolted door did not move, he turned his back against it and slid into a sitting position, hand over his shoulder to hold the splinter in place.
How long to wait? At some point Silver Hair was coming back with the man from Autolite. He glanced at his bare wrist before remembering they had taken his watch. He began slow counts to sixty, trying to keep score of the passing minutes.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Carefully, he pushed the door slightly ajar, trying to remember if the hinges squeaked. The first thing visible in the tiny crack between door and frame was a pair of feet propped in a chair. The guard was taking it easy, maybe too easy if the deep, even breathing was any indication.
Encouraged, Lang pushed the door a little wider. He wasn't as lucky as he had hoped. His keeper was tilted back in a chair, his legs stretching to a second chair, engrossed in a magazine. The rifle was across his lap. Beyond him, a dimly lit hall stretched for maybe twenty feet, intersecting what Lang guessed was yet another hallway like a large hotel. The only thing missing were numbers on the line of doors.
Lang eased the door shut. He needed to move but couldn't chance the door swinging open. Untying a shoe, he jammed the rubber sole between floor and door. Careful to keep the splinter in place, he returned to the bed. The sheets were old linen, bordered with fine lace. Regretting the necessity of destroying something so beautiful, he ripped a couple of long strips loose before returning to the door. He wadded one strip and made a loop of the other.
The guard was still intent on his magazine. Lang opened the door a little wider. If the guard looked up, Lang was finished. With as little motion as possible, Lang lobbed a Mephisto over his keeper's head. It landed with a gratifying thunk.
The magazine fell to the floor as the guard snatched up the AK-47 and sprang to his feet.
There was only a split second before the Templar realized the source of his distraction and turned around. In a single motion, Lang shoved the door wide and lunged. His sudden weight on the other man's back knocked him down, the rifle clattering against the plank flooring. With one hand, Lang dropped the looped strip of linen over the guard's head, past his chin, and twisted it tight, stifling the yell that was beginning in his throat.
Lang's other hand stuffed the wadded cloth into the man's open mouth, giving the embroidered garotte another turn. The keeper was clawing at his throat, trying to loosen the crushing pressure on his air supply, when Lang brought up a knee to put between the man's shoulder blades and pushed down as hard as possible. The human upper esophagus is a muscular tube, hard to close completely, but the keeper's weakening efforts told Lang he was succeeding. The Templar was limp when there was the sound of approaching footsteps.
4
Sintra, Portugal
2340 hours
From across the winding, tree-shaded street, they had been watching the top two floors of old limestone that could be seen over the wall. The building's windows were tightly shuttered as though the occupants wanted none of the gentle breeze from the ocean ten or so miles distant. The structure could have been described as a castle or palace simply based on its size and the generous acreage upon which it sat. In fact, it was not much grander than its neighbors, all of which were large enough to be regal residences instead of summer homes. Indeed, three dwellings of royal origin had been built on the hillside of this small town.
In the early 1800s, Lord Byron had fallen in love with the area as had a significant segment of Europe's nobility and wealthy. In the last century, increasingly dreary socialist governments and the taxation necessary to implement the illusion of social equality had forced the sale of many of these exquisite vacation homes to the world's new elite: multinational corporations, usually those headquartered in tax havens with corporate anonymity.
Only two people were in sight tonight, ambling with careful indifference along the sidewalk as they gawked at the opulence of what was illuminated behind protective walls. They had stopped in front of one.
"Not a lot of traffic," the sniper observed. "Haven't seen the first tourist today, either." "You won't," the other person said, studying that part of the facade visible above the razor wire-topped wall. "What few there are come in by bus, eat lunch at one of those restaurants we saw in the town square this afternoon, and leave. After touring the palaces, there's not a lot for 'em to do. The hotels are priced out of the average budget and you have to have recommendations from some pretty obscure people just to get a room."
The marksman frowned. "I'd never even heard of the place until you tracked Pegasus here. How did you do that?"
By unspoken agreement, they both turned as though to resume their stroll as a large Mercedes slowed for one of the road's many turns and effortlessly accelerated up the hill.
"You did. You got someone to hack into the Froggies' air traffic control computer. Only one flight from Toulouse-Blagnac by private aircraft yesterday, the one to Lisbon."
"But this isn't Lisbon."
"No, but it's less than twenty kilometers away. This town, Sintra, has always been a place for those who would just as soon not be officially noticed. I called a Portuguese solicitor I know, had him check the tax records and, presto! Up come the chaps at Pegasus."
The Mercedes disappeared behind yet another wall as it followed the curves of the narrow street. The pair resumed their interest in the building.
"So," the marksman said, "you think he's in there, that round tower sort of thing."
It was not a question.
"Why else bring him here?"
The two hesitated a few moments before continuing the slow pace of sightseers.
"High voltage as well as the concertina wire on top of the wall," the marksman said. "And I will wager you there are motion detectors in the yard. Probably also dogs."
The other verbalized the obvious. "The two of us aren't going to get him out with a frontal assault. We're going to have to watch the place and wait for a chance."
"And if there isn't one?"
He shrugged as he dug in his pockets. "We can only do our best and hope."
The marksman frowned, unhappy with the obvious truth of the answer. "They could kill him before we…"
The sniper's companion turned back in the direction from which they had come. "For all we know, they might have already. But I doubt they would bring him all the way here just to kill him. I would imagine they'll be wanting to know how he discovered their secret first. He'll know his life will last only as long as he can keep that information. He's tough; they won't have gotten it yet."
Both moved deeper into the shadows cast by the limb of a huge oak overhanging the wall· opposite the gate of the building that held their interest.
"If he does get out," one said, "it's bloody unlikely he's going to just walk through that big iron gate. Maybe we'd better gather our things from the car and make such preparations as we can now."
"Better yet, call for reinforcements," said the other.
5
London
0123 hours the next morning
Inspector Fitzwilliam hated late night calls even more than those that interrupted his evening routine. Although he would never admit it, he was annoyed by the fact that the phone's ring had no effect on Shandon, his wife. After thirty-two years of marriage, the intrusion rarely even provoked her into rolling over.
This particular call made the detective forget his pique.
When the caller gave a name, he sat upright as though on a spring.
"Who?"
The name was repeated. He had heard correctly the first time.
"Where?" he asked, frowning as he heard the answer. "Hold on." He reached into a bedside table for the pen and pad he always kept there. "Repeat those directions, please."
The caller did so and the phone went dead.
6
Sintra
0527 hours
Lang sprang for the rifle and snatched it up from the floor. Slinging it over his shoulder, he dragged the guard's body into the room and shut the door. The close smell of death and the thought that he had killed again made him gag. If there had been time, he would have felt a cold fury for these men who had not only murdered but had made him a killer, too.
The corpse felt heavy beyond its apparent weight as he dragged it to the far side of the bed. Trying to breathe only through his mouth, he stooped and tugged loose the rope at the guard's waist and pulled the robe over the still head.
Even through the thickness of the door, Lang could hear voices tinged with surprise at finding the sentry gone. He tried to move faster.
Dipping into resources of strength he didn't know he had, Lang managed to dump the limp body onto the bed and throw a sheet over it. The door was opening as he lifted the robe over his own head and let it settle over him like a large white bird coming to roost. There was only time to pull up the hood and hide the rifle under his habit before Silver Hair and another man were in the room.
Silver Hair asked something in a language Lang couldn't understand, again Slavic-sounding. Guessing at his meaning, Lang pointed to the body under the sheet and mumbled. The Templar asked again, this time with an edge to his tone. Again Lang nodded, moving around the bed toward the door.
As soon as he was between the two men and the exit, Lang whirled and lunged into the hall, slamming the door behind him. As he had hoped, the key was still in the lock. He felt, rather than heard, two bodies slam into the heavy wood on the other side as the lock's bolt clicked into place. Lang took deliberate care in putting the key in the robe's pocket.
In the hall was a small cart, the sort of thing an auto mechanic might use to carry around a car battery. That was what was on it: the battery with wires and alligator clips. The sight brought Lang's mind back to the pain he still felt and he fought the urge to go back into the room and fry someone else's balls.
Instead, he made sure the hall was empty before taking the rifle out from under the robe and checking the clip.
Full with all thirty-six rounds. Too bad the guard. hadn't had an extra magazine. Ammunition, Lang mused, was like cash on a vacation: no matter how much you brought, it was never enough.
He risked taking off the cassock long enough to sling the AK-47 muzzle down under his right arm so that, if need be, he could bring it up, firing through the cloth. He wasn't going to get any points for marksmanship that way, but the Russian-designed weapon was intended more for rapid fire at relatively close range than for competition shooting.
Keeping close to the wall, Lang sauntered down the hall as though he knew where he was going. At the intersection, both directions looked the same: dimly lit, with curving.walls and regularly spaced doors that, absent the outside latch, were identical to the one he had just locked.
Right or left?
Lang chose left so the rifle was on the outside. If he had to use it, he preferred not to have to fire across his body. Shortly, he came to an arch framing a staircase beneath an arched window, the glass black with night. The steps only went down. Lang was on the top floor.
The stairs were marble. Like the tower of Blanchefort, there was a depression worn in the middle where centuries of feet had passed that way. Also like the old castle, the risers were short, made for short legs. The steps radiated from a center column in a spiral tight enough to make him slow his descent to ease a faint sense of vertigo.
There were landings on each of the two floors he passed, each similar to the others, each with a window. He saw the color of night and an occasional streak of light shimmering through the waves of the hand-blown glass.
A sound floated up the tight circular stairway, so faint Lang was surprised that he had been unconsciously listening for some time. The further down he went, the more distinct it became until he recognized it as a Gregorian chant, Latin sung without tune, but still pleasingly melodic.
Still too distant to make out the words, Lang came to yet another landing. The stairs continued down, but through the window he could see trees, their branches limned against a streetlight. He thought he could make out a wall, too. He stopped. This place-this weird, round building probably had at least one basement, no doubt complete with dungeons. If Lang was seeing what he thought he saw outside the window, this must be the ground floor.
He stepped into another circular hallway, this one with a ceiling vaulted twenty feet. The cold gray of stone walls was abated by tapestries, their figures life size and mostly gory. In silent agony, martyrs bristled with arrows, sizzled over fires and were devoured by lions. Between the gruesome pictures, suits of chain mail held swords, empty helmet slits squinting into the dim light.
The main floor. Like the men in the lifeboat in the lawyer joke, he knew where he was but not where that was.
Steps echoed from the stone floor. Lang grasped the rifle under the robe with one hand and tugged the hood down further over his face with the other. There was no need. Like a ghost in his white habit, a figure floated past on the other side of the hallway. His hands clutched rosary beads and he was mumbling what Lang supposed was a prayer.
Once the Templar was out of sight, Lang felt like saying one of his own.
The chanting grew louder until Lang was at its source. To the right, a huge circular room was filled with men in white robes or chain mail armor. In the center of the circle, another man in robes stood before a carved marble altar faced by the standing congregation.
Just as Pietro had described the chapel at Blanchefort.
Past the chapel was what Lang guessed was the door to the outside. To call it massive hardly did it justice. Reaching almost to the ceiling, two single panels were held closed by an iron bar as thick as Lang's thighs. The hinges, shiny brass, were three or four feet in height.
Lang considered making a dash for it but quickly discarded the idea. Two men, one on each side of the door, stood guard, their AK-47's anachronisms against the white surcoats with the red crosses.
They did not appear to be purely decorative.
Both watched with little interest as Lang approached.
Their reply to his motioning for them to open the door was a question in the same Slavic tongue he had heard before. Lang gave an exaggerated shrug to say that he didn't understand. With the international character of Pegasus, surely not everyone spoke the same language, at least not this language.
