It was a beautiful morning as Cardinal Conti walked to the medieval tower that housed the Institute for the Works of Religion, the Vatican Bank. Every quarter the five men who served on the Supervisory Commission of Cardinals gathered from around the world to review the bank’s activities and results.
Conti had been elected President of the Commission two years previously with the overt blessing of Pope Benedict. The bank’s meetings were held behind closed doors and no minutes were recorded. Cellphones were not allowed in the room. The five members therefore were free to discuss anything they wished; what happened in the bank’s conference room was revealed to the outside world only if all of those men determined it would be so.
Cardinal Conti presided over today’s meeting, hastily pushing agenda items through the process and frequently gazing out the ancient tower windows as mundane fact-filled reports were presented. His lack of attention wasn’t lost on the others. The Archbishop of Santiago sat next to Conti – he leaned over at one point and whispered, “Dominic, are you all right? You seem preoccupied.”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. I just have a lot going on right now. You can’t imagine how busy things are.”
The Archbishop truly couldn’t imagine. He had no desire to work in Vatican City. There were many, many men here whose political ambitions were as strong as their godly ones. He loved being in Chile, a vast ocean and a continent away from the politics and intrigue that festered in any seat of government, including the holiest one on earth. Put the Church and the State together in one place, the Archbishop thought with a smile, and you get nothing but problems.
Cardinal Conti forced his mind back on the issues at hand as the presentations droned on. Everything on today’s agenda was totally routine – if he hadn’t been President of the group he might have begged off and stayed with his exciting project. But he had to carry on for another hour or so.
His mind drifted again to the Templars manuscript. He felt both excitement and dread at the prospect of tackling the symbols. He hoped to find information so secret, so important that it was painstakingly encoded for protection. At the same time he feared he would find nothing but another page of Bible verses. If the latter happened he’d have to figure out why someone went to that effort. There had to be more than there appeared.
“Ahem. Eminence, may we proceed?”
Dominic was jolted back to the reality of the bank meeting from his reverie. The Vatican Secretary of State and the other men around the table looked expectantly at him.
“Ah, my apologies, gentlemen.” He glanced at the agenda in front of him and had no idea whose report had just concluded. “Let’s see. Who’s next?” He smiled as one of his colleagues gave him a quizzical glance and began the next discussion.
Mercifully the meeting ended around noon, Conti having kept his mind on the subjects at hand for the remainder of the session. He avoided the usual small talk and conversation that followed each meeting – these men only saw each other quarterly and all had become good friends. There was always a period of catching up, usually including lunch, but today Dominic Conti excused himself and hurried back to his office.
Ensuring he had nothing on his agenda for the afternoon and all calls were held, Dominic poured himself a glass of wine from a small refrigerator in an adjoining pantry, took it, a piece of cheese and a slice of crusty bread to the table. He sat and began to decipher.
As before, the process was painstakingly slow. The symbols were so tiny his eyes ached. After about an hour he had several lines printed out in the ancient French language. He stopped, poured another glass of wine and walked around his office a few times to loosen his aching shoulders and legs. Then he sat down to read what he had decoded.
O Lord, hear our prayer. By the grace of God our Father and his Son Jesus the Christ our Lord we have been appointed defenders and guardians of the faith. Let our words and deeds be pleasing to Him and through His holy guidance may we steadfastly continue our mission, guarding the secret with which we have been entrusted for these three hundred sixty-seven years.
Conti stopped and reread the words in front of him. A prayer. But what does it mean? What secret have the Templars guarded for 367 years? The date of the last diary entry was 1496. Three hundred and sixty-seven years previously would be the year 1129.
As head of the Knights Templars today, Conti was familiar with the historical significance of that time period. Led by Hugues de Payens, the original Knights Templars were officially endorsed by the Catholic Church at the Council of Troyes in 1128. Thus began two centuries of religious and martial fervor, the meteoric rise of the soldiers of the order and its deadly eradication in the early 1300s.
In 1129 the original Templars would have been immensely popular among the population, revered as soldiers of the cross, defenders of the faith and guardians of the church. And if the prayer he just translated were true, these crusading Christian soldiers were entrusted with a secret in that year. Those early Templars had been completely wiped out in 1310, their members burned to death. But as Dominic Conti knew well, that wasn’t the end of the Knights Templars. Successors arose, in secret at first. These were dangerous times but men bravely continued the work. The Templars secrets were passed to them. According to legend they knew where vast treasure was hidden, spoils of the Templars’ activities. That knowledge had gone missing over the centuries but the rumors of unimaginable riches persisted.
Of course this wasn’t the group also called Knights Templars who ultimately became a subset of the Masonic organization. These Templars were part of the Church just as the original ones had been. And that continued today.
What had they been entrusted with? What had they guarded for three and a half centuries? Hopefully the rest of the coded symbols would provide the answer.
The phone on the desk across the room rang, startling Cardinal Conti. He had explicitly instructed his secretary that no calls were to be put through. Angrily he strode across the expansive office, punched a button on his phone and curtly said to his assistant, “This better be important.”
