Exhaling loudly, Amanda smiled in thanks. Back on the street, she reversed direction, pushed through the wall of people and began to run once more.
If Cam could hold out another five minutes, she’d be there to help.
Georgia waited in the shadows along the perimeter of the sanctuary. From her vantage point she would be able to both see Buckner enter and also make a quick dash to the staircase leading to the basement. While she waited she doused herself with some spray perfume she kept in her purse.
Cam leaned against a pew in the church nave, not far from the ornately-carved wooden staircase leading to the elevated pulpit containing the Delta of Enoch. Facing the rear of the church, he nodded to Georgia. Father Jean had rung the church bells, sending Amanda racing way. It wouldn’t be long now.
Buckner and the one he called Falcon pushed through the front door and marched toward them, guns drawn. Good, there were only two of them. They must have taken Amanda’s bait. Cam waited until they saw him. As they adjusted their course, Cam called out in a voice just loud enough for Buckner to hear, “Georgia, get the bones!” It was a childish ruse, but Buckner couldn’t very well ignore it.
She bumped around to get their attention before yanking open the door to the basement stairs and bounding down. From above she heard Buckner’s orders. “Follow her, Falcon. Don’t let her do anything with those bones.” Chauvinistic and cocky, Buckner would never suspect his operatives were being neutralized by women.
Heavy footsteps followed her down the stairwell. The hallway remained dimly lit. She pulled open the door to the prisoner room and slipped in, closing the steel door behind her. She held her breath and tried to control her breathing, the key grasped tightly in her sweaty hand as she pressed her back against the wall next to the door, her body partially concealed by a thick wooden post.
Five seconds later Falcon jumped down the final few stairs and froze in the hallway. Georgia could picture him, his gun drawn, evaluating the situation. Which of the doorways to explore first? He sniffed the air and grunted. He had her scent—not many women wearing perfume in the church basement.
He tiptoed toward her door, pulled it open and slipped into the room, his gun drawn. He crept forward slowly, the gun arcing in front of him, drawn to the flickering candle Georgia had placed at the far side of the room. Georgia waited until he had fully entered the room before spinning off the wall and scurrying out into the hall. She slammed the door closed just as a shot rang out, the bullet pinging against steel. Fingers shaking, she aimed the key at the lock, knowing she had only one chance at the target before the operative kicked the door back open. Her eyes wide, she shoved the key in the lock and turned. Click. Falcon’s foot smashed into the door a split-second later.
Buckner waved the gun as he approached Cam. “Where’s Astarte?” Cam asked. He remained leaning against the pew, his body language relaxed and non-threatening. But his heart was racing.
“In the car. Where she’s going to stay.”
“Then you’re not getting the artifacts.”
Buckner aimed the gun at Cam’s chest. “I think I am.”
Cam forced his eyes away from the barrel and shrugged. “Amanda took the scroll, and no way is your man catching her. And the priest himself is long gone with the Burrows Cave artifacts; good luck finding him.” Actually they were in Georgia’s hotel room, which would no doubt be the next place Buckner looked once he left the Basilica. “So I’ve got nothing for you.”
“That wasn’t very smart of you. The scroll and the artifacts were your only bargaining chips.”
“But like you said, you have no intention of freeing Astarte. So my bargaining chips weren’t worth much.”
“They might have saved your life.”
“It seems to me they might have cost me it. At least now you need my help to retrieve them.”
Over Buckner’s shoulder Cam saw a movement in the vestibule of the church. A shadow edged up the side aisle, ducking behind the large statues that lined the perimeter of the church nave. “Enough games,” Buckner said. “I want the artifacts. All of them.”
Cam chewed his lip. Buckner hadn’t demanded the scroll and he hadn’t demanded the bones—he must have believed Amanda and Georgia were no match for his operatives. “We’re just going in circles here. It’s a stalemate.”
