The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud

by Julia Navarro

  In his ears still echoed the deep voice of Jacques de Molay calling down God’s judgment on Philippe le Beau and Pope Clement. He had not the slightest doubt that God would have His revenge for the murder of His faithful servants by the king of France and the pope, that He would not let this abominable crime go unpunished.

  They had taken Jacques de Molay’s life from him but not his dignity, for there had never been a man as brave and upright in the last moments of his life.

  He paid what the boatman asked to ferry him across the river, and once on the Portuguese side he rode quickly to the chapter house that had been his home for the last three years, since he had returned from his battles in Egypt and the defense of Cyprus.

  Master José Sa Beiro received João de Tomar immediately. He asked him to be seated and offered him cool water to relieve the thirst of the road. The superior then sat with the knight to listen to the news he had brought from Paris.

  For two hours de Tomar gave a vivid account of the last days of the Temple and especially of March 19, that black day on which Jacques de Molay and the last Templars were burned at the stake under the harsh gaze of the commoners and court in Paris. Appalled and horrified by the account, the master had to call upon all the dignity of his position in order to not let his emotion spill over.

  Philippe le Beau had sentenced the Temple, if not its knights, to death, and for the next weeks all across Europe the pope’s command to suppress the order was relentlessly carried out. The knights were to be tried in ecclesiastical courts in every Christian nation. In some kingdoms they would be absolved, while in others the pope’s orders would be interpreted to allow the knights to join other religious orders.

  José Sa Beiro knew that King Dinis bore no ill will against the Temple and in fact had good intentions toward it, but would the king of Portugal be able to oppose the dictates of the pope? He needed to know, and to find out he would send a knight who might speak to the king on his behalf and so clarify his position.

  “I know you are weary, but I must ask you to take on a new mission,” he said to de Tomar. “You must go to Lisbon and take a letter to the king. You will tell him all you have seen, leaving out no detail. And you shall await his reply. I will prepare the letter now; meanwhile, go and rest. If possible, you will leave tomorrow.”

  The sun had not yet risen when João de Tomar was called again into the presence of the superior.

  Sa Beiro handed him the letter and clasped his shoulder. “To Lisbon now, João. May God be with you.”

  Lisbon was lovely in the first light of dawn. De Tomar had been traveling for several days, for he had had to stop awhile for his horse’s hoof to recover from a bruise from a stone on the road. The noble steed was his most trusted and loyal friend, and it had saved his life in more than one battle. He himself put a plaster on the hoof and waited for two days while it healed. He would not exchange the horse for another for anything in the world, even at the risk of being reprimanded by his superior for delay.

  With King Dinis, Portugal had become a prosperous nation. His genius had given the country a university, and he was overseeing a profound reformation of agriculture, so that for the first time there was an abundance of wheat and olive oil, and good wine to export.

  The king took no more than two days to receive João de Tomar, and after presenting Dinis with the letter from José Sa Beiro, the Portuguese Templar once more related what he had lived through in Paris.

  The king assured the knight that he would reply soon, that he had already had news of the pope’s intentions to dissolve the order.

  De Tomar knew of the king’s good relations with the clergy, with which he had signed an accord a few years earlier. Would he dare stand up to the pope?

  It was another three days before the Templar was called once more into the presence of the king. Dinis had made a decision that was wise, even Solomonic. He would not seek a confrontation with the pope, but he would also not persecute the order. Dinis of Portugal had decided that a new order would be formed, the Order of Christ, and that all the Templars would become members, with their same laws and rules, the only exception being that the new order would be under the power of the king, not the pope.

  In this way the prudent king ensured that the Templar riches would remain in Portugal, not pass into the hands of the Church or other orders. He would be able to count on the Templars’ gratitude, aid, and, above all, gold, to carry out his plans for his kingdom.

  The king’s decision was firm, and he would so inform the superiors of all the chapter houses. From that time forward, the Temple in Portugal would be under royal jurisdiction.

  When Master José Sa Beiro learned of the king’s order, he realized that although the Templars would not be persecuted, hunted down, or burned at the stake as they had been in France, from that moment on, their possessions would be at the disposal of the king. Thus, he had to make a decision of his own, for it was possible that Lisbon might ask him for an inventory of the possessions held in each chapter house.

  Castro Marim, therefore, was no longer a safe place to keep the Temple’s greatest treasure, and José Sa Beiro determined that he must make arrangements to send it to a place where the hands of neither pope nor king could reach it.

  THE ODOR OF INCENSE FILLED THE CHURCH.

  The Mass had ended just moments earlier. A dark-haired priest, tall and powerfully built, walked quickly toward the confessional farthest from the altar, set in an alcove far from curious eyes. The prayer book he carried looked small in his big-boned hands.

  No one knew that Addaio was in Milan, not even Guner. He was there unknown to anyone in the community, to put in motion his own plan to shadow Bakkalbasi’s operation to end Mendib’s life. The meeting had been set for seven; it was only half past six, but he preferred to be early. He had wandered the neighborhood in his clerical disguise for more than two hours, trying to determine whether he was being followed.