The man on the left pantomimed reading something and held out his hand, a clear signal that he expected a document or writing of some sort. Apparently the good brothers had to get a hall pass to leave.
The man on the right was staring at Lang's feet. The Mephistos. After throwing the one, Lang had put the pair back on. Everyone here wore the armored solleret or Jesus shoes.
The Templar guard was quick to unsling his rifle but not nearly as quick as Lang in raising the one under the robe. The sound of the shot inside stone walls was deafening. A neat red hole was centered on the cross on the Templar's robe, blood smudging the sterile white.
The remaining guard was as eager as his brothers to die for the cause, scrambling to bring his weapon to bear. Lang again squeezed off a single shot from the hip, aware that he had been forced to kill yet again.
Even before the sound waves reverberating from the domed ceiling stopped echoing in Lang's ears, the chanting stopped. He let the rifle's sling slip from his shoulder to use both hands on the huge latch on the door. He pushed from his mind the possibility this led into another part of the building or a closed courtyard.
Worse than up that well-known creek.
The latch weighed nearly a hundred pounds and Lang had to lift it a good three feet or so to clear the hasp. The exertion sent daggers across the shoulder that had been twisted as well as a lightning bolt to his scrotum that burned away any remorse he might have felt at leaving two more dead Templars. In fact, the pain was so great that he had an instant fantasy of sticking around to kill every one of them.
A sound behind told him he might have that opportunity. He turned to face the entire congregation from the chapel. Gritting teeth against the pain so hard that he could hear molars grinding, he gave the latch a final shove, pushing the door with his foot. The great hinges moved with what seemed glacial speed and there was a three-or four-foot gap between the doors. Through it Lang could see the gray of dawn and feel a slight breeze.
He was almost outside.
A quick glance over his shoulder saw a distinctly unhappy crowd moving toward him. Although unarmed, the intent was clearly hostile. Stooping, Lang retrieved one of the AK-47's from the floor and thumbed it onto automatic. As he slid between the giant doors, he sent a burst into the ceiling. The noise and the shower of plaster had the desired effect of making everyone duck.
Then Lang was running down steps and onto what looked like a driveway.
He had no idea where he was, so he followed the pavement. Semitropical plants, palm trees, Spanish bayonet, succulent cactus and, beyond, a high wall filled his vision.
He hadn't thought about the wall, particularly one far too high to jump and topped with razor wire. A closer look revealed electrical wiring, too. Whether these people meant to keep people in or out, they were serious about it.
If there was a driveway, there had to be an exit. Keeping in the dark, Lang paralleled the pavement until he came to the gate. Iron and every bit as tall as the doors he had just come through, it was the only way out of the compound he could see and it was guarded by two men who weren't dressed in costume. But they did carry automatic weapons and one of them held a cell phone to his ear. Lang was willing to bet he wasn't calling out for a pizza.
Squatting behind a bush, Lang surveyed the situation. The warm breeze was heavy with moisture, the smell of salt air and jasmine. Somewhere near the ocean, but what ocean?
The guard with the cell phone snapped it shut and put it in a pocket, speaking to his comrade. They took their rifles in both hands and began to scan the grounds. Lang considered two quick shots. At this distance, a miss was unlikely. No good. The sound would draw everyone and Lang wasn't sure he could get those gates to open. Steel arms on each side indicated there was some sort of mechanism that controlled the movement. If a combination was required or he couldn't find the switch, Lang would be no better off than he was now.
Make that worse off. He could hear the barking of dogs approaching. Not a lot of time. In the east, the day was brightening. It would be fully light soon.
7
Lisbon, Portela Airport
0624 hours
The twin DeHavilland turned off the runway of Lisbon's Portela Airport to taxi towards a small ramp where a number of vehicles waited. Within minutes, a parade of black Lancias was streaming along the Avenida Marechal through a city not yet quite awake.
From a tinted window, Inspector Fitzwilliam watched the night reluctantly depart Lisbon. The guidebook he had scanned on the plane told him that somewhere out there in the dark was the old city. Briefly, he let himself fantasize: he and Shandon on holiday, seated at a small restaurant with a view of the Tagus, Lisbon's magnificent harbor, castles brooding on the surrounding hills. Magnificent from the pictures.
Unfortunately, romantic trips were hardly the purpose at hand. He watched as the cavalcade flashed through Campo Grande, white-belted policia holding back the light traffic of delivery trucks from the country and homeward-bound late-night celebrants. Moments later, he was on the divided IC19. A cloverleaf and the suburb of Queluz whizzed by. Even the pink glow of dawn could not improve the monotony of white flats stacked boxlike on barren slopes.
Damnably accommodating of these chaps, the inspector thought. The Froggies would have died rather than invite him along to observe the arrest. The Dons and Krauts would have smothered him with an endless stream of paperwork. Too bad all the sodding EU didn't cooperate as easily as Portugal. And to sweeten the matter, no one needed to suffer the bother of getting a warrant, according to Carlas, his contact here. Just knock on the door and search for Mr. Langford Bloody Reilly all you bloody like.
He settled back in the seat. This was going to be a pleasure. Maybe Carlas could even get the extradition papers in order while he shopped for a gift for Shandon, bring Reilly back the same day.
Now that was day dreaming, he told himself.
If only this affair hadn't leaked to the local constabulary in time for them to warn whoever it was that had Reilly. The Sintra police, he understood, viewed their duty as protecting the local gentry. Even against, or particularly against, the national authorities.
8
Sintra
0647 hours
"You sure that you can cut that without getting electrocuted?"
The sniper held up a piece of uninsulated wire for an answer, quickly clipping it to a small black box that resembled a pocket tape recorder. "And with this, never will they detect the circuit has been interrupted. At least, not for two hours."
The pair had cut a gap in the wire and were sitting astride a section of the wall hidden from the main building by a clump of trees. The missing steel ringlets had been tossed onto the ground on the outside of the wall as soon as they had been clipped. Below the pair was a small gate almost obscured by flowering vines. Beside them was the grappling hook they had used to secure a rope to the top of the wall, a sound the guards had not heard because they had been investigating another noise, one made by pebbles tossed onto the pavement of the driveway.
"What if he doesn't get out of the house in two hours?" the other wanted to know. "We just calmly walk up to the door and ask to see him?"
The sniper was about to answer but instead held up a hand and pointed to the two guards at the gate, their features rapidly becoming visible in the increasing light. The slump of people bored by the inherent tedium of such duty was gone from the way they stood, peering into the shadows shrinking from the morning. It was obvious they had become suddenly alert, one holding a phone to his head. If either person on the wall doubted something was happening, that doubt evaporated with the sound of dogs barking.
9
Sintra
0648 hours
Lang didn't have many choices. With any luck at all, he thought, he should have two or three minutes before the dogs picked up the scent and either led his pursuers right to him or, more likely, attacked. Any reservations he had had about shooting the two guys at the gate were more than outweighed by the thought of becoming Kibbles and Bits. He'd have to get both men with one burst before either could return fire, though. Flipping the switch back to automatic, he took a deep breath and centered the AK's front sight on the chest of the nearest man, exhaled and squeezed.
Nothing.
When his fingers touched the cocking mechanism, a chill of dread went all the way to his feet. The action was open, ready for a full dip. He had picked up the weapon of one of the men inside and hadn't had time to check the magazine. The rifle was empty, useless.
Well, maybe not entirely useless. Maybe he could at least use the butt as a club. Flitting from shadow to dark spot, he made a quick but indirect run for the gate. Behind, it sounded as if the hounds of hell were on his trail. More likely the Dobermans of doom.
Lang was crouching, ready to make a final sprint across fifty feet or so of open space, when he heard something to his rear besides the dogs. As he spun around, he saw a dark object, felt a sharp blow to his head and everything went dark.
10
Sintra
0649 hours
Six cars squealed to a stop outside a ten-foot iron gate.
Before Inspector Fitzwilliam could climb out of the backseat, two men were pounding the butts of what looked like Yank-made M16 rifles against the steel. He saw Carlas speak into a grille beside the gate, and the iron slowly began to swing open.
11
Sintra
0700 hours
Though stunned by the blow, Lang could feel the throbbing pain. as though the back of his head might have a meat cleaver in it. He was being dragged to his feet by two men carrying rifles.
Excited voices were shouting. He was being hauled towards the back of what looked like a medieval castle. The sound of engines made him twist in his captors' grasp. Five or six long black cars were gliding up the driveway. Either Lang was witnessing a Mafia state funeral, a pimp's convention was in town, or somebody really important had arrived. His head hurt too much for him to care which.
Then he saw two guys in khaki, either militia or police. Sometimes in Europe it was hard to tell the difference. Even with the pain fogging his thought process, it hit him: Somehow the cops had found him. This time, the cavalry had come to Little Big Horn in time.
His relief didn't last long enough to enjoy. He was being taken away from his rescuers. One of his escorts pressed a rifle against Lang's throbbing head. The unspoken message was clear: if he made any sound that attracted attention, it would be his last. Despair replaced elation. The building in front of them was big enough to hide Lang easily. The cops would never find him.
"Lang! Here!" Lang recognized the voice calling to him from somewhere along the wall. Was he hallucinating?
If so, the guys on either side of him were, too. They both whirled to their right, rifles pointing away from Lang. He took what seemed to be the only chance he had and made a headlong lunge.
They spun back around, weapons coming to bear. Lang could see the dark hole of the muzzles; was expecting to see a flash, likely the last thing he would see on this earth.
Instead one, then both, of the men pitched forward as though struck with an invisible hammer. At the same time, the whipcrack of the rifle that had killed them bounced from wall to wall.
Stooping, he intended to grab both their weapons, but the same voice urged him on. "Run for it, Lang!"
Ahead, he could see a rope dangling tantalizingly over the wall. He would later come to believe that with proper encouragement a man can equal or break any track record in the books. He knew he did in reaching that rope. Winding hands around it, he used his feet against the wall to climb faster than Tarzan ever had. He didn't even notice the pain in his twisted shoulder.
Painfully aware that he made an inviting target, a dark body against the white wall, he expected the sound of shots any minute. Then he almost sighed his relief. There would be no gunfire. The Templars wouldn't dare shoot unless they wanted a war with the whole Portuguese police force.
There was growling below and something struck at his feet as he pulled himself up. He could only hope the dogs weren't particularly good jumpers. Someone was pulling on the rope, reeling it up, by the time Lang reached the top of the wall.
He wasn't surprised to see Gurt, her cheek pressed against the rifle stock in the standard sitting position for competition shooting. He had recognized not only her voice but also her marksmanship. He was, however, astonished to see Jacob beside her.
"You're too old for this," Lang blurted.
"I appreciate your bloody gratitude," the Israeli said, calmly dropping the rope down the other side of the wall, "but you can express it fully when we get down from here." He wrinkled his nose. "And are those your mates down there?"
Below them was a milling, barking, growling mass of fur and teeth.
Gurt held her sniper's rifle in one hand and reached for the rope with the other. "You two may here sit and all day talk. For me, I am getting gone."
She disappeared feet first as she rappelled down the outside of the wall. Lang followed, this time fully aware of the needles of pain jabbing into his shoulder. Supporting even part of his weight tensed his crotch muscles, sending jolts of burning agony from scrotum to stomach.
The three stood in a wooded area beside the wall as Jacob twitched the rope until the hook disengaged. Gurt disassembled her weapon and stowed the parts in an attaché case.
"Shouldn't we hurry?" Lang asked. "I mean, I don't want you guys to do anything that's uncool like running, but shouldn't we be getting the hell out of here?"
