The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  “How’d you find that?”

  “Zurich tracked you down. They must have called all the hospitals in Rome.”

  “Oh, hell. I have a headache, but that’s all. Got my bell rung, but it’s been rung worse before and I lived.”

  Mancini put the paper back and peered over his glasses. “Why are you here? What do you think you’re going to do here? Take some time. Go to the beach. Watch the girls. Come back when you’re in one piece again and don’t look a garbage truck backed over your head.”

  Callahan laughed. “Yeah. I probably do look like hell. But I am in one piece. It’s just a big bruise.” He looked around, leaned in, and lowered his voice. “There’s only two Templars here, you and me, and we can’t have half our forces at the beach.”

  “That’s changing. Zurich wants payback. They’ve been arriving ever since Sunday night. All vested Templars.”

  “What about the Concordat? You and me are already in violation.”

  “The last Pope refused an alliance with the Templars, you’re right, so we were in violation by being in the Vatican. But, now he’s dead, and his papacy is ended. And there is no Pope, so the Concordat is in a gray area. We can bring Templars in and we’re really not in violation since there is no Pope. If the next guy makes an alliance with us, fine. If he doesn’t want to work with us, then we just pack up and let him fight his own battles. Next time they come calling with a bomb, he can tell them all about the fellowship of men, the dignity of human life, open borders, and God’s plan for mankind.”

  “I want in on this.”

  “There’s a spot for you. Don’t worry.”

  A uniformed guard came in and piled a Glock Nine box, holster, two magazines, and two boxes of shells on Mancini’s desk. Mancini signed three forms, then pushed the pile to Callahan. “Here. A good Austrian gun.”

  Mancini rubbed his chin and pushed back in his chair. “It’s on for tomorrow. The plan has been complete for a few weeks. Zurich wants to move now, before these guys disperse.”

  “Deal. Well, what do I do today?”

  “Take a rest.”

  “Take a rest? No way. There has to be something I can do. This place is a madhouse, half the Vatican is dead, Italian cops are still around, and I just heard you’re acting Chief of Vatican Security. That shows how screwed up things are.”

  “Yes, yes, and yes.” Mancini looked around. “You want something to do today, big shot? Want to kick some ass? Alright. I’ll give you something to do today. Remember, you asked.” He grinned and took a clipboard from the wall. “Here. After the bomb, they found some bishop handcuffed in the Vatican Library and babbling about a frog.”

  “Are you nuts?” Callahan scanned the clipboard. “We’re mounting an operation, and you want me to chase down the library bandit? Is it an overdue book? Chewing gum? Is that what the Glock is for?”

  “What are you bitching about? There’s nothing to do until tomorrow night.” Mancini pointed to the door. “Go to the library or go to the beach. Your choice.”

  Callahan took the Glock and the holster and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Santani’s office was a surprise. Callahan had expected a dusty clutter of books, papers, and filing boxes balanced on top of each other, but instead he found ultramodern furniture and a bank of three computer monitors. Not an oak panel, index card, cobweb, or mahogany desk in sight.

  The library had not reopened and was eerily quiet. Nobody sat in the vast reading room poring over old books, no shuffling of paper, no rustling tweed, no carts of books being wheeled around. Creepy.

  Callahan accepted coffee from the Bishop and listened politely as he gave a brief history of the library. It had been founded by Pope Nicholas V in 1451 to bring the various Vatican holdings into a single recognized collection. Since then, it had grown from one thousand books to more than two million. It also had a hundred thousand manuscripts in Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew. It housed maps, letters, drawings, artwork, coins, engravings, and medals. The records of the Catholic Church were part of the collection, detailing the reign of each Pope, councils, encyclicals, synods, conclaves, and consistories. Santini’s pride in the library and his place in it was obvious.

  Callahan patiently listened to Santini’s story of the theft at the library, nodded the whole time, and faked some notes on a small pad he carried.

  “Anything I can do to help, I will do, Mr. Callahan. Anything.” Bishop Santini fiddled with a paper clip, caught himself, and placed it aside. “Anything at all.” He picked up a pen, pried the top off, snapped it back, pried it off… and shoved it in a drawer.

  “Well, maybe you can tell me why the thief took so little. As you said, the Vatican library is one of the premier collections in the world. The collection is huge. Why stop with a few medallions? And why those in particular?”

  “You must understand those medallions are priceless, very special, and have great historical value.”

  “Yes, I know. And each one weighs, what? About two or three ounces? He only took, what? A hundred medallions? So we have less than twenty pounds? You said he was a husky man. Doesn’t that seem odd? I’ll agree it’s a lot of gold, but if twenty pounds is priceless, wouldn’t fifty pounds be even more priceless?”

  “Fifty pounds is not easy to carry.”

  ”Oh, I don’t know. Fifty pounds is a bag of fertilizer or a heavy suitcase. And after all the work he went to? And that’s not even counting the tattooed nun.” Callahan waited for a reaction.

  Santini winced at the mention of the tattooed nun. The tattooed frog would follow him for the rest of his career. He never should have said a word.