  The man he was waiting for was an assassin, a professional who worked alone and had never failed—at least so far.

  Addaio had learned about him through a man in Urfa, a member of the community who some years earlier had come to the pastor to ask forgiveness of his sins. The man had emigrated to Germany and then to the United States, but things hadn’t worked out for him, he said, and he had taken a dark road, becoming wealthy as a drug dealer, flooding the streets of Europe with heroin. He had sinned, sinned terribly, but he had never betrayed the community. He had returned to Urfa, the home of his youth, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, seeking expiation and offering to make a large donation to the community in order to help ensure its survival. The wealthy always think they can buy salvation.

  He begged to help with the community’s sacred mission, but Addaio rejected his aid. An impious man, even though he was a member of the community, could never be a part of that mission, although Addaio’s obligation as a pastor was to counsel him in the last days of his life. And in the course of those conversations-cum-confessions, the penitent had given Addaio contact information for a man he said the pastor should call if he ever needed someone to do a piece of difficult work.

  Now Addaio sat in the confessional, lost in thought, awaiting the arrival of the killer.

  “Mi benedica, padre, perché ho peccato.”

  The voice startled him. He hadn’t noticed that someone had entered the other side of the confessional and knelt as though to pray. After Addaio hurriedly muttered their prearranged greeting, the man continued. “You need to be more careful. You weren’t paying attention.”

  “That’s not your concern. But you can be sure it won’t happen again,” the pastor snapped, then paused. “I want you to kill a man,” he finally said.

  “That’s what I do. You bring a file on him?”

  “No, there are no files, no photos. You’ll have to find him for yourself.”

  “That’ll cost you more.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Addaio explained what the assassin was to do. Whe
n he had finished, the killer left the confessional and disappeared into the shadows of the church.

  Addaio made his way to one of the pews before the altar. There, covering his face with his hands, he broke into tears.

  Bakkalbasi sat on the edge of the couch awaiting the others. The house in Berlin was safe; the community had never used it.

  He had known these men since his childhood. Three of them were originally from Urfa, members of the community who worked in Germany. The other two, also members of the community, had come directly from Urfa via different routes. All of them were ready to give their lives if necessary, as their brothers and other relatives had done in the past.

  When they were assembled, Bakkalbasi explained what they were to do. They received their orders grimly, stricken with sorrow as they contemplated the murder of one of their own. But as Bakkalbasi talked on, it was clear that there was no other way to ensure the ongoing security of the community.

  Mendib’s great-uncle would be given the opportunity for which he had volunteered—the plan was a mortal wound with a knife—but the five men in the group were to make certain that Mendib died. They were to organize a team to follow the young brother from the moment he stepped outside the prison and to find out what they could about those who were almost definitely using him as a way to the community. Above all, they were not to take any risks or expose themselves to arrest.

  They would be aided by two members of the community in Turin. Each man was to travel immediately to the city by his own means, preferably by car. The absence of borders in the European Union would allow them to drive from one country to another without leaving any traces. Then they were to go to the Monumental Cemetery and find tomb 117. A small key hidden in a planter next to the mausoleum door would allow them inside the structure. Once inside, they were to find and trip a hidden lever that would open a door to a secret stairway under the sarcophagi; the stairs led to a tunnel, which led, in turn, to the cathedral—to the house in which Francesco Turgut lived. The community had used the tunnel for centuries and had taken measures to ensure that it remained unknown, unmarked on any map. No one would find them.

  They would shelter in a chamber in the tunnel until they accomplished their mission. The cemetery was relatively deserted, although a few curious tourists went there from time to time to see the baroque tombs. The guard was a member of the community—he was an old man, the son of an immigrant from Urfa and an Italian woman, and he was a Christian, as they were, and their best ally in this mission.

  Turgut and Ismet had prepared the underground room. If they were able, they were to bring Mendib’s body back to the tunnel, to be entombed within the wall for all eternity.

  WHEN ANA ARRIVED IN PARIS, SHE WENT DIRECTLY TO the editorial offices of Enigmas, which were located on the second floor of a nineteenth-century building.

  Paul Bisol was the exact opposite of Jean. Dressed nattily in a well-cut suit and stylish tie, he looked like an executive with a multinational corporation rather than a journalist. Jean had been as good as his word and had phoned him to enlist his help.

  Bisol listened patiently to Ana’s story. Not once did he interrupt her, which surprised her.

  “Do you know what you’re getting into?” he asked when she had finished.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mademoiselle Jiménez—”

  “Please, call me Ana.”

  “All right, then, Ana, first you should know that the Templars do still exist. But they are not just those elegant historians that you say you met in London, or other pleasant gentlemen in so-called ‘secret societies’ who style themselves the heirs of the spirit of the Temple. Before he died, Jacques de Molay made certain that the order would continue on. Many knights disappeared without a trace; they slipped into what we might call an underground existence. But all were in contact with the new center, the mother chapter, the Scottish Temple, which is where de Molay had decided that the true and legitimate center of the order would reside. The Templars learned to live out of sight, clandestinely; they infiltrated the courts of Europe, even the papal curia, and they have continued to live that way right down until today. They never ‘died out.’”

