The Sword of the Templars t-1

by Paul Christopher

  “So?”

  “They’re Italian. The only place you can get them is a town called Macerata, near the Adriatic Coast.”

  “Now why would you know a thing like that?” Peggy asked.

  “Fanum Voltumnae,” said Wanounou as though it would mean something to them.

  “ ‘Fanum’ means ‘temple’ or ‘shrine,’ doesn’t it?” Holliday said, his mind skipping back to Mary-Lou Gemmill’s senior Latin class and her threats to deny prom tickets to anyone who couldn’t decline neuter i-stem nouns by the end of class.

  “That’s right,” said Wanounou. “There’s a big archaeological site there. Etruscan. It’s not far from Orvieto, a big gathering center for crusaders shipping out to Jerusalem. I’ve visited the site a number of times.”

  “How far along were you with the scroll before they got to you? Did you manage to read it?”

  “I didn’t even get to clean the pieces.”

  “How many slices?”

  “Nine.”

  “How long do you think the whole scroll was?”

  “Thirty centimeters. I measured the pieces.”

  “About twelve inches.”

  “More or less.”

  “And he took them all?”

  “I guess so. My concentration was elsewhere,” answered Wanounou.

  Peggy gave Holliday a sharp look.

  “Would you like some water?” she said.

  Wanounou nodded.

  There was a carafe and a plastic cup with a flex straw in it on a rolling side table beside the bed. Peggy poured some water into the cup then held the flex straw to the professor’s lips. He drank and then his head dropped back against the crisp linen of the pillow as though even sipping a little bit of water had exhausted him.

  Holliday sighed. Maybe losing the scroll and whatever secret it possessed was an omen. The priest in the Old City alley brought the body count to an even half dozen. And those were the people he knew about. How many other people had died because of the sword and its hidden message? With the scroll gone there was no way to go on. They’d reached the end of the line. It was time to go home.

  “Well, that’s it, I guess,” he said. “We’ve got nowhere else to go with this. We’d better pack up and go.”

  “You’re going to leave it like this?” Wanounou said. “After everything you and Peggy have been through? After everything I’ve been through on your behalf?”

  “You’d make a great Jewish mother,” said Holliday, smiling weakly.

  “I have a Jewish mother; it rubs off,” said Wanounou, trying to smile back. It obviously hurt. He grimaced instead.

  “Without knowing what’s on that scroll I’m stumped.” Holliday shrugged. “Unless a really suspicious customs guy at the airport finds your Italian thieves the scroll is gone forever.”

  “The scroll may be gone,” said Wanounou, “but we might still have the message.”

  “Explain.”

  “X-ray fluorescence. Know anything about it?”

  “Something to do with X-rays?” Peggy ventured.

  “Fluorescent X-rays,” said Holliday.

  “Never mind,” said Wanounou. “It’s a relatively new process they use for all sorts of analysis, including archaeological artifacts. They used it recently to uncover a hidden text under a painted over section of the Archimedes Palimpsest, a copy of some of Archimedes’s theories from about 300 B.C.”

  “And?”

  “The silver the scroll is made of is brittle and thin, extremely fragile. It occurred to me that even the cleaning process might harm whatever images or script was on the silver.” He paused, his voice croaking. Peggy gave him another sip of water. He went on. “So before I put them into the electrolyte bath I took them upstairs to the imaging department and ran the individual slices through the big Philips machine they have up there. I fed the imaging data back down to my computer in the lab. I was just about to check it when the goons came in.”

  “So the data is still in your computer?”

  “It should be,” said the professor.

  Using Wanounou’s key and with the password to his computer written on a slip of paper, Peggy and Holliday let themselves in to the professor’s laboratory later that morning. Except for a dark stain on the floor there was no evidence that anything untoward had happened. There was nothing broken and nothing that looked out of place.

  The vase that had originally contained the silver scroll had been placed on a photographic copy stand waiting to be documented. There was a scattering of rust-colored crumbs on a white plastic tray that had held the laser-sawn strips of the scroll, but the scroll itself was gone.

