Treasure Templari

by David S. Brody

  “I’m hoping you can help me. A client of mine found a sword. He wants it dated.”

  “Where’d he find it?”

  “I don’t want to tell you because I’m afraid it might influence your findings.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Look, buddy, the science is the science.”

  Bruce was pleased with the response. He wanted someone who would stand behind his work. He handed over the sword, wrapped in burlap; he would need to bring the pottery to a different lab. “How does it work? The metallurgy tells you the date?” Had there been wood or bone attached to the artifacts, they could have been carbon-dated. But there was no way to carbon-date metal since it had never been alive. The man nodded. “The older the object, the more impurities you usually find. And you can also sometimes tell origin based on the composition of the metals. Sort of like a fingerprint.” Apparently, every mine yielded slightly different metal signatures and those signatures could be crosschecked against databases in the U.S. and Europe.

  “What’s the turnaround time?” Bruce asked.

  “A week, give or take.”

  Bruce pulled out a couple of hundred-dollar-bills; Norman didn’t have much time. “Can I get a preliminary answer by tomorrow?”

  The man scanned the room to make sure nobody was watching and slipped the cash into his front pocket. “Leave me your number.”

  Bruce began to turn and then stopped. “On second thought, I do want the location where the sword was found included.” It would make things more official. He scribbled out the address of the Levana Resort in the Catskills. “Here. Make sure this is in the report also.”

  Cam knew better than to park close to the demonstration—if things got messy, he’d never get out. So he found a lot in Charlestown, not far from the historic frigate, the USS Constitution, and walked the mile past Boston Garden to Government Center just as the morning rush hour was ending.

  The immigration office opened at 8:00, and a crowd of over 100 people had gathered by the time Cam arrived at 9:15. Mostly young, many of them wearing blue and brown, the colors of the immigration rights movement. They milled around, sipping water and chatting, like an athletic team waiting for their opponent to arrive for a game. They didn’t have to wait long. From across the brick-lined plaza behind Boston City Hall, a line of sign-carrying marchers, some with Nazi flags, surged forward two-by-two like a military campaign, the sound of their boots echoing off the surrounding office buildings. Many of them wore leather, most were tattooed, and all were white. For some reason, it surprised Cam to see that perhaps a quarter of them were women. Their chant made up for in enthusiasm what it lacked in creativity: “U-S-A, U-S-A, tell the scum to stay away!”

  Cam took a deep breath, looking for Astarte. He spotted one of her friends. “Megan, where’s Astarte?”

  She wrung her hands, bouncing in anxiety. “A few girls went to the bathroom and we got separated. We’ve been trying to text her.”

  Cam swallowed a wave of panic. “Where’s Adriana’s mom?”

  “Out looking for the missing girls.”

  “Tell Astarte to call me right away if you find her.”

  He pushed forward and hauled himself up onto a bike rack to scan the crowd. His heart fell. There she was, on the far edge of the waiting counter-protestors, directly in the path of the marching white supremacists. He pushed toward her as a squadron of police did the same from off to her right. Boston law enforcement was no stranger to protest marches and rallies, and they had a good track record at keeping the peace. But these were volatile situations, and shit happened—Cam couldn’t help but think of the Emerson College student killed by a police pepper spray shot during a Red Sox victory celebration. He lowered his head and plowed forward.

  Detlef stood in the conference room of an import-export company’s 23rd-floor office at One Beacon Street, a brick high-rise overlooking City Hall Plaza. He peered through a pair of binoculars and watched the burgeoning demonstration below. For five grand, he had convinced the company to keep its workers home for the morning. It had been money well-spent.

  On the window ledge sat a monitor displaying a feed from a GoPro camera mounted atop the sign carried by one of his most trusted lieutenants. Jonas was neither large nor particularly strong; in fact, he looked more like a bookkeeper than a foot soldier. But he was street-smart and committed. Plus he had the ability, like some world-class soccer players, to anticipate how the action would unfold a few plays before it actually happened. The last thing Detlef needed was for the GoPro camera to get knocked from its perch because one of his protestors stumbled into an unintended melee.

  He spoke into his mouthpiece. “Jonas, do you copy?” Jonas led the march.

  “Loud and clear,” came the response over the chants.