They looked at each other and Jacob shrugged. "Possibly, but I doubt it. I expect the lads from the police and Inspector Fitzwilliam will keep your former hosts quite busy for some time. I don't know Portuguese law, but I'll book someone's going to have to explain a lot of illegal arms."
As an American, Lang had forgotten how difficult it is to legally possess anything other than sporting firearms in Europe. "Who's Fitzwilliam?" he asked.
As they crossed a meadowlike area, Gurt and Jacob took turns explaining that and how they had followed Lang to the Languedoc and then to Sintra. Lang had never before been unaware of what country he was in. He found the experience disorienting.
Beyond the open area was another wall, this one without razor wire. They climbed it, coming down in front of the Templars' next-door neighbor's estate, about a quarter of a mile away.
By the time the trio reached the Fiat 1200 parked a street further up the hill, the pulsating of sirens seemed to come from all directions. Two police cars, lights flashing, wailed past.
CHAPTER TWO
1
Rome
Four days later
They took turns driving, stopping only for gas and snacks, until they were back in Rome. There Gurt had access to a safe house, a small apartment on the top floor of a building on the Via Campania. From the window of the tiny living room, they could look across the ancient city wall to the green of the Villa Borghese, Rome's largest public park.
Jacob took the foldout and Gurt and Lang shared the single bedroom. Happily, the shock torture had no permanent effects.
The moment Lang woke up on the third day, he knew it had to be Sunday. Not only were the busy streets quiet, but he could also hear children's excited screams and laughter along the park's walkways and bike paths.
The three managed to keep out of each others' way long enough to prepare a hearty breakfast in the cramped, galley-style kitchen. Either out of consideration for two stomachs not quite at ease with the smell of fish first thing in the morning or merely because he couldn't find smoked herring in Rome, Jacob had foregone the kippers and had fried sausages instead. The spicy salsiccia were a welcome substitute for bangers.
Lang was enjoying his second cup of espresso when Jacob fired up his pipe and Gurt lit a Marlboro.
"Jesus, guys," Lang said, futilely waving the smoke away, "there wasn't much point in rescuing me only to give me lung cancer."
Jacob replied, "Demonstrates we can't stay here forever. Exactly what did you have in mind for your future?"
Lang forgot the smoke. "I'm going to expose the bastards, reveal their secret to the world," he said, cold fury in his voice. "Once their secret's out, there'll be no more extortion money. That will be the end of them."
Jacob made a sucking noise through his pipe, noted it had gone out and prodded the bowl with a matchstick. "And spend the rest of your unnaturally shortened life looking over your shoulder? Once the secret's out, that letter doesn't protect you any longer."
"Those sons of bitches killed my sister and my nephew. They follow that act by framing me for two murders I didn't commit," Lang snapped waspishly. "What do you suggest, kiss and make up?"
Gurt had a question but Jacob spoke first, talking between puffs as he applied a new match. "I'd suggest you think of some form of revenge other than exposure. If not for yourself, for a few hundred million Christians. I mean, I'm a Jew, never was too keen on the Church, but Christianity's a stabilizing force in the world. You destroy it and…"
Gurt had been following the conversation so closely that she had let her cigarette's ash grow. It fell unnoticed onto the worn rug.
"Destroy Christianity? What…?"
Jacob pointed the stem of his pipe in accusation. "That's what Lang's talking about. Tell her."
"Yeah, tell me."
Lang sighed. "Jacob read the Templar diary, he made the same guesses I did and we were both right "The Templar who wrote that diary was familiar with the Gnostic heresy, a…"
"The who?" Gurt asked. Her cigarette had burned to the filter and she flinched as she touched the hot ash with her fingers before she stubbed the smoldering butt out in a cracked ashtray.
"The Gnostics were an early sect of Christians. They believed Christ was mortal, by God, not of God. Therefore, His spirit, not His body, ascended into heaven after He was crucified.
"In 325, about the time the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, various bishops of the church met at Nicea to decide some troubling issues. First, they had to choose among a number of accounts of Christ's life. They selected four: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Possibly one of the reasons these were preferred over others is that all four have Christ being resurrected, body and all. Hence, His immortality and triumph over death, the basic· Christian message as well as fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecy. Subsequently, the Gnostics and any others who didn't share the official view were hunted down and liquidated as heretics.
"The Templars discovered the Gnostics were right: Jesus's body had not ascended into heaven or anywhere else. Instead, His brother and wife fled Palestine, taking the body with them."
"That was what was in the 'vessel' Pietro read about in the Gnostic writings," Jacob interjected.
"In one form or another," Lang said. "Jewish funerary custom of the time required the body be allowed to decompose for at least a year. The bones were then put in an ossuary, a small stone box, and permanently entombed. Whether Jesus's body was brought to the Languedoc and his bones then moved or was hidden until only the bones were left, we'll never know."
"Why not leave the body where it was, where it was placed after the crucifixion?" Gurt wanted to know.
Lang shrugged. "I can't say for sure, but I can make a number of guesses. One would be that the Jewish messianic prophesies all called for resurrection of the body. Leaving the corpse would deny messiah status to Christ and stature to his disciples. Second, that would also occur to His followers, who might well take the body themselves if His family didn't. Third, Christ was executed as a common criminal. Tombs were for the wealthy. It would be just a matter of time before the body was dumped or placed in a lesser grave."
"So, the body, or just the bones, is moved to southwest France?" Gurt had another Marlboro in her hand.
Lang nodded. "And the Templars discovered exactly where. You can imagine the havoc the appearance of Christ's remains would have caused the church. The Templars had a good idea. They began to blackmail the Church, the pope."
Gurt lit up, puffed and looked up at Lang. "If you're talking about the Middle Ages, the pope would have been powerful enough to simply go destroy the body, move it where it couldn't be found or eliminate the Templars."
Lang thought a moment. "Again, I'm only guessing, but I don't think the pope was that powerful. He had to hire mercenaries every time he had to go to war. The Templars had what amounted to a standing army and had fortified the area around the tomb with the castle, Blanchefort. Any attempt to take the body would have chanced the Templars making their secret public. Plus, I'd speculate no pope wanted to be involved in desecrating the tomb of Christ, even though they weren't willing to admit it existed."
Both Jacob and Gurt were silent for a moment, no doubt trying to poke holes in Lang's theory.
Jacob asked, "Assuming you're right on, why didn't the Templars just move the ossuary, take it someplace they could keep securer
Lang had wondered about this before and thought he had the answer. "To find the tomb, they had to have a clue. They had some sort of documentation that placed Christ's tomb right where it is. If they moved it, the ossuary lost its authenticity."
"You mean, like a picture, a painting no one knew existed, that turns up in somebody's attic without a provenance but with what looks like Rembrandt's signature on it," Jacob said, ruefully regarding a cold pipe again. "You can test the pigment, the canvas, but there'll always be a smidgen of doubt."
"A doubt the Templars couldn't afford," Lang said. Gurt filled her coffee cup before raising an eyebrow at Jacob. "No thanks," he said. "That stuff would melt the spoon, you tried to stir it."
"It's espresso," she said. "It's supposed to be strong."
Jacob pushed his cup a few inches away. "It may be authentic Italian espresso, but my nerves can't take any more caffeine." He looked at Lang. "Which still leaves the question of what you plan to do."
He was right, of course. Exposing the Templars' secret would give Lang great personal satisfaction but it would devastate a large part of the world's population. He thought of Francis, how the revelation would destroy his faith, his reason for life, just as it had Pietro's. He remembered the peace religion had given Janet. Who was he to singlehandedly undo two thousand years of good works? Well, mostly good works, anyway, overlooking the Crusades, the Inquisition and a few other unfortunate excesses.
He made a decision. "Gurt, I would be surprised if Pegasus isn't looking for me. I don't think it's to our advantage for them to know where we are, sure not to yours and Jacob's if they connect you with getting me out of Sintra. Are the stores here open on Sunday?"
.She regarded him with curiosity. "Most are." "Could you get me a computer? A laptop, any make as long as it has a modem." She frowned. "I suppose this will go on my credit card just like your airplane tickets.". She wasn't angry about it, just unwilling to let him forget.
"Okay, okay," he said. "You know I'll pay you back."
"How?"
He didn't get her meaning. "How?"
"I would very much like to see Atlanta, visit Tara and the places in that wonderful book."
Lang was stumped for a second. Then, "You mean Atlanta, Gone With the Wind'? I didn't know people read it anymore, seeing as it's become politically incorrect. Anyway, those places don't exist."
"I never have been to Atlanta or the American South."
"This time of year, it's hot and the city has the second worst air quality in the country."
"I do not intend to live outside in a tent. I am sure there is air-conditioning available."
"And the third worst traffic."
"I do not intend to drive."
"Sounds lovely," Jacob grinned.
"I still want to see it: Gurt said."! think you do not want me to visit."
Truth was, he didn't. Visiting would have been fine but the idea of sharing his small condo with a woman for longer than one night was disquieting. He had visions of beauty potions on the bathroom sink, lacy undies in dresser drawers and pantyhose draped over the shower curtain. He had experienced difficulty a couple of times with women who came to visit and were less than eager to leave. On the other hand, he owed his life to Gurt: she had helped him and was about to again. He was not an ungracious person. Particularly when the promise to be performed was in the indefinite future and a stunningly attractive woman was involved.
"Done," Lang said. "Now what about that computer?"
"I can bring one from the Agency," she volunteered.
"No, I want a new one, a machine that's never had any e-mail address other than mine." He turned to Jacob. "And ru need Pegasus's e-mail address. They are a corporation registered in the Channel Islands, so they would have an address, maybe a Web site for their legitimate businesses."
2
Rome
Two hours later
Pegasusltd@gb.com was the address, found easily enough by Jacob. The sales staff at the electronic store had been very helpful in programming the new computer, including Lang's own e-mail address and password so he could use his existing. Internet service.
At the kitchen table, Gurt and Jacob peered over his shoulder as he slowly typed in the message all three had agreed upon:
Wish to meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. Reply before matters made public.
Reilly
Short if not sweet.
An hour passed. Unable to concentrate, Lang reread the same page of Friday's International Herald Tribune a dozen or so times. Jacob dozed in front of the window while Gurt listened to a German-language broadcast of what she said was a soccer match. For all Lang knew, it could have been The Best of Adolph sSpeeches. The reaction by the audience would have been the same.
The Herald Tribune is the only place "Calvin and Hobbes" still exists. For once, Lang didn't find the strip amusing. He was too busy trying to think how an e-mail could be traced to a specific phone line.
An hour had just passed when the computer made a sound like a gong and words appeared on the screen. The picture of an unopened envelope made understanding Italian for "you've got mail" unnecessary.
Name time, place, conditions.
That was all it said-brief, succinct. Obviously Pegasus hadn't referred the question to the legal department. Lang had previously asked Gurt and Jacob for their input in anticipation of just this question.
Church of San Clemente, Viadi San Giovanni in Laterano. Rome. Triclinium of Mithras. 1530 hrs. Tues next.
One person only.
Gurt had thought of the forty-eight-hour period. In that time, Lang could reach Rome from anywhere, therefore he could be anywhere when the e-mail was sent. The place was Jacob's idea. San Clemente was typical of Rome in that the site contained several periods of history. At street level, or actually slightly below, the simple eighteenth century facade at the bottom of the Esquiline Hill indicated a church that had been in use since the twelfth century. Beneath the carved altar and mosaics of the drowning of Saint Clement were the ruins of a fourth century Christian place of worship. Deeper yet were the ruins of a Temple of Mithras, a first-century male fertility cult that drifted into Rome from Persia to become popular among Rome's military.
Lang recalled that the site had been maintained and continually excavated since the seventeenth century by an order of Irish Dominican monks. So far as he knew, they haven't found any whisky yet.