  Peggy sat down at the computer terminal, booted it up, and entered Wanounou’s password. She entered the name he’d given to the data from the X-ray fluorescence scanner upstairs and then opened it. A screen full of brightly colored, slightly fuzzy images appeared.

  “According to your friend Raffi the X-rays react to particles in the iron gall ink they used back in the Middle Ages,” said Holliday, peering over her shoulder.

  “Why would they use ink on silver?” Peggy asked.

  “As a guide for the engraving tool they used to scratch into the metal,” explained Holliday.

  Peggy looked at the screen.

  “It’s fuzzy,” she said. “Some of the words and letters are missing. And it’s in Latin.” She looked around at Holliday. “Can you read it?”

  Holliday bent closer.

  “ ‘Innocent III, Episcopus, Servus Servorum Dei. Sancti Apostoli Petrus et Paulus: de… potestate et auctoritate confidimus ipsi intercedant pro… ad Dominum. Precibus et meritis… Mariae semper Virgi… beati Michaelis Archangeli, beati Ioannis Bapti… et sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli et Sanctorum misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus; et dimissis omni… peccatis vestris, perducat vos Iesus Christus ad vitam aeternam.’ ”

  “Easy for you to say,” snorted Peggy. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s an apostolic blessing from Pope Innocent the Third,” replied Holliday. “I think it’s called the Urbi et orbi-blessings to the city and to the world. ‘May the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in whose power and authority we have’-uh, ‘confidence’ would be the best translation, I guess-‘intercede on our behalf to the Lord…’ Et cetera, et cetera. Innocent was Pope during the Crusades. He was the one who eventually ordered the Templars to be arrested and killed.”

  “That’s it?” Peggy said. “A blessing?”

  “There’s more,” said Holliday, scanning the text. “Is there any way you can print this out?”

  “Probably,” answered Peggy. She fumbled around with the keyboard and the mouse, then finally found the right command. Somewhere nearby a photo printer began to hum and whirr.

  “Yada, yada, yada… ‘May Jesus Christ lead you into everlasting life…’ Yada, yada… ‘Descend on you and remain with you always…’ Here we go. ‘I hereby give you, Rutger von Blum, also known as Roger de Flor, Admiral of Naples and the Holy Order of the Temple, full license and authority to remove these treasures to a place of safety across the sea and out of the hands of the infidel Saladin…’ ”

  “Does it say where this place of safety is?” Peggy asked.

  “Not really. All it says is… ‘fanum cavernam petrosus quies.’ ”

  “Which means?”

  “Roughly translated: ‘a rocky, holy cave-place of peace and quiet.’ Something like that.”

  “We need to talk to Raffi again.”

  When they returned to the hospital on the far side of the campus, Raffi was sitting up in his bed and half of the tubes and wires were gone. He was eating green Jell-O, sucking it carefully through his bruised and battered lips. They showed him the photo prints of the scroll sections, holding each one of them up in front of his swollen eyes. Holliday gave him the rough Latin translations.

  “It’s a papal bull. A proclamation. A license, like letters patent they used to give to privateers and pirates.”

  “I could never fi
gure out why they called it a bull,” said Peggy. “What do bulls have to do with it?”

  “A bulla is the lead seal they used to attach to the end of them,” explained Raffi.

  “What about this ‘rocky holy cave-place of peace and quiet’?” Holliday asked. “Ring any bells?”

  “Not a one,” said Wanounou. “But I know who you could ask.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend of mine, Maurice Bernheim. He’s a curator at the Musйe National de la Marine in Paris. He wrote a book on the history of Mediterranean shipping. If anyone is going to know about this Roger de Flor, it’ll be Maurice.”

  25

  The Musйe National de la Marine is located in one wing of the 1930s Palais de Chaillot and looks out across the Champ de Mars. When you see a photograph of Hitler with the Eiffel Tower in the background during his whirlwind visit to Paris after the city fell, the Fьhrer is standing on the terrace of the Marine Museum.

