The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! God is Great!”

  He pressed the small button under his thumb and detonated the twenty-four pounds of C-9 elevated over his head.

  Ibrahim saw God.

  * * *

  “What’s that?” shouted Santini.

  Hammid ignored him, went to the door, and scanned the area while keeping his captives in sight.

  “It’s our cue. Don’t worry. It’s simply the electrical substation serving the Vatican. A small explosion. The Pope will have to use a flashlight for a while.” He threw the handcuff key to Santini. “Now, unlock yourself and Sister Jeanette. You will go first, followed by me and Sister Jeanette.”

  Santini unlocked them and guided Sister Jeanette by the elbow. “Have faith, my child. God is with us.”

  Hammid stood at the door with his hand out. Santini gave him the handcuff key. “The guards at the library have redeployed to defensive positions,” Hammid said. “That means we will have the library to ourselves. What a pleasant surprise. Bishop, are you ready? Shall we go? Sister, please?”

  Redeployed? What does that mean? Now what, thought Santini. Just cooperate. Pray for the strength to keep Sister Jeanette and the library safe.

  * * *

  The staff entrance to the library was just a short walk from the shed. They heard sirens in the distance, and security people raced past them as they made their way along the walkway.

  Nobody paid any attention to them when Santini used his blue card key and the lock hissed open onto a small lobby. Nobody was there to pay attention. The guard station was abandoned. Santini had never been told about redeployment if the Vatican came under serious attack. Since the library was closed for Easter, the building was now deserted.

  “Don’t turn around, Bishop. Eyes straight ahead.”

  A few seconds later, Hammid said, “Ok, look at me and pay attention.”

  When he turned back, he saw Hammid wearing a soft-brimmed hat with netting hanging all around the face and neck. But Sister Jeanette had a cloth bag over her head and Hammid was tying the drawstring and a long leash snuggly around her neck.

  “I think this will defeat any high-tech cameras while we do our work. And bagging Sister Jeanette will keep her from wandering off. And your cooperation will keep Sister Jeanette’s blood off the polished floor. Do you understand?”

  Santini kept his eyes straight ahead. “I understand. What do you want?”

  “Take us to room H21.”

  Room H21? Santini raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. H21 held Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Papal manuscripts being reexamined and cataloged. Over the years the library had used too many different indexing systems, and now he was supervising a massive effort to install a single computer system that not only categorized an item with a permanent collection number, but also held its location. Room H21 held manuscripts that had previously been properly cataloged, plus others that had been discovered incorrectly stored in other collections.

  Santini led them through the echoing reading room that would be filled with scholars on any other day, and up two flights of stairs. Now there was nothing to do but follow instructions. No guards, no protocols, no prearranged signals, and no help.

  He stopped before a plain door, slipped his card in the slot and pushed the door open. “Room H21,” he said. What could he want in there?

  “Now block the door open with that chair.”

  Santini moved the chair and let the door close on it.

  “Now back to the main reading room. You too, Sister.” He waved the gun at Santini.

  Hammid tossed him the handcuffs when they reached the reading room. “Get under the table, and lean back against the table leg. Put your arms though that support and lock up.”

  When Santini had securely handcuffed himself to a sturdy table leg in the main reading room, Hammid stuck him with a small syringe. Santini resisted, then relaxed, then wondered why Sister Jeanette had a frog tattoo on her ankle. A frog?

  Five minutes later, Hammid untied the sack on Sister Jeanette’s head. She put on a bee-keeper hat like Hammid wore, then pulled the sack off her head and under the beekeeper veil so no camera could catch her face. She shook her hair out, reached under the veil and carefully removed the duct tape from her mouth and eyes.

  “Well, that worked out pretty well,” Jean said. “The guy was gentle as a lamb when he thought the good nun was going to get her throat cut.” She looked sideways at Hammid. “In fact, I was worried for a while.”

  “Had to be convincing. It did work out. You never can tell what people will do when only their own life is at stake. That guy might have gone to his grave rather than let us into his precious library.” He nudged Santini with his foot, but got no reaction. “Couldn’t risk that, could we?”

  “Let’s get moving here,” she said. “I don’t want to get caught when those guards get back. How long can it take to get a substation back on line?”

  “Oh, I think we have time,” replied Hammid.

  They returned to room H21 and Jean started looking through the stacks and folders. The room wasn’t cluttered, but it was a temporary sorting and cataloging room. When the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Papal collection was finished, it would be moved to its new home, and the room would be temporary host to another collection being cataloged.

  Hammid stood before a work table and looked at a few brown pages with their cramped Latin script. “Can you really read this old stuff? I mean, does any of this make sense to you?”

  “Hammid, now’s not the time to be checking my credentials and qualifications. Just leave me alone and I’ll get what we came for.”

  “Ok. I’m going to take a look outside. If you need me, call me on the cell phone.”

  “Ok. I think I understand how things are arranged here. It shouldn’t be long.”

  When Hammid left, Jean consulted a listing that hung on a clipboard on the wall and pulled out several long, flat document drawers before she found the one she wanted. She wore cotton gloves over the latex gloves both she and Hammid had worn so she didn’t damage anything in the collection. She had no patience for unwitting vandalism.