The advantages of the site for a potentially hostile meeting were several. First, few if any tourists knew about the place. Second, the Mithran temple consisted of passages wide enough for only one person at a time. Finally, the church was at or near the bottom of a steep hill where Jacob could keep watch in secret, calling Lang on a cell phone if a trap appeared imminent. Also, Gurt and her rifle could easily cover the only entrance.
3
Rome, Laterano
1530 hours the next Tuesday
Churches in Rome close at half past noon on weekdays, reopening three and a half hours later. Jacob and Gurt had been in a second-story storage area of a shoe store across the Via di San Giovanni since ten 0'clock. In the normal Italian manner of doing business, the shopkeeper had accepted a handful of bills without a single question in exchange for use of the premises. After all, it was money the hated tax man would never know about and, therefore, would not take.
With punctuality uncharacteristic of Rome, a brown-robed monk opened the doors at precisely three-thirty. The sharp edges of a hammerless.38 stuck in Lang's belt under a jacket dug into his backside as he followed the brother inside and past the ornately carved choir enclosure to their left.
The monk disappeared and Lang was alone. Approaching the altar, he noted the detailed animals and leaves depicted in the mosaics of the apse: To the right was an open door and a staircase.
The darkness into which Lang descended was interrupted by weak lightbulbs hung every twenty or so feet from the low ceiling. Somewhere below, water was rushing, a reminder that Rome is located on a number of aquifers, so many that almost all of the hundreds of fountains spout potable water. The passageway was square, wide enough for two persons to pass, and hewn through rock that the dim lights gave a reddish color. Lugubrious faces, whole and in part, stared down from pieces of frescoes, most of which had succumbed to time, neglect and moisture.
In what had been the fourth-century sanctuary, there was little other than a slightly higher ceiling that would have announced its purpose to the uninformed. Lang stood still for a moment, listening to rushing water. Anyone who says silence has no sound, he mused, has never been in a dimly lit ancient ruin, listening for the footsteps of a possible assassin.
A winding metal staircase led to the next level, some fifty feet below the streets of the modern world. What was left of the Mithran temple seemed even more poorly lit than the floor above. A narrow space separated ruined walls that barely reached Lang's hips. Around every turn, skeletons of steel scaffolding reached to the low vaulted ceiling. Lang wasn't sure it was there as part of the excavation or to hold up the ancient brick above his head.
This was not a place for the claustrophobic.
Through occasional grates in the outer walls, water black as oil in the dark was visible as it raced by with an roar of anger at its confinement. At every turn, piles of brick and masonry attested to the archaeology in progress, but there was no one at work. The thought of how truly alone he was down here under centuries of ruins added to the chilly dampness that was not entirely his imagination.
At last the narrow path came to a central room. Along each side, a single long bench was carved into the stone walls. In the center was a chest-high block of white marble, the carved figures of Mithras slaying a bull standing in a bold relief caused by the shadows of the few overhead bulbs.
This was it, the triclinium, the room used for ritual banquets. Lang checked the time, squinting to see the luminous numbers on his watch. Three-thirty-seven. Sitting on one of the benches-to wait, his only company was the boisterous voice of the water and spirits of feasting Romans dead two thousand years.
There was no breeze to move the string of lights, yet the darkness seemed to creep from the corners, making silhouettes of fanciful monsters on the walls. The jab of the.38 in his belt was no longer uncomfortable but reassuring.
He was about to check his watch again when he heard something other than water. Standing, he turned to get a direction as the sound became more distinct, then recognizable as footsteps on stone.
With the revolver in hand, Lang moved to the far side of the room, putting the altar between him and whoever was approaching. He wished that Gurt had had time to secure a better weapon, a large-bore automatic with a full clip rather than the puny six shots the revolver held. But at least he had the advantage of surprise.
Or so he thought.
Although darkness hid the man's face, Lang recognized the shining silver hair as the Templar stood at the entrance to the room. "Come, Mr. Reilly, there is no need for you to hide. If I'd wanted to harm you, you would not have lived past the first level."
Gripping the gun's butt with both hands, Lang placed the stubby front sight of the.38 squarely on the newcomer's chest. A miss at this range would. be unlikely. "Okay, so I'm a little paranoid. You weren't the one who got your balls singed. Now keep your hands where I can see them and away from your body, step forward and place both palms against the altar."
The Templar did as he was told. A quick pat-down revealed no weapons. "Now that you're satisfied I'm no threat," he said, "perhaps you'll tell me why you wanted to meet."
Lang motioned to one of the benches and sat so that Silver Hair was between him and the entrance. "Someone walks through that doorway and you're history."
The older man sighed deeply. "Again, Mr. Reilly, had we wanted you dead, you would not be here. Can we dispense with the threats and get down to whatever business you have in mind? I gather there is something you want from us or you would not have been the one to initiate contact."
His eyes met Lang's as he made a show of slowly reaching into his coat pocket, producing the silver case and taking out a cigarette. He broke the gaze only long enough to light it.
"You're right;" Lang said. "You've been blackmailing the church for over seven hundred years. Now it's your turn to pay a little hush money.»
The Templar showed no surprise. In fact, Lang was certain he had been expecting it. "How much?»
Lang had given this a lot of thought. The sum should be big enough to be punitive but not enough to make it tempting to kill him and take their chances with the letter. Lang was prepared to negotiate, something he had learned well from horse-trading with the prosecution for lower sentences for his clients. But never anything this big. It was going to be like trying to get a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.
"Half billion a year, payable to the Janet and Jeffrey Holt Foundation."
Silver Hair lifted a gray eyebrow, either surprised or doing a good job of pretending to be. "I don't think I've ever heard of it."
Lang sneezed. The cold of the stone on which they were sitting was beginning to permeate his body. Standing, he kept an eye on the entrance. "It doesn't exist yet. Janet Holt was my sister, the one you people incinerated along with her son when you firebombed that home in Paris."
The Templar nodded slowly. "You'll use a foundation to channel money…»
"No! The foundation will be real enough.»
Lang had given this subject a lot of thought, too, ever since Jacob had convinced him that exposure of the Templar secret would do a great deal more harm than good. First he had thought of the money he could demand. the vacation homes, yachts and jets that could be his. The truth, plain and ugly, was that the idea of going, the same places for every vacation was only slightly more appealing than getting seasick..His terror of flying increased in inverse proportion to the size of the aircraft involved. The Porsche was his choice of car, he lived exactly where he wanted and already made an obscenely large income doing what he enjoyed, trying cases. The only thing missing from his life was Dawn and even the Templars couldn't give her back.
Besides, there was no way the sort of money Lang had in mind would stay a secret. It took little imagination to conjure up the hordes of solicitors lining up to inundate him with timeshares, questionable securities, even more doubtful charities and the rest of the telemarketing inventory. He could also see the IRS salivating at the prospect of taking a large part of the money to staunch the eternal government hemorrhage. A charitable foundation both memorialized Janet and Jeff and let Lang spend a huge amount wherever he thought Janet and Jeff might have wanted, perhaps for children like Jeff in poverty-ridden countries.
Silver Hair smiled coolly. "A true philanthropist, just like your fellow Atlantan Ted Turner."
"Better. I didn't marry Jane Fonda."
It was not lost on Lang that the other man hadn't squawked about the price, a sure indication he should have asked for more. Instead, Lang said, "One more thing…"
"There always is," the Templar said, his tone bristling with sarcasm.
"You got me blamed for a murder in Atlanta and another in London. I want to read in the London Times and the Atlanta Journal that those murders have been solved, the culprit arrested."
Silver Hair was looking around for a· place to drop his cigarette. He finally ground it out on the stone floor. "That might be difficult."
"I'm not stipulating that it has to be easy. You've got people who're willing jump out of windows, you can sure as hell find somebody to take those raps."
He gave Lang a nod, an acknowledgement this request, too, would be met. "And for this, we get to know who has the letter?"
Lang shook his head. "I might have been born at night, pal, but not last night. The letter's location stays with me. I've got too much to live for. Besides, you know I won't go public with your secret; it would end the funding for the foundation."
"We all die, Mr. Reilly. What happens then?"
"If the foundation is to survive me, so will your secret, a risk you'll have to take, that I'll make provisions not to endanger the annual funding of the charity."
The Templar looked at Lang for a moment as if trying to make up his mind about something. "For a half billion dollars a year, Mr. Reilly, I'd think I'd be entitled to hear exactly how you found the tomb. Most of it we know. But the rest… I'd hate to have to be paying more money if someone else…"
"Fair enough," Lang said. "You know about the Templin diary. That indicated whatever the secret was, it Was located in the southwest of France. It was through the painting, or rather the picture of it, that I finally figured it out. The inscription made no sense, ETINARCADIAEGOSUM. One too many words. I guessed it might be a word puzzle, anagram, so I rearranged the letters." Pulling a city map out of a pocket, Lang wrote on the margin. "I rearranged the letters like this:
Et in Arcadia Ego (Sum)
Arcam Dei Iesu Tango.
Arcam, tomb, objective case.
Dei, God, dative case.
Iesu, Jesus, possessive.
Tango, I touch.
" 'I touch the tomb of God, Jesus: is what I made of it. As long as the Poussin is around, somebody else is just as likely as I was to figure that out."
"Since you, er, found our secret, all copies of the painting have been destroyed. The original is in the Louvre."
"Okay," Lang said, "since this is question-and-answer time, I've got one for you. How did you, the Templars, find out about the tomb in the first place?"
Silver Hair took out another cigarette. "Very well, then. When we held Jerusalem, one of our number came across documents, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, it's called today, scratched on parchment, much like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A petition in which Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene asked Pilate for leave to depart for another part of the Roman Empire, taking the corpse of Jesus with them for reburial. Written across that parchment was approval in Latin.
"Our long-ago brethren recognized the places and rivers in that document and found the tomb, something that would have been an embarrassment to the Church, as Christ's corporeal body supposedly ascended into heaven. The Vatican saw the wisdom of-ah-paying us to guard this secret."
"Why didn't the Vatican simply destroy the tomb and its contents?" Lang thought he had given Gurt the correct reason but he wanted to know for sure.
The man regarded the end of his cigarette. Thinner and longer than any brand Lang had seen, he would have bet it was made to order. The Templar took a long drag before answering. "And commit the ultimate sacrilege, defiling the tomb of Christ? Better the pontiff should have exhumed Saint Peter and thrown him into the Tiber. Bad enough the body of Our Savior had not ascended, that the Gnostics had been right all along. Besides, the pope only saw part, of the documents we found. Where Joseph and Mary actually went, we kept to ourselves."
This was the weirdest conversation Lang had ever experienced. He was sitting in the ruins of an ancient temple, conversing like two baseball fans discussing batting averages with the man who had been at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of what family he had-the first person he had truly wanted to kill. And the one person he knew he would not.
"For such a valuable secret, you left a lot of clues lying around. You explained Poussin's painting, but the cross by the side of the road that lines up with the statue?"
"A relatively modern addition, but a clue for those who know what they are searching for-only Templars until you. We may need to remove one or both markers."
The man shifted his seat on the rock, grasped his knees and seemed to be waiting for Lang's next question. The son of a bitch was enjoying this, bragging on the cleverness of the order. Lang not only wanted to kill him, but he would have enjoyed doing it with his hands around the bastard's throat, watching-the life leach out of that arrogant face.
Lang's rational self told him that he would be better off to learn what he could. "You must have a pretty large organization to have tracked the painting from London to Paris to Atlanta."
The other man exhaled smoke tinged with red from the lights. The illusion looked as though he were breathing blood. Stephen King would have loved it here. "Not large but very, very efficient. You don't keep an international organization secret for seven centuries without being efficient."