  “Excellent. Steady as she goes.” Detlef alternated between looking through the binoculars and eying the monitor. “Keep in formation. Don’t engage until I give the word.”

  “Got it.”

  “Remember, we want to give the news stations time to see our signs, time to get video of our chants, time to interview some of our marchers.” After that, it didn’t matter if things turned ugly. And given that many of their activists also trained as mixed martial arts fighters, ugly might not be a strong enough word.

  Cam no longer had to bull his way along. The counter-protestors, whose numbers seemed to have doubled in the few minutes since he arrived, had begun to swarm toward the arriving white supremacists. It looked to Cam like a score of black-clad Antifa (for ‘anti-fascist’) activists had joined in and were shoving their way forward, whooping, hoping to inflame passions. Each group was funneling into a twenty-foot-wide pathway at the edge of the plaza running alongside the federal building. Normally a twenty-foot passage would more than suffice. But not when hundreds of angry people were converging like stampeding animals. Cam rode the tide. He had lost sight of Astarte. But based on the sea of humanity moving her way, she was likely about to be sandwiched between the two seething hoards.

  Standing on a concrete planter box, he glanced to his right. A phalanx of police wearing riot helmets and carrying Plexiglas shields pushed forward, trying to wedge themselves between the two groups before the pushing and shoving along the front lines turned into something worse. Cam redoubled his efforts, pulling protestors aside as he careened his way to the front of crowd. He arrived to find Astarte, arms linked on either side with fellow counter-protestors, almost chin to chin with a skinhead with a swastika tattoo across his forehead, the rest of his face covered with a red bandana. He could tell she was frightened, but she and her cohorts were matching the white supremacist chant with one of their own: “Say it loud! Say it clear! Refugees are welcome here!”

  Shit. This was bad. The groups were being forced together by bodies pushing from behind. The white supremacists had rearranged themselves, now forming a battalion line of fifteen wide and six or seven deep. Cam knew that even minimal contact would be like dropping a torch into the tinderbox. And the police were still sixty or seventy feet away. He reached over a woman wearing a brown and blue hijab and grabbed for Astarte’s arm. Astarte turned in alarm at the contact, wide-eyed, until she recognized Cam’s face. She blinked. “Dad? What are you doing here?”

  He pushed closer. “Getting you out of here. Come on!”

  He reached for her hand, but she pulled away. “No way! I’m not leaving now.”

  A man ten feet from Astarte fell, apparently knocked down from behind. A skinhead wearing a MAGA hat kicked at him, but the man’s friends pulled him back out of range as the neo-Nazi spat in his direction. “Astarte, listen to me. It’s not safe here.” He managed to grab her arm. “Come on.”

  A water-balloon filled with sewerage landed on the bricks at their feet, spraying them with foul liquid. Astarte, repulsed, staggered back and met Cam’s eyes. But she steadied herself with a deep breath. She lifted her chin and shook her head. She was surprisingly calm. “Sorry, Dad. But evil triumphs when good people do nothing
.”

  Detlef studied the feed from the GoPro camera. Things had reached the boiling point quicker than he expected, fueled by the Antifa activists. They swept across the plaza like a tempest darkening the harbor. Detlef and his group had clashed with the self-proclaimed anti-fascists many times before. But they were becoming increasingly bolder, choosing to initiate violence rather than waste time with counterdemonstrations and marches. Which was fine with him. It gave his soldiers a chance to crack some skulls, and it kept the peaceful demonstrators, who accounted for 95% of Detlef’s opposition, on the sidelines for fear of being injured in the violence.

  Almost on cue, his eyes settled on a young almond-skinned girl at the front of the counterdemonstration battle line. “She can’t be more than fifteen,” he whispered. Then, aloud, to Jonas. “See that girl in front, just to your left? Not sure what she’s doing there. Try to make sure she doesn’t get hurt, okay?” That was all they needed, some teenager from the suburbs getting conked on the head and turning public sentiment.

  “Understood. But it’s getting loud here. I can barely hear you.”

  Detlef shook his head. What kind of parent let his daughter loose in the middle of a riot? The answer appeared quickly on his monitor. A forty-something guy reached for the girl, trying to pull her away. Better late than never, Dad.