  Maurice Bernheim was in his early forties, bluff and hearty and full of laughter. When he saw Holliday his first comment was about how easily a man with a patch on his eye could be a pirate. Bernheim was comfortably chubby, brown-haired, wore a lovely Pierre Cardin suit and expensive-looking shoes, and smoked a particularly foul-smelling brand of cigarettes known as Boyards. Holliday hadn’t known you could still get them, and the only reason he remembered them at all, other than once choking on one, was because, oddly, they were the only brand of cigarette anyone smoked in the movie Blade Runner. They smelled like old sneakers that had somehow caught fire.

  Bernheim’s office was a lavish room with the same view that Hitler had gotten, French doors leading out to the same terrace, paintings of ships where there were no bookcases, and ships in bottles on the few shelves that had no books. The furniture was expensive, leather and comfortable. Bernheim’s desk was huge, carved, and very old. The carpets on the floor were Isfahan Persian and beautiful. Either Bernheim was independently wealthy or he had a lot of juice in his job.

  “Ah, yes,” said Bernheim, leaning back in his chair. Smoke writhed up from the corn-paper cigarette in the big, cut-glass ashtray, already overflowing with butts from previous brushfires. “The infamous Roger de Flor. I know him well.”

  “Why infamous?” Holliday asked.

  “He was something of a bad boy, you know. An adventurer and a mercenary. Sometimes he would rise up against his employers and take them over. He was like his Templar friends-far too successful. A great sailor by all accounts.”

  “Why did the scroll we found refer to him as Rutger von Blum?” Peggy asked.

  “That was his name,” said Bernheim with a very Gallic shrug. He picked up his cigarette, and it found its way to the corner of his mouth. He sucked, then puffed, excreting a cloud of smoke up toward his high ceiling. “He was born in Italy where his father was royal falconer in Brindisi. Blum means flower in German. De Flor was nothing more than political expediency… When in Rome and all that, yes?”

  “How did he connect with the Templars?” Holliday asked.

  “He was a second son, which in those days meant his father didn’t know what to do with him. It was either the priesthood or the sea. When the young Roger came of age he was indentured to a Templar galley of which he later became captain. Like that.” He took a puff of his Boyard. “He eventually built up a fleet of warships and cargo ships for hire. His flagship was the Wanderfalke-the Peregrine Falcon, a caravel. Two hundred tons; quite large for the time.”

  “I read you the translation of the Latin over the telephone,” said Holliday. “Did it mean anything to you?”

  Bernheim smiled broadly and took another drag on his cigarette.

  “Not at first. My Latin is sparse to say the least; it was never my subject even years ago. I think perhaps your translation was a little… rough, as well.”

  “I’ll grant you that.” Holliday nodded.

  “So,” continued Bernheim, “it did not sonner les cloches, yes? Ring the bells?” He shrugged again. “So I thought, I smoked a few cigarettes and thought some more. Fanum cavernam petrosus quies. So I did what my old teacher Monsieur Forain instructed. I, how do you say it, decomposer la phrase?”

  “Parse,” said Holliday.

  “Yes, parse,” nodded Bernheim. “I parsed the phrase. Fanum. Shrine. Holy Place. Cavernam. Cave. Hollow place. Petrosus. Rock. Stone. Quies. Resting place.”

  “Bells rang?” Peggy asked.

  “Indeed, yes, they rang loudly because I also remember Monsieur Forain telling us that Latin is often a matter of the turn of phrase. What are the phrases that we have here?”

  “Fanum cavernam and petrosus quies,” responded Holliday.

  “Quite so, les phrases descriptives, the descriptive phrases ‘holy cave’ and ‘rock of quiet.’ Then I see it. A pun, or perhaps even a code. Quies, a place of safety. A harbor perhaps. The Harbor of the Rock, yes?”

  “Is there such a place?” Peggy asked.

  “Certainly,” nodded Bernheim, triumphantly crushing out the fuming end of his cigarette. “Roger de Flor’s home port: La Rochelle, the harbor of the rock.”

  “And the holy cave?” Holliday said.

  “Saint-Emilion,” said Bernheim.

  “I thought that was a wine,” said Peggy.

  “Also a town not far from La Rochelle. Also a monolithic church carved out of the limestone where the hermit St. Emilion had his home. In a cave beneath the church. The Harbor of the Rock. The Holy Cave, n’estce pas?”

  “It could be,” nodded Holliday.

