“I’m Olivia, and here is Father Andre.”
The figure relaxed and took another moment to respond. It occurred to Olivia that this fellow was a gatekeeper of sorts and was likely taking instructions from a superior.
“Follow me.”
Olivia and the priest followed.
—
Diggs had suspected that he was being tracked.
He was marked since he pulled those secret files from the CIA database. Diggs was a night risk asset.
“Ladies, I’m going to have to step back a little bit,” he said, peering at the device in his hand. It showed who was coming for him, and who put the order out.
Miller looked at the former agent and knew that Diggs had pissed someone off. They nodded at each other, and Diggs withdrew into the shadows.
He heard the distant sound of the Dietz Ducati.
He had met Gerald twice. He knew the boy's track record. He was formidable, hard like nails, and one of the best in the game. Gerald would die trying to kill. And he would live through it too.
He checked the magazines on his guns again. He was ready.
—
10
They were ushered into a well-lit cavern. Dark-clothed men stood in a semicircle; there was someone seated in the middle. Someone covered in a dark cloak too, but only up to his knees. The rest of his feet were white and hairy. His head was covered with a black hood. Behind him stood someone with a large knife in his hand. The man in the chair was groaning in pain.
Olivia’s heart broke, but she controlled herself. She looked at Father Andre; he showed no emotions. And he still didn’t have the Grail in his hand.
“Father,” Olivia murmured under her breath, “I hope to God that you know what you’re doing.”
The priest’s face looked unusually white, his face ashen. His attention was on the figure in the middle of the room.
The murmur had stopped as they approached the conclave. Now, one figure pulled himself out of the group; the man seemed to float towards Olivia.
Olivia stepped back. “I have to see his face. I have to know he’s still alive!” she cried.
The man stopped.
“The Grail first. Show it.”
“No, we see his face or no deal!”
There was quiet. The man behind the dark hood spoke slowly. “Do you suppose you can come here and make demands of the Order?”
“I just wanna go home, but I’m not giving you the Grail until I’m satisfied that my friend is safe. You give me him, I give you the Grail, that’s how we trade!”
The hood turned in the priest's direction.
“Who is it with you, priest?” the voice from the hood growled.
The priest was standing funny. He leaned forward, like a tree against a raging storm. Veins stuck out in his fist; his eyes were fading slits in his face.
“You didn’t come this far without it, did you?”
Olivia stepped forward. “You let us see our friend, then you’ll have the Grail!”
“Then, you leave us with no choice!”
The man standing behind Peter Williams placed the knife under Peter’s hood and pressed it against the neck.
Olivia glanced at Father Andre; he was still staring in that catatonic gaze. The cleric reached out and grabbed Olivia’s hand in a fierce grip.
She whispered, “Father!”
Father Andre’s face seemed to regain color. He looked around the place. His eyes settled on the covered person in the middle.
“Where is the Grail?!” the figure with the knife shouted.
“I have not come to give it to you,” the cleric said. “I have rather come to face you.”
Olivia frowned. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“You're gonna have to sit through this one, Miss Newton,” he said to her. And to the man seated on the chair in the middle of the room, the man who was supposed to be Peter Williams, Andre said, “I have come today, not to save you, but to face this Order!”
Olivia gasped. She looked at the cleric sharply.
“Father, what is wrong with you? That’s Peter—”
The man with the knife snapped again. “You’re wasting time. We’ll kill him if you don’t surrender the Holy Grail. You have ten seconds to—”
“You can’t kill a man that’s already dead, can you?” Father Andre asked.
The man with the knife hesitated. Olivia saw the change in the room even before it became apparent in the murmur. Heads turned under the masks and hoods. This is not what they expected. This is not how it should go, this little charade before their eyes. The body language said so.
The Templar with the knife dropped it and removed a gun from his cloak. He pointed at the cleric.
“One last time, where is the Holy Grail?”
Father Andre shook his head.
“Well, then, you will die.”
Bang!
The sound of the gun was loud in the chamber. Olivia jumped; she fell on her knee. Father Andre was bleeding from his shoulder. He staggered, put his hand on the nearest wall, and held on.
There was no movement from the Templars. Mute and clothed heads stood there like covered mannequins.
“The next time, I won’t miss my shot.” The Templar repeated with the gun, “Where is the Holy Grail?”
The cleric fell on one knee and buried his face in his knee. “I am the Grail,” he groaned.
“You’re what?” the Templar asked.
“I am the Grail.”
Olivia’s face convulsed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Father turned a pained face to Olivia. He whispered to her, “I’m sorry, Olivia.”
From inside his cassock, something shiny came out. Father Andre had a gun on him all the time. He was fast. He pointed the gun at the man sitting on the chair and fired. The man, Peter, moved for the first time. The bullet grazed his shoulder and sunk in the body of the Templar with the gun. He fell.
Olivia screamed and stretched her hand to Peter. “No!”
“Olivia, don’t! He’s not Peter anymore!” she heard the cleric shout.
Olivia got halfway as the Templars stopped her. They pushed her back.
“Why don’t you show yourself, Half-face?” the cleric hollered.
