The Templar Throne

27

Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican secretary of state, sat beside the large pool at his villa just beyond the north end of the Rome Ring Road. He was wrapped in a thick white terry-cloth robe with the crossed keys and double-headed phoenix of his family coat of arms. It was one of the odd twists of fate that fascinated Spada.

The present Pope was the son of a Bavarian village policeman, while Spada was descended directly from the Borgias. Yet the policeman's son and onetime member of the Hitler Youth was the Pope, and Spada was only the Pontiff's second in command. Oh, well; true power often rested behind the throne, even if it was the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of St. Peter.

Spada wrapped the robe more tightly around his shrunken chest. He still loved to swim each day, but even though the afternoon was warm he felt a chill. Another sign that he was getting on in years, the first being that his oldest friends were beginning to die around him.

He wondered if he would go to hell for his transgressions when he died. Established Catholic doctrine said that if he made a final confession and was given extreme unction he would go to heaven but he wasn't sure he believed in either heaven or hell. Sometimes the old man hoped that death would be more straightforward, a simple end to consciousness and then the everlasting dark.

For Cardinal Spada, Catholicism was far more political than it was spiritual. A true Catholic of the Holy Cross should, almost by definition, have no more personal ambition than to be a humble parish priest. Spada smiled at that.

As a trained lawyer his first appointment to the Holy See had been as an assistant to Cardinal Pietro Ciriaci, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the interpretive body for canon law. That had been the beginning, and he'd never looked back and never once regretted his long, sometimes vicious rise to the Red Hat and a seat in the College of Cardinals.

Father Thomas Brennan, head of Sodalitium Pianum, the Vatican Secret Service, came out through the open French doors of the villa and walked across the patio to where Spada was resting after his brief swim. It was early afternoon and the bright sun had turned the breeze-ruffled surface of the azure pool into a field of sparkling diamonds.

The pool area was absolutely secure, swept for electronic devices every day by Brennan's people and surrounded by a tall hedge on three sides; the villa itself was protected by a high, spiked stone wall, security cameras, and armed members of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican police.

As usual the pallbearer figure of the Irish priest was slightly hunched, as though the burdens of the world rested on his sloping shoulders like some cosmic coffin, and as usual he was smoking, a trail of cigarette ash sprinkled over the lapels of his cheap black suit. He sat down at Spada's glass-topped, wrought iron patio table.

A servant appeared with a tray, a heavy ceramic ashtray and two tall glasses. One was a raspberry-colored negroni and the other was a rusty- looking Long Island iced tea. The servant placed the Long Island iced tea and the ashtray in front of Brennan and the negroni in front of the cardinal. The servant bowed slightly to the cardinal and then withdrew. The two men at the table sat silently for a moment, watching the chips of light dancing randomly across the swimming pool. Finally, with a certain regret in his voice, the cardinal spoke.

"Have you discovered anything new?"

"After escaping from the lake property they took a train to Halifax, Nova Scotia."

"A train?" Spada asked, surprised.

"Quite smart, really," replied Brennan. The priest took a long swallow of his drink. "No airport security, no identification required to purchase tickets, no railway police to speak of, not on the trains at any rate."

"Are they still there?"

"They met with a man named Gallant."

"Who is he?" Spada asked.

"A fisherman. A lobster catcher, to be specific."

"A fisherman?"

"This man Gallant has a somewhat dubious reputation," said Brennan. He butted his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. "He is rumored to smuggle things between Maine and Nova Scotia: cigarettes, cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals and the like. Now he's vanished along with his boat. So have Holliday and the woman."

"Could he be smuggling them into the United States?"

"It's a possibility. The normal crossings have become much more difficult to breach with everyone needing passports on both sides of the border."

"But why now?" Spada asked. "To give up their quest at this stage doesn't seem logical."

"Perhaps they were frightened off by the attack at the lake property," suggested Brennan.

Spada sipped his mouth-puckering drink and shook his head. "There is the fundamental problem of why they went to Canada in the first place," said the cardinal. "And why this Braintree?"

"Braintree was a colleague of Holliday's uncle. He's helped Holliday before."

"Ah, yes," Spada said and nodded. "The infamous Henry Granger, spy, Nazi killer, academician and the last of the Templars all in one."

Brennan's thin lips twisted into a grimace. He spoke darkly. "Not the last Templar, we know that much at least, thanks to the efforts of his nephew, Lieutenant Colonel Holliday."

The expression on Brennan's face was enough to draw a smile from Cardinal Spada, something that rarely occurred these days.

"Stare calme, Tomasso, stare calme. Holliday bested you, so accept it. You'll have your chance at retribution, I assure you." The cardinal thought for a moment, then spoke again. "Do you think Holliday has the slightest idea of what he's involved with, its scope?"

"I doubt it," replied Brennan. "He may well believe that he's dragged the woman into his troubles rather than the other way around."

