The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  “Confirmed kill on number four. Strangled in bed.”

  “Probable kill on the Via Appia Nuova. No collateral damage. Successful exfiltration," said another of the men. “Abdul Rizak Al Ghamdi, Saudi. Bomb planted last night in a planter outside the girlfriend’s ground floor apartment. Got him on the way out. Nobody else hurt.”

  “We should start paying these girls,” said Mancini.

  The Marshall circled the room as reports continued to come in. After one hour, reports had come in from nine teams. Eight had been successful, and one had been aborted.

  Callahan came up the stairs and spoke briefly to his controller.

  “Good work, Callahan,” said the Marshall.

  “So, we have four left out there,” said Mancini. He glanced at his watch. “Come on, guys, let’s hear something.”

  “Abort on number eleven. Watcher says our man is limping away from the target building with blood on his leg.”

  Callahan moved behind the man who had given the report, but said nothing. The Marshall kept pacing and scanning the entire control center.

  The screen showed GPS blips on a detailed neighborhood map. The controller pointed to the blip of the wounded Templar. “We have two cars converging on primary and alternate extraction points… one in position… second car reports our man… is in the first car… and moving away.” Two blips converged, then only one moved off. The man said something into the headset he wore. “Confirm our man is being extracted in one of our cars.”

  Mancini flipped through a clipboard. “Sami Ba Isani. Gaza experience. Jordanian. Looks like he got some practice in Iraq, too. Too bad. He doesn’t deserve to live. At least our man got out.”

  “Abort on numbers seven and eight. A car pulled up in front of their building and they jumped in. They left their own motor scooters parked in front.”

  “Sounds like they got the word from someone,” said Mancini. “Damn. One of them was Hashashin.”

  “That’s twelve accounted for. Right?” Callahan looked at one of the men at a computer terminal.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Who’s left?”

  “Number two,” said the man. “Only name we have is Saad. Hashashin.”

  The Marshall looked at his watch. “Who’s the shooter on that?”

  “DeLarossa, Sir” replied the controller.

  “Watcher?”

  “Karl Koch.”

  “Koch and DeLarossa,” repeated the Marshall. “It’s been too long. Anyone else, we should call them off. But nobody, and I mean nobody, is better than those two. Let them run a while.”

  The Marshall pointed to the man at the terminal. “Call the Watcher and see what’s happening.”

  The man held his hand to his earpiece as he listened. “The Watcher… says DeLarossa is sitting in a sidewalk café half a block away from the target drinking coffee and eating a Danish. The target is across the street and down a bit at another café, at a table with two others.”

  “Anyone we know?” asked Mancini.

  “Arab looking guy. Middle-aged. Overweight. And a woman. Brown hair. Thirty to forty. Says she has a frog tattooed on her ankle. They’re all studying something on the table, some papers.”

  “Mancini!” Callahan shouted, “A fat Arab guy, a woman in her thirties, and a frog. Ring a bell?”

  The man at the terminal held a hand to his earpiece and waved a hand. “Our man… DeLarossa… is moving toward the target. The Watcher says it’s a ‘Go.’ Looks like he can get a clear shot and get away.”

  “Abort. Abort now,” yelled Callahan. “Abort.”

  * * *

  “Show me your Latin transcription,” the man ordered Jean.

  She slipped the Latin transcription of the Treaty of Tuscany from her bag and laid it on the café table before him. He produced a page and laid the two side by side. Then he put one finger on the first word of Jean’s Latin, and another on the first word of his paper. Mumbling to himself and moving one word at a time, he put a check above each word on the pages.

  He stopped and looked up. “This word.” He pointed at Jean’s transcription. “Look. Is it correct?”

  Jean bent over and looked at the Latin. She pulled a copy of the original treaty from her bag and consulted it. “Yes, that’s correct. It’s ‘et.’ That’s Latin for ‘and.’”

  “Mine says ‘ut.’” He showed her his page. She quickly scanned it and saw he had brought a Latin transcript of the treaty. Now where did he get that?