It dawned on Olivia then what may be transpiring before her eyes. The obvious was peeling away, and the reality of deceit was becoming evident.
The cleric was looking at her with the eyes of an all-knowing God. The biblical proportions of what was about to be unveiled suddenly hit Olivia.
“No, no…”
Her legs turned to jelly. She could no longer stand without holding on to something. It can’t be true, the voice in her head tore at her. No, no, not Peter.
But it was him. It was Peter Williams under those yards of black clothing. Time slowed again as the figure rose. The black cloak went up like waves of dark water and underneath was the face of Peter Williams, laughing, eyes on Olivia.
The cloak fell around him, and on the chair. The man with the knife stepped back. A silence that was so thick that it could be smeared on something descended on the room.
Peter was standing under the yellow light of the light bulb, lean, yes, but filled with vitality. He was naked from his head to his slim waist. The rest of him was clad in black pants, his feet were bare. He was more muscular around his torso.
He started clapping.
“Bravo, bravo.” He clapped. The crack of it echoed in the chamber.
He was looking from the cleric to Olivia and back. He kept on with that mad clapping. Blood spattered on the floor as he strutted around the chamber. Peter glanced at the wound on his shoulder and shook his head.
“Surprised, hm, Olivia?”
Awestruck, Olivia gawked at the man she used to know. Her throat suddenly dried up. She tried to speak, but her mind protested what she was seeing.
Peter went to Father Andre, where he crouched. He pulled the cleric's head back. “Now where is the Grail
, priest?”
Andre gritted. “I am the Grail.”
Peter smacked the priest across the face.
—
Tom Garcia made one final plunge in the case involving the Pinecrest Florist and Balloons shop. It had become clear that the cases were related. Somehow, this house in Miami was significant to whatever Olivia had been saying about the Templars in Rome.
He had seen the report again on the TV the night before. Some Asian had been killed by some assassin.
Tom had suspected the report didn’t cover half the truth.
He went to Olivia’s apartment. He found the box containing her stuff from the office; he went through everything she had written about the subject. He found her laptop too, but he couldn’t get inside it.
He was going through the messages on her phone when he heard some message left by a particular Floyd come in.
Tom ran the name through the local database. Floyd worked at the Miami Daily.
Tom drove down to the newspaper office immediately.
“What’d I do, man?” the young man protested.
When he was alone with the sheriff outside in the Jeep, Tom said, “Relax, I’m not charging you for anything.”
“Phew!” Floyd breathed.
“But I will bring you in for something if you don’t do what I say.”
Floyd frowned. “You want to blackmail me?”
“Yes,” said Tom Garcia, and threw the Jeep in gear.
Ten minutes later, Floyd was breaking into Olivia’s laptop. Five minutes after that, Tom was reading about the secret lab in Antarctica, the Argentine admiral Huebner, the connection between the admiral and the drug bust that led to John Williams' death months before.
Then he was sweating when he read about the Half-face and the Snake.
“Half-face?” he mumbled.
He removed from his pocket a copy of the artist's impression of the hobo that Vinnie Malvern saw the night his friend was murdered. It was all making sense.
Breathing hard, Tom looked for pictures of Admiral Huebner, and those of Peter Williams. There was no real likeness, yet that didn’t dismiss the possibility of a connection.
“Who’s that?” Floyd pointed at the artist's impression.
“Our new nightmare.”
The sheriff continued reading Olivia’s articles. He ordered Floyd to make coffee in the kitchen. The lad went in there and came back shortly with two cups.
Floyd picked up the drawing from the artist again. “You want to see who this looks like, right?”
Tom glanced at the nerd. “Yeah, can you run it?”
“It's simple actually, but it’s gonna cost you, sir.”
“How about I strike all the parking tickets for last month?” Tom gave him a sideways look.
Floyd rubbed his ear.
He got Olivia’s scanning machine from its pack. He inserted the copy of the artist's impression; he started tapping and scrolling.
“Now let’s go down deep-web,” Floyd said. “We are breaking some laws here, Sheriff.”
“For a good cause. Do it.”
“Greater good, huh? Okay.”
Minutes passed, and the printer started humming. It vomited two copies.
Sheriff Tom Garcia picked up the papers, and what he saw made him reach for his cell phone.
—
Director Carl Brenner of the American Consulate in Rome and Sheriff Tom Garcia went way back. Buddies in high school actually, and then Tom had gone on to marry Carl’s neighbor, Betty Holland.
Brenner hadn’t heard from Tom since he moved to Rome two years ago. But when he overheard his voice, old memories flooded his head.
Tom Garcia didn’t call to catch up, however.
Tom laid out his predicament. Brenner listened.
“You are not one to bullshit around, Tom,” he said, “but I gotta tell you what you just told me is one hell of a story.”
“You’ve seen the reports, Brenner. The dead Asian and those other bodies didn’t come from wonderland.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Tom sighed.
—
Gerald Dietz parked his bike by the church. He walked past parishioners going up the steps and went around the cathedral. He stopped at an outhouse. Above that was the vestry. He opened the old wooden door and went down two flights of steps.
