“He said he was also from Iran.”
“How sure was he?” Reilly felt a blip in his pulse.
Tess thought about it for a beat. “He just said he was from Iran. He didn’t seem to have any doubt about that.”
Reilly frowned. It was clearly not the answer he’d been hoping for—but after all that had happened, he’d come to expect it. This was starting to sound suspiciously like the dirty work of an intelligence agency. The intelligence agency of a country that wasn’t known to pull its punches. Which didn’t bode well at all.
“Anyway, Sharafi got the message,” she continued. “He had to get results. And when he couldn’t go any further on his own, he decided he needed the help of a Templar expert.”
“So he went to Jordan,” Tilden added. “To consult your friend Simmons.”
Tess nodded. “He was in bad shape. At first, he tried to hide it. He didn’t tell us the whole story. He just said he’d been working on something for a paper he was writing, he was trying to track down a Templar knight called Conrad who’d ended up in Constantinople in 1310.”
“But I thought all the Templars were arrested in 1307?” Reilly asked.
“The arrest warrants were served in October of 1307, yes. But some Templars managed to hit the road before King Philip’s seneschals swooped in. Many French Templars, for instance, ended up in Spain and Portugal, where the local orders were more or less protected by the local kings. They changed their names to escape detection when the pope’s inquisitors turned up looking for them. And in the East, the Templars had lost all their bases in the Holy Land long before that. Acre fell in 1291, right? Their last bastion there was on a small island off the Syrian coast, Arwad. They were kicked out of there in 1303 and the surviving Templars ended up in Cyprus, where they got into trouble for helping the king’s brother overthrow him. When the king took back the throne, he had the four Templar ringleaders executed by drowning and exiled the rest, who couldn’t really go back to their homelands in Europe, where they faced arrest. We know very little about what happened to them.”
“So this Conrad is, presumably, one of those escapees,” Reilly speculated.
“That’s what Jed thought,” Tess said. “He checked his records. He found mention of a knight called Conrad right up to the arrests in Cyprus. After that, the trail went cold. He couldn’t find anything beyond that—which isn’t surprising. Once they were exiled by the King of Cyprus, Conrad and his buddies weren’t about to head back to Europe, not with all the inquisitors there waiting to pounce. Jed thought they’d most likely be living incognito in big cities like Antioch and Constantinople. So that was it. And then Sharafi broke down. He told us what was really going on. And Jed, well, he decided he had to do everything he could to help him. We both did. This wasn’t just a trivial academic inquiry. It was clear that Sharafi’s guy wouldn’t accept failure. Sharafi was freaking out with worry that he might do something to his wife or his daughter to push him harder. We had to find something. And when Jed hit a wall with his own records, he told us about the Registry. He knew about it, he knew it existed, he knew it was kept in the bowels of the Vatican—but he also knew no one was allowed to see it.”
Tess paused, hoping someone would pick up that ball.
Reilly did. He turned to Brugnone. “Is that true?”
Brugnone shrugged, his expression still locked in its frown, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Why is that?” Reilly pressed.
Brugnone slid a guarded glance at Tess, then directed his attention back at Reilly. “Our archives are full of sensitive documents. A lot of what we have can be easily misinterpreted and twisted around by scandalmongers with less-than-honorable agendas. We try to limit that.”
“And this Registry?”
Brugnone nodded to Bescondi, who stepped in. “It’s a complete record of the arrest of the Templars and the dissolution of their Order. Everything the inquisitors found, everyone they spoke to, it was all logged into it. The names of the members of the Order from the grand master right down to the lowliest of squires, what happened to them, where they ended up, who said what, who lived, who died … The Order’s properties, its holdings across Europe and in the Levant, their livestock, the contents of their libraries … Everything.”
Reilly processed it. “So Simmons was right. He knew that if there was any trace of what happened to Conrad, it would be in there.”
“Yes,” Bescondi agreed.
Reilly noticed Bescondi glance pointedly across at the cardinal. A silent exchange seemed to have passed between them as the cardinal answered the archivist with an almost imperceptible nod. The archivist did the same to acknowledge it.
Reilly turned his attention back to Tess. “And … that’s when you called me.”
