by Adam Hiatt
“Put your hands where I can see them,” he barked.
The man sitting behind the desk visibly jumped in his seat as all color in his face seemed to fade. Only seconds later did he recognize his unexpected visitor. A disapproving scowl formed on his mouth as he grabbed a stapler off his desk and tossed it toward Reddic.
With as little effort as it would take to swat a fly away, Reddic’s hand shot up and snatched the object out of the air and placed it back down on the desk. A moment of silence ensued as both men were staring blankly at one another. They looked like two boys having a staring contest. Brooke stood in the doorway witnessing the interaction. Reddic had told her that they were going to see his brother. If they were brothers, she would never have known. First, she had never seen anybody treat their brother like that, and second, they looked almost nothing alike.
The man she watched behind the desk had dark black hair parted to the side. He wore a pair of cheap glasses that looked like they were picked up from a gas station. His skin had a darker complexion and his body was quite diminutive compared to Reddic’s, but toned, nonetheless. At least that was the impression she got looking at his clothing. It hung loosely on his body and was out of style. She wondered if style only mattered to professors on the west coast.
Regardless of his fashion, she noted a quiet confidence about him. Reddic exuded confidence with every step he took. He carried an athletic grace that was both irritating and attractive. His brother, on the other hand, seemed to derive his self-assuredness from his intellect. There was something about him that was vaguely familiar.
Since her career dominated her life, Brooke’s love life was nearly non-existent. She had not been on a date for almost three years and was certainly not planning on one any time soon. She seemed to always be outside the popular crowd. She never understood why working hard at her studies had given her the label of nerd. Since when was setting goals and achieving them a negative? She was self-conscious for a long time. In fact, the effect it had on her youth was crippling.
When she graduated from Caltech in only three years, she was still unsure of herself. That was until she met Feldman at Stanford. The thought of her late mentor caused her emotions to build. The man had changed her life. He gave her a purpose and helped her attain a self-respect that she so desperately needed. She no longer viewed herself as an outcast. She was a beautiful, intelligent, and successful woman.
It was at that moment that Brooke realized that Reddic’s brother reminded her of Feldman. There was something about his eyes that sparkled like those of her former mentor. Looking at those eyes made her replay Feldman's final words in her mind. He spoke of oaths and covenants and exposing them. She had never heard him speak like that before. She had no idea what he meant by that. Brooke’s mind snapped back to the present as she realized Reddic was snapping his fingers at her
“What?” she asked.
“He’s wondering who you are,” he said.
“But he didn’t say anything,” Brooke replied, confused.
“He has a tendency to act weird around women.” Before Reddic’s brother could protest, he said, “Allow me to make the introductions. Brooke Hansen, meet my older brother, Jaxon Smith.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Jaxon said, leaving his chair to shake her hand. Brooke took his hand and felt a jolt run through her body as her skin met his. It felt like electricity had coursed through her limbs. She had never felt such a sensation by merely shaking a man’s hand. She held his hand longer than custom dictated, but she did not want to let go.
“Are you finished?” Reddic asked. Brooke’s face immediately flushed as she pulled her hand away and stepped back.
“What’s the matter little brother? Are you jealous of a handshake?” Jaxon asked.
“Jealous of you? Get over yourself.” Reddic glanced at Brooke and noticed her smiling. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just wasn’t sure you two were even brothers, but after this exchange there’s no doubt,” she said. In truth, she was enjoying the brotherly ribbing, but not for any reason that she would admit. She had never found herself in an environment where two men were competing for her affection. She felt as if her skin were aglow.
“So how do you two know each other?” Jaxon asked.
“It’s a complicated story,” Reddic replied.
“I’ve got some time now that you’ve interrupted my morning research,” Jaxon said, putting his feet on his desk. “By all means, elaborate.”
“The short version is that Brooke here is an accomplished physicist out at Stanford. She and a colleague were exploring alternative energy sources. Three days ago, her colleague was murdered and now I believe the same people are after her. So that’s why we’re here.”
Jaxon hesitated before speaking. “I’m just a little confused as to why you’re helping her,” he said. “Does she even know you?” It was a loaded question, but Reddic understood the implication.
“First and foremost, she knows that I’m a friend and not the enemy,” he said, looking at Brooke. “And because this is an unusual circumstance, she does know that I have a very resourceful friend that is good at helping people, but that’s all.”
Jaxon seemed to relax upon hearing that Brooke did not know the details of Reddic’s life. Even Jaxon did not know everything, but he knew a lot more than anybody else. As far as he was concerned, the more people that knew anything increased the chances of Reddic becoming a target. As the older brother, he would not allow that to happen. Reddic was the only family he had left. Their parents had both been killed as innocent bystanders in a failed terrorist plot in New York several years ago. Jaxon was now the protector, and he would protect Reddic and his secret until his death.
“So where do I fit into all this?” Jaxon asked.
“That’s what I'm here to find out,” Reddic said. “After Brooke tells you what she saw when her colleague was killed, we will know if you can help or not.” Reddic nodded at Brooke to begin.