He would have to go around the Templars and find Diggs and his team.
He took a route that went around the chamber where the Templars were; he even heard their voices as he went by.
He screwed a silencer on his gun and went down another flight of steps. This one would take him up a different step.
The kill will be clean and quiet.
—
Diggs received a quick email on his pager. Dietz is here.
He told Miller to take the others and hide. But that they should prepare to take fire.
“Who is it?” Miller asked.
“Dietz, ring a bell?”
“No, new guy?”
“New guy, yes.”
Diggs stalked down the hallway and entered a small chamber. There, he waited for Dietz.
—
“Peter, what did they do to you?” Olivia stammered.
“What they did to me?” Peter threw his hands in the air. “No, not me, it’s not me that needs the Holy Grail.”
Olivia frowned again.
“Aww, Ted Cooper couldn’t say much to you before the cop shot him, eh? By the way, that cop is here—”
Peter Williams turned to one of the masked men.
“Come on, Steve, show yourself, I mean, what are they gonna do about it?”
One mask by the wall slowly went up, and Olivia recognized the cop, Steve, from the night that Ted Cooper was murdered. Steve grinned at Olivia.
“No one can bear the reach of the Templars, Olivia, and no one can beat us. We are everywhere. Did you ever suspect I might be who I am right now?”
Olivia lamely shook her head
“Yeah, right, who knew? And how about Ted Cooper?” he said, strutting around. “Ted missed the point of his calling, he refused to see the big picture. The world needs the Templars now more than ever. This isn’t just about world domination. Of course, I’d like that very much. It is also about bringing a decadent world back to its senses. To its knees before God. That’s why we need the Grail.”
Peter crouched before Olivia. He touched her face, tenderly. Then he whispered in her face. His breath smelled like sewer draught.
“I know you liked me, Olivia. And honestly, I would have loved to know what you taste like, you know, get to tax that ass of yours. But I have bigger dreams as you now can see. What did you think when you waited for me that night at the diner, and I didn’t show up? Or when you went to my apartment?
“Yeah, I saw everything. We have eyes everywhere.”
He got up suddenly.
“Now I want you to tell the priest that if he doesn’t give the Grail up, I will kill him. I know he hid it somewhere. This isn’t some expedition or some adventure. This is some real business.”
He crouched before the cleric. Father Andre’s wound had stopped bleeding. He was kneeling and lolling.
“Padre, just tell me where you have kept the Grail, then maybe I won’t kill you and your girlfriend here, and the others. I know Frank Miller is here, and the old gang. But I’m going to kill them all if you don’t tell me where the Grail is.”
The cleric spoke weakly, “I am the Grail.”
Peter looked at Olivia. “Do you understand anything this asshole is saying, Olivia? What is he talking about? Is he fucking you yet? You know we never got around to fucking.”
He came back to Olivia. “Maybe we will if you get him to tell you where the Grail is.”
Peter went and kicked the cleric in the face.
Olivia closed her eyes.
—
Tom Garcia faxed some of Olivia’s findings to Carl Brenner in Rome. The consul removed his glasses aft
er reading it. He lit a cigarette after seeing the picture log that Floyd made of the artist's impression and the face that matched it.
“My God,” he said.
He had friends in the Italian government. He used them.
—
Dietz heard the sirens, and he froze in his tracks. The local police weren’t supposed to show up. He looked back the way he came; darkness stared back at him. He had gotten to the landing. The map on his device showed that Diggs and his people were supposed to be close. But they were not.
It didn’t matter. Dietz proceeded slowly, with his gun out in front of him. Searching the corners and behind the pillars. He hated the pillars. In the dark, they looked like people.
The sirens had gotten louder, and he heard a distant commotion from ground level.
He moved faster.
—
The Templars heard the sirens too. Peter Williams looked up at the roof of the chamber.
“Brothers, looks like we have company, but how’s that possible?”
He took Father Andre’s hand and pulled him up. “Get up! We are going for a walk!”
The cleric cried in pain. He stumbled forward as Peter pushed him.
The cop, Steve, came to Olivia with a gun. He prodded her forward with it. The Templars took off their hoods and started leaving the chamber.
Heavy footfalls echoed all around them.
Peter Williams stopped as the first policeman appeared at the top of the stairs. Peter shot the cop in the chest; he turned back and stared down another hallway. More police came down the stairs and from other hallways. Peter pushed the priest into a narrow hallway, and Steve pushed Olivia in too.
“Move, come on!” Peter commanded as they disappeared into the dark.
Meanwhile, the police covered most of the Templars with their guns.
—
Liam Murphy saw Dietz first.
It was a happenstance encounter. Liam heard the police sirens and heard the commotion nearby as the police rounded up on the Templars but didn’t hear Olivia nor the priest's voice.
He tapped Miller on the shoulder. “What are we going to do?”
Miller said they’d wait right where they were, just in case Olivia or the priest happened by.
“Diggs said we should wait,” Anabia Nassif whispered to Liam. “This is not a movie, Liam. If you get shot, you die for real. No props or stuntmen to do it for you. So just sit your ass down.”
Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 38