The Templar Throne

29

"Pick up the ark," ordered Meg. Holliday did as she instructed, grabbing the lead box and lifting it with both hands. It weighed about forty pounds, too light to be lead sheet unless it was very thin or just a protective veneer over something else, probably wood. Not the heaviest load he'd ever carried but it was going to slow them down.

"We won't make it back to the boat with me carrying this," said Holliday, looking at Meg. Her red hair was flying wildly in the rising wind, her eyes squinting against the whirling sand. She picked up her pack and shrugged it over one arm. The pistol never wavered and she never looked away. She barely blinked.

The religious fervor was gone, replaced by something cold and hard. It was an entirely different creature than the pretty, defensive, red-haired nun he'd met at Mont Saint-Michel. This Sister Meg was capable of putting a bullet between his eyes without a second thought.

He was no shrink, but crazy seemed like a good enough diagnosis. Behind them the ocean roared and crashed as the gigantic rolling waves battered themselves to death on the broad beach, each one clawing itself a little higher up the sand.

"To hell with Gallant and his stupid boat," Meg answered. "We're setting our own timetable. Get moving." They began to walk back along the hardpan, then veered left at exactly the place where they first walked down to the edge of the lake. He could tell because he could see their boot prints in the broken crust of the sand. They followed their own footsteps to the base of the low, hill- like dunes and found the deep cut trail that had led them here. They began heading up the path.

The sense of the Stechkin aimed between Holliday's shoulder blades was almost physical, like a sudden flash of sunburn or an itch. If he remembered correctly the tough little automatic had a twenty-round magazine and a rate of fire that was somewhere around six hundred rounds a minute. That meant she could empty the pistol into his back in two seconds.

"Smart," said Holliday, speaking to the empty air in front of him. "Using lead. There's no real way of dating it and I'm sure whatever little things you've got tucked away are nice and authentic."

"Shut your mouth," snapped Meg.

"You're not going to shoot me," said Holliday, who wasn't quite sure he believed it. "If you were going to kill me you would have done it by now. For whatever reason you still need me." He paused. "By the way, who is your mother?"

"You never thought to ask me what my last name was, did you?" Meg said behind him.

"I didn't think nuns had last names," said Holliday.

"Nuns were ordinary people before they took their vows, and anyway, who said I was a nun?"

"Are you?"

"I was once, not anymore."

"So what's your last name?" asked Holliday.

"Sinclair. My mother's name is Katherine, if that makes things any clearer."

Holliday remembered a piece he'd read in Time magazine a few months ago, something about there being only a dozen female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Kate Sinclair had been number four in a list headed by Angela Braly at WellPoint, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Irene Rosenfeld at Kraft Foods. Kate Sinclair ran an amorphous multinational that had something to do with water.

"The water lady?"

"I doubt she'd take too kindly to that description," said Meg Sinclair. "Mother is the CEO and majority shareholder in the American Fluid Dynamics Corporation. A utilities provider. Her son, my brother, is Richard Pierce Sinclair."

"The senator?"

"That's him," said Meg. "The next president of the United States."

"In your dreams," said Holliday. "He's the junior senator from some backwoods state like Tennessee."

"Kentucky," she corrected. "But you'd be surprised what three years and a billion dollars can do for your image. Stop here."

Holliday stopped. They were at the summit of the dune. He looked down onto the narrower north beach and the sea beyond. The Deryldene D was invisible, more than a mile away up the beach. Behind him he heard movement. It sounded as though Meg was looking through her knapsack, maybe distracted. Somehow he doubted it, and it wasn't worth the risk of trying to find out.

He heard something vaguely familiar and then he remembered where he'd heard it before-it was the sound of someone breaking open the cylinder of a revolver, then snapping it back into place again. What was she doing? The Stechkin was basically a machine pistol; what did she need a revolver for?

There was a loud, explosive blast behind his back and then a white-hot hissing that sounded reminiscent of a roman candle going off on the Fourth of July.

Holliday looked up as a trail of white smoke arced up into the dark sky overhead, drifting and smudging in the wind. At the top of the arc it exploded into a bright red ball of light. Of course, thought Holliday, a signal flare. He wondered about Gallant. He'd see the flare, of course, and wonder what it was all about, but he doubted that the lobsterman would do anything about it.

"Move," ordered Meg. Once again Holliday did as he was told and began moving down the sloping face of the dune.

"What was that all about?"

"You'll see," said Meg.

Holliday's arms were beginning to ache from the weight of the ark. He glanced down at the lead veneer of the box and its inscription. By this you shall conquer. Maybe he could fake a fall, go head over heels and drop the box on his way down and make a run for it. Suddenly, from overhead he heard a faint droning sound, the familiar whine of a prop plane, and a fairly large one at that.

