The Sword of the Templars t-1

by Paul Christopher

  “Who?” Holliday asked. “It’s not as though he had a lot of friends. Ones that are still alive anyway.”

  “How about the university?” Peggy suggested. “Maybe somebody there.”

  “He was a professor emeritus. He didn’t lecture anymore. I think he was thesis advisor to a few grad students, but that’s about it.”

  “Still…” Peggy said.

  Holliday glanced at his watch. It was five o’clock. Probably too late for anyone at the school. He stared at the sword. He knew well enough that an artifact of such good quality and condition would normally have pride of place in the collection of any museum. It was a collector’s dream. In the hands of an expert there was even a good chance that the actual swordsmith could be identified; most smiths had a private “chop” or hallmark that they stamped somewhere on their work. Why had Henry decided to keep it hidden from prying eyes? Curiosity got the better of him.

  “We can give it a shot.” Leaving the sword where it was, they left the house, Holliday carefully locking the front door behind them.

  “Your ride or mine?” Peggy asked. She had a Hertz rental from Niagara Falls while Holliday was using a Crown Victoria tan sedan from the West Point Motor Pool. It had the suspension of a tank, no radio, and no cup holders.

  “Yours,” said Holliday.

  The SUNY main campus was less than a mile north of the Hart Street house. The grounds were pleasant, treed, and mostly modern, a lot of the buildings bearing the unmistakable mark of the architect I. M. Pei, the Chinese-American designer who seemed to favor flat, featureless cubes and rectangles that often looked like three-dimensional studies in geometry rather than buildings. Someone had once called it “fortress architecture.” To Holliday it seemed more like simple random shapes made from a child’s wooden blocks.

  The History Department was located in Thompson Hall, a squat firebrick rectangle with a jutting wing at each end. Holliday and Peggy began navigating a series of windowless, dimly lit corridors.

  “I remember studying places like this in Sociology,” muttered Peggy as they trailed down yet another bleak hallway. “They were meant to be riot proof. Narrow stairwells, bad lighting, slow elevators.” She snorted. “Who riots in universities these days? They’re all business students now. No more sex, no more drugs, and no more rock and roll. Just beer and football.”

  “Don’t kid yourself.” Holliday grinned. “There’s still a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, even at West Point.”

  “Be still my heart,” gasped Peggy in mock horror. “You mean the Army of One smokes pot?”

  “That’s the least of it,” replied Holliday. “Think of all the places the Army sends its soldiers: Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan; drug paradises, each and every one.”

  “You’re too cynical.”

  “Heroin use in America increased by almost two hundred percent during Vietnam,” said Holliday. “Of course I’m cynical.”

  They found the Medieval Studies Department on the third floor. The offices stood around a central reception area guarded by a secretary. The nameplate on the secretary’s desk identified her as Ms. Caroline Branch. The name was apt; she was thin as a twig. She appeared to be in her late fifties or early sixties. Once upon a time she’d probably been quite beautiful, even model pretty, but the years had taken their toll. The high cheekbones now stood out like ax blades, her neck was thinning, the wrinkling hidden behind a col orful scarf, the small breasts impossibly symmetrical in a padded bra. Her hairstyle was a flipped-under look from the seventies, streaks of gray overtaking what once might have been chestnut but which was now merely brown.

  Her hands had long, elegant fingers, unadorned, and a few gnarled raised veins, and a few more age spots. There were no bangles on her wrists. She looked as though she’d been a secretary forever. Holliday introduced himself and Peggy. Ms. Branch seemed unimpressed; there wasn’t even a token expression of sympathy at Uncle Henry’s passing. Holliday could smell the faint, sour scent of tobacco in the woman’s hair and some kind of sweet alcohol on her breath. A secret smoker and a sherry drunk, perhaps.

  “We were wondering if we could get into Professor Granger’s office,” said Holliday.

  “We’d like to get some of his personal things,” added Peggy.

  “It’s very late,” the secretary complained. She gave an obvious glance at the large-faced men’s-style watch on her right wrist. “I was just about to leave.”

