Treasure Templari

by David S. Brody

  A distant voice interrupted. “Hey!” A uniformed man on a bike, peddling toward him. A patrol, another measure to prevent suicides. Not prevent, deter.

  Ignoring the intrusion, Bruce again focused on the sailboat, imagining the spray on his face and the wind in his hair. With a feeling of satisfaction, knowing this was the most selfless thing—perhaps the only selfless thing—he had done in his life, he shut his eyes and, just as Salvatore’s men closed on him, leapt. Stay vertical, he reminded himself. It will hurt less.

  As he soared, he pictured Shelby, smiling and winking.

  Chapter 13

  Cam whispered into Amanda’s ear, not believing the words even as he said them.

  “Wait, Bruce is dead?” Amanda replied, jolting up in their hotel room bed as the early morning sun filtered through the blinds.

  Cam showed her his phone. “I just listened to my messages. This came in overnight.”

  He played it for her: “Cameron, this is Shelby. Um, I’m not sure how to say this. Bruce is dead.” Her voice cracked. “Apparently he jumped from the Tappan Zee Bridge. I just thought you should know. This is all related to the painting and the treasure. Call me back and I’ll explain. Okay. Bye.”

  Cam kept his voice low, with Astarte asleep on a cot in the corner of the room. “I tried to call back, but it went straight to voicemail.” He paced around the bed. “None of this makes sense.” Which, in turn, made it impossible to figure out what to do.

  Amanda swung her legs out of bed. “I agree. Something’s weird. Bruce doesn’t seem like the suicide type.” She paused. “Unless it was the only way to keep a secret he needed to keep.”

  As she threw on a pair of jeans, Cam’s phone rang. Shelby. Cam expressed his sympathies and then allowed her to talk, holding the phone so Amanda could hear as they sat together on the edge of the bed.

  “Like I said, he jumped from the bridge.”

  “Did they find a body?” Cam asked quietly.

  “No. But a guard saw him jump and said he never resurfaced. Plus he left his wallet and phone behind. And they found one of his shoes.” She choked back a sob. “They said sometimes it takes weeks for the bodies to be recovered.”

  “I’m sorry, Shelby.” He paused. “But I’m not sure I understand.”

  She sniffled. “Yesterday, before the auction, I made him tell me what was going on. Everything. Or, it turns out, almost everything.” She let out a long, agonized sigh. “There is no painting, you know. Or I should say, it’s a fake.”

  “Wait,” Cam replied. “A fake? The Just Judges is a fake?” He and Amanda exchanged glances as Astarte stirred and sat up to listen. So what was all this about?

  “In the end, all of this was just a real estate play. A scam. The painting, and the mystery, and the Holy Grail, and the Templar treasure, it was all just a way for Bruce to get people to overbid for the property.” Shelby sighed. “He’d been planning it for months, since he first heard about the property and its artifacts when he sold a Warhol painting for the owner. I just explained it all to the police.”

  Cam began to see how some of the pieces fit together. “Let me guess. Bruce was behind the corporation that bought the mortgage loan from the bank. Pennybags Unlimited.” Cam should have seen that coming—Pennybags was the name of the little guy on the Monopoly board, which Shelby had told him was Bruce’s favorite game.

  “Yes. He paid just over a million for it. All his savings. And then he made some deal with Norman Plansky—something about a French investor, I’m not even sure Norman understands what he signed—so that Bruce also owned fifty percent of the property itself. So all that money the Saudis paid yesterday, most of it flows back to Bruce. I think around twenty-four million dollars, after expenses.”

  Cam whistled. “Wow. He got the Israelis and neo-Nazis and Saudis all to bid against each other, thinking they couldn’t let the others get the treasure. And in the end, there was no treasure.”

  It was hard for Cam to wrap his brain around. He had been certain there was a treasure. Some treasure, buried somewhere. Even if he couldn’t find it, he didn’t doubt its very existence. And there still may be—if the painting was ever found, someone might decipher its clues. But that had nothing to do with the present situation. Bruce didn’t have the painting. And he didn’t have any way to find its treasure. Bruce had played on the legends and myths—almost everyone, including Hitler, believed the painting was a secret map to a Treasure Templari. So Bruce gave them what they wanted, took them where their dreams wanted to go, allowed them to see what they wanted to see. And then, blinded by the glare and glow of a treasure that existed only in their imaginations, he had fleeced them. To the tune of forty million dollars.