These people, or at least this one, weren't overcome with humility, just as Pietro had observed seven hundred years before.
"Like the Mafia," Lang said.
The corners of the Templar's mouth turned down in disdain and he sniffed at the comparison, totally missing Lang's sarcasm. "Come now, Mr. Reilly. The Mafia is hardly secret, hasn't been for forty years. And most of its members are in prison-or about to be. No, Mr. Reilly, we are much more efficient. We have brothers in every western country, influential members of their societies. Two heads of state, leading politicians. Education, commerce, science. Any field you choose, we have members not only in it but dominant. And sufficient wealth to buy half the world's nations, General Motors, any other large corporations you care to name. Or politician. There has been no single foreign policy in the Western world we have not orchestrated. We cause conflicts including war when it benefits us and peace when it does not."
Now there was a comforting thought.
Or the man was crazy, megalomania on steroids. Worse, he might not be crazy. But if half of what he was saying was true, every conspiracy nut in the world was, in fact, an optimist.
Lang had forgotten how cold he was. He stood, stretching joints that were beginning to ache with the damp chill. "As soon as I see the articles in the papers, I'll e-mail instructions about the money, where to send it. Oh yeah, if you've got someone on the papers, thinking about fabricating a story, don't. I get arrested, the Templars'll be the biggest story of the century, maybe the millennium."
Silver Hair also stood, again crushing his cigarette butt under the sale of a very expensive Italian loafer. "May I send you the papers?"
"I'll see 'em. In fact, I'll assume our deal is off, I don't read about it in the next month."
Silver Hair shook his head, tsk-tsking. "You don't give much leeway, do you, cut us a little slack as you Americans say."
"We also say a tit for a tat. Your people didn't cut my sister or nephew a hell of a lot, either."
"Simply business, Mr. Reilly, a matter of survival. Nothing personal." He smiled benignly as though justifying the smallest of transgressions.
The son of a bitch meant it, just like that. Pure animal hatred provided more than enough heat to dispel the damp. Lang fought back the urge to lunge for his throat right there. Only the realization that, if Lang killed him, he would still be a fugitive and there would still be an order of Templars stopped him.
"Well, it's been swell." Lang stepped aside to walk past and out of the room.
"Yes," the Templar said, "I enjoyed our chat, too."
Lang snorted. You can recognize a vampire because they don't cast a reflection in a mirror. You can tell a Templar because, they don't get sarcasm. Lang was out of the room before he turned, giving in to curiosity. "One last question."
Silver Hair nodded. "By all means."
"You are all men. How do you…?"
The older man's-smile was visible even from where Lang stood. "How do we provide a continuing membership without procreation? The same way the Dominicans, Franciscans or any other holy order does: by men joining. The difference is, we recruit, search out the brightest all over the world." He gave a dry chuckle. "Remember: Celibacy in the church of the fourteenth century was more form than function. Even the popes had mistresses and children. We… well, I suppose I've more than answered your question."
There were a thousand other questions but Lang wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was interested.
Shadows were beginning to stretch across the Via di San Giovanni as Lang left San Clemente. Even the delicate light of late afternoon made him wince after the twilight underground. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see he had been gone only half an hour.
Lang felt as though he had arisen from a tomb himself.
1
Rome
Four days later
They took turns driving, stopping only for gas and snacks, until they were back in Rome. There Gurt had access to a safe house, a small apartment on the top floor of a building on the Via Campania. From the window of the tiny living room, they could look across the ancient city wall to the green of the Villa Borghese, Rome's largest public park.
Jacob took the foldout and Gurt and Lang shared the single bedroom. Happily, the shock torture had no permanent effects.
The moment Lang woke up on the third day, he knew it had to be Sunday. Not only were the busy streets quiet, but he could also hear children's excited screams and laughter along the park's walkways and bike paths.
The three managed to keep out of each others' way long enough to prepare a hearty breakfast in the cramped, galley-style kitchen. Either out of consideration for two stomachs not quite at ease with the smell of fish first thing in the morning or merely because he couldn't find smoked herring in Rome, Jacob had foregone the kippers and had fried sausages instead. The spicy salsiccia were a welcome substitute for bangers.
Lang was enjoying his second cup of espresso when Jacob fired up his pipe and Gurt lit a Marlboro.
"Jesus, guys," Lang said, futilely waving the smoke away, "there wasn't much point in rescuing me only to give me lung cancer."
Jacob replied, "Demonstrates we can't stay here forever. Exactly what did you have in mind for your future?"
Lang forgot the smoke. "I'm going to expose the bastards, reveal their secret to the world," he said, cold fury in his voice. "Once their secret's out, there'll be no more extortion money. That will be the end of them."
Jacob made a sucking noise through his pipe, noted it had gone out and prodded the bowl with a matchstick. "And spend the rest of your unnaturally shortened life looking over your shoulder? Once the secret's out, that letter doesn't protect you any longer."
"Those sons of bitches killed my sister and my nephew. They follow that act by framing me for two murders I didn't commit," Lang snapped waspishly. "What do you suggest, kiss and make up?"
Gurt had a question but Jacob spoke first, talking between puffs as he applied a new match. "I'd suggest you think of some form of revenge other than exposure. If not for yourself, for a few hundred million Christians. I mean, I'm a Jew, never was too keen on the Church, but Christianity's a stabilizing force in the world. You destroy it and…"
Gurt had been following the conversation so closely that she had let her cigarette's ash grow. It fell unnoticed onto the worn rug.
"Destroy Christianity? What…?"
Jacob pointed the stem of his pipe in accusation. "That's what Lang's talking about. Tell her."
"Yeah, tell me."
Lang sighed. "Jacob read the Templar diary, he made the same guesses I did and we were both right "The Templar who wrote that diary was familiar with the Gnostic heresy, a…"
"The who?" Gurt asked. Her cigarette had burned to the filter and she flinched as she touched the hot ash with her fingers before she stubbed the smoldering butt out in a cracked ashtray.
"The Gnostics were an early sect of Christians. They believed Christ was mortal, by God, not of God. Therefore, His spirit, not His body, ascended into heaven after He was crucified.
"In 325, about the time the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, various bishops of the church met at Nicea to decide some troubling issues. First, they had to choose among a number of accounts of Christ's life. They selected four: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Possibly one of the reasons these were preferred over others is that all four have Christ being resurrected, body and all. Hence, His immortality and triumph over death, the basic· Christian message as well as fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecy. Subsequently, the Gnostics and any others who didn't share the official view were hunted down and liquidated as heretics.
"The Templars discovered the Gnostics were right: Jesus's body had not ascended into heaven or anywhere else. Instead, His brother and wife fled Palestine, taking the body with them."
"That was what was in the 'vessel' Pietro read about in the Gnostic writings," Jacob interjected.
"In one form or another," Lang said. "Jewish funerary custom of the time required the body be allowed to decompose for at least a year. The bones were then put in an ossuary, a small stone box, and permanently entombed. Whether Jesus's body was brought to the Languedoc and his bones then moved or was hidden until only the bones were left, we'll never know."
"Why not leave the body where it was, where it was placed after the crucifixion?" Gurt wanted to know.
Lang shrugged. "I can't say for sure, but I can make a number of guesses. One would be that the Jewish messianic prophesies all called for resurrection of the body. Leaving the corpse would deny messiah status to Christ and stature to his disciples. Second, that would also occur to His followers, who might well take the body themselves if His family didn't. Third, Christ was executed as a common criminal. Tombs were for the wealthy. It would be just a matter of time before the body was dumped or placed in a lesser grave."
"So, the body, or just the bones, is moved to southwest France?" Gurt had another Marlboro in her hand.
Lang nodded. "And the Templars discovered exactly where. You can imagine the havoc the appearance of Christ's remains would have caused the church. The Templars had a good idea. They began to blackmail the Church, the pope."
Gurt lit up, puffed and looked up at Lang. "If you're talking about the Middle Ages, the pope would have been powerful enough to simply go destroy the body, move it where it couldn't be found or eliminate the Templars."
Lang thought a moment. "Again, I'm only guessing, but I don't think the pope was that powerful. He had to hire mercenaries every time he had to go to war. The Templars had what amounted to a standing army and had fortified the area around the tomb with the castle, Blanchefort. Any attempt to take the body would have chanced the Templars making their secret public. Plus, I'd speculate no pope wanted to be involved in desecrating the tomb of Christ, even though they weren't willing to admit it existed."
Both Jacob and Gurt were silent for a moment, no doubt trying to poke holes in Lang's theory.
Jacob asked, "Assuming you're right on, why didn't the Templars just move the ossuary, take it someplace they could keep securer
Lang had wondered about this before and thought he had the answer. "To find the tomb, they had to have a clue. They had some sort of documentation that placed Christ's tomb right where it is. If they moved it, the ossuary lost its authenticity."
"You mean, like a picture, a painting no one knew existed, that turns up in somebody's attic without a provenance but with what looks like Rembrandt's signature on it," Jacob said, ruefully regarding a cold pipe again. "You can test the pigment, the canvas, but there'll always be a smidgen of doubt."
"A doubt the Templars couldn't afford," Lang said. Gurt filled her coffee cup before raising an eyebrow at Jacob. "No thanks," he said. "That stuff would melt the spoon, you tried to stir it."
"It's espresso," she said. "It's supposed to be strong."
Jacob pushed his cup a few inches away. "It may be authentic Italian espresso, but my nerves can't take any more caffeine." He looked at Lang. "Which still leaves the question of what you plan to do."
He was right, of course. Exposing the Templars' secret would give Lang great personal satisfaction but it would devastate a large part of the world's population. He thought of Francis, how the revelation would destroy his faith, his reason for life, just as it had Pietro's. He remembered the peace religion had given Janet. Who was he to singlehandedly undo two thousand years of good works? Well, mostly good works, anyway, overlooking the Crusades, the Inquisition and a few other unfortunate excesses.
He made a decision. "Gurt, I would be surprised if Pegasus isn't looking for me. I don't think it's to our advantage for them to know where we are, sure not to yours and Jacob's if they connect you with getting me out of Sintra. Are the stores here open on Sunday?"
.She regarded him with curiosity. "Most are." "Could you get me a computer? A laptop, any make as long as it has a modem." She frowned. "I suppose this will go on my credit card just like your airplane tickets.". She wasn't angry about it, just unwilling to let him forget.
"Okay, okay," he said. "You know I'll pay you back."
"How?"
He didn't get her meaning. "How?"
"I would very much like to see Atlanta, visit Tara and the places in that wonderful book."
Lang was stumped for a second. Then, "You mean Atlanta, Gone With the Wind'? I didn't know people read it anymore, seeing as it's become politically incorrect. Anyway, those places don't exist."
"I never have been to Atlanta or the American South."
"This time of year, it's hot and the city has the second worst air quality in the country."
"I do not intend to live outside in a tent. I am sure there is air-conditioning available."
"And the third worst traffic."
"I do not intend to drive."
"Sounds lovely," Jacob grinned.
"I still want to see it: Gurt said."! think you do not want me to visit."
Truth was, he didn't. Visiting would have been fine but the idea of sharing his small condo with a woman for longer than one night was disquieting. He had visions of beauty potions on the bathroom sink, lacy undies in dresser drawers and pantyhose draped over the shower curtain. He had experienced difficulty a couple of times with women who came to visit and were less than eager to leave. On the other hand, he owed his life to Gurt: she had helped him and was about to again. He was not an ungracious person. Particularly when the promise to be performed was in the indefinite future and a stunningly attractive woman was involved.
"Done," Lang said. "Now what about that computer?"
"I can bring one from the Agency," she volunteered.
