The Templar Cross

2

"Talk," said Holliday, busying himself by making a fresh pot of coffee. Rafi sat slumped at the kitchen table. His face looked pale and exhausted. He made a little groaning sound and sat a little straighter in his chair.

"You knew how it was between us," Rafi started tentatively. It was almost a question.

Holliday shrugged. "You were a couple," he said. "She went back to Jerusalem after we were in the Azores and she stayed there."

"That's right," Rafi said and nodded. "At first it was so she could take care of me after I got out of the hospital, but later…" He let it dangle.

"Later it turned into something else," said Holliday.

"Something like that," said Rafi.

Holliday found two mugs in the cupboard above the counter, then went to the refrigerator and brought out a container of cream. He kept his hands working, fetching spoons. He'd never felt comfortable talking about his own relationships, let alone anyone else's, particularly Peggy's. With Uncle Henry gone, he and his much younger cousin were orphans together. It was a special bond. Now this young archaeologist was in the mix.

"Did you have a fight or something?" Holliday asked, taking a stab in the dark. He took a handful of coffee beans and poured them into the little grinder on the counter. The machine whirred for a few seconds and the dark, rich aroma of the freshly ground beans filled the air.

"No," said Rafi, shaking his head. "No fight. Nothing like that. In fact we were talking about making things a little more… permanent."

"Marriage?" Holliday asked, surprised. Peggy was a self-described serial monogamist, a committed bachelorette, or spinster, or whatever the hell the politically correct term for it was these days. It seemed out of character.

"We were getting there," said Rafi bleakly.

"So what happened?"

"She got a call. Smithsonian magazine. They had an assignment for her. They knew she was in Jerusalem, so she seemed like the obvious choice."

"They wanted a photo story?" Holliday asked. He dumped the coarse ground coffee into the Bodum French press on the counter and poured in boiling water from the kettle. The cowboy coffee on the stove was for himself; the Bodum was for guests.

"A photo story and a written one as well. A journal of the dig. She liked the idea of writing; she'd been thinking about it for a while. This was a break for her, or that's what she thought," added Rafi bitterly.

"What dig?" Holliday asked.

"The Biblical Archaeology School of France in Jerusalem had underwritten an expedition into Egypt and Libya. One of their senior people, a man named Brother Charles-Etienne Brasseur, had stumbled onto a cache of old Templar texts while he was doing research in the Vatican Archives."

"The Vatican? The Roman Catholics had the order disbanded and the last grand master burned at the stake," said Holliday.

"The texts Brasseur discovered had been confiscated by King Philip's marshals during the dissolution," replied Rafi. "They came from an obscure abbey called La Couvertoirade in the Dordogne region of France."

Holliday pressed down the plunger in the Bodum and poured out two mugs. He brought them to the table and set one down on the table in front of his friend, then took a seat himself.

"What was in the texts that set this Dominican Brasseur off?" Holliday asked.

Rafi took a grateful sip from the mug. He was visibly unwinding, sitting straighter in his chair and looking more alert as the strong brew seeped into his system.

"The texts were written by a Cistercian monk named Roland de Hainaut. Hainaut was secretary to Guillaume de Sonnac, the grand master who led the Templars at the Siege of Damietta in 1249."

"Where's Damietta?" Holliday asked.

"The Nile Delta, east of Alexandria."

"Okay, I'm with you." Holliday nodded, visualizing a map of Egypt and the fan-shaped delta of the Nile not far from Cairo, which lay just below it.

"According to Hainaut he traveled to a Coptic monastery somewhere in the desert, and while he was at the monastery he heard rumors about the location of Imhotep's tomb. Imhotep was a polymath, sort of a Leonardo da Vinci of his era. Imhotep was the man who invented the pyramid and founded the art of Medicine."

"I know who Imhotep was," said Holliday. "Does this story have an ending or should I be thinking about fixing us dinner tonight?"

"Sorry," said Rafi. "It's complicated and I'm tired."

"Go on," said Holliday.

"Anyway, the Hainaut text gave fairly clear directions on how to get to the monastery but said nothing more about the tomb's location. The expedition was supposed to make a preliminary test dig at the monastery location. Finding the tomb would be an extraordinary coup all by itself, but this archaeologist, Brother Brasseur, has some kind of wild theory that Imhotep was the archetype for Noah and the biblical flood. In my opinion it's a little thin scientifically, but the press was eating it up and the expedition got financed."

"So what happened?" Holliday asked. He got up, brought the Bodum coffeemaker back to the table and divided what was left in the pot between them. Rafi continued.

"They set out from Jerusalem and rendezvoused in Alexandria, where the outfitters met them with their vehicles, supplies and hired help. Somewhere between El Alamein and Mersa Matruh they were kidnapped by a group called the Brotherhood."

"Who the hell is the Brotherhood?" Holliday asked sourly, an ugly sensation curling in his gut and putting bile in his throat.

"Their full name is the Brotherhood of the Temple of Isis. According to them they're the Muslim version of the Templars and they were around long before them. Supposedly they date back to the cult of Imhotep at Memphis on the Nile around 600 B.C. The Brotherhood worship Imhotep as the god Ptah. Ptah was the god of craftsmen and of reincarnation. He was immortal. In other words a carpenter who comes back to life and lives forever. The Christian parallels are obvious. The Brotherhood feels that the Christians, particularly the Roman Catholics, hijacked Imhotep as Jesus Christ. They also cite themselves as the direct descendants of both the Copts and the Assassins, or Hashasheen, a sect of drugged-out Shia Muslims and the original fedayeen-'freedom fighters' in their terminology."