  Cam played through the ruse in his mind. Brilliant in its simplicity. All Bruce had done was let the world know he had recovered the painting. Then he stood back. Actually, as Cam thought about it, there were a few things that didn’t add up, a few things Bruce had needed to manipulate. “But what about the sword?” Cam asked Shelby. The testing had come back as 12th century, indicating the Templars really were in the Catskills.

  “Bruce switched out the sword Norman found with one he bought in Belgium before having it tested.”

  Cam met Amanda’s eyes and shook his head. “Well, I feel like an idiot.”

  “Don’t,” Shelby said. “He had me fooled also. Otherwise I never would have let you get involved.” She took a deep breath. “It turns out, he was in real danger. That’s why, in the end, when I came to New York on Sunday, I agreed to help him. Even though it was all … wrong. I feel like I owe you both a huge apology.” She let out a long, anguished sigh. “Of course, I never would have let you be attacked up in New Hampshire if I had known about it. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Wait, you say you could have stopped that?”

  “If I had known, I could. It was Bruce. That guy with the SS tattoo wasn’t a white supremacist, he was working for Bruce.”

  Cam clenched his fists. Bruce was lucky he was dead, the scumbag. Cam had been choked nearly to death. Knowing it came from a supposed friend made his neck ache and throb even more.

  Shelby continued. “Bruce wanted you to go running to the Mossad, to tell them you were on a hit list so they’d believe the white supremacists were after the treasure also.”

  Cam shook his head and replayed his encounter with the SS guy—the tattoo, the call to Hildegard Scientific on his phone, the report in the hotel room saying Cam knew too much and that Templar artifacts had been found at the resort. The entire encounter was a fake, everything meticulously planned. And, again, all designed to get the Israelis and the neo-Nazis and the Saudis to believe that the others were hot for the treasure. And, of course, that the treasure was real.

  Cam’s mind spun back to the painting itself. He still had questions. “But what about the navigational codes embedded in the painting?” Cam asked. “The towers and spires and parapets?”

  “Bruce photo-shopped those in. Remember, he never actually showed you the original painting. Just pictures.”

  “Wow,” Cam repeated. “He really got me.”

  Amanda touched his hand and leaned in to ask Shelby a question. “I don’t understand why everyone would believe he actually had the Just Judges painting if nobody even saw it.”

  “That was the beauty of his plan. Nobody would believe you or me if we claimed to have it. But we’re not professional art thieves or recoverers. When Bruce put out the word he had it, people believed him. He runs in that circle.” Shelby paused and swallowed. “Sorry, ran in it, I guess.” She powered on. “He had some guy in Europe fooled, an art dealer who was working with the Saudis. Bruce even went so far as to commission a fake, to fool his own client into thinking he really owned a masterpiece. He planted it in his client’s apartment and then let him discover it, alongside other Dutch art that was authentic. And then made a second copy for the Mossad to steal, as a way to get them to swallow the bait as well.”

  Cam looked up to the c
eiling and let his mind race. “Brilliant, actually. If he had tried to sell the painting, he wouldn’t have gotten past square one. But the treasure, that was something that couldn’t be checked. Couldn’t be verified until you started digging.”

  “And everyone believes in buried treasure,” Amanda added. “At least anyone who ever drew a treasure map as a child.”

  Cam replayed the auction in his mind. Everything had been designed, including the recent attack on Cam, to ensure there were three serious bidders at the auction, all of them believing in the treasure. If it had been just one, say the Mossad, bidding would have stopped at a few million. But the three desperate bidders kept pushing each other higher. Of course, even Bruce had not planned on the bidding hitting forty million. Bruce knew nothing about the salt water technology; in his mind, the Templar treasure was probably just some run-of-the-mill cache of gold and/or ancient artifacts.