  Ana was shocked to feel a wave of mistrust and distaste. This man sounded more like one of the illuminati than a historian or serious journalist. She had been chasing around Europe in pursuit of her crazy theories, and she had become inured to the disdain of the “experts” who urged her not to let herself be carried away by fantasy. Now she found herself with someone who agreed with her, and she didn’t like it.

  Bisol picked up the telephone and spoke to his secretary, then asked Ana to follow him. He led her to a nearby office, where a woman with dark brown hair and immense green eyes was sitting behind a computer, typing. She smiled as they entered, and Paul introduced her as his wife, Elisabeth.

  “Sit down,” she invited Ana. “So you’re a friend of Jean’s?”

  “Well, actually we met just recently, but we hit it off, I guess, and he’s been a huge help to me.”

  “That’s Jean,” Paul said. “He’s like one of the three musketeers—all for one and one for all—though he’s not aware of it, I think. But he’s a great judge of character. Now, Ana, I want you to tell Elisabeth everything you’ve told me.”

  The situation began to make Ana nervous. Paul Bisol seemed to be a nice enough person, but there was something about him she didn’t like; Elisabeth, too, gave Ana an uneasy feeling, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. She just knew she felt like getting out of there as fast as she could. Her years as a reporter had given her a finely honed sense of the dubious and dangerous, and she felt herself sailing into uncharted waters with these two. But she shook off the feeling, at least for the moment, and launched again into her suspicions about the Holy Shroud.

  Elisabeth, too, listened without interruption, as her husband had done. When Ana finished, the couple looked at each other, obviously weighing wordlessly how to proceed. Finally Elisabeth broke the tense silence.

  “Well, Ana, in my opinion, you’re on the right track. We’ve never made this particular connection, but if you say that you’ve found links between the Templar de Charney and the shroud family in the Lirey archives, well, then…it seems clear that the two Geoffroys were somehow related. So the shroud really did belong to the Templars. I’m not surprised; that fits with indications we’ve found, too, coming at it from other directions. Why was it in the hands of Geoffroy de Charney? Off the top of my head I’d say that since Philippe le Beau wanted to grab the Temple treasure for himself, the Grand Master may have decided to send it to a safe place. It’s so logical—Jacques de Molay ordered Geoffroy de Charney to carry the shroud away to his own lands and secure it there, and years later it turned up in the hands of a relative, the other Geoffroy. There’s always been talk of a mysterious treasure associated with the Temple, and the shroud must have been that treasure—after all, they all took it to be authentic.”

  “But it isn’t,” Ana replied, playing the devil’s advocate. “And they would have known it wasn’t. The Holy Shroud dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, so…”

  “Yes, you’re right, but it may have been represented to the Templars as authentic in the Holy Land. Back then it was hard to determine whether a relic was authentic or a fake. What seems clear is that they believed it to be real when they sent it off to be safeguarded. You’re right about this, Ana, I’m sure of it. But you have to be careful; you don’t get near the Templars without risk. We have a good genealogist, one of the best, and he’ll help you find out if there are other leads out there. As for your current friend in the family, give me an hour or two and I should be able to tell you a bit more about him.”

  As Ana left Elisabeth’s office with Paul, she told him she’d be back that afternoon to meet with the genealogist. She’d see then what Elisabeth had found on the man she was sure had visited his family estates in Lirey not so very long ago—Padre Yves de Charny, the secretary to th
e cardinal of Turin.

  She wandered around Paris aimlessly, turning over in her mind everything she knew and had guessed. Around noon she sat in the window alcove of a bistro and had lunch, reading the Spanish newspapers she’d found at a kiosk on the street. It had been days since she’d had any news of what was happening in Spain or Italy. She hadn’t even called her newspaper, or Santiago, although she sensed that the Art Crimes investigation must be coming to its end. She was convinced that the Templars had had something to do with the shroud, that as popular suspicions through the centuries suggested, it had been they who had brought it back from Constantinople. She remembered the night in the Dorchester in London, when it had hit her as she looked through her appointment book that the handsome French priest in Turin, the cardinal’s secretary, was named de Charny. Until now she’d had no solid lead, just that it appeared that Padre Yves had visited Lirey several years ago—if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that it had been he. There just weren’t that many priests so strikingly handsome that everyone who mentioned them said how good-looking they were.

  It was possible that Padre Yves was related to the Templars, but was it a relation to the distant past, to long-dead knights, or to something happening now? To people—Templars—living now?

  But that would mean nothing, she told herself. She could just picture the handsome priest with his innocent smile telling her that, yes, his ancestors fought in the Crusades, and that indeed his family came from the region of Troyes. And what of it? What could that possibly prove? Nothing, it proved nothing. She certainly couldn’t picture him lighting fires in the cathedral. But her instinct told her that there was a thread that led somewhere—a thread leading from Geoffroy de Charney to Geoffroy de Charny that then wound in twists and circles for generations until it came to Padre Yves.