“Hi,” she said with a juvenile smile. Reddic simply rolled his eyes. This coquetry was too much. “When William, he was my colleague, was killed, I saw his phone in his hand. He was about to send me a text message. There was a picture. It was old, grayscale, and looked like a shield. In the top left corner and the bottom right were crosses. The other two corners were plain. There was a stripe, like a road, that divided the background in half. William started to type a text beneath it. All it said was, ‘Brooke, beware’. That was it.”
Brooke felt a slight pang of guilt as she lied again. Well, misled was a more appropriate term, she convinced herself. There was something else on Feldman's phone that day, but she chose to keep it to herself for the time being. It was too outrageous to believe, or even consider. She wanted to see if she could fully trust these two before revealing the most important and frightening piece of the puzzle.
Brooke looked up and saw Jaxon’s eyes widening. “A shield with two crosses and two stripes?” he asked. He reached behind his desk and pulled a large volume off the bookshelf. Rapidly flipping through the pages, he found what he was looking for and flipped the book around for his guests to see. On the page was a sketch of what looked like a shield. There were two red crosses in the upper left and lower right corners and a yellow stripe running down the middle of a blue background in the other two corners.
“What is this?” Reddic asked.
“It’s a coat of arms,” Jaxon explained. “Does this look familiar?” He had his finger pointed at the image in the middle of the page.
“That’s it!” Brooke exclaimed. “That’s the same shield.”
Reddic’s eyes immediately fell on the caption beneath the sketch. All that was written was a date: March 18, 1314. His head shot up and locked eyes with his brother. There was a knowing glimmer in Jaxon’s countenance.
“Have you ever heard of the Knights Templar?” Jaxon asked.
14
The rhythmic droning within the Citation XLS was enerva
ting. Mahan desperately wanted to sleep, but he could not afford the luxury. His small team of subordinates had been providing him with a steady flow of new information. Much of it was entirely useless. His patience was wearing thin by the second. It was nearly impossible for the woman to just disappear without the help of government assets.
The real issue was that none of their contacts could clearly identify who may be involved. Even the Priest could not ascertain the source. That had the assassin worried. If the Priest could not gather any intelligence, then they were in trouble. His resources were extraordinary. The jet that they flew on, the funding they had, it all came courtesy of the Priest.
The flight plan was to carry Mahan and his team back to Baltimore. It was home base. When they located the professor, they needed to be ready to move. It would do them no good to stay in California in the hope that she somehow popped up on the grid. If he were the one helping her, he would try to get her as far away as possible.
One of his men suddenly appeared, taking the seat directly across from him. It was Pavlov, the appointed leader of these Russians for hire. Mahan felt his blood pressure begin to rise. He did not think he could tolerate any more useless information.
“We just came across a surveillance photo taken out of Sacramento’s airport,” the former FSB man said. “Your contact in the NSA ran it through their facial recognition software and got eighty-five percent match. He uploaded it on the server.”
Mahan sat ramrod straight in his chair. This was the break he had been waiting for. “Tell me more,” he said.
“There is one problem. No ticket was issued. The woman flew deadhead, with pilot credentials.”
“Who was she traveling with?”
“Surveillance footage shows her passing through alone.”
“Then where was her flight heading?” Mahan asked.
“Her flight landed in Boston less than an hour ago.”
The destination surprised the assassin. Why the woman went to Boston was a mystery. “Have my source check surveillance at Logan International and see if she meets anybody,” he said. “Get all passenger manifests and cross check them with known aliases that your contacts may have. There is no way she is doing this by herself.”
“Yes, sir,” the FSB man said eagerly.
“One more thing,” Mahan said. “Tell the men to get some rest. We’ll be wheels down in an hour and need to be ready to fan out. We need to find out why the woman is in Boston. Once we know that we’ll know just where she is. And Pavlov,” he said as the Russian started to move.
“Yes?” he asked cautiously.
“You’re out of excuses. This time you come through.”
Pavlov frowned and got up to leave. Mahan didn’t care that he was upset. He had a job to do and would be held accountable for the results. This would be his last chance to get it right.
Mahan reached for the secure satellite phone. He could not help but feel that a weight had been lifted. This new piece of intelligence was the proof he needed. There was now no doubt the woman was getting assistance from the CIA. As far as he knew, only they would be so resourceful as to run an op like that.
He punched in a series of numbers and brought the phone to his hear. The Priest would know what to do next.
15
Reddic stared at his brother in disbelief. He had to be mistaken somehow. As far as he could determine, a coat of arms had nothing at all to do with an alternative energy source. He glanced at Brooke and briefly wondered if she had not remembered exactly what she had seen on her colleague’s phone or if she failed to describe it with enough detail.
“This just doesn’t make sense,” Reddic said. “There has to be something else.”
“As far as I know, this is the only symbol that resembles what Brooke described,” Jaxon replied.
“Are you sure you saw correctly?” Reddic asked Brooke.