"No, I want a new one, a machine that's never had any e-mail address other than mine." He turned to Jacob. "And ru need Pegasus's e-mail address. They are a corporation registered in the Channel Islands, so they would have an address, maybe a Web site for their legitimate businesses."
2
Rome
Two hours later
Pegasusltd@gb.com was the address, found easily enough by Jacob. The sales staff at the electronic store had been very helpful in programming the new computer, including Lang's own e-mail address and password so he could use his existing. Internet service.
At the kitchen table, Gurt and Jacob peered over his shoulder as he slowly typed in the message all three had agreed upon:
Wish to meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. Reply before matters made public.
Reilly
Short if not sweet.
An hour passed. Unable to concentrate, Lang reread the same page of Friday's International Herald Tribune a dozen or so times. Jacob dozed in front of the window while Gurt listened to a German-language broadcast of what she said was a soccer match. For all Lang knew, it could have been The Best of Adolph sSpeeches. The reaction by the audience would have been the same.
The Herald Tribune is the only place "Calvin and Hobbes" still exists. For once, Lang didn't find the strip amusing. He was too busy trying to think how an e-mail could be traced to a specific phone line.
An hour had just passed when the computer made a sound like a gong and words appeared on the screen. The picture of an unopened envelope made understanding Italian for "you've got mail" unnecessary.
Name time, place, conditions.
That was all it said-brief, succinct. Obviously Pegasus hadn't referred the question to the legal department. Lang had previously asked Gurt and Jacob for their input in anticipation of just this question.
Church of San Clemente, Viadi San Giovanni in Laterano. Rome. Triclinium of Mithras. 1530 hrs. Tues next.
One person only.
Gurt had thought of the forty-eight-hour period. In that time, Lang could reach Rome from anywhere, therefore he could be anywhere when the e-mail was sent. The place was Jacob's idea. San Clemente was typical of Rome in that the site contained several periods of history. At street level, or actually slightly below, the simple eighteenth century facade at the bottom of the Esquiline Hill indicated a church that had been in use since the twelfth century. Beneath the carved altar and mosaics of the drowning of Saint Clement were the ruins of a fourth century Christian place of worship. Deeper yet were the ruins of a Temple of Mithras, a first-century male fertility cult that drifted into Rome from Persia to become popular among Rome's military.
Lang recalled that the site had been maintained and continually excavated since the seventeenth century by an order of Irish Dominican monks. So far as he knew, they haven't found any whisky yet.
The advantages of the site for a potentially hostile meeting were several. First, few if any tourists knew about the place. Second, the Mithran temple consisted of passages wide enough for only one person at a time. Finally, the church was at or near the bottom of a steep hill where Jacob could keep watch in secret, calling Lang on a cell phone if a trap appeared imminent. Also, Gurt and her rifle could easily cover the only entrance.
3
Rome, Laterano
1530 hours the next Tuesday
Churches in Rome close at half past noon on weekdays, reopening three and a half hours later. Jacob and Gurt had been in a second-story storage area of a shoe store across the Via di San Giovanni since ten 0'clock. In the normal Italian manner of doing business, the shopkeeper had accepted a handful of bills without a single question in exchange for use of the premises. After all, it was money the hated tax man would never know about and, therefore, would not take.
With punctuality uncharacteristic of Rome, a brown-robed monk opened the doors at precisely three-thirty. The sharp edges of a hammerless.38 stuck in Lang's belt under a jacket dug into his backside as he followed the brother inside and past the ornately carved choir enclosure to their left.
The monk disappeared and Lang was alone. Approaching the altar, he noted the detailed animals and leaves depicted in the mosaics of the apse: To the right was an open door and a staircase.
The darkness into which Lang descended was interrupted by weak lightbulbs hung every twenty or so feet from the low ceiling. Somewhere below, water was rushing, a reminder that Rome is located on a number of aquifers, so many that almost all of the hundreds of fountains spout potable water. The passageway was square, wide enough for two persons to pass, and hewn through rock that the dim lights gave a reddish color. Lugubrious faces, whole and in part, stared down from pieces of frescoes, most of which had succumbed to time, neglect and moisture.
In what had been the fourth-century sanctuary, there was little other than a slightly higher ceiling that would have announced its purpose to the uninformed. Lang stood still for a moment, listening to rushing water. Anyone who says silence has no sound, he mused, has never been in a dimly lit ancient ruin, listening for the footsteps of a possible assassin.
A winding metal staircase led to the next level, some fifty feet below the streets of the modern world. What was left of the Mithran temple seemed even more poorly lit than the floor above. A narrow space separated ruined walls that barely reached Lang's hips. Around every turn, skeletons of steel scaffolding reached to the low vaulted ceiling. Lang wasn't sure it was there as part of the excavation or to hold up the ancient brick above his head.
This was not a place for the claustrophobic.
Through occasional grates in the outer walls, water black as oil in the dark was visible as it raced by with an roar of anger at its confinement. At every turn, piles of brick and masonry attested to the archaeology in progress, but there was no one at work. The thought of how truly alone he was down here under centuries of ruins added to the chilly dampness that was not entirely his imagination.
At last the narrow path came to a central room. Along each side, a single long bench was carved into the stone walls. In the center was a chest-high block of white marble, the carved figures of Mithras slaying a bull standing in a bold relief caused by the shadows of the few overhead bulbs.
This was it, the triclinium, the room used for ritual banquets. Lang checked the time, squinting to see the luminous numbers on his watch. Three-thirty-seven. Sitting on one of the benches-to wait, his only company was the boisterous voice of the water and spirits of feasting Romans dead two thousand years.
There was no breeze to move the string of lights, yet the darkness seemed to creep from the corners, making silhouettes of fanciful monsters on the walls. The jab of the.38 in his belt was no longer uncomfortable but reassuring.
He was about to check his watch again when he heard something other than water. Standing, he turned to get a direction as the sound became more distinct, then recognizable as footsteps on stone.
With the revolver in hand, Lang moved to the far side of the room, putting the altar between him and whoever was approaching. He wished that Gurt had had time to secure a better weapon, a large-bore automatic with a full clip rather than the puny six shots the revolver held. But at least he had the advantage of surprise.
Or so he thought.
Although darkness hid the man's face, Lang recognized the shining silver hair as the Templar stood at the entrance to the room. "Come, Mr. Reilly, there is no need for you to hide. If I'd wanted to harm you, you would not have lived past the first level."
Gripping the gun's butt with both hands, Lang placed the stubby front sight of the.38 squarely on the newcomer's chest. A miss at this range would. be unlikely. "Okay, so I'm a little paranoid. You weren't the one who got your balls singed. Now keep your hands where I can see them and away from your body, step forward and place both palms against the altar."
The Templar did as he was told. A quick pat-down revealed no weapons. "Now that you're satisfied I'm no threat," he said, "perhaps you'll tell me why you wanted to meet."
Lang motioned to one of the benches and sat so that Silver Hair was between him and the entrance. "Someone walks through that doorway and you're history."
The older man sighed deeply. "Again, Mr. Reilly, had we wanted you dead, you would not be here. Can we dispense with the threats and get down to whatever business you have in mind? I gather there is something you want from us or you would not have been the one to initiate contact."
His eyes met Lang's as he made a show of slowly reaching into his coat pocket, producing the silver case and taking out a cigarette. He broke the gaze only long enough to light it.
"You're right;" Lang said. "You've been blackmailing the church for over seven hundred years. Now it's your turn to pay a little hush money.»
The Templar showed no surprise. In fact, Lang was certain he had been expecting it. "How much?»
Lang had given this a lot of thought. The sum should be big enough to be punitive but not enough to make it tempting to kill him and take their chances with the letter. Lang was prepared to negotiate, something he had learned well from horse-trading with the prosecution for lower sentences for his clients. But never anything this big. It was going to be like trying to get a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.
"Half billion a year, payable to the Janet and Jeffrey Holt Foundation."
Silver Hair lifted a gray eyebrow, either surprised or doing a good job of pretending to be. "I don't think I've ever heard of it."
Lang sneezed. The cold of the stone on which they were sitting was beginning to permeate his body. Standing, he kept an eye on the entrance. "It doesn't exist yet. Janet Holt was my sister, the one you people incinerated along with her son when you firebombed that home in Paris."
The Templar nodded slowly. "You'll use a foundation to channel money…»
"No! The foundation will be real enough.»
Lang had given this subject a lot of thought, too, ever since Jacob had convinced him that exposure of the Templar secret would do a great deal more harm than good. First he had thought of the money he could demand. the vacation homes, yachts and jets that could be his. The truth, plain and ugly, was that the idea of going, the same places for every vacation was only slightly more appealing than getting seasick..His terror of flying increased in inverse proportion to the size of the aircraft involved. The Porsche was his choice of car, he lived exactly where he wanted and already made an obscenely large income doing what he enjoyed, trying cases. The only thing missing from his life was Dawn and even the Templars couldn't give her back.
Besides, there was no way the sort of money Lang had in mind would stay a secret. It took little imagination to conjure up the hordes of solicitors lining up to inundate him with timeshares, questionable securities, even more doubtful charities and the rest of the telemarketing inventory. He could also see the IRS salivating at the prospect of taking a large part of the money to staunch the eternal government hemorrhage. A charitable foundation both memorialized Janet and Jeff and let Lang spend a huge amount wherever he thought Janet and Jeff might have wanted, perhaps for children like Jeff in poverty-ridden countries.
Silver Hair smiled coolly. "A true philanthropist, just like your fellow Atlantan Ted Turner."
"Better. I didn't marry Jane Fonda."
It was not lost on Lang that the other man hadn't squawked about the price, a sure indication he should have asked for more. Instead, Lang said, "One more thing…"
"There always is," the Templar said, his tone bristling with sarcasm.
"You got me blamed for a murder in Atlanta and another in London. I want to read in the London Times and the Atlanta Journal that those murders have been solved, the culprit arrested."
Silver Hair was looking around for a· place to drop his cigarette. He finally ground it out on the stone floor. "That might be difficult."
"I'm not stipulating that it has to be easy. You've got people who're willing jump out of windows, you can sure as hell find somebody to take those raps."
He gave Lang a nod, an acknowledgement this request, too, would be met. "And for this, we get to know who has the letter?"
Lang shook his head. "I might have been born at night, pal, but not last night. The letter's location stays with me. I've got too much to live for. Besides, you know I won't go public with your secret; it would end the funding for the foundation."
"We all die, Mr. Reilly. What happens then?"
"If the foundation is to survive me, so will your secret, a risk you'll have to take, that I'll make provisions not to endanger the annual funding of the charity."
The Templar looked at Lang for a moment as if trying to make up his mind about something. "For a half billion dollars a year, Mr. Reilly, I'd think I'd be entitled to hear exactly how you found the tomb. Most of it we know. But the rest… I'd hate to have to be paying more money if someone else…"
"Fair enough," Lang said. "You know about the Templin diary. That indicated whatever the secret was, it Was located in the southwest of France. It was through the painting, or rather the picture of it, that I finally figured it out. The inscription made no sense, ETINARCADIAEGOSUM. One too many words. I guessed it might be a word puzzle, anagram, so I rearranged the letters." Pulling a city map out of a pocket, Lang wrote on the margin. "I rearranged the letters like this:
Et in Arcadia Ego (Sum)
Arcam Dei Iesu Tango.
Arcam, tomb, objective case.
Dei, God, dative case.
Iesu, Jesus, possessive.
Tango, I touch.
" 'I touch the tomb of God, Jesus: is what I made of it. As long as the Poussin is around, somebody else is just as likely as I was to figure that out."
"Since you, er, found our secret, all copies of the painting have been destroyed. The original is in the Louvre."