"That your ride?" Holliday asked without turning around. He gripped the box more tightly. If there was going to be a chance of getting out of this it would be now. He tensed, trying to judge the exact moment.

"Shut up," Meg said, her voice flat and unemotional. Overhead the buzzing grew louder and suddenly he could see the plane. It was some kind of high-winged utility aircraft like the Defender, the one used by the British military. It was obviously about to use the beach as a runway. "And don't think about making a break for it," continued Meg. "Your body English is betraying you. All that tension in the shoulders and turtleing your neck down like you are."

"I don't think you've got it in you," said Holliday, knowing that his moment had gone. "Maybe you think you're some kind of hard case, but I don't think you're a cold-blooded killer."

"Who knows?" Meg Sinclair answered. "Try me and see."

Off to the left the aircraft was in its final approach, its tail wagging back and forth with the force of the gusting wind. Holliday and Meg reached the bottom of the dune and stepped out onto the beach. Meg Sinclair stayed behind Holliday, giving him no chance to move on her. Carrying the lead-covered box was almost as good as being handcuffed.

The first fat drops of rain were hitting the sand. The drops were large enough to dig their own little craters when they hit. Gallant was going to have a hell of a time, his only advantage being that he would be running before the wind.

"How did the plane know when to pick you up?" Holliday asked.

"Satellite phone, an Ericsson R-290," answered Meg. "They've been flying in circles for an hour, waiting for my signal."

"A satellite phone? Where on earth did you pick up one of those?"

"Think about it," said Meg. Holliday could tell that she was grinning from ear to ear. "It'll come to you."

Holliday thought and then he had it. It was the only answer.

"Quince," he said finally. "He was one of yours." He cursed silently. He should have put it together long ago.

"Got it in one, Professor," Meg said and laughed, obviously greatly pleased with herself. "The whole abduction was just to make sure you were still off balance and not questioning things too much. Besides, I had to update Mother and her friends. Quince gave me the weapon and the phone while you were still knocked out." There was a pause. "We weren't prepared for an assault at the lake, however. That wasn't part of the plan at all." The twin-engined turboprop touched down, its sticklike three-wheeled undercarriage and fat tires barely making an impression in the sand. The livery was stark black and white and the name on the side was Skybus Air Express.

"One of Mommy's companies?" Holliday guessed.

"Move," said the young Sinclair woman.

"Why don't I just put the ark down and walk away?" Holliday suggested. "No harm, no foul. You've got what you want."

"Not yet," answered Meg. "We need you to authenticate the find."

"What makes you think I'll do that for you?"

"You have an incentive," said Meg Sinclair.

"What incentive would that be?" Holliday asked.

"Your so-called niece Peggy Blackstock and her archaeologist husband."

"What about them?" Holliday asked, his heart beginning to race. He turned around to face Meg Sinclair, sour bile rising in his throat. Sinclair's face was blank and the gun was still unwavering in her hand. "Tell me what you've done," said Holliday.

"How touching, such family concern." She paused. "Oh, of course! Peggy's pregnant, isn't she?"

"Tell me!"

"At noon today, local Israeli time, Peggy and her husband were kidnapped. For the moment they are safe and unharmed. How long that condition lasts is entirely in your hands."

Holliday froze. "So help me God…"

"God can't help you," said Meg Sinclair. "But I can. Cooperate and they'll stay alive. One wrong move and they'll be dead. All three of them. Now move."

Holliday stared at her. Never in his entire life had he experienced the utter fury and rage rising in his soul, not even in the heat of battle, not even when he'd felt the meaty slip-slide of his knife sliding across the exposed throat of a picket guard on the edge of an opium plantation outside of Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

"If you harm them in any way, when this is over I will hunt you down wherever you are and I'll see you dead and in the ground, you psychotic bitch."

"You'd kill a woman?" Meg Sinclair asked, batting her eyes and smiling. "I wouldn't have thought your chivalrous code would allow it."

"In your case I'll make an exception."

"Fine," said Meg Sinclair. "You've had your moment of heroic male posturing, but right now I want you to walk down the beach and get on that plane." The rain began to fall harder. Holliday gave himself another second to burn her face into his mind and then turned away and did as he was told.

Five minutes later, turning into the wind, the plane rose into the air in a hard climb, then banked and headed south. As they turned, Holliday caught a glimpse of the Deryldene D putting out to sea, wake churning hard behind her as she backed away from the beach. He glanced at his watch. The time on the bezel had run out and true to his word Gallant had waited to the last minute. Holliday silently wished him Godspeed, watching the little lobster boat for as long as he could before it vanished into the sheeting rain.