  She pulled the drawer out, laid it on the work table, and lifted the lid off the drawer. She dug through a pile of ancient manuscripts, most in Latin, until she found what she wanted. So, this was the Treaty of Tuscany. Her research showed no mention of it in any history book, no references in any libraries, no articles about it, and nobody looking for it. It had been forgotten. As far as the world was concerned, this treaty had never existed. Yet here it was in front of her.

  The data slip with it said it had been found between the pages of a Sixteenth Century collection of biblical commentary, and was awaiting examination by a curator. That meant the Vatican Library really didn’t know what it was. That happened. Things were “discovered” in old collections all the time. It was in surprisingly good shape for a manuscript drawn up in 1189. The parchment was brown with age and the ink had faded, so she took a magnifying glass from a work table and bent over the treaty.

  The center of the treaty was too dark to read, but she knew from experience that it would be readable under the proper filtering light.

  But when she finished reading the Latin that was readable, she knew why it had been forgotten, and why it should probably remain forgotten. She also knew why certain people desperately wanted it remembered. What had she gotten herself into? Who was Hammid? Really? But there was no turning back now.

  Back to work. It was unusual in another way, too. The page was about twenty-two inches long, and that wasn’t unusual. But what was unusual was that only half of the page had been taken by the script and the seals of the signatories. The other half was blank.

  She pulled a small, but very high resolution Nikon from her bag and took several pictures of the treaty in its original condition. Then she went to work. When she was finished, a plastic sleeve with the treaty went into a leather case. Then she securely taped a plastic bag
to her thigh, high up under the nun’s habit she wore.

  Hammid came back just as she dropped her dress. “Got it?” he asked.

  She held up the leather case. “Right here. Want to take a look?”

  “No. You can show it to me back at the hotel.” He took the leather case from her and they headed back the way they had come.

  Chapter Three

  Vatican - Easter Sunday, March 22

  Seconds after the blast, the inside of the Basilica was stone silent. No moans. No calls. No falling statuary. No breaking glass. Aside from some surface blemishes, the enormous interior of the Basilica had absorbed the blast, ignored it, and proudly stood as it had for four hundred years. Windows blew out, venting some of the force, and bright shafts of sunlight shot through the sparkling dust hanging above the carnage.

  The structure shrugged off the explosion, but the people inside didn’t have that choice. Then the screaming began.

  Anyone within one hundred feet of the bomb died instantly. Within two hundred feet, the effect varied. Some died, others were mangled, maimed, blinded, or completely unhurt. Naked and shocked survivors whose clothes had been completely blasted off slipped and fell in the gore. The explosive cared nothing for rank or privilege. Cardinals, visiting dignitaries, guards, pages, babies, and eleven-year-old candle bearers all lay in the same wet, pulpy mess. The Pope was gone, shredded by the blast at the very instant he held Catholicism’s most sacred symbol above his head. The Vatican Security Chief who tried to throw a blast blanket over the Pope was too late, and lay unconscious and bleeding behind the marble altar, saved by that same blanket.

  Callahan had just entered the doors of the Basilica when the explosion exited at an expansion rate of 26,500 feet per second. The blast picked him up and hurled him through the portico and down five steps until his face painfully crunched against something hard. Ibrahim’s oxygen bottles had burst into thousands of tiny shrapnels, and jagged metal shards mixed with the explosive ripped along the blast path. One small piece grazed his head.

  Mancini and the guards behind Callahan were below the level of the top step and were sheltered from the blast. They drew their weapons, ran in the front doors, and aimed pistols inside the church, scanning for secondary attackers following the bomb with bullets. Nothing. They were ready to engage the enemy, ready to protect the people in the Basilica, but the enemy had left the building. With no targets in sight, they holstered their guns and moved into the destruction.

  * * *

  Callahan tried to stand after the blast, but the ground kept moving. Each time he tried to stand, the ground moved again and he’d fall back. Why are those people running? Is mass over? Is the Pope finished? What about that bomb guy in the wheelchair? They shouldn’t run like that. Someone might get hurt. He tried to stand again and pushed up on both feet. Where did my gun go? Did the Hashashin take my radio? I’m supposed to protect these people. Is that smoke coming out of the church doors? I should call the fire department. They’ll know what to do.

  His head felt very large, and everything sounded very far away. The ground moved again and he fell forward. Maybe if I just lay here for a few minutes to clear …

  * * *

  “Bishop? Bishop? Bishop Santini, can you hear me?”

  Santini was dreaming of paper. All the pages of the books were blank. Blank? Where were the words? A library with blank pages?

  “Bishop, can you sit up?”

  The paramedic from the Carabinieri helped him sit. Then it all snapped back into focus. The fat man, Hammid, the gun, and the nun all rushed back. The medic helped him to a comfortable reading chair in the great hall.

  “Can you remember what happened, Bishop? Our strike team found you unconscious and handcuffed to that table.”