"Terrorists," said Holliday.

"Lunatics," Rafi said and shrugged.

"Same thing. And these are the people who've got Peggy?"

"Yes."

"How long ago did this happen?" Holliday asked.

"What's today?"

"The twenty-sixth. Monday."

"Thursday, then. Four days ago." Rafi ran his fingers through his wiry hair and yawned.

"What are their demands?" Holliday asked.

"They haven't made any," said Rafi. "At least they hadn't when I left from Ben Gurion yesterday."

"That's not good," said Holliday.

"No," said Rafi. "That's what my friends in the Mossad said." He gave another jaw-cracking yawn.

"When was the last time you slept?" Holliday asked.

"On the plane. What I need is something to eat."

"Let's get you some breakfast, then." Holliday stood up. "You up for a walk?"

"After fourteen hours sitting in the cheap seats of an El-Al 777? Sure, I'm up for a walk. Where to?"

"Grant Hall. The cafeteria's open this early. You need kosher?"

"Right now I'd eat a bacon sandwich with a side order of more bacon," answered the archaeologist.

"Hang on," said Holliday. "I'm going to change and then we can get going. Bathroom's down the hall if you need it."

Rafi headed for the bathroom and Holliday went to his bedroom. Five minutes later he reappeared dressed in a worn, comfortable set of chocolate-cookie camouflage BDUs that dated back to the First Gulf War. Five minutes after that a freshly scrubbed Rafi reappeared and they left the house. The morning air was cool and pleasant as the sun rose over the trees. It was going to be a nice day. As Holliday locked up the cannon thundered on Trophy Point half a mile down Washington Road. He paused and snapped a quick salute as reveille sounded, the rat-a-tat bugle notes echoing across the entire installation.

"Another 'R' Day begins," said Holliday, joining Rafi on the walk. "God help us all."

"What's 'R' Day?" Rafi asked.

"The arrival of the freshman recruits. Twelve hundred kids with their moms and dads and their kid brothers and their sisters, maybe a girlfriend or boyfriend, sometimes even the next-door neighbors. The whole place turns into a circus."

"At six thirty in the morning?"

"The Army likes to get an early start on its insanity," Holliday said with a grin. "If we're lucky we'll escape most of it."

They walked down Professor's Row. A lot of the houses had that locked-down deserted look. Most of the officers and civilians who taught academic courses at West Point had already left on vacation or were on summer courses of their own somewhere else.

The two men reached the junction of Professor's Row and Jefferson Road, then turned west, passing Quarters 100 and the Thayer Monument. In front of them the gray bulk of Washington Hall loomed with the Washington on horseback statue in front of the giant twin-armed building and the Cadet Chapel rising on the hill behind. Doorways were leaking new recruits now, most of them wearing the black and white gym strip that would be their slightly demeaning costume until they were given their uniforms later in the process. Here and there Holliday could see uniformed, red-sashed second-year cadets herding the bewildered-looking new recruits into some kind of order.

"They look like they're in hell." Rafi grinned, watching the frightened young men and women as they tried to keep their expressions blank.

"That's the idea," said Holliday. "Alienation and separation from the past. Shock treatment; like cutting the umbilical."

"Better them than me," said the Israeli.

"You got that right," agreed Holliday.

They stepped onto the broad concrete mall in front of Washington Hall, threading their way through pods of new recruits that darted nervously like small schools of fish, moving this way and that. On the wide expanse of the Plain to the left parents and friends were beginning to congregate like witnesses to an execution.

As they passed in front of the Washington statue, a cadet got up from where he had been sitting and stepped forward. He was in full uniform, complete with the six gold chevrons of a Cadet Regimental Commander and an ugly pair of BCGs-Birth Control Glasses, named that because you weren't going to get any while wearing them. He looked older than the average firstie and he had a dark stain of five o'clock shadow on his cheeks and jaw. There was a West Point ring on the second finger of his left hand. The right hand was digging into the pocket of his uniform trousers. The young man was smiling sheepishly.

" 'Scuse me, sir, but I seem to have lost my…"

Holliday reacted almost without thinking. He shoved Rafi hard, sending him sprawling. At the same time Holliday lashed out, punching the cadet in the face as hard as he could, feeling cartilage crack under the impact. He grabbed for the young man's right wrist as it came out of the trouser pocket, then put his heel behind the cadet's forward-stepping left ankle, simultaneously twisting the right hand back on itself, the wrist snapping like a twig.

The cadet screamed and fell with Holliday still gripping the wrist. Rafi struggled to his feet as a small crowd began to gather on the pavement around them. Out of the corner of his eye Holliday saw several red-sashed cadets running toward them. The man on the ground struggled briefly, then fell still. He stared darkly up at Holliday, his jaw working as though he was grinding his teeth.

"Who the hell are you?" Holliday barked. "I know you're not a cadet."

The man on the ground began to shudder, his heels rattling on the pavement. His eyes rolled back in his head until only the whites showed and a foamy froth slipped out from between his lips.

"Dear God," whispered Rafi, staring down at him. "He's dying."

Holliday nodded to a black carbon-steel object on the ground beside the man in the cadet uniform.

"And that's a military-grade switchblade," said Holliday. "He was trying to kill me. He's an assassin."