“The secretary to His Holiness is on the line, sir. I’m so sorry to disturb you. I told him you were in conference and he insisted on being put through immediately.”
Wonder what this is all about? Dominic punched a flashing button on his phone and said, “Good afternoon. This is Dominic Conti.”
“Good afternoon, Eminence. My apologies for disturbing you but His Holiness asks that you meet with him today at four pm. Is that time acceptable?”
Is that time acceptable? How ridiculous, Conti thought. There’s not a person in Vatican City who wouldn’t drop anything when the Pope asked for a meeting.
“Of course. I’ll be there. May I ask what is the subject of our meeting?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t told, Eminence. We’ll see you at four.”
There was a time, Dominic thought, when things were different. When Benedict was Pope the call would have come directly from him, not an assistant. He and the retired pontiff had had a close working relationship, one of mutual respect. Not so with the new one. Although he was widely respected and admired, he was also just that – new. No one knew exactly what to expect, and he didn’t yet have an infrastructure of colleagues. That would come in time but at this early stage he was an enigma. Dominic Conti could speculate forever on the purpose of his summons to the papal office but he had no idea what the meeting would be about. And he was slightly miffed that his decoding project would have to wait for another day. He had just over an hour to wrap things up, walk to the Pope’s office and be on time for the meeting.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cardinal Conti felt uneasy standing at the same office doors he had surreptitiously entered just a few nights ago. Since the Pope was in his office today, two Swiss Guards stood at attention outside the office, a marked difference from the solitary guard who had lounged in a chair the other night.
The papal secretary opened the door and gestured Conti inside, closing it
behind him. The pontiff sat behind the desk where Dominic had gone through drawers and stolen the photocopy that decrypted the Templars manuscript. Suddenly he became aware of another person in the room. He glanced to his left and saw a man sitting in a chair.
The Pope came around his desk and presented his ring to the Cardinal, who knelt and kissed it. The Pope said, “Cardinal Conti, do you know Frederico Messina?” He gestured to the man sitting in the chair, who rose and extended his hand.
A wave of fear caused Dominic Conti to shudder involuntarily. He had never seen Messina although the name was immediately familiar to him and to everyone else in Vatican City. Frederico Messina was head of the Directorate of Security and Civil Protection Services. More directly to the point, he was commandant of the Gendarmerie Corps. This was the police and security organization of the tiny country of Vatican City. Unlike the Swiss Guard, who provides personal security for the Pope and his offices, the Gendarmerie Corps was the national police force, roughly equivalent to the FBI.
Conti forced himself to be calm. His mind raced – at first he thought this was about his breaking into the Pope’s office – somehow he had been caught on camera or otherwise compromised. But if that were the case the head of the Swiss Guard would have been here, not Frederico Messina. So this was about something else. But what?
The Pope introduced the two then said, “Please sit. May I arrange some coffee for you, Cardinal Conti?”
He declined. The pontiff sat behind the desk.
“A matter has come to my attention, Dominic, and I thought it best to get first-hand answers to a few questions Officer Messina has.”
“Of course, Holiness. Anything I can do to help…”
The Pope interrupted. “Officer Messina, please take over from here. I’ll interject when I feel it necessary.”
Dominic Conti could feel drops of sweat beading up on his neck and in his armpits. Where was this headed?
Within a matter of seconds he knew the answer.
“Eminence,” the policeman began, “does the name Giovanni Moretti ring a bell with you?”
Chapter Thirty
London
Brian spent the morning at the gallery, ate a quick lunch at his desk, wrapped up and took the tube to the Club. At three pm he walked into the library. A man dressed in khaki slacks and a sweater stood at the front desk, completing a short check-in form.
Jeffrey Montfort was helping the man. He looked up and said, “Good afternoon, Brian. Ready to tackle our project? I’ll be with you in a moment. Let me get this gentleman situated.”
Jeffrey seemed eager to get to work. He hummed as the man at the desk handed in his paperwork and requested a couple of books. He led the stranger to a carrel, held up a finger to Brian to indicate he’d be right back, and trotted off to the stacks. He returned in a couple of minutes with two books, handed them off to the new guest and returned to his desk and Brian.
“All yours!” He was effusive, Brian noticed. Working on a mystery was likely the most interesting thing that had happened in the Monument Club library in years. And Jeffrey Montfort was ready for some detective work.
“The easiest way to start will be to provide you with everything Lord Borland was working on that last few days before his death. I’ll print out a list of the items he had checked out that last week. He was here every day. As excited as he became there at the end I’m sure he was on to something. He’d come in every morning around ten, have a cup of tea with me then get started. He checked out several things each day and returned them every evening. That’s our policy, you know. Everything checked out gets returned the same day. That’s my job! Library policeman!”
Brian listened patiently to Jeffrey Montfort ramble. He craved conversation – that much was obvious. He was friendly and probably very intelligent, but his pasty skin and disheveled appearance revealed a man who got outdoors very little and cared nothing for how he looked.