“I am absolutely positive that this is the same image I saw on William’s phone,” she said, pointing to Jaxon’s book.
Her unequivocal certainty just made matters worse. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” he muttered.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Well, I thought we had a lead, or at least a starting point to find out who is after you, but this,” he waved his hand over the image on the book, “is nothing but a dead end.”
“Have you ever heard of a secret combination?” Jaxon asked. The randomness of the question caught Reddic off guard.
“Like to a safe?” he asked. “Every combination is secret. What would be the point of having a safe if you gave out your combination?”
“That’s not exactly what I am referring to.”
“Brooke, you’re also a professor,” Reddic said. “Does this make any sense to you?”
“Maybe,” she replied.
“Good grief,” Reddic interjected. “You guys are speaking a totally different language.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “Jaxon, are you by chance talking about a secret society?”
“I suppose you could look at it that way,” Jaxon said. “But secret societies are usually a little more transparent, and not always, how should I say, sinister?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“First of all, secret societies are not exactly secret.” Reddic furrowed his brows in frustration, but before he could utter a word Jaxon quickly resumed. “There has been a constant struggle throughout history between what I call the two brotherhoods. There are both good and bad secret societies, both claiming to have noble intent. You’ve heard of the Masons, right?”
“That I have heard of,” Reddic replied, nodding his head.
“What about the Italian Mafia or the Triads of China? Or the Pythagoreans, the Medellin, the Stern Gang, or Hitler’s SS Schutzstafel? The one thing all these have in common is that they believed what they did was justified, but more salient is the fact that we all know or knew they existed. It wasn’t a secret what their intent was.
“A secret combination, on the other hand, is much darker. It’s a pact or an oath that can take place within any group sworn to secrecy. These are usually disturbing pacts that are far from transparent and are always aimed at acquiring power or wealth. That, my friend, is what separates the good from the evil.”
“Jaxon, seriously, what does this have to do with anything?” Reddic asked.
“Let me tell you about a project I’m working on,” Jaxon said patiently. He moved around to the front of his desk and started to pace back and forth. He was in full professorial mode. He was in his element. Reddic knew what was coming, so he sat in his brother’s vacated seat and prepared for a long lecture. He had seen this look in his brother’s eye before.
“As you may have learned in a history class at one point in your life, in the year 1009 Muslim conquerors destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which was widely considered one of the holiest sites in all of Catholicism. Christians had been making pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship at the site, as well as the destroyed remains of the Temple Mount. There was immense pressure on the European Christians to take back their holy site. Therefore, in AD 1095 Bernard of Clairvaux stirred the emotions of Europe’s Christians to launch the First Crusade. It was an easy sell at the time. In case you were unaware, Christians and Muslims didn’t get along that well.”
“I’m not sure that relationship has changed at all,” Brooke commented.
“That’s a topic for another conversation,” Jaxon said. “So, thousands of self-proclaimed holy warriors marched all the way to Jerusalem from France. They traveled through Constantinople and through present-day Turkey. They arrived at the walls of Jerusalem on June 7, 1099. Five weeks later, on July 15, they breached the walls and took back the city. However, the Christians may have won the battle, but not the war. The effective military insertion was devoid of an equally effective exit strategy, so a vacuum was created, and violence escalated. Even though Jerusalem was securely controlled by the Franks, the surroundin
g areas were not. Christians were still pillaged and plundered relentlessly.
“It was for this reason that two prominent men named Hughes de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer proposed that a monastic group be created to offer protection. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem enthusiastically agreed and offered sanctuary on the Temple Mount itself in the Al Aqsa mosque. Thus, the Knights Templar was created. They became a militant order. Before long they became very rich and influential. The order grew rapidly and was enveloped with secrecy. It was a brotherhood. There were rumors spread throughout Europe that they were out to conquer the world. In other words, some believed it was an evil brotherhood.
“You see, nobody knew exactly what they were up to, but they had immense power and they protected the Holy Land. In 1139 Pope Innocent II issued a papal bull granting the Templars autonomy throughout the Christian Empire. That meant they answered to no one except the pope himself. They didn’t pay taxes and they could receive donations in the form of riches or real estate. The Templar mystique grew exponentially. Yet, there was a gigantic question left unanswered.”
“Why were the Templars so privileged,” Brooke said, matter-of-factly.
“Bingo,” Jaxon said, winking at his brother. “Some claim it was a token of appreciation for risking their lives to protect the Holy Land. After all, the Templars had a reputation for being ruthlessly efficient. These guys were completely unconcerned with their own wellbeing. They would fight to their death and would not allow themselves to be taken for ransom.”
“But that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to single out the Templars and give them executive privilege,” Reddic said. “If that were the case then all those Crusaders you spoke of would have been given similar autonomy, right?”
“You’re mostly right. What if the pope issued the papal bull as a form of hush money?” Jaxon suggested.
“Hush money?” asked Brooke. “Are you implying the Templars had compromising information?”