  Wait. Detlef did a double-take. The guy looked familiar. Reaching into his satchel, he yanked out the envelope Katarina had given him and compared the picture to the man in the crowd. Same features, even the same haircut. He flipped the photo to read the bio info Katarina had included on the back. There it was. Daughter, Grade 10. What were the odds? He tossed the photo aside.

  “Jonas, listen to me.” He spoke quickly. “As loud as you can, yell the name ‘Cameron Thorne.’ Now.”

  Jonas did so. The man’s head turned, scanning the crowd for the source of the call. Bingo. It was a crazy coincidence, but Detlef didn’t have time to question their good fortune.

  Detlef leaned forward. “Okay, Jonas, see that guy just to the left of the girl, the one with the blue jacket? I need you to do exactly as I say…”

  Sipping on a cup of hot coffee, Gus surveyed the room he had rented in an old Victorian boarding house in Allston not far from the Green Line—$40 per night, with a private bath. It would have been $30 if he were willing to share a bath, but what was the sense of being out of jail if you couldn’t take a leisurely shit or a long, hot shower when you wanted to? Bed and dresser plus a thick deadbolt on the door. And, crucially, a small balcony from which he could jump onto the roof of a low porch fronting the side alley. He hadn’t survived twenty-six years in the can without knowing how and when to run away.

  Using the cash Bruce gave him, he had bought a couple of security cameras at Best Buy and attached them to the outside wall next to his window—by angling the cameras, he was able to get a complete view of the building’s front entrance area and the side alley leading to the back door. Not much had changed since Gus went away. Cars were basically the same except everyone drove SUVs, planes were the same, television was the same except the sets were bigger and thinner, kitchen appliances were the same, people on the subway still had body odor and complained about poor service. But two things were different: The Red Sox had somehow won four World Series, and the technology—phones and computers and wireless devices—made life like living in a Star Trek episode. A couple of nails, plug the thing in, and voilà, instant surveillance. He shook his head. You could even talk to the frigging camera.

  He took another sip from his coffee and bit into a glazed donut—shit, it tasted good compared to jail grub. As far as he knew, he had not made any new enemies since returning to Boston. Not yet, at least. Bruce didn’t count—he was an old enemy. And Thorne wasn’t really an enemy; he was more like the kid you bullied during recess. But the thing about living the life Gus had chosen was that you didn’t necessarily know when you had made a new enemy. It was like that old Ty Cobb quote: “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” If Gus wasn’t making enemies, he wasn’t trying hard enough.

  Which was the reason for the security cameras. Every time he came back to his room, he fast-forwarded through the footage. Yesterday something caught his eye. A couple of thick-necked goombahs had plodded up the front stairs late in the morning. They were clearly out of place—their pinky rings could pay for a year’s rent in a place like this. Were they looking for Gus? If so, he wanted them to find him on his terms, not theirs. Figuring they might be creatures of habit, he decided to hang around this morning to see if they returned.

  Just before 10:00, a bit earlier than yesterday, a black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of a hydrant across the street. Two men—the same men as on the video—climbed out. Gus watched on the monitor, not wanting to be seen in his window. He had packed all his belongings into a shoulder bag just in case. As they climbed the front stairs, Gus edged out his balcony door, leapt to the roof of the porch below, and soundlessly dropped into the alley. Circling around to the front of the rooming house, he watched from behind a hedge row as the thugs stood on the porch and questioned another resident, showing him a picture. The resident shrugged. A crisp bill (Gus guessed it a fifty) seemed to improve his memory; he pointed up to Gus’ room and loped away. What the hell? Gus racked his brains—other than stealing that bust thirty years ago, there was no reason the Mob should be after him. Well, fuck ’em.

  Shouldering his bag, and using a passing bus as a screen, Gus scurried across the street as the hoods pushed their way into the building. They could tear apart his room if they wanted—it was now his old room. Crouching, Gus removed the shiv from the sheath on his forearm. If the bastards were after him, he might as well give them a reason. With a deft movement, he stabbed down at the front tire of the Lincoln. But at the last millisecond he stopped his arm. No reason to let them know he was on to them. Slashing the tire—spitting in the face of the bully—would have felt good. But it would not have been smart. And Gus had learned the hard lesson of never trading temporary pleasure for permanent regret.