Jeffrey Montfort went to work. “All right then,” the librarian said shortly, “here’s our printout. I’ll find all these things for you. Meanwhile let me stick you in a carrel – here, let’s just use the same one Arthur worked in for the last few months. Seems fitting, don’t you think?” The carrel was twenty feet away from the only other person in the library. That man had his head buried in a book, hard at work in his own cubicle.
The librarian scurried away, perusing his list as he stuck a pencil behind his ear. In his carrel Brian unpacked the case he had brought, putting pen, pencil, highlighter and paper on his desk.
“I haven’t sat in a carrel since college,” he thought, remembering the old days at Oklahoma University with his roommate Harry Harrison. Harry had followed his father’s political career, ultimately becoming Vice President of the United States, and then assuming the highest office when his predecessor went missing in Mexico. Brian had been instrumental in helping find the former President some time back.
The librarian returned with an armful of things – a couple of books, several three-ring binders filled with papers and a couple of magazines. But he looked puzzled.
“Find everything OK?” Brian asked.
“Not exactly. This is odd. Yes it is. This is odd.”
As Brian’s grandfather would have put it, the man was in a tizzy. He was upset about something; he kept looking at his printout, then the items he had in his arms, then back to the sheet. He shook his head. “I can’t explain how this could have happened.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Well, it appears our friend Lord Borland broke the rules. Or more accurately, we both did. It looks like that last day he forgot to turn in one of the things he checked out. And I’m an accomplice! I neglected to double-check what he returned. Instead, I must have simply marked off everything as back in its place.”
“So one of the items isn’t on the shelf?”
“Exactly. Lord Borland must have forgotten to turn it in.”
“Could he actually have handed it back, and you either misfiled it or someone else took it off the shelf where it belonged?”
Jeffrey Montfort became miffed. “I haven’t misfiled an item in ten years, Brian. Some people call me OCD. I prefer to call myself meticulous, careful even. I care deeply for each one of these sixty thousand documents. They’re my family, you might say. I treat each with respect and care. And I ensure our members do the same.”
This is a little creepy, Brian thought. This guy really needs a life.
“And no one took this item off the shelf. Before Lord Borland asked for it no one had requested it in the entire time I’ve been here. Twenty-one years next month.” Obviously distressed, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. He was sweating profusely. Brian was afraid he was going to have a heart attack.
“Let’s just think this through. What is the thing that’s missing?”
“It’s a two-inch three-ring binder, one of several copies of books that Marco Caboto’s heirs donated to the Club in 1930. I told you earlier that Arthur was very interested in the Knights Templars manuscripts, the ones Caboto turned over to the Vatican around 1875. The Club received copies of those manuscripts in 1930 along with the rest of Marco Caboto’s library. One day or another over the past few weeks Arthur Borland had checked out every Templars copy we had, but lately he began requesting unrelated things. This missing binder is one of those. I think he was looking at every copy of anything from the Caboto collection. Not original volumes, mind you. Just copies. I figure he was probably making sure none of them might accidentally be the copy of that last volume – the Templar manuscript that was stolen from your gallery. The name of the item that’s missing is ‘Journal des Pauperes Commilitones’. It’s a copy of an original which was dated 1699.”
The title meant nothing to Brian. “So Arthur had to have put this binder into his briefcase in order for it to be missing? Correct? Do you inspect the carrels before closing at night to ensure no one left anything out?”
Jeffrey Montfort puffed
up like a balloon. He was livid – Brian could see veins in his temples and his face was red. His voice rose slightly and was strangely high-pitched.
“Mister Sadler! I would think from what I’ve told you that you daren’t question my diligence in maintaining this roomful of my children, my books. Of course I check everything at night. I make sure every chair is pushed back beneath its carrel. I turn off every single light. There was nothing left behind. Nothing.”
Brian had unintentionally gone too far. “I apologize, Jeffrey. I’m just vocalizing every thought I can come up with, trying to conceptualize what could have happened. I met Arthur downstairs for lunch the day after his last visit here. If the briefcase he had then is the same as he carried here I don’t see how he could have put a two-inch binder in it. It wasn’t big enough to hold a binder that size.”
“He always carried the same brown case.”
“That’s the one. Do you have storage lockers here?”
“No. Well actually, yes. But no one’s used them in years.”
“Can we take a look at them?”
“Follow me.” Montfort led Brian to a closet near the entrance to the library. He opened the door; inside was a dusty room lined with shelves of cubbyholes, each one covered by a hinged wooden door. Each was perhaps a foot square and two feet deep. The librarian was right – they looked as though nobody had been in the room for ages.
“Look,” Brian said, pointing to the floor. There were shoe prints in the dust. They led into the room four feet to a wall of ancient wooden lockers, some doors open with hinges hanging askew. Others were closed and one had a small padlock on it. Brian pointed at the lock.
“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” Montfort said.
“It looks pretty new, at least a whole lot newer than the shelves in this room,” Brian replied. “Can I open it?”
“Absolutely you can. Whoever put that lock on did so without my permission. We need to see what’s in there.”
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