  “Well, if that’s supposed to be a copy of the treaty, it’s wrong.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t know where you got this, but somebody on your side of this doesn’t know Latin. ‘Ut’ means ‘in order to.’ It makes no sense in that sentence. The phrase is ‘Pope and king.’ It makes no sense to say ‘Pope in order to king.’”

  “Don’t tell me what we know or don’t know, woman. We have had this for centuries.” He flicked his page with his fingers.

  Woman? Does this guy think he’s back on his camel? “Well, man… then you’ve been wrong for centuries. I don’t give a damn how long you have had it. This is what I do every day, and I can tell you that’s right.” She jammed a finger down on her transcription.

  Hammid intervened and the two men had a quick exchange in Arabic. “Let’s just get on with this,” he said to Jean.

  The man scowled and continued comparing the two pages. When he finished, he shrugged and said something in Arabic to Hammid.

  “My colleague says the transcription you have provided matches what we know about the treaty. We have had the words for hundreds of years, but without the original…” He shrugged.

  “Your colleague says so? Why do we even have this guy checking it?” Jean nodded at Saad. “Why couldn’t you check it?”

  “What can I say? Our management likes to double-check when we are paying large amounts of money for things. Saad will now call and confirm you have delivered the correct manuscript, and our management will transfer your fee to your account.”

  Which means, thought Jean, that someone doesn’t completely trust Hammid, or they are awfully careful with their money.

  They waited while Saad made his call. When he finished, he asked Hammid in Arabic, “Why don’t we kill this stupid cow? We have what we want. Why waste good money on her?”

  Hammid studied Saad and wondered as he often did why so many people think killing is a solution to any situation. But he had to be patient. “We don’t kill her. First, we made a bargain and she fulfilled her end. Second, we might need her services again. Third, what is she going to do? Will she run to the police and say she was involved in bombing the Vatican? I doubt it.”

  Hammid sipped of his coffee and continued in Arabic. “Actually, if one had no regard for her, far better than killing her would be to tip the police to her. Let them put her on trial and have her testify the treaty did, indeed, come straight from the Vatican Library.” The Old Man’s wisdom came easily to him.

  Hammid turned to Jean. “Check your account in about five minutes.”

  They waited and made small talk. Two minutes…

  Rome - Thursday, March 26

  The man at the window table left a few euro notes, daintily dabbed a napkin to his lips, folded the napkin back on the table, put on his sunglasses, and picked up his shopping bag. He pursed his lips, looked over the tops of his sunglasses at his reflection in the window, and carefully smoothed back one of the few remaining hairs on his smooth head. One arm held the shopping bag, while the other was bent at the elbow and swayed with him as he took small, quick steps. He was the bank teller who smirks as you reach the front of his line and slams down a CLOSED sign.

  At the cafe door he stretched, coughed into an embossed handkerchief, and looked left and right several times deciding which way to go. He glanced at his watch with a large face and a bright blue band, chose to go right, and walked out of the café at a leisurely pace. He nodded at pedestrians he met, and paused a few times to shake a disapproving head at d
isplays in the windows of the expensive shops.

  The target had led them on an unexpected chase. All the intelligence they had said Saad would leave his apartment and ride his Vespa to the university for his morning classes. He was an excellent student. So, the Watcher had simply let the air out of the Vespa’s back tire. Then DeLarossa had planned to approach Rashid as he investigated the flat, nod in sympathy, and shoot him.

  But Saad had ignored the Vespa that morning and hastily walked in the opposite direction, talking on a cell phone. DeLarossa figured he wasn’t going far, since he had left the Vespa parked. He knew they should have aborted the mission at that point, but they weren’t quitters. The Watcher was following Saad and had given no abort signal.

  Now he could see the back of his target sitting with a man and woman across the street in a sidewalk cafe. He couldn’t see the target’s face, but his back was just as good. The target was smoking and bent over a table, engrossed in whatever they were inspecting. Good.