  “We won’t be very long,” said Holliday.

  “We could lock up if you wanted us to,” offered Peggy.

  Ms. Branch looked insulted.

  “I couldn’t allow that, I’m afraid,” she said.

  “How long were you the professor’s secretary?” Holliday said.

  “Administrative assistant,” she corrected curtly.

  “Administrative assistant,” repeated Holliday.

  “I’ve been with the university for forty-three years. I came here directly from the Albany Academy,” said Ms. Branch primly.

  Forty-three years. Late sixties, early seventies, which fit the hairstyle. The Albany Academy was almost as old as West Point, a place to keep the daughters of New York State’s rich and powerful until it was safe to let them out on their own. She’d turned to stone here, petrified like an insect in amber. Odd that the woman had come to work at SUNY rather than take classes; there was more to Ms. Branch than met the eye.

  “You were with Grandpa Henry all that time?” Peggy asked.

  “I wasn’t with your grandfather, Miss Blackstock. I worked for him.” There wasn’t the slightest deference in her voice; after forty-three years she probably had more dirt on more people than anyone else in the university. She didn’t need job security-she had gossip instead. Holliday smiled to himself. Good intelligence could take you anywhere.

  “Could we get into the office?” Holliday pressed gently. Ms. Branch gave him a long, steady look.

  “If you must,” she said, relenting. She opened the center drawer in her desk, took out a ring of keys, and stood up. Holliday and Peggy followed her to a closed office door on the far side of the room. A small plastic sign read simply: DR. HENRY GRANGER. Ms. Branch unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped aside.

  “We’ll be quick,” promised Peggy.

  “Please,” said Ms. Branch. Did she have cats to feed? Was it laundry day? Holliday offered her a diplomatic smile as he passed.

  They stepped into the office. It was large and airy, one wall lined with pale oak bookcases, another with framed photographs, and a third with a cluttered bulletin board. Surprisingly the fourth wall had a window.

  The office looked out across the SUNY ring road to Maytum Hall, one of the I. M. Pei buildings, the geometry in this case being a concrete semicircle with narrow glass slits at regular intervals. To Holliday it looked like an outsized version of one of the concrete bunkers Rommel had erected on the Normandy beachhead.

  The ground between Thompson Hall and the concrete semicircle consisted of neatly manicured lawn, the occasional curving path, and trees planted here and there in case the symmetry became too overpowering.

  Peggy checked out the trophy wall of pictures, and Holliday sat down behind the modern desk. It even had a computer terminal. He tried to boot it up, but it was password protected. He opened the center drawer and found an address book, which he began to flip through.

  “Weird picture,” murmured Peggy, leaning into the wall for a closer look.

  “Weird how?” Holliday asked, still flipping through the old address book.

  “It’s a photograph of three guys, with Grandpa Henry at one end in civilian clothes and the other two guys in uniform. Army, I think. British. From the background I’d say it was taken somewhere in North Africa. Cairo maybe. Could be Alexandria.”

  “So? What’s weird about that? Henry was a medieval scholar. He’s traveled all over the world.”

  “The inscription says: ‘Derek Carr-Harris, Leonard Guise, Donald Mitchie, April 1941.’ Then the
word ‘Postmaster’ with a capital P.”

  Holliday flipped through the address book. There was a U.K. listing for a D. Carr-Harris but nothing for Guise or Mitchie.

  “Interesting. Postmaster sounds like it might have been a code name. But we weren’t at war in April ’41. What’s Henry doing hanging around in Egypt with a couple of Brits in uniform eight months before Pearl Harbor? He started off in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS wasn’t even organized until 1942-June or July.”

  “ ‘Curiouser and curiouser’ as Alice said down the rabbit hole,” Peggy murmured, looking at the next picture on the wall. “Here’s another one with Carr-Harris and Grandpa Henry in it. Neither one of them is in uniform.”