  “I am sure of it,” said Bernheim. “Go to see this person in La Rochelle.” He sat forward and scribbled something on a notepad. He tore it off the pad and handed it to Holliday. A name and address: Dr. Valerie Duroc, Universitй de La Rochelle, 23 avenue Albert Einstein, La Rochelle, France. “She will be your guide.”

  They left the museum and crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Iйna by the tour boat landing stage. They turned and walked along the quayside, enjoying being in Paris once again. Peggy had been there on assignment several times, and when Holliday had done a brief stint at NATO headquarters in Belgium, Paris had been his favorite go-to place for R amp;R.

  Paris. Arrogant, self-involved, pompous to the point of buffoonery, and populated by roughly six million elitist snobs forever looking down their noses at everyone else in the world, including the rest of their fellow Frenchmen, Paris was without a doubt still the most beautiful city in the world and one of the most fascinating. You could hate Paris for all its shortcomings, but at the same time you could have a wonderful time meeting the challenges the old bitch has got waiting for you around every corner.

  They eventually reached the Quai d’Orsay and turned down the boulevard Saint-Germain, heading toward their hotel. Saint-Germain was in full summertime riot gear, selling everything from Armani suits to ten-thousand-dollar cufflinks and solving the problems of the world over coffee and a sandwich jambon in any number of cafйs that ran the length of the long, tree-lined grand boulevard.

  Half the store windows announced a grande vente to lure in the tourists, and the other half had signs in their windows warning of the dreaded fermeture annuelle, the city’s classic July-August vacation when all Parisians make their once-yearly trek to the country or the seaside and pretend to enjoy it.

  As Holliday and Peggy made their way down the street to their pension-hotel on the rue Latran they heard a dozen different languages being spoken and saw tour buses rolling by from at least that many countries. It was hardly the Left Bank of Hemingway’s time, but it was still a great show, complete with striped jerseys, berets, old Citroлns, and les flics, the smiling pillbox-hatted policemen twirling their nightsticks and caressing the nasty little automatic pistols holstered on their hips. Here and there Bosnian beggars lurked, often with landmine-blasted arms and legs, rattling paper cups in hand.

  They bought mustard slathered sausage rolls from a street vendor and continued down to the hotel, a six-story run-of-the-mill pension wit
h no particular amenities other than the fact that, for a city like Paris, it was relatively cheap. Holliday and Peggy trudged up the narrow stairs to the second floor, said their good-byes in the hallway and retreated to their separate rooms. Neither one of them had slept since Jerusalem.

  The room was classic third-rate Paris. The bed was cast iron with a mattress so soft it almost hit the floor. The chest of drawers had survived two World Wars and had the scars to prove it, and the bidet was ridiculously crammed between the bathroom door and the window, which overlooked a back alley. The view was just as classic: chimneypots on rooftops that drifted down to the Seine and a corner of Notre Dame if you hung out over the fire escape like an acrobat.

  Holliday stared. The room had been completely trashed. The mattress looked as though someone had gone at it with a butcher knife; there were feathers and shreds of ticking everywhere. The drawers in the bureau hung open like lolling tongues, and clothes were scattered all around the room. His overnight bag had been torn to ribbons and the lining hacked out.

  He paused. A sound? His heart hammered in his chest; the smart thing would be to turn around and run. Instead he went across to the closed door of the bathroom, wincing as a floorboard creaked under his foot like a rifle shot. He paused again at the door and listened.

  Breathing, or the sound of a breeze blowing down the alley outside? Water dripped in the bidet. Holliday thought about the knife that had torn up the room. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his arm. He pushed open the door. The bathroom was empty.

  He turned back into the room, but something was nagging him. The shower curtain had been drawn around the bathtub. He was sure it hadn’t been like that when he left the room. He whirled. A knife razored past his shoulder, and he had an image of a slim, lean-faced man in a white shirt with the tails out. His head smashed against the doorframe, and he reeled back as the man lunged toward him.

  Holliday scuttled backward through the open doorway. His assailant tried to bring the knife up under his ribs, but he managed to twist away, the long stiletto blade slicing through his shirt and grazing his skin. Holliday managed to launch a sharp kick to the man’s groin.