Buckner leered at him. “Actually not. At this point I have not given orders for my man to kill Amanda, though he has captured her already.” Was he bluffing? Buckner tapped the cell phone strapped to his belt. “But I will order her killed if necessary. I don’t believe you that the priest has fled with the artifacts. Take me to them. Or your pretty fiancée dies.”
Apparently Cam didn’t answer quickly enough because without warning Buckner whipped his gun through the air, catching Cam on the cheek with the barrel. It was more a slapping impact than a crushing blow, but Cam staggered sideways and landed on one knee. Blood oozed from the side of his face and he spit out a piece of tooth. His cheek burned. It took a second but thankfully his head cleared. “Fuck you, Buckner. Put the gun away and let’s see how tough you are.”
“No time for that.” The operative waved the gun. “Now, like I said, take me to the artifacts.”
Being on the floor gave Cam a different sightline; he glanced toward the side aisle again. More movement. A candle flickered, illuminating a lithe female form. Amanda. She was okay. Thank God. She caught his eye, motioned with her head for Cam to come toward her. She must have heard their conversation as it echoed through the empty basilica. He made a show of glaring at Buckner before nodding and sighing. He pulled himself upright. “If I give you the artifacts, nobody gets hurt, right?”
“Once I have the artifacts you are of no threat to me.”
“Amanda will be pissed if I let you keep Astarte.”
“If Amanda is dead it won’t matter how pissed she is.” He tapped his cell phone.
Cam ground his teeth again to make it look good. “Okay,” he hissed. “Follow me.”
Cam limped across the nave and turned left along the aisle toward the front altar of the Basilica, as Amanda had motioned. Buckner trailed him, the gun held loosely by his side. Cam exaggerated his injury, hoping to further lure his adversary into a false sense of overconfidence. In the shadows ahead, Amanda disappeared through a doorway.
“Where are we going?” Buckner asked.
“The artifacts are back here,” Cam said.
They pushed through an oak door into a smaller chapel area, built end-to-end with the Basilica. Cam made conversation, hoping to buy some time. “They built this chapel to accommodate smaller crowds. The Basilica is too big for regular services.”
“Whatever. Just make it quick.”
Cam limped down the center aisle of the chapel; a massive bronze sculpture loomed above them against the altar wall in the front of the chapel. A door panel set flush into the altar wall was slightly ajar, a rim of light visible around its frame. Cam began to head toward it but another movement in the shadows ahead redirected him. Again exaggerating his limp, he turned right as they approached a rope barrier in front of the altar. “I need to go around,” he said.
Buckner followed close behind as they detoured around the rope, now approaching the altar from the side. The door loomed ahead. On their right a statue of John the Baptist stood above them atop an ornate wooden side altar, the bearded, barefoot figure clothed only in a sheepskin wrap with his normal shepherd’s staff fashioned into a cross. John the Baptist. Draped across the statue’s shoulder was a silk scarf. What was Amanda up to? Cam slowed.
As he passed the statue a voice, small but strong, cut through the silence from the main altar area. “That wasn’t a very good knot.” Astarte stood up from behind the chapel pulpit, her cobalt eyes ablaze with indignation. Amanda must have freed her.
Buckner turned toward the little princess. “How did you get out of the car?” He raised his gun.
As Buckner glared at Astarte, the John the Baptist statue and the sid
e altar upon which it stood rocked, teetered and finally toppled toward him. Buckner turned and raised his arm to protect himself but the massive fixture crashed onto him, driving him to the ground and pinning him. His gun clattered away.
Amanda stepped out from behind the side altar, Georgia and Father Jean with her. It had taken the strength of all three to tip the fixture. Buckner moaned, shifting under the weight of the immense altar, the horizontal bar of the Baptist’s crossed staff impaled partway into his shoulder. Cam grabbed the gun.
“Sorry about your statue, Father,” Amanda said, her cheeks still red from her run. Her green eyes shone with excitement. She never looked more beautiful.
