The Templar Conspiracy

12

They woke early, asked for a car to be delivered from Hertz, had a quick breakfast and were on the road to Aigle by nine. They took Highway 1 out of Geneva and headed north, staying close to the shoreline of the long, silt-colored lake. They were almost halfway to Aigle before anyone spoke.

"Remind me why we're going to this place," said Peggy.

"Aigle is the area code on that number on the back of Tritt's desk. When I called the number it was for a vineyard called Chateau Royale des Pins. I did some checking on the computer; it's about two miles outside the town. Apparently they make a nice Chablis."

"Never cared much for white wine," said Brennan from the backseat.

"It sounds like a bit of a wild-goose chase," said Peggy. "If there's anything to find it will be at that private garage on the French side." She shook her head and stared out the window at the passing landscape. There was a dusting of snow on the ground and a cold wind was blowing in gusts, pushing a flotilla of sailboats around the lake. "We should be in Rome," she grumbled softly. "That's where the action's going to be."

"That would be your veritable needle in a haystack." Brennan laughed. "There's two and a half million people in Rome. How do you propose we track him down?"

"You got a picture of him in that file from your friend in counterintelligence, didn't you?" Peggy said.

"Tritt must know there's a CIA file on him at the very least," said Holliday. "It's easily a decade old. He'll have changed his look since then." The photograph in the computer file showed a handsome, narrow-faced man with aristocratic features and neatly parted honey blond hair. If he was an actor he could have played the part of an Oxford student or the ne'er-do-well son of an English lord.

"Still, it's a photograph of the bastard; it's something to go on."

Holliday couldn't fault Peggy's enthusiasm, but after half a lifetime in intelligence he'd learned that enthusiasm, intuition and hunches had little to do with it. Finding and identifying Tritt would be a matter of hard, slogging work, assembling small pieces of information like a jigsaw puzzle until the whole picture took shape. Privately he gave them one-in-a-million odds on finding the assassin before the president arrived. They simply didn't have enough time.

Even though traffic was fairly light, it took them the better part of two hours to make the fifty-mile trip around the lake to Aigle at the head of the Rhone valley. The town was a quaint little Alpine village of eight thousand, named for the eagles that circled on the upward air currents of the valley below, looking for rabbits taking shelter under the camouflaging grapevines in the summer months and foxes in the winter.

Aigle had been the seat of government for the canton since the eleventh century. Still the seat of municipal government for the district, now the town relied heavily on tourism and the vineyards in the area. They stopped at the Place de la Gare in the center of town to ask for directions and were told to follow the Chemin du Fahey to its end two and a half miles east of the town.

Fifteen minutes and two wrong turns later they reached Chateau Royale des Pins. Less a chateau than a full-blown castle, it sat at the summit of a large, flat-topped hill. It was surrounded by pruned grapevines that made it look like a gigantic military cemetery filled with makeshift, gnarled crosses, dark against a recent fall of fresh snow.

They parked in the lot at the bottom of the hill and trudged up the narrow path to the top, snow crunching under their shoes. They reached the old gatehouse at the entrance to the huge stone building. Left and right were turrets and arrow slits in the heavy walls. Here and there Holliday could actually see rusted cannonballs embedded in the walls that probably dated back to Napoleonic times. They went through a pair of imposing oak, iron-strapped doors and stepped into the castle.

They found themselves in a large foyer with La Boutique de Chateau on one side and the requisite suit of armor on display to the right. The boutique was really nothing more than a souvenir shop selling castle key chains, wine-bottle key chains, bottle-opener key chains, eagle key chains, assorted postcards, a Swiss Post Office first-day cover of a stamp to commemorate the castle and View-Master slide sets that looked as though they'd been on the shelves, untouched, for decades.

Feeling the beady eyes of the concierge staring at him suspiciously, Holliday bought a wine-bottle key chain and gave the woman, a faint mustache distinguishable on her lip, a smile. The woman took his money and didn't smile back.

A bored-looking tour guide who was probably the concierge's husband levered himself up off his stool and started giving them the tour, not bothering to see if they were following. Finally he turned and spoke.