  “All I can tell you, Mr. Callahan, is what the thief said.” He looked down at his hands. “He said the medallions had great value to Chinese collectors. Let’s see, he said there was so much priceless Chinese art in the West, wasn’t it time for some priceless Western art to be in China?” Santini thought that was very good detail.

  Callahan looked up from the folder on his lap. “Well, Bishop, is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “Is it time for priceless Western art to be in China? Has there been a movement in that direction? Are there calls for the return of Chinese art?”

  “Repatriate art? Everybody is calling for that.” Santini looked across the room where his safe was concealed.

  “But why these medallions? Isn’t there something more valuable here? Any Faberge Eggs? Jeweled tiaras? Jewels are easier to fence than these medallions. Like you said, the medallions are listed in the Vatican collection in numismatic catalogs. They could always melt the gold, I suppose.”

  Santini winced again at the thought. “Oh, they could, and it would be horribly destructive.” Go with this guy, he thought. Don’t fight him. “Funny thing is, in a legitimate sale, each medallion would bring ten times its own weight in gold.”

  Santini cracked a knuckle. Why had he chosen those stupid medallions? This American was right. A thief could find many more valuable things in the library.

  He held a silver letter opener between his index fingers and examined it. “I can’t say what they thought, or why they did it. How do I know? It was horrible. All those people dead, the Holy Father, the Cardinal Librarian. Why ask me what the thieves thought? I don’t know. I’m a scholar, not a thief. I’m a librarian. I have a duty to this collection. I have a duty to the Church.”

  Callahan pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m sorry if I have upset you, Bishop. But you must remember that I, too, have a duty. Sometimes people observe things that can be very helpful. Sometimes they don’t even realize they hold a key to an investigation. Something in the mannerisms of the thieves, a few words between them, or an off-hand comment. You’re all we have, Bishop.”

  Callahan rubbed a finger under the bandage on his head. “Tell me a bit more about those medallions. Is there any way you can imagine someone would bomb St. Peter’s just to get some trinkets? Understand, these things are new to me.”
r />   Callahan saw him bristle at the word “trinkets.”

  Santini didn’t like where this was going. “Even if I put myself in the criminal mind, it makes no sense, Mr. Callahan. As I said, they can’t sell them for their real value. I doubt any collector would go near them now. No museum, gallery, or dealer would touch them. The first thing they would do, just to protect themselves, is call the police.”

  “Ok. Well, is there anything, anything at all in the Vatican Library that would even come close? Can you imagine anything here that a criminal would want so badly he would blow up a thousand people?”

  “If a criminal was willing to kill a thousand people, I would think he could find much more lucrative places than our library. I suppose he could blow up a bank and kill a hundred people to haul off cash or jewels.”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose so.” Callahan made show of putting his pen away and closing his notebook.

  “Ok.” Callahan got up to leave and turned back toward Santini. “You know, Bishop, that nun never came forward to report she was kidnapped. Doesn’t that seem strange?”

  “Of course it’s strange. Everything about that day was strange. It tells me she was an imposter who was in league with the thieves. She was one of them. You know that.”

  “But you did get a good look at the tattoo? The frog?” Callahan smiled.

  Santini sighed. “Yes, the frog. I can only report what I remember, and as I lost consciousness, I remember a frog. I can’t tell you if it was real, or if it was a dream. I can only report what I remember.”

  Callahan stopped a few feet from the door. “And you didn’t see anything familiar in the pictures from the security cameras?”

  The bishop brushed the front of his cassock and adjusted his pectoral cross. “I looked at thousands of pictures, and none of them looked like the man who kidnapped me. I don’t know… the pictures… it’s just… none of them match that man.”

  The bishop came around his desk. “Truthfully, those security pictures from all over the Vatican aren’t very good. In most of them there is not enough detail to make out a face, and the ones that can be recognized just weren’t the thieves. Our cameras in the library are state of the art and had better angles, but the man was wearing that hooded bonnet, and the woman was covered with that bag in the library. You can see that yourself.” Santini seemed out of breath and Callahan wondered why he was offering such a spirited defense. “I did the best I could with the police artist, but I’m afraid the sketch looks like millions of men.”

  “But you say he was British?” said Callahan.

  The bishop hesitated. “Yes. He spoke English with a British accent.”

  “Is there something else?”

  “I’m not sure, but he sounded like someone who had been schooled very well in English, but there was a trace of a mother tongue there, too. It’s hard to say what, and it was faint, but it was there.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t American?”

  “Mr. Callahan, I have been around a long time. Trust me. I know the difference between a British and an American accent. Perhaps he was really a Russian pretending to be British. I don’t know. How do you expect me to know?”

  “Thanks for your time, Bishop. If we need anything else, I’ll get back to you.”

  Santini picked up the paper clip again. That man will be back, he thought.

  * * *

  Callahan’s head pounded with each step back to Mancini’s office. Something was wrong at the library. It just didn’t add up. He didn’t believe for a minute the bomb had been a diversion for the library thieves, but the thieves had certainly known when it would be detonated. Was someone just trying to make a fast buck on the back of the bomb? But if that was true, why take those medallions instead of jeweled rings, chalices, and crucifixes? Those things contained a fortune in diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. Pry the jewels out and they transport easily and can be sold anywhere in the world.