The priest smiled as he brushed the dust off his robe. “My guess is he was getting bored just standing there all these years. It was time for him to join the other Templars in battle.”
CHAPTER 20
The Montreal police had refused to officially intervene in Buckner’s mission, but they had no problem with Father Jean handling things as he saw fit. He made a phone call to a desk sergeant who served as a church deacon and within fifteen minutes a half dozen off-duty cops, many of them well into their Friday night beer, had arrived. They bound Buckner, corralled Python when he finally returned empty-handed from his pursuit of Amanda, and lastly retrieved Falcon from his cell.
“Please escort our three American guests to the border,” Father Jean said. “And give this one something for the pain in his shoulder.” He turned to Buckner. “I promise if you return to Montreal we will not be nearly so hospitable next time.”
Father Jean accompanied the sergeant out to the street as the off-duty police deposited Buckner and his posse into the back of a windowless van. “Did they really bring guns into the Basilica?” the sergeant asked.
The priest nodded.
The sergeant kicked the ground and shuffled his feet for a few seconds before looking up at the priest. “Mind if we take the long way to the border?”
Cam, Amanda, Astarte and Georgia had reassembled in the function room of the Basilica while Father Jean gave final instructions to the police sergeant. Amanda tended to Cam’s wound, dabbing at the gash with a cloth napkin they found in the kitchen. Her ribs throbbed from the exertion of her run; she held an ice pack to her side with her free hand.
“I’m getting a bit tired of nursing you. Can’t you take better care of yourself?”
Cam held up a piece of his tooth, which Astarte had found under one of the pews. “How are you at dentistry?”
The priest walked in and examined the gash on his cheek. “You’re going to need stitches. Otherwise you’re going to have a nasty scar.”
“Like Frankenstein?” Astarte asked.
“Worse,” Amanda said. “At least Frankenstein had a nice smile.”
The priest nodded. “And I suppose we should try to get that tooth repaired as well. I’ll make a call.”
“And don’t forget his knee,” Amanda said.
Cam held up his hand. “We’ve got more important things to deal with. My boo-boos can wait.”
“Nonsense,” the priest said. “We can talk in the car. I’ll drive. I have a good friend who’s the team doctor for the Montreal Canadiens. They’re playing tonight at the Bell Center, not too far from here. He can fix you up in no time. And there will be a dentist at the rink as well.”
Amanda turned up her lip. “He’s not going to look like one of those toothless hockey players is he?”
They piled into Father Jean’s Audi, the two men in the front. The priest had removed his black robe, but kept his clerical collar on over his black dress shirt. Amanda made a point of sitting behind Cam so she could see at least part of the priest’s face as they talked—she didn’t want to misread their conversation. Cam brought the ancient scroll; leaving it unguarded—in a Catholic church of all places—didn’t seem like the wisest move.
The priest drove expertly, cutting down side streets and weaving his way through traffic. “This car is my one earthly indulgence, though I did buy it used. When I was a young man,” he explained, “I used to race Formula One cars.” He shrugged. “Now I’m in a race to save souls.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry; that sounded sanctimonious.”
Amanda smiled. “Perhaps what you meant was you try to steer people in the right direction.”
He grinned and slapped the wheel. “Yes, yes, very good.”
She turned serious. “Speaking of the right direction, what’s our next move?”
“Good question,” Cam said. “I sort of feel like the dog that caught the mail truck. What are we supposed to do now?”
The priest nodded. “As I said, in some ways we have been preparing for this moment for centuries. But at the same time we never believed it would arrive.”
Amanda turned to Georgia. “You’re the expert on this. Can the world handle the truth? Can the world accept Jesus’ mortality?”
Georgia bit her lip. “I think people are more resilient than we give them credit for. So I think over time this kind of revelation might be okay.”
Father Jean nodded again. “That is my belief as well. I believe the truth is holy, and must be honored as such. It is the cover-ups and the lies that undermine faith. And I believe there are those in the Vatican who agree with me on this.”