  “What is it?” Holliday asked, continuing to rummage through the drawer. He found Uncle Henry’s passport and checked the dates. It was still valid. There were four stamps on the last page: one going into Canada at Niagara Falls, an entry stamp from Heathrow Airport in London two days later, and another entry stamp into Frankfurt dated a week after that. The last stamp showed his reentry into the U.S. three weeks following his entry into Germany. All the stamps were from three months ago.

  “They’re standing in this huge room with a gigantic open window you could fly an airplane through. There are mountains in the background,” said Peggy, describing the photograph.

  “Is there an inscription?”

  “Yes. It says ‘Berghof 1945.’ ”

  “You’re kidding me!” Holliday stood and went to the wall of photographs. He gazed over Peggy’s shoulder and looked at the picture. Uncle Henry and Carr-Harris were little more than silhouettes, insignificant against the grotesquely out-of-scale room they were standing in. It really was enormous. The snowy peaks of the Salzburg Alps were clearly etched in the distance.

  “Remind me where Berghof is again?” Peggy asked.

  “Not where, what,” explained Holliday. “The Berghof was Adolf Hitler’s name for the summer house in Bavaria that Broadbent mentioned. The Fьhrer was trying to be a man of the people. It means ‘Mountain Farm.’ ”

  “Which explains the flag the sword was wrapped up in,” said Peggy. “But what was Grandpa doing there with that Englishman? What was he doing there at all?” She paused. “I thought the lawyer said his father was with Grandpa when he found the sword.”

  Holliday nodded. “So did I.”

  “So where is he?”

  “A lot of questions about Henry today and not enough answers.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Ask more questions,” said Holliday.

  6

  Holliday stepped out of the office. Ms. Branch, the secretary, was sitting at her desk. A large purse stood waiting beside her computer screen, now shrouded with a plastic cover. She was reading a pale green hardcover book. It looked very old; Holliday couldn’t see the title. Ms. Branch looked up, closing the volume, her index finger inserted to keep her place.

  Holliday saw the cover. There was a picture of a beautiful young woman with long auburn hair inset into the fabric. The title was stamped beneath it in faded gold: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. Surprise, surprise; it seemed there was still a romantic little girl hidden inside the secretary’s arid soul. The book looked as though it might have come straight off Uncle Henry’s shelf of children’s books.

  “Yes?” Ms. Branch said.

  “According to his passport my uncle traveled to Canada a few months ago.”

  “That’s right, in March.”

  She didn’t even have to consult a day book. Interesting.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Toronto.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Yes,” said Ms. Branch. “He went to see a colleague at the Centre for Medieval Studies. The University of Toronto. Dr. Braintree.”

  “And then he went on to England and Frankfurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Certainly,” said Ms. Branch, her tone crisp. “The Master’s Lunch.”

  “The Master’s Lunch?”

  “Balliol College, Oxford. They have a lunch for the senior Old Members every two or three years.”

  “He went to England to have lunch?” Holliday asked.

  “He had a great many friends at Oxford,” said Ms. Branch.

  “Any in particular?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Icy.

  “What about Frankfurt?”

  “Are you asking me if I know why the professor went to Germany?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have no idea,” said Ms. Branch. She stiffened in her ergonomically designed chair. “And I’m not sure I like being interrogated.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Holliday. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”

  “I’m afraid it did.”

  Holliday paused. Something was nibbling at his subconscious. More than a year ago Henry had been diagnosed with early-stage macular degeneration: his eyes were failing. He’d voluntarily stopped driving. He tried to visualize his uncle riding the Greyhound. Somehow it didn’t compute.

  “How did he get to Toronto?”

  “I drove him to Buffalo,” said Ms. Branch. “He caught the afternoon train.”

  A little bit of color flushed her cheeks. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly. She clutched the book in her lap like a drowning sailor. She looked almost demure-Bambi caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Years peeled away in an instant. Suddenly, Holliday got it. Curtains parted, the fog lifted, the veil dropped from before his eyes, and all was revealed.

  Of course.

  The old copy of Anne of Green Gables probably had come from Uncle Henry’s shelves. They were lovers, or had been once upon a time.