  “So,” Amanda said softly after a few seconds, “if this plan was so bloody brilliant, why did Bruce jump off a bridge?”

  Shelby let out another tormented sob. “That was the one part of the plan I didn’t know about. A gangster, a mob boss, was after Bruce for, like, eight million dollars. I think Bruce figured his death would wipe away the debt.”

  “But you said there was twenty-five million profit in this scam,” Amanda said.

  “Yes. And Gus also was stalking him, demanding millions himself.”

  “And it wouldn’t be just the mobster and Gus after him,” Cam added. “The Saudis eventually would figure out they’d been scammed too. Remember what they did to that Turkish journalist who crossed them. Cut him up into pieces inside their embassy.”

  “In the end,” Shelby said, “I think Bruce realized he could never stop running. So he decided instead to make a grand gesture.” She lowered her voice. “From what I can see in the documents he left, most of the money goes to the Big Sister organization.”

  “That’s sweet,” Amanda said. But the tightness in her jaw told Cam that she, too, was angry at having been played. Not to mention, being put in danger.

  “Yes. And it makes me feel a little better. At least all this—all the lies, all the scamming—was for a noble cause.” Shelby sniffled again as she explained she needed to end the call. “The gesture won’t bring him back, of course. But at least now there’s something about his memory I can hold on to. Something I can cherish.”

  As Cam hung up, he looked at Amanda. “I feel bad for Shelby. But the thing I can cherish is that the bastard is finally out of our lives.”

  Menachem sat at the window of his Manhattan hotel room, staring at the sun rising over Central Park as his coffee turned cold. He cursed in Hebrew. He had been awake for two hours and in a bad mood for three. He didn’t like to be outsmarted. Admittedly, it was better than explaining to his bosses that he had pissed away forty million of his country’s dollars on a pile of dirt. But still. Arrujo had played him.

  Standing, he kicked the wall separating his room from Ezra’s. “Wake up!”

  The old bear had insisted on privacy. “We’re not in the army anymore,” he had said last night. “I don’t have to smell your farts or to listen to your grumbling. And I might just find someone to share my bed.”

  From the sound of things, it had been multiple someones. Menachem had finally ordered ear plugs from room service. Even then, he had been unable to sleep, his subconscious tricking him into hearing a rhythmic pounding of the headboard against their common wall like some kind of Chinese water torture.

  What seemed like only minutes after Menachem had, finally, fallen asleep, an urgent pre-dawn message arrived from Tel Aviv, waking him. Apparently, Menachem now understood, Arrujo had played them all as part of an elaborate real estate scam; he then jumped off a bridge to make sure none of those he conned came back looking for vengeance. Menachem cursed again. At least Arrujo had had the decency to ensnare the Saudis rather than Israel in his trap. Still, Menachem had wasted precious time and resources chasing a phantom treasure that he believed—and had informed his superiors—would rejigger the balance of power in the Middle East. Arrujo was wise to have jumped before Menachem got his hands on him. The ruse would have cost him more than just a finger.

  He kicked at the wall again. “Ezra!”

  A bed creaked, followed by the shuffle of footsteps. The door between their rooms opened slightly. Ezra called through the crack in a thick voice. “I need to shit, shower and shave. Then I need food. Then we talk.”

  “Arrujo is dead,” Menachem replied tersely. “He never had the Just Judges painting. The whole thing was a real estate scam.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. The painting was just a way to get us interested in the resort property, to believe a treasure was buried there.”

  Ezra chuckled. “In that case, I’ll skip my shave. But call down to room service. I’m going to need an extra hearty breakfast.”

  “Where are we going?” Astarte asked, riding shotgun as Amanda drove along a winding mountain road through the Catskills. Venus sat in the back, her nose pressed against the passenger side window.

  “To the resort property. To check out the Saudi dig.”

  Cam had taken the train into the city to meet with Shelby, who wanted help sorting through the piles of financial documents Bruce had left in their hotel room safe. Bruce was nothing if not organized, apparently having planned out his suicide, and the days leading up to it, in excruciating detail. He had even paid for the hotel room in advance.