“But how do you reveal something like this over time?” Cam asked. “Jesus was either immortal or he wasn’t. There’s not much middle ground.”
The priest responded. “Sure there is: Jesus could be deemed immortal spiritually but not physically. And there are ways to pave the way for this type of revelation. An admission that he and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, for example. And then an emphasis placed on Jesus’ siblings, to make him seen more human. And also perhaps a recognition that Mary and Joseph had a normal marriage that included sexual relations. Then, eventually, an admission that when Jesus was resurrected his soul ascended to heaven but his bones did not.” The priest shrugged. “If this is done in small steps, I don’t see it causing such a crisis.”
“But doesn’t Jesus’ mortality undermine the entire basis for Christianity? How can a god be mortal in any sense?” Amanda asked.
“For those who look at religion in a purely rational sense, I suppose it might. But the part of our brain that deals with reason and logic is different than the part that deals with faith. So a physicist can still believe in heaven and a medical doctor can believe in a soul—as the doctor who is about to repair Cam’s face does—even though there is no scientific basis for either. The discovery of Jesus’ bones, even if proven conclusively through DNA and other evidence, will resonate in the ‘reason’ side of our brain. But for most people the ‘faith’ side will still believe in the things taught them at their parents’ knee on a snowy Christmas morning.”
“Despite all the evidence,” Cam said.
“Yes, despite all evidence,” Father Jean replied. It was an uncommon concession for a priest to make, but Father Jean was proving himself to be an uncommon member of the Catholic clergy. “And you need to realize: As compelling as the evidence is, it is not 100 percent conclusive. The science may prove that the bones belong to a 2,000-year-old Middle Eastern male, and that the scroll is an authentic 12th-century writing, and even that Astarte is a direct descendant of the person buried in the ossuary. But there are those who will still argue that this is all just circumstantial.”
“But why would the Templars go to such trouble if the bones didn’t belong to Jesus?” Amanda said. “They risked certain death if the Church found out what they were doing.”
The priest shrugged. “I agree with you. But skeptics will say the Templars simply made a mistake. They got the wrong bones.”
“And they just happen to be 2,000 years old, and from the Middle East?” Cam said. “And they happen to match Astarte’s DNA? The odds on that being a coincidence are pretty long.”
Father Jean smiled. “And that’s why faith is such a powerful force. Faith ignores the odds.”
&nbs
p; The priest turned into the players’ lot at the downtown arena and exchanged a few words with the guard, who bowed and waved him in. The game was at its midpoint, so there was little traffic around the sports complex. “Let me ask you a question, Cameron. Actually, two questions.”
“Okay.”
“First, do you believe in God?”
“Probably not in the way you mean, no.”
Father Jean nodded. “But when you first saw Amanda in the Basilica tonight, and knew she was safe: What was your first thought?”
Cam smiled. “Thank God.”
The priest nodded again. “I thought as much. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in a fox hole. Your faith is strong even though you claim to have none. Faith is potent, and it is resilient.
Most of all, it is not rational. The story of Jesus is powerful and it is instilled in Christians at an early age: God sent us his son to suffer on our behalf and lead us to salvation. If the Church announces it made a mistake, that the actual bones of Jesus did not ascend, that it was only a spiritual ascension rather than a physical one … well, that changes a detail of the story but not the story itself. Perhaps to religious historians the revelation would be cataclysmic. But the average Christian would see it as a few buckets of sand removed from the beach. Jesus would be no less our Savior.”
Father Jean parked the car. “And another thing, Cameron.” He put his hand on Cam’s shoulder as they walked toward the arena’s side door. “You know that moment when the doctor takes out that big needle and brings it up close to your face and you get that queasy feeling in your stomach?”
“Yeah….”
He smiled. “Well, I better not hear you asking God for any mercy.”
Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2) Page 29