  Strike team? Why was a strike team in the library? “Why, we were robbed. A man with a gun, and he had a nun hostage, a nun with a tattoo of a frog on her ankle. Have you found her? I was handcuffed to the table and then they stuck me with a needle. Did you catch him?”

  “Bishop, you are the only one we have found here.” He shook his head. “No nun. No tattooed frog. You should rest.”

  The paramedic was stuffing his kit back together.

  “Pardon my haste, Bishop. Please consult your personal physician as soon as possible. But I think you can understand I have to get back out there. The strike teams aren’t finding any injured inside the buildings, and I can be more useful out there.”

  The strike team returned to the room, and the commander told him the library was safe and clear. He said they didn’t have time to look into the theft, but he would personally report it to his superiors. They couldn’t stay with all the problems outside.

  Santini was puzzled. “What are you all talking about?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t know. Of course, you’ve been in here.”

  When the paramedic told him what had happened at St. Peter’s, at the mass where he should have concelebrated with the Pope, where everyone on the altar had died, where he would have died, he felt immediate relief, guilt at feeling relieved, then nausea at the guilt. Was he lucky, or was he damned?

  That meant he was responsible for the Vatican Library. Nobody else was going to step up. The Cardinal Librarian was probably dead or severely injured. He could mourn the dead later, but there was urgent work do right now. There had been a theft, but he didn’t know what was taken. That’s where his duty was right now, to the library.

  Santini ran up the steps to room H21, surprised his back didn’t scream in pain. The door was still wedged open with the chair he had placed there earlier. He scanned the room and saw the document drawer open on the work table. He checked the drawer number against the computerized catalog and saw ten documents listed for that drawer.

  He lifted each document from the drawer and laid it on the table. He counted nine, not ten, as the computer said. He checked the data slip with each document. All were there except something called the Treaty of Tuscany. Interesting. What was that? He never heard of it. The entry in the computer said it had been found two months ago between the pages of a Sixteenth Century volume of biblical criticism in another collection. That’s precisely why this recataloging was so important. They had things they didn’t even know about.

  So, the treaty had come in here, and the technicians had routinely scanned it into the computer, but the entry showed it had not yet been examined by the curators. That was normal. Work on this section was about fifty percent complete. Technicians would enter unknown manuscripts into the computer, then curators would examine them.

  He drilled deeper into the computer. Let’s see what the scan of this manuscript shows. The scan would have a very detailed picture of the document under both normal and infrared light. Once scanned, the software allowed the curators to bring out features that were invisible in normal light. What exactly do we have here?

  A large, flat-panel screen showed the document at normal size, and he adjusted a few filters and enlarged it to take up the full screen. He read the old Latin, read it again, looked at the seals of the Popes, and felt sick again. Is this what was stolen? Could his Church have done this? His Church? How could it ever create something like this?

  Even worse, had this document been in the Vatican Library all these years? And was his recataloging program responsible for loosing this horrid Treaty of Tuscany into the world? Was he responsible?

  This couldn’t be passed off to anyone else. He was stuck with the problem, and the clock was ticking. The strike team officer had promised to alert the proper authorities. Would he? When would they come? What if they found the treaty? That wasn’t an option.

  He checked to make sure the computer logging system was turned off, and entered new computer index numbers for the treaty, removing it entirely from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Papal collection, and putting it into his own personal section. It was much like physically taking a book off the shelf on the fourth floor, sliding the other books together so no space was left
, and putting it in his secret bookcase in the basement. There would be no trace left on the fourth floor. This was the same, just done with computer files.

  He gathered up the data slips that had been attached to the treaty, carefully removed its title from the folder that had held it in the drawer, and slid the folder into the middle of a stack of empties. He surveyed the room. It looked just like any normal sorting room half-way through a recataloging. Good.

  But that was only half the job. Now he had to “steal” something, so the authorities could find evidence of a theft. He went back to the main reading room. Still empty. He called out asking if anyone was there. Quiet.

  An archway led off the main reading room into a display area currently occupied with several glass cases exhibiting royal seals from medieval European royalty. Every king had one, and in an era where illiteracy was the rule rather than the exception, the kings made documents official with their royal seals. These were round, gold, between two and three inches in diameter, and usually depicted the king’s likeness on one side and some important event from his reign on the other.

  Santini felt sick again at what he had to do, but it had to be done. You’re protecting the Church, he told himself. Just do it and get it done with. He covered his hands with his sleeves to avoid fingerprints, lifted a floor vase and slammed it down in the middle of each glass case. The racket was huge, and glass flew everywhere. But he wasn’t cut, and the vase held together.

  Would a thief have replaced the vase where it had been? No. He threw the vase aside and let it roll over to a wall. Now he took off his cassock and spread it on the floor. He grabbed as many of the royal seals as he thought a thief could carry and dumped them on top of the cassock. Gathering up the sides of the cassock, he hurried to his office with the loot.

  When the one hundred and three seals were safely stashed in his safe, he put the cassock on and comforted himself with the thought that someday the seals could be returned to the collection. And now, his duty lay outside helping with the injured. He had done his best to protect his Church.