"They have come under fire on six separate occasions since joining forces. The man who followed them in Prague, the Peseks in Venice, St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, the attempted kidnapping on Iona, and finally the attack in Canada. Surely he's not so naive that he'd think we were responsible for all of that?"

"He's run into the Peseks before, that unfortunate series of events in Libya last year, if you'll recall."

"Vividly."

Brennan lit another cigarette. "So he puts the Peseks at our doorstep and perhaps that CIA hireling in Prague. He'd almost certainly assume that the police intervention in Cornwall was concocted by the Company as well; they're the only people who could orchestrate a thing like that so quickly."

"And the rest?"

"He knows the failed kidnapping was by the Blackhawk people. Like an idiot the man he disposed of was carrying identification. The police questioned the man he wounded, so undoubtedly MI- 5 and hence the CIA know of their involvement."

"Would he know about Rex Deus's involvement with them?"

Brennan shook his head. "Blackhawk is small, nothing near the size and profile of groups like Halliburton or Blackwater."

"Sadly, of course, we do know of them," murmured the cardinal. "All too well, in fact."

"You shouldn't have allowed the bank to do it," said Brennan. "If you'll recall, I advised you of that at the time, Your Eminence."

"There was nothing that I could do about it," explained Spada. "RhineHydraulik and Aquadyn were both European companies and heavily invested in us. There was no way that the IOR could know that there would be a hostile takeover and consolidation of both of them by Sinclair's company."

"The Vatican Bank should know," replied Brennan harshly.

"Did you?" Spada snapped. "The Istituto relies on you for such intelligence."

"No," said Brennan. "But I knew that RhineHydraulik was weak and Aquadyn was vulnerable. Again, I told you that at the time, just as I told Bertone at the bank." The Irishman shook his head sadly.

"Now a fundamentalist Christian organization that has a private army of its own is a business partner of the Holy See. If we withdrew our interest in Rhine-Aqua in this market we'd lose billions. If Rex Deus sold their interest there would be a run on the stock and we'd lose billions again. If they want to, Rex Deus can put the entire Catholic Church into a vise."

"I am aware of all of this," answered Spada. "Which is precisely why we need some leverage with them. They must be controlled or dealt with some other way."

Brennan looked mildly amused at the cardinal using such strong language.

"You'll have to be clearer than that," said the priest. "It's not as though I've got too many Antonin Peseks out there. I can't order up assassinations like a meal in a restaurant."

"Forget that for the moment," said the cardinal, abruptly changing the subject. "We were talking about Holliday. What about the Canadian incident?"

Brennan shrugged. "At this point it is still unclear. The group that abducted Holliday and the woman has not been identified, although it is likely that their attackers at the lakefront property were Blackhawk." Brennan drained the last of his drink and began crunching ice cubes between his teeth.

"We're missing something," said the cardinal. "This is too great a concentration of force from too many directions to be about a semi- mythical religious relic." The old man frowned, his thin lips drawn down, his eyes cold and thoughtful.

A sudden gust of wind shook the branches of the hedge around the pool. As a child Spada was sure that sound was the voices of the dead whispering and heralding disaster. He shivered, shrinking into the heavy robe. Maybe he still believed it. "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten."

"Begging your pardon, Eminence?" Brennan said, confused.

"A verse from the Holy Scripture, Father Brennan. James, chapter five to be precise."

"I'm not sure I take your meaning."

"This whole thing is about money. I can smell it." The cardinal thought for a moment, his head bowed, almost as though he was at prayer, something he hadn't done in a very long time. "A year or so ago you heard a rumor making the rounds in Washington about something called Ironstone. Sinclair's name was involved. Did you ever discover anything else about it?"

"A little, and it wasn't about money. As far as I know it was the code name for some kind of military response to the threat of a major act of terrorism on American soil."

"Nothing that would affect us, though."

"Not directly, no," said Brennan.

A young priest appeared in the doorway into the villa. He stood hesitantly for a moment and then came forward to where Spada and Brennan were sitting. One of Brennan's boys, certainly, if his dark good looks were anything to go by. He stopped and bowed to Spada and then turned to Brennan.

"Is ea anois, an bhfeadaim cunamh leat, Michael?" Brennan asked. Spada smiled for the second time since Brennan had arrived. The Irishman was speaking Gaelic, a requirement for all his couriers. A nice touch for keeping secrets, even from a cardinal, like the Navaho Windtalkers used by the U.S. Marines during World War Two. The young man responded, speaking rapidly. Spada couldn't understand a word. The message was brief. When the young man was done he bowed respectfully to Spada and then departed.

"What was that all about?" Cardinal Spada said as the young man disappeared into the darkness of the villa beyond the French doors. "Or am I allowed to ask?"

"The situation regarding Holliday has changed direction. His cousin Peggy and her husband have vanished into thin air."