  It seemed strange now-and maybe high on Peggy’s ee-uw scale-but not so strange if you went back forty-three years to young Caroline Branch’s arrival in Fredonia, hormones freshly released from the all-girl confines of the Albany Academy.

  Holliday did the math: the mid-sixties, the Playboy Philosophy, the Summer of Love, and all that malar key; she would have been nineteen or twenty and fresh as a daisy. Uncle Henry would have been in his forties, very much the pipe-smoking debonair professor, maybe even a little bit of distinguished gray at the temples. Hugh Hefner with an education.

  Teacher and student for as long as it lasted and maybe longer than that. It wouldn’t be the first time in academia that a professor had bedded a coed. Henry had never married and, according to the nameplate on her desk, neither had Ms. Branch. Maybe it really was an old-fashioned love story. He stared at the secretary with fresh eyes.

  “Do you have any other questions?” Ms. Branch asked stiffly, perhaps reading his mind a little.

  “Not right now.”

  “It really is getting quite late,” she prompted baldly.

  “We won’t be much longer.”

  Holliday turned on his heel and went back into the office, shutting the door behind him. Peggy was sitting in front of Henry’s computer, trying passwords.

  “Try Caroline,” said Holliday, keeping his voice low.

  “What?” Peggy asked, brow wrinkling.

  “The password. Try Caroline.”

  “But…”

  “Later. Just try it.”

  Peggy gave him a look, but she typed the name into the slot and hit return.

  “Nothing,” she said. She sounded almost relieved.

  “Try Caroline Branch, all one word,” he instructed. She typed. She stared at the screen.

  “I’ll be damned,” she whispered. “It worked.”

  “I think they were lovers back in the day,” explained Holliday quietly.

  Peggy snorted. “Grandpa, you old dog!”

  “What kind of files do you see?”

  “The usual stuff. Looks like a lot of old lectures in his ‘My Documents’ files. One called ‘Letters,’ another labeled ‘Expenses.’ ‘Graduate students.’ ‘Tutorials.’ Nothing out of the ordinary
. Nothing about a sword anyway.” She glanced up at Holliday. “Presumably that’s what we’re looking for.”

  “Is there an e-mail account?”

  “Grandpa Henry using e-mail? Come on, now.”

  “Grandpa Henry having a love affair with Ms. Branch?” Holliday grinned.

  “Point taken,” said Peggy. “I’ll check.” She tapped a few keys. “You’re right. There’s a Hotmail account: medievalscholar99@hotmail.com.”

  “What’s the last message he sent?”

  “It’s to medievalscholar123@hotmail.com,” said Peggy. “Sent a week ago.”

  “What’s the subject line?”

  “It’s a thank-you for a reply from the 123 person. The subject line for the original message is ‘QUERY.’ ”

  “What does it say?”

  “It says: ‘Dear Henry, as I suggested to you on your visit it looks like you have some early combination of a Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian problem going on, but without the key I’m afraid it’s probably indecipherable. There’s no mention of it anywhere in the literature that I can find. There’s a fellow in Jerusalem named Raffi Wanounou who knows a lot about crusader castles; maybe he can point you in the right direction. He works at the Institute. Sorry I can’t be more help. It was nice seeing you in March. Hope things went well with Donald. Keep in touch.’ It’s signed Steven Braintree.” Peggy made a face. “There’s such a name as Braintree?”

  “It’s part of Metropolitan Boston. John Quincy Adams was born there,” said Holliday. “Apparently this particular Braintree is a professor at the University of Toronto.”

  “What’s all this ‘Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian’ stuff?” Peggy frowned. “It’s all gobbledygook.”

  “I think he’s talking about codes,” answered Holliday. “You ever read a book called The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett? They did a TV movie of it back in the eighties with Cliff Robertson.”

  “Not my era.”

  “It was about a code based on a Daphne du Maurier novel called Rebecca.”

  “Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. 1940. Alfred Hitchcock.”

  “The forties is your era?”

  “Absolutely.” She grinned. “All that noir stuff. Great lighting, everybody smoking cigarettes.”