  “Dig? But I thought Shelby said it was all a scam? What’s there to dig for?”

  “I’m not sure. But remember, they did find a European sword buried with the arrowheads and other Native American funerary items. And the journals did put the Templars along the Neversink River. Maybe it’s worth taking a look. Besides, it’s on our way back to Massachusetts.”

  Astarte rolled her eyes. “Or maybe you just wanted to stop me from complaining about being bored.”

  Amanda smiled. “True that. But also, I’m curious. I wanted to see the site. I mean, it’s been at the center of this whole nasty chapter in our lives.”

  “How far a drive?”

  “Still another twenty minutes.” Amanda glanced across. “This will keep you busy. Tell me one famous thing that happened in Italy or Spain or Portugal on October 13, 1582. If you can do it, I’ll buy you an ice cream. And feel free to use your phone.”

  “This sounds like a game Dad would play.”

  “You’re right. Maybe he’s rubbing off on me, God help me.”

  “Okay, I’ll play. October 13, that’s the day the Templars were outlawed. Is it something to do with that?”

  “Nope. No more hints. If you lose, you have to call me Your Highness the rest of the day. Deal?”

  Astarte was already scrolling through her phone. “I won’t lose. And don’t think you’re getting even a bite of my ice cream.”

  Five minutes later, Astarte turned. “I’ve got it. The answer is nothing. Nothing happened on that day. The calendar got turned forward ten days, from October 4 to October 15. So there was no October 13 that year.”

  Amanda nodded. “Excellent. But you still lose. The bet was that you have to tell me one famous thing that happened. Nothing is not an acceptable answer.”

  “Ugh. Whatever.”

  “Whatever, Your Highness, I think is what you meant to say.”

  They drove in silence, Amanda humming “God Save the Queen” in celebration of her victory.

  Astarte cut her off with a question. “One thing I don’t get. How can the Saudis dig up the property if it’s a Native American burial ground?”

  “They can’t, legally. But it’s not like the government is posting guards outside the resort to stop them. They’ll be slapped on the wrist and fined, but I don’t think they care much about that.”

  “What about someone getting a restraining order?”

  “Good idea. But even that’ll take a day or two. By then, it will be too late. I’m gue
ssing they already started digging.”

  Astarte chewed her lip. “Well, what about us getting a restraining order?”

  The doctors discharged Katarina from the Catskills hospital on Tuesday morning. It had taken until Monday evening for her motor skills to return to normal. Her first words, by the time she could talk, had been directed at Deidre.

  “You are an idiot. Why didn’t you insist on being able to bid?”

  “I tried. They forbade it.”

  Katarina had shaken her head in disgust. “Go. I don’t want to see your face.” The cow had not even had the common sense to demand that the ambulance take her to a real hospital in New York City.

  On Tuesday a limousine sent by her company picked her up for the ride back to Boston. She’d make arrangements for her car later. Lulled by the ride and by the drugs still in her system, she nodded off, the sun on her face…

  “You failed me, Katarina. You failed us.” Her grandfather appeared to her through the smoke, as he had in New Hampshire on Samhain.

  “Opa. I am sorry. I did my best.”

  “Detlef’s death was in vain.”

  “No. I will fix it. Fix things.”

  “It is too late.” Opa began to fade away, then reappeared, like a genie emerging from a bottle, this time his face angry and contorted. He came very close, his bloodshot eyes holding hers. He spat at her feet. “Worst of all, you let the Jews defeat you.”

  Cam strolled down Fifth Avenue, lost in his thoughts. He had spent over an hour with Shelby, helping her go through the documents Bruce had left. Bruce, consistent with his personality, had tied up the financial and legal loose ends in a tight bow. The auction was over, the money paid, the property conveyed, the deal done. By issuing stock in a targeted manner in both Pennybags Unlimited and the French investment company formed with Norman Plansky, Bruce had arranged it so a few million bucks went to Shelby while the balance accrued to Norman and the Big Sister organization—they would be splitting tens of millions of Saudi oil dollars. For their investment, the Saudis—no doubt already digging—would find nothing beside some Native American funerary items and arrowheads.