  He could see the Watcher about a quarter block on the other side of the target’s café, slowly moving up the street with a walker. He moved the walker, settled himself, moved one foot, settled himself, moved the other foot, and paused. Then the whole procedure started again. Every few steps, the Watcher would carefully focus the long lens of his camera on the street scene and take a picture. He was quite obvious about this, pulling lenses from a bag hanging on the walker, adjusting camera settings, and waving the light meter around. The Watcher would no doubt have pictures of the target and anyone else who was with him. He had to remember that the Watcher had once done the same job he had now. Time passes.

  The Ruger Mark III .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol swung easily in the shopping bag. He looked down into the bag and saw the gun with its attached silencer sitting on top of a folded jacket. A round was in the chamber, the safety was off, and ten additional rounds waited in the magazine.

  When the traffic cleared, he crossed the street at a diagonal toward the café where the target was bent over the table in discussion. The woman looked up at him when he reached the curb, but registered nothing and went back to gesturing at the papers.

  The Watcher fished in his bag, pulled a Michelin travel guide from his pocket, and held it up pretending to consult it. That was the abort signal, but DeLarossa was no longer looking at the Watcher. He locked on his target and closed for the kill.

  The target was twenty feet away. He paused at the edge of the café, where a low fence separated it from the sidewalk. Should he stop for a latte, or continue on to whatever important business he had? The latte won out. He looked at his watch, and entered the open gate of the café.

  He glanced around, frowned, and then spotted a waiter offering a table. He nodded to the waiter with an annoyed and audible sigh that caused the waiter to retreat back into the building, lifted his shopping bag up and peered into it, rooting through its contents with his right hand. As he moved, Saad’s back came within one foot of his left side. He held the handles of the bag at chest level with his left hand so it hid his right hand holding the Ruger. His right forearm was parallel to the ground, with the end of the silencer six inches from the back of Rashid’s head.

  He fired three times. The small caliber bullets hardly made a sound with the silencer attached. They penetrated the skull, tunneled around inside the brain, but didn’t have the power to leave an exit wound. He dropped the gun back into the bag, continued looking through the bag with an annoyed expression, never interrupted his stride toward his table, then moved out the gate on the other side.

  The other patrons in the café noticed nothing and continued conversing or perusing their newspapers like normal Romans. Behind him, the woman at Saad’s table gave a choked sob, and he heard a chair fall. Then he heard screams and dishes crashing as the patrons saw the blood soaking the tablecloth and running onto the ground. What happened? That man on the table? So much blood! Oh, my God! Good. He walked out of the café and continued down the street, passing the Watcher who stayed buried in the Michelin Guide. DeLarossa noticed the guide, caught the Watcher’s eye, and shrugged. A beat up fiat with stolen license plates was waiting around the corner. He got in the back seat and the car moved off and turned at the first intersection.

  * * *

  “Target is down. Repeat. Target is down.”

  “Damn,” shouted Callahan. He wanted them alive, not dead or running all over the city.

  Callahan turned to the Marshall. “The woman the Watcher reported on… tattoo of a frog on her leg… same as the one who robbed the library… the man with her fits her partner. It’s a bomb connection… the only one we have.”

  Callahan spun and faced the controller. “Tell the Watcher to follow the man and woman at all costs.” Damn. What if they split up? Which one? “If he has to make a choice, follow the woman.” Why her? Instinct?

  The Marshall came around behind the terminals. “You, you, and you,” he pointed at three controllers. “Move all your people into the area. Get the descriptions out to them. We have a Watcher on the woman with the tattoo on her leg. We need a tail on the fat Arab.”

  He pointed at DeLarossa’s controller. “If your Watcher has any pictures, see if you can get them back here.”

  Then he pointed to Callahan. “Go!”

  Callahan grabbed an idle controller. “You know Rome? You have a car?”

  “I was born and raised in Rome.”