  Cam was at a loss. He couldn’t very well throw Astarte over his shoulder and waltz his way through an angry crowd. Nor could he leave her here—especially given her skin color—faced off against a bunch of white supremacists.

  “Astarte,” he yelled. “This is not negotiable.” And then he did just that. “You can stay, but not here at the front. Come back with your friends.”

  The words seemed to get through to her. She half-turned toward him. Now all he had to do was fight his way through the surging, teeming wall of humanity.

  And then things turned crazy.

  Suddenly three men from the line of white supremacists bolted forward. It seemed odd, out of character given their stoic discipline. Odd or not, come at them the men did.

  Instinctively, Cam stepped into their path, shielding Astarte. The cops were still almost fifty feet away, their advance apparently stalled. His heart beat like a kettledrum as he searched for a possible escape. The three men, who had stopped their chanting and dropped their signs, formed a semi-circle in front of him. All of them wore bandanas covering their faces, but there was no missing the cold hatred in their eyes. The smallest, in the middle, seemed to be in command; two larger men with rugby player physiques wearing camouflage flanked him. A water bottle flew, glancing off one of the rugby player’s shoulders. He ignored it. Then the middle man nodded. “Now!” He crouched and dove for Cam’s legs, wrapping his arms around Cam’s knees. Cam dropped an elbow onto the man’s neck and felt the grip loosen. But his movement had exposed himself—the thugs lunged, one landing a powerful uppercut into Cam’s gut, stunning him, while the other grabbed his arm and spun Cam around with a hammerlock. Cam winced as the hammerlock hold drove his wrist up toward his neck, tearing at his shoulder joint. As Cam tried to spin away, the man who had punched him grabbed him by the hair and stuffed a moist, sweet-smelling cloth over his face. Chloroform. What the fuck? Cam held his breath, fought to try to fre
e himself from the grasp of the three attackers. But fighting required oxygen, and oxygen meant breathing. Within a few seconds he began to feel weak and dizzy. He dropped to his knees and, after throwing a slow, desperate punch, toppled to his side.

  Astarte’s plaintiff cry—“Dad!”—was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness.

  Detlef watched his team expertly attack and disable Cameron Thorne. Three additional men and two women had joined Jonas’ assault team, stepping past Thorne and shielding Jonas from counter-protestors. The attack had sparked chaos, with multiple small skirmishes breaking out along the front lines. But it was a controlled chaos, with Detlef’s trained forces in control of their actions and emotions amid the tumult. This, after all, was nothing compared to the mixed martial arts fighting most of them were used to.

  Jonas, on one knee, his hand cradling Thorne’s head, adjusted his earpiece. “What now?” he asked, calm amid the bedlam. The girl—the daughter—pushed at them, screaming, trying to reach her father. A large, dreadlocked black man held her back. The line of police arrived, using shields and clubs to try to wedge themselves between the battling factions.

  “Call for a stretcher,” Detlef replied, confident in his well-trained men at the front lines. “Take him out like he was one of our guys, wounded.” When was the last time a violent mob took a counter-protestor away for medical attention?

  Jonas blew a whistle, and almost instantly a pair of men raced forward carrying a medical stretcher. Within twenty seconds they had secured Thorne and melted back behind their front lines; Jonas jogged alongside. “Where should we bring him?” he asked.

  “Not to the hotel.” Too many eyes there. This was risky enough, with cellphone cameras and security footage. But Katarina had said it was important. Fortunately, Jonas and his team had covered their faces. “Take him to the van. Bring the twins with you. And make sure you don’t show your faces.” Like a well-trained battalion, Detlef and his men prepared for every contingency; he had a half-dozen vans double-parked around the Government Center plaza in case his men needed evacuation, attention or supplies. But taking a prisoner was not a contingency Detlef had imagined. He considered the problem. “Tell them to bring Thorne to my sister’s brownstone.” He gave Jonas the address on Marlborough Street. Katarina was at work; she may not be pleased that her home had been commandeered. But, apparently, Thorne was important to her. “It’s just east of Clarendon. Go in the garage, off the alley between Marlborough and Commonwealth. The code is 31238.” March 12, 1938, the date of the Anschluss, combining the Germanic peoples of Germany and Austria. “I’ll meet you there as soon as this is over.”