"English?"

"American," answered Holliday.

The man nodded. "American. Of course," as though it should have been obvious to him.

Holliday spent the next hour learning far more about Chablis than he ever wanted to know; it was made from high-altitude Chardonnay grapes that were slightly more acidic than the grapes grown in a warmer, lower valley environment. He also learned that Chateau Royale was a traditional winemaker, storing the wine in oak casks rather than the more modern stainless-steel tanks. When Holliday asked a simple question about Chateau Royale's ownership he was basically told it was none of his business.

The tour was confined to the main floor, which contained the shop and a viticulture museum, and the old dungeons in the basement, now used as the actual manufacturing, fermentation and storage area. The upper floors of the castle held the private apartments housing the owners, who demanded strict privacy.

Holliday began thinking that Peggy had been right-the whole thing was a waste of time. He didn't see how he was going to find any proof of a connection between whoever owned Chateau Royale and William Tritt, the onetime CIA assassin.

The tour finally ended with a quick run through the museum and a brief history of the Chateau Royale label, carefully skirting the whole matter of ownership. The little group exited the suite of expansive rooms that made up the museum and stepped out into the looming entrance hall with its inlaid marble floor and tapestries on the walls.

As they headed back to the shop, Holliday thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned slightly. He recognized the man instantly. The last time they'd met Holliday had elbowed him in the throat hard enough to crush his windpipe.

He tried to keep his expression neutral and carefully turned his face away. The man kept on coming down the stairs, then turned and went into the museum. Five minutes later the trio was back out in the cold again, heading down the steep path to the parking lot.

"Well, that was a bust," said Peggy.

"I thought it was quite educational myself," said Brennan. Peggy shot him a look to make sure she wasn't being mocked.

"I found out exactly what I needed to know," said Holliday, dropping his little bombshell.

"Which would be?" Brennan said.

"As we were going out in the main hall, did you see the man coming down the stairs?"

"Big man. Jowls, distinguished-looking. Gray tips at the temples. Maybe seventy or so," answered Peggy.

"That's the one." Holliday nodded.

"And who would he be to us?" Brennan asked.

"His name is Angus Scott Matoon," explained Holliday. "He's one of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. He's also Rex Deus. He was at that meeting where I was supposed to play pet archaeologist. I hit him pretty hard when I made my unceremonious exit from Sinclair House."

"Did he see you?" Brennan asked.

"I don't think so," said Holliday, shaking his head. "And if he did, he didn't recognize me."

"You'd better hope not," said Brennan. Holliday got behind the wheel.

"Where to now?" the priest asked.

"France," answered Holliday. "Thonon-les-Bains."

Kate Sinclair sat in the baronial hall that passed as a living room in the castle's private apartments, drinking coffee and staring out through the three churchlike arched windows at the panorama of the Alps, rising only a few miles distant to the north. Pacing up and down across the giant Tabriz carpet that covered the cold stone floor, General Angus Scott Matoon sipped from a snifter of Dudognon Heritage Cognac and scowled as though the expensive brandy had gone sour. He looked somehow diminished out of uniform, thought Sinclair.

"Did he see you?" the brittle woman asked.

"I saw him, so I'm assuming he saw me," answered Matoon.

"Excellent," said the elderly woman.

"You're sure that leaking Crusader is a good idea? Holliday was only a lieutenant colonel but he's got some very heavy connections in the intelligence business. He could be big trouble."

"For God's sake, get some spine! You're one of the Joint Chiefs! We're far too wealthy to have big trouble. We simply have problems we have to surmount," said Sinclair. She let out a smoker's coughing laugh and lit another cigarette. "Quit worrying about Holliday. It'll be taken care of." She paused for a moment. "When they left, which way were they going?"

"North," answered the general. "I had Jean-Pierre follow him for a while like you asked. He says they turned west, heading for the border on the coast road."

"France," murmured Sinclair. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, then let the smoke dribble out through her aristocratic nostrils. "They're going to Thonon-les-Bains."

"What's there?" Matoon asked.

"Bad news for the colonel and his friends, I'm afraid."