  “Let’s go!” He ran for the stairs.

  * * *

  When Saad’s head fell forward onto the table, Jean felt herself lifted up like a rag doll and placed on her feet. Hammid shoved her briefcase into her hands and said, “Go. Run. Go now. And I do mean run. Get out of here.”

  Jean took one more look at Saad, put a hand on the fence around the café, and vaulted over it. She held the case in both hands for balance and sprinted down the street in the direction opposite from the shooter. She turned at the first corner, then settled into a comfortable but brisk walk, pretended to look at the items in the shop windows, and tried to get her breath under control.

  It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t TV. The dour Arab was just sprawled in a puddle of his own blood. Right in front of her, at her table. Pop, pop, pop. Just like that. Hardly a sound. She could have reached out and touched him. The cigarette still glowed in his mouth. And that eye. That single open eye, dead, but looking right at her. Why hadn’t they shot her and Hammid? Why just that Arab? And who were “they?” Who was the little wimp with the shopping bag and gun? Some wimp.

  She wore a light blouse, slacks and running shoes. Hammid made her change from the more fashionable sandals she had chosen because he said they had to be prepared. When she had asked what they had to be prepared for, he had just shrugged and said, “Contingencies.” Now she thanked God she had changed shoes. Contingencies? Had he known? Suspected? Did the bank transfer go through?

  She was four blocks from her hotel when she saw the first police car skid around a corner and head toward the café. She paused and watched it, figuring that was what most people would do. It was just a few minutes run to the hotel, but she forced herself to slow down and walk at the same speed as everyone else on the sidewalk. Run and she would be stopped. Relax. Breathe. She even paused to inspect some shop windows, using the reflection in the glass to look for tails. Tails? What did a tail really look like? Some guy in a trench coat?

  At one block from the hotel her heart stopped racing and her hand ached. She released the death grip on the briefcase holding her translations, transcriptions of the treaty, and a few copies of the original. Hammid had the original, so no trace was left at the café. Hammid was leaning back in his chair and talking about the beauty of Alexandria when Saad was shot. That ended the travelogue. Now the Arabs probably wanted her dead, too. Whoever the Arabs were. Who did Hammid work for? The group with the long view of history? Who shot the guy? Why?

  So where was Hammid? Probably sprinting in the opposite direction right now. That picture brought a
bitter smile. Would he be back at the hotel? And how was she supposed to do the laser analysis on the treaty when Hammid had it with him? That was his problem now. She was finished. It wasn’t worth it. Not her fight.

  And Saad. He had an excellent transcript of the treaty in Latin. Where did that come from? They said they had it for hundreds of years. Perhaps some copy from when it was written? He had checked every word against her transcript. What would have happened if they were different?

  When she reached her hotel room, she collapsed on her back on the bed, then jumped up and connected her laptop computer to the hotel wireless Internet. She waited while the connection to her Swiss bank was confirmed. Account number, then three passwords in response to three questions. More waiting. Then the numbers flashed up. The transfer had been completed. The account showed one million euros.

  She fell back on the bed again. She had one million euros and she was wanted by the whole world as a mass murderer. She didn’t know where Hammid was. And she had no idea how to get out of Italy. Why not just take the train? Nobody knew anything about her. And who was that little mouse of a man who had shot Saad? Who cares? He didn’t want to shoot her. He had the chance. So she stared at the ceiling wishing she had never set eyes on Hammid, but grateful for all that money.

  * * *

  The Watcher had received the abort message when the shooter was halfway across the street and closing on Saad. He slid his small knapsack from his shoulder and pulled out a Michelin travel guide. That was the abort signal, but the shooter was focused on the target, not the Watcher. He had no other options. Protocol demanded he simply give a clear signal, and he had not been ordered to break cover to contact the shooter. So he fumbled with the guide while DeLarossa pranced into the café, shot the target, walked through the café, and exited toward him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if DeLarossa had sat down and ordered a cappuccino. The man was gifted.