  And that guy Santini? What was he so nervous about? Could it be an inside job? Did they really grab the jewels and bust up the glass cases for show? But that didn’t make sense either. The guy had given his whole life to the Vatican Library. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself outside of the scholarly world.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about that library bishop, and that bothered him even more. Templar strike teams would go out tomorrow night, and he was worried about a library? He straightened up and quickened his stride when he approached Mancini’s office.

  Mancini met him coming in the door. “You still look like crap, Callahan. How’d you do with the bishop?”

  “They stole some medallions from medieval kings. About a hundred. It doesn’t add up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, who blows up the Pope to get a few medallions? The risk is way too high.”

  Mancini cocked his head. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to dig into the security logs. That’s my thing, anyway. I want to see what key cards were used and where.”

  “You think Santini is dirty?”

  “No, not that. I can’t put my finger on it. It just has a special stink. I’ll need a super-user code for the security system. I’ve worked with it before, and it’s really pretty good.”

  “Super-user? You want access to the entire Vatican security system?”

  “Yeah, unless you want me to hack into it, but that will take too long and be embarrassing to you.”

  Like all Templars in Operations, Callahan had a real cover job. His was with Triad International. It wasn’t much different from Special Operations when he was in the Marine Corps. They were all shooters, but modern warfare, and especially anti-terrorist work, had gone way beyond chasing down the bad guys and shooting them.

  “Look.” Mancini pointed to the office. “Go sit down at a terminal in there and I’ll have the computer geek come to you. I don’t want you wandering around scaring the help with your twisted face.”

  “One more thing,” said Callahan. “When do our friends arrive?”

  “A lot are here, and everybody will be here tonight. And it gets even better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Templar Marshall himself is coming down from Zurich.”

  * * *

  Callahan studied the first floor plan of the library displayed on the screen and traced the route Santini told him the thieves had taken. Did Santini really understand how the computer logged every use of a keycard?

  He saw nothing unusual until just after the bomb exploded. Then the logs showed the guards had hit the emergency auto-protect option before they redeployed to deal with the bomb. That was exactly what they should have done. The computer system would reject any keycard that wasn’t coded to a high-level user.

  He highlighted the door where Santini said the thieves had entered and clicked for its log. Just after the bomb, it had been opened by Santini’s keycard. Ok. Then he accessed the camera covering the inside of the door. Just like Santini had said, it showed a man dressed as a priest wearing a beekeeper hat that blocked his face and a nun with a bag over her head. Then they moved out of camera range.

  Now, Callahan asked for the next use of any keycard anywhere in the library. The screen displayed the drawing for the second floor and flashed on room H21. Santini’s card had been used there just minutes after they had entered the building. What was room H21?

  He pulled up a room list and saw H21 was a sorting room. He flipped the list on the screen and found the library had fourteen sorting rooms scattered on different floors.

  Santini hadn’t said anything about H21. Why not? What was in there?

  Forty minutes after H21 had been opened, the camera and detectors showed a large priest and a nun, both wearing beekeeper hats, leaving the way they had come. It didn’t look like they had a hundred medallions, but with the camera angle, he couldn’t be sure.

  Rome - Tuesday, March 24

  “Tell me,” said the dead, flat, brittle voice on the phone.


  Hammid couldn’t put it off any longer and he had dialed the Old Man in the Bekka valley, the leader of the Hashashin. The Old Man never gave a greeting or good word. No congratulations, no polite inquiries. None of the courtesy, small talk, and attention to personal detail which was so delightful among most Arabic speakers. It was always a terse, sterile, and efficient exchange of information. He expected the very same of others.

  “Sheik, I have secured the Treaty of Tuscany from the Vatican Library. The woman from London sorted through the documents and says this is the treaty. She translated it and it agrees with what we know about the treaty. She had no prior knowledge of it. She is conducting more tests, but says final laser analysis must be done in London.” He hoped he had been as succinct and accurate as possible.

  “Saad will contact you and inspect the treaty before paying her. She is not to be harmed. She cannot harm us. All her testimony can do is enhance the authenticity of the treaty if she says she stole it from the Vatican Library. She is valuable to us alive. Make sure you understand that.”

  “Yes, Sheik.”

  “Arrange for the London testing.”

  The line clicked off.

  London again, thought Hammid. Always London, or America, or Japan. No Arab universities had the equipment. Nobody journeyed to Arab universities for advanced research. No high-tech solutions were developed there. Even the science books they learned from were in English.

  Once his people ruled the civilized world, leading it in science, mathematics, literature, astronomy, philosophy, and religion. But no more. While the world advanced, they watched. Their best students studied in the US, and the very best stayed with their American masters.

  They had lost their unity, their spirit, and their drive. Worst of all, three hundred million Arabs blamed three million Israelis for their plight. If the Israelis magically disappeared one day, they would have to invent some other excuse.

  Would they believe the West hated and despised them? No. Would they unite as a people to be reckoned with? No. Would they draw on their dormant energy? No.