"Okay," Lang said, "since this is question-and-answer time, I've got one for you. How did you, the Templars, find out about the tomb in the first place?"
Silver Hair took out another cigarette. "Very well, then. When we held Jerusalem, one of our number came across documents, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, it's called today, scratched on parchment, much like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A petition in which Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene asked Pilate for leave to depart for another part of the Roman Empire, taking the corpse of Jesus with them for reburial. Written across that parchment was approval in Latin.
"Our long-ago brethren recognized the places and rivers in that document and found the tomb, something that would have been an embarrassment to the Church, as Christ's corporeal body supposedly ascended into heaven. The Vatican saw the wisdom of-ah-paying us to guard this secret."
"Why didn't the Vatican simply destroy the tomb and its contents?" Lang thought he had given Gurt the correct reason but he wanted to know for sure.
The man regarded the end of his cigarette. Thinner and longer than any brand Lang had seen, he would have bet it was made to order. The Templar took a long drag before answering. "And commit the ultimate sacrilege, defiling the tomb of Christ? Better the pontiff should have exhumed Saint Peter and thrown him into the Tiber. Bad enough the body of Our Savior had not ascended, that the Gnostics had been right all along. Besides, the pope only saw part, of the documents we found. Where Joseph and Mary actually went, we kept to ourselves."
This was the weirdest conversation Lang had ever experienced. He was sitting in the ruins of an ancient temple, conversing like two baseball fans discussing batting averages with the man who had been at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of what family he had-the first person he had truly wanted to kill. And the one person he knew he would not.
"For such a valuable secret, you left a lot of clues lying around. You explained Poussin's painting, but the cross by the side of the road that lines up with the statue?"
"A relatively modern addition, but a clue for those who know what they are searching for-only Templars until you. We may need to remove one or both markers."
The man shifted his seat on the rock, grasped his knees and seemed to be waiting for Lang's next question. The son of a bitch was enjoying this, bragging on the cleverness of the order. Lang not only wanted to kill him, but he would have enjoyed doing it with his hands around the bastard's throat, watching-the life leach out of that arrogant face.
Lang's rational self told him that he would be better off to learn what he could. "You must have a pretty large organization to have tracked the painting from London to Paris to Atlanta."
The other man exhaled smoke tinged with red from the lights. The illusion looked as though he were breathing blood. Stephen King would have loved it here. "Not large but very, very efficient. You don't keep an international organization secret for seven centuries without being efficient."
These people, or at least this one, weren't overcome with humility, just as Pietro had observed seven hundred years before.
"Like the Mafia," Lang said.
The corners of the Templar's mouth turned down in disdain and he sniffed at the comparison, totally missing Lang's sarcasm. "Come now, Mr. Reilly. The Mafia is hardly secret, hasn't been for forty years. And most of its members are in prison-or about to be. No, Mr. Reilly, we are much more efficient. We have brothers in every western country, influential members of their societies. Two heads of state, leading politicians. Education, commerce, science. Any field you choose, we have members not only in it but dominant. And sufficient wealth to buy half the world's nations, General Motors, any other large corporations you care to name. Or politician. There has been no single foreign policy in the Western world we have not orchestrated. We cause conflicts including war when it benefits us and peace when it does not."
Now there was a comforting thought.
Or the man was crazy, megalomania on steroids. Worse, he might not be crazy. But if half of what he was saying was true, every conspiracy nut in the world was, in fact, an optimist.
Lang had forgotten how cold he was. He stood, stretching joints that were beginning to ache with the damp chill. "As soon as I see the articles in the papers, I'll e-mail instructions about the money, where to send it. Oh yeah, if you've got someone on the papers, thinking about fabricating a story, don't. I get arrested, the Templars'll be the biggest story of the century, maybe the millennium."
Silver Hair also stood, again crushing his cigarette butt under the sale of a very expensive Italian loafer. "May I send you the papers?"
"I'll see 'em. In fact, I'll assume our deal is off, I don't read about it in the next month."
Silver Hair shook his head, tsk-tsking. "You don't give much leeway, do you, cut us a little slack as you Americans say."
"We also say a tit for a tat. Your people didn't cut my sister or nephew a hell of a lot, either."
"Simply business, Mr. Reilly, a matter of survival. Nothing personal." He smiled benignly as though justifying the smallest of transgressions.
The son of a bitch meant it, just like that. Pure animal hatred provided more than enough heat to dispel the damp. Lang fought back the urge to lunge for his throat right there. Only the realization that, if Lang killed him, he would still be a fugitive and there would still be an order of Templars stopped him.
"Well, it's been swell." Lang stepped aside to walk past and out of the room.
"Yes," the Templar said, "I enjoyed our chat, too."
Lang snorted. You can recognize a vampire because they don't cast a reflection in a mirror. You can tell a Templar because, they don't get sarcasm. Lang was out of the room before he turned, giving in to curiosity. "One last question."
Silver Hair nodded. "By all means."
"You are all men. How do you…?"
The older man's-smile was visible even from where Lang stood. "How do we provide a continuing membership without procreation? The same way the Dominicans, Franciscans or any other holy order does: by men joining. The difference is, we recruit, search out the brightest all over the world." He gave a dry chuckle. "Remember: Celibacy in the church of the fourteenth century was more form than function. Even the popes had mistresses and children. We… well, I suppose I've more than answered your question."
There were a thousand other questions but Lang wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was interested.
Shadows were beginning to stretch across the Via di San Giovanni as Lang left San Clemente. Even the delicate light of late afternoon made him wince after the twilight underground. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see he had been gone only half an hour.
Lang felt as though he had arisen from a tomb himself.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Lake Maggiore
A week later
Sara groused when Lang refused to tell her where he was. He wasn't willing to bet his freedom that the line wasn't still tapped. She did agree to send a copy of the Atlanta Journal story of his exoneration to Jacob when it appeared. Jacob would e-mail a code word when both articles had run.
When it came, the storyline common to the papers was that both murders had occurred as an attempt to steal a priceless painting by Nicolas Poussin, a French painter who had a small room of the Louvre dedicated to his work. Having possessed it, Lang had been suspected of its theft until the real culprit was identified and apprehended in London. It came as no surprise to Lang that the purported thief likely died in an escape attempt. The hulk of the car in which he had fled was too badly charred from the unusual explosion, resulting from a high-speed crash, to distinguish human remains. Neither piece mentioned that the art dealer in London had been killed after the man in Atlanta nor what a doorman was doing with such a treasure.
Foolish consistences may be the hobgoblin of little minds, Lang thought with a wry grin, but not of newspapers. Otherwise, why would their editorials tout a candidate, then excoriate him a year later?
Lang was almost sorry to learn that the need to hide was over.
He and Gurt had spent the time on the shores of Lake Maggiore at the cluster of summer homes and a gas station called Ranco, hardly a town or even a village. The only inn had but five guest rooms. It had thirty seats for dinner, however, and each was full every night. Lang gained at least a pound a day.
They made love every morning. Afterwards, they lay exhausted, postponing getting up, watching the rising sun paint the snowy tops of the Swiss Alps across the water a blood red. The scene was reflected in the bottomless black waters of the lake until the picture was streaked by the morning ferry.
The days were spent walking like young lovers, which Lang guessed they were, along the shore, admiring the handsome homes built by people who had declined the commercial development of Italy's more popular Como.
After a far too sumptuous dinner, the couple sat on the deck outside the room and watched the stars until the lake's mist reached like fingers to extinguish the celestial show. As soon as one would stand, the other would make a dash for bed where they tore at each others' clothes and made love again until they fell into an exhausted sleep.
Who would want that to end?
It was only on the way to Malpensa that Lang sat up in the seat of the old taxi with a jolt. He had just spent the first day in years when Dawn had not been in his thoughts. The realization made him feel guilty.
But not for long.
2
Atlanta
Two weeks later
Gurt adored Atlanta. She gaped at the huge homes on West Paces Ferry, marveling that any single person could own such acreage solely for a residence. She loved the variety of restaurants in Buckhead. The high-end malls, Lenox Square, Phipps Plaza, were her nirvana, supermarkets her promised land. The multiplicity of choices both delighted and confounded her. On her first grocery shopping trip with Lang, she was unable to make a selection of anything that had more than three alternatives.
They went to a Braves game. The game did not hold as much interest as the beer and hot dogs. She came away viewing America's national pastime as a large, hot, outdoor Oktoberfest.
She adored Grumps, too, an affection equally returned.
Once returned from Sara's care, the dog missed Lang's secretary not at all, wriggling with spasms of joy whenever Gurt returned to the condominium from her outings with Lang, leaving him to muse that if the Germans had loved their fellow man anywhere near as much as they loved their dogs, the past century would have gone a-lot more smoothly.
In fact, the dog's affection became a source of humor between Gurt and Lang. Any time he put arms around Gurt, Grumps would grab Lang's shoe, socks or pants, anything he could hold in his teeth, growl and try to pull Lang away.
Lang's apprehensions about living with a woman proved unfounded. The first recognizable blow to his belief in the sanctity of his own space came from Francis.
It started when the priest came by for dinner, hamburgers cooked on a grill on the balcony accompanied by the current vintage of Chateau Budweiser in cold bottles.
After Gurt and Lang gave Francis the somewhat sanitized version of their recent European experience, Gurt and Francis got into a discussion that wandered from the medieval Church to indulgences to Martin Luther. Lang left them and went to bed about half past 1560-the year, not the hour.
At Francis's insistence, Gurt was included in dinner at Manuel's, the priest sweeping aside Lang's protests that the evenings there had been historically male-only. As the priest pointed out with Jesuitlike logic, that had only been by Lang's choice. Lang was astonished to hear her tell a joke in understandable if halting Latin. He had no idea she knew a word.
Only months later did Lang find the thin book of contemporary anecdotes with their Latin translations, Amo, Amas, Amat: Learn Latin and Amaze Your Friends. She had gone to a lot of trouble just to please him.
There were no potions on the bathroom counter, no feminine silk in the drawers. Although she was always appropriately dressed when they went out, the room in Lang's closets had not diminished. He began to wonder exactly where did she keep her stuff. He supposed that years of living in cramped apartments in Europe had made her thrifty with space.
She amused herself while Lang was at work, recounting a list of the day's activities over dinner: shopping, walking in various parks or simply enjoying Grumps's company.
Lang began to eye the calendar warily, noting the increasing speed with which her date of departure seemed to approach. Too stubborn to admit it, he nonetheless dreaded the thought.
3
Atlanta
A week later
It was one of those early summer evenings in Atlanta when it was easy to forget that the temperature would soon be nudging the high nineties and the slightest stirring of air perceived as a breeze. Lang and Gurt were walking Grumps along Peachtree at a pace slow enough to allow the dog to savor and return each message his predecessors had left in the grassy margin between sidewalk and street.
Gurt was to leave the next day. Lang could think of little else. "Lang," Gurt asked lazily, "have you named the bene… benefic…"
"Beneficiaries," he supplied. "Of the foundation? No, not yet. I've narrowed it to Central American relief funds that specialize in schooling and health for children, kids like Jeff. I've had to hire a staff just to screen the applicants. If I interviewed them all, I'd have to give up the law practice."
Gurt stopped to let Grumps explore a particularly interesting few square feet. "I don't understand: if the money comes from the church to the Templars to you, why not simply return it to the church?"
Lang knew from experience she had given this some thought. She rarely asked pointless questions. "Two reasons: First, if it goes right back to the church, the Templars will find out and simply raise their extortion if they haven't already. Second, the church's priorities aren't the same as mine. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in countries with limited resources, kids need to learn about birth control early, safe sex to avoid AIDS, stuff the church doesn't exactly favor."
"And the church, the Catholic Church, will continue to pay this money to these men because they do not want the world to know Jesus's body did not ascend into heaven?"
Grumps lunged forward, almost snatching the leash from Gurt's hand.
Lang reached across her body and grabbed it, reining the dog in. "Not so fast, fella. Yep. I'm no theologian, but it seems Christ could have been divine either way. The church just made a mistake early on that they don't want to admit."
She took the leash back. "To touch the tomb of God's son… It must have really been a journey, a trip."
There was something appealing about Gurt's occasional mismanagement of the American idiom, the way she twisted her face into a pout when she wasn't sure she had it right.
"I didn't; think of it that way at the time. I…" He stopped, putting both arms around her. "Screw the tomb, the Templars, whatever. Gurt, I don't want you to leave."
She rested her head against his shoulder. Another couple smiled as they detoured around them.
"What is the edge, er, point of staying? I had to practically force you to let me come. I know I cannot replace Dawn."
"Nobody can. But you're not a replacement, you're… you're you and that's plenty good enough."
"Then I guess I will stay as long as it does you happy."
"That, madam, will be forever." He kissed her lightly, oblivious to the honking horns and good-natured jeers of passing motorists. The moment was shattered by the scream of brakes and a gut-wrenching thump.
Gurt shoved herself free. "Grumps! Mein Gatt!"
"Shit!"
Each had thought the other had the leash.
A mound of black fur was crumpled on the curb where the dog had landed after impact with a car. A woman, pale and shaken, got out of a Volvo. "I didn't see him until he ran right in front of me."
Lang and Gurt ignored her, rushing to the still-quivering animal. Oblivious to the blood that ran down her blouse, Gurt scooped him up, clutching him tightly.
"Liebchen, Liebchen," she moaned. "Es tut mir so leid." Grumps licked her face before his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp.
Lang had never seen Gurt weep before. The knowledge she had coolly shot and killed made her grief all the more touching. He took the body from her, surprised at how cold it had already become. There was no breath or heartbeat. Kneeling, he gently lowered Grumps to the ground and put his arms back around the distraught Gurt, whispering anything that might be of comfort.
A small knot of joggers, bikers and other walkers gathered, bonded by morbid curiosity, their voices respectfully low..
Later, Lang was unable to remember what happened first, the murmur of surprise or the tug at his pants leg. He looked down, certain he had momentarily lost his sanity.
Grumps, growling playfully, had the cuff of Lang's trousers in his mouth. Where the dog had lain seconds before, a puddle of blood was disappearing like the morning's dew.
Neither Gurt nor Lang spoke as they walked away, Grumps renewing his search of the grass; Lang was thinking of a hillside in France, of the unexplained warmth he had felt from a stone box whose existence most of the Christian world would deny.
Maybe…He shook his head, dismissing the thought as impossible.
What he felt for Gurt was miracle enough.
1
Lake Maggiore
A week later
Sara groused when Lang refused to tell her where he was. He wasn't willing to bet his freedom that the line wasn't still tapped. She did agree to send a copy of the Atlanta Journal story of his exoneration to Jacob when it appeared. Jacob would e-mail a code word when both articles had run.
When it came, the storyline common to the papers was that both murders had occurred as an attempt to steal a priceless painting by Nicolas Poussin, a French painter who had a small room of the Louvre dedicated to his work. Having possessed it, Lang had been suspected of its theft until the real culprit was identified and apprehended in London. It came as no surprise to Lang that the purported thief likely died in an escape attempt. The hulk of the car in which he had fled was too badly charred from the unusual explosion, resulting from a high-speed crash, to distinguish human remains. Neither piece mentioned that the art dealer in London had been killed after the man in Atlanta nor what a doorman was doing with such a treasure.
Foolish consistences may be the hobgoblin of little minds, Lang thought with a wry grin, but not of newspapers. Otherwise, why would their editorials tout a candidate, then excoriate him a year later?
Lang was almost sorry to learn that the need to hide was over.
He and Gurt had spent the time on the shores of Lake Maggiore at the cluster of summer homes and a gas station called Ranco, hardly a town or even a village. The only inn had but five guest rooms. It had thirty seats for dinner, however, and each was full every night. Lang gained at least a pound a day.
They made love every morning. Afterwards, they lay exhausted, postponing getting up, watching the rising sun paint the snowy tops of the Swiss Alps across the water a blood red. The scene was reflected in the bottomless black waters of the lake until the picture was streaked by the morning ferry.
The days were spent walking like young lovers, which Lang guessed they were, along the shore, admiring the handsome homes built by people who had declined the commercial development of Italy's more popular Como.
After a far too sumptuous dinner, the couple sat on the deck outside the room and watched the stars until the lake's mist reached like fingers to extinguish the celestial show. As soon as one would stand, the other would make a dash for bed where they tore at each others' clothes and made love again until they fell into an exhausted sleep.
Who would want that to end?
It was only on the way to Malpensa that Lang sat up in the seat of the old taxi with a jolt. He had just spent the first day in years when Dawn had not been in his thoughts. The realization made him feel guilty.
But not for long.
2
Atlanta
Two weeks later
Gurt adored Atlanta. She gaped at the huge homes on West Paces Ferry, marveling that any single person could own such acreage solely for a residence. She loved the variety of restaurants in Buckhead. The high-end malls, Lenox Square, Phipps Plaza, were her nirvana, supermarkets her promised land. The multiplicity of choices both delighted and confounded her. On her first grocery shopping trip with Lang, she was unable to make a selection of anything that had more than three alternatives.
They went to a Braves game. The game did not hold as much interest as the beer and hot dogs. She came away viewing America's national pastime as a large, hot, outdoor Oktoberfest.
She adored Grumps, too, an affection equally returned.
Once returned from Sara's care, the dog missed Lang's secretary not at all, wriggling with spasms of joy whenever Gurt returned to the condominium from her outings with Lang, leaving him to muse that if the Germans had loved their fellow man anywhere near as much as they loved their dogs, the past century would have gone a-lot more smoothly.
In fact, the dog's affection became a source of humor between Gurt and Lang. Any time he put arms around Gurt, Grumps would grab Lang's shoe, socks or pants, anything he could hold in his teeth, growl and try to pull Lang away.
Lang's apprehensions about living with a woman proved unfounded. The first recognizable blow to his belief in the sanctity of his own space came from Francis.
It started when the priest came by for dinner, hamburgers cooked on a grill on the balcony accompanied by the current vintage of Chateau Budweiser in cold bottles.
After Gurt and Lang gave Francis the somewhat sanitized version of their recent European experience, Gurt and Francis got into a discussion that wandered from the medieval Church to indulgences to Martin Luther. Lang left them and went to bed about half past 1560-the year, not the hour.
At Francis's insistence, Gurt was included in dinner at Manuel's, the priest sweeping aside Lang's protests that the evenings there had been historically male-only. As the priest pointed out with Jesuitlike logic, that had only been by Lang's choice. Lang was astonished to hear her tell a joke in understandable if halting Latin. He had no idea she knew a word.
Only months later did Lang find the thin book of contemporary anecdotes with their Latin translations, Amo, Amas, Amat: Learn Latin and Amaze Your Friends. She had gone to a lot of trouble just to please him.
There were no potions on the bathroom counter, no feminine silk in the drawers. Although she was always appropriately dressed when they went out, the room in Lang's closets had not diminished. He began to wonder exactly where did she keep her stuff. He supposed that years of living in cramped apartments in Europe had made her thrifty with space.
She amused herself while Lang was at work, recounting a list of the day's activities over dinner: shopping, walking in various parks or simply enjoying Grumps's company.
Lang began to eye the calendar warily, noting the increasing speed with which her date of departure seemed to approach. Too stubborn to admit it, he nonetheless dreaded the thought.
3
Atlanta
A week later
It was one of those early summer evenings in Atlanta when it was easy to forget that the temperature would soon be nudging the high nineties and the slightest stirring of air perceived as a breeze. Lang and Gurt were walking Grumps along Peachtree at a pace slow enough to allow the dog to savor and return each message his predecessors had left in the grassy margin between sidewalk and street.
Gurt was to leave the next day. Lang could think of little else. "Lang," Gurt asked lazily, "have you named the bene… benefic…"
"Beneficiaries," he supplied. "Of the foundation? No, not yet. I've narrowed it to Central American relief funds that specialize in schooling and health for children, kids like Jeff. I've had to hire a staff just to screen the applicants. If I interviewed them all, I'd have to give up the law practice."
Gurt stopped to let Grumps explore a particularly interesting few square feet. "I don't understand: if the money comes from the church to the Templars to you, why not simply return it to the church?"
Lang knew from experience she had given this some thought. She rarely asked pointless questions. "Two reasons: First, if it goes right back to the church, the Templars will find out and simply raise their extortion if they haven't already. Second, the church's priorities aren't the same as mine. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in countries with limited resources, kids need to learn about birth control early, safe sex to avoid AIDS, stuff the church doesn't exactly favor."
"And the church, the Catholic Church, will continue to pay this money to these men because they do not want the world to know Jesus's body did not ascend into heaven?"
Grumps lunged forward, almost snatching the leash from Gurt's hand.
Lang reached across her body and grabbed it, reining the dog in. "Not so fast, fella. Yep. I'm no theologian, but it seems Christ could have been divine either way. The church just made a mistake early on that they don't want to admit."
She took the leash back. "To touch the tomb of God's son… It must have really been a journey, a trip."
There was something appealing about Gurt's occasional mismanagement of the American idiom, the way she twisted her face into a pout when she wasn't sure she had it right.
"I didn't; think of it that way at the time. I…" He stopped, putting both arms around her. "Screw the tomb, the Templars, whatever. Gurt, I don't want you to leave."
She rested her head against his shoulder. Another couple smiled as they detoured around them.
"What is the edge, er, point of staying? I had to practically force you to let me come. I know I cannot replace Dawn."
"Nobody can. But you're not a replacement, you're… you're you and that's plenty good enough."
"Then I guess I will stay as long as it does you happy."
"That, madam, will be forever." He kissed her lightly, oblivious to the honking horns and good-natured jeers of passing motorists. The moment was shattered by the scream of brakes and a gut-wrenching thump.
Gurt shoved herself free. "Grumps! Mein Gatt!"
"Shit!"
Each had thought the other had the leash.
A mound of black fur was crumpled on the curb where the dog had landed after impact with a car. A woman, pale and shaken, got out of a Volvo. "I didn't see him until he ran right in front of me."
Lang and Gurt ignored her, rushing to the still-quivering animal. Oblivious to the blood that ran down her blouse, Gurt scooped him up, clutching him tightly.
"Liebchen, Liebchen," she moaned. "Es tut mir so leid." Grumps licked her face before his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp.
Lang had never seen Gurt weep before. The knowledge she had coolly shot and killed made her grief all the more touching. He took the body from her, surprised at how cold it had already become. There was no breath or heartbeat. Kneeling, he gently lowered Grumps to the ground and put his arms back around the distraught Gurt, whispering anything that might be of comfort.
A small knot of joggers, bikers and other walkers gathered, bonded by morbid curiosity, their voices respectfully low..
Later, Lang was unable to remember what happened first, the murmur of surprise or the tug at his pants leg. He looked down, certain he had momentarily lost his sanity.
Grumps, growling playfully, had the cuff of Lang's trousers in his mouth. Where the dog had lain seconds before, a puddle of blood was disappearing like the morning's dew.
Neither Gurt nor Lang spoke as they walked away, Grumps renewing his search of the grass; Lang was thinking of a hillside in France, of the unexplained warmth he had felt from a stone box whose existence most of the Christian world would deny.
Maybe…He shook his head, dismissing the thought as impossible.
What he felt for Gurt was miracle enough.
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