Tess shook her head ruefully. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I thought, you were the one person I knew could get Sharafi in to have a look at it. Nothing more. Still, I agonized over whether or not I should ask you to do this. Especially given what we were …” Her gaze lingered on Reilly for a long second as she let the words trail off. There was no need for the others to hear about their problems. “I talked it over with Jed first. I wasn’t sure, I was still debating it … and the next thing I know, this guy shows up outside Jed’s office with a gun in his hand, herds us into the back of his van and drives us to some grotty place, I don’t know where it was. He throws me and Jed into this room, it must have been a cellar of some kind, he puts these plastic cuffs on our wrists and ankles. Sharafi was already there, tied up like us. And all these horrible images of the teacher’s head and the hostages in Beirut and in Iraq started flashing through my mind.” Tess was feeling colder now. Talking about it was making her relive the whole nightmare. She looked at Reilly. “He made me call you.”
“How did he know about all that?” Reilly asked. “Did you discuss it with anyone else?”
“No, of course not. Maybe he was listening in on what me and Jed were talking about, maybe he had a mike planted in Jed’s office or something.”
Reilly processed it for a few seconds. “This guy, whoever he is, whoever he’s working for—and I think we’ve got some ideas to think about on that front—he’s got some serious resources at his disposal. He shows up in Istanbul and thinks nothing of murdering a woman to motivate Sharafi. He shadows him to Jordan and somehow gets wind of what you and Simmons were talking about privately. He grabs the three of you out in Jordan and manages to whisk at least two of you, if not all three, all the way to Rome, undetected. He has the balls to meet me at the airport and sell me on his story and has me bring him in here to recover this Registry, but not before setting up a couple of rigged cars to use as diversions in case he needs them.” He shook his head and exhaled heavily. “This guy’s got access to the right intel, he’s got resources that allow him to travel around as he likes, he’s got access to explosives and detonators and cars and God knows what else. He’s as cool under pressure as anyone I’ve come across.” He looked around the room to press his point. “This guy is no lightweight. He’s the real deal. And we’re going to need some serious resources ourselves if we’re going to stand half a chance of taking him down.”
Delpiero bristled, his expression indignant. “Oh, we intend to do everything we can to bring this man to justice,” the Vatican cop confirmed, his tone laced with mockery. “But equally, I think you have a lot to answer for in this matter. You seem to have forgotten that you were his accomplice in this crime.”
“I haven’t forgotten that at all,” Reilly snapped. “I want this guy more than anyone in this room.”
“Perhaps I’m not making myself clear,” the inspector said. “We’re filing charges against you. You brought this man into the Vatican. If you hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have gotten into the archives, he wouldn’t have needed to detonate any bombs, and—”
“You think that would have been it?” Reilly fired back. “You think he’d have called it a day and scooted home? Are you kidding me? You saw how he
operates. If I hadn’t brought him in here, he would have found another way in. He might have, I don’t know, found a way to get to Monsignor Bescondi. Maybe with another severed head, to make sure he was taken seriously.”
“You drugged the monsignor,” Delpiero growled. “You helped the bomber escape.”
“That was before I knew he was the damn bomber or that he even had a bomb,” Reilly raged. “I did what I had to do to get him his damn book and save the hostages. You tell me this, all right? What would you have said if I’d told you this guy needed to check out the Templar Registry? Would you have just let him waltz in there and given him access to it? Or would you have needed to know exactly who he was and why he needed to see it?”
Delpiero stumbled for a reply, then looked over at Bescondi and Brugnone. The archivist and the cardinal seemed equally flustered by the question.
“Well?” Reilly insisted, his tone fierce.
Their shrugs answered him.
He mopped his face with his hands and tried to throttle back his anger. “Look,” he offered, his voice calmer now, but still resolute. “Maybe you think I was wrong, maybe you think I should have done things differently. Maybe you’re right. But in the heat of the moment, I just didn’t see any other option. I’m willing to face the consequences of what I did. Absolutely. You can do anything you want to me—once this is over. After he’s in custody or in the morgue. But until that happens, I need to be part of this. I need to help bring him in.”
Delpiero met his gaze straight on. “That’s very admirable of you, Agent Reilly. But we’ve discussed this with your superiors, and they agree with us.”
Reilly followed the inspector’s glance across to Tilden, who gave him a “what the hell did you expect?” shrug. “You weren’t here on Bureau business—worse, you withheld informing us about what you were really here for. That hasn’t gone down too well with the powers that be back home. Unless I’m missing something, my bet is you should consider yourself suspended,” the attache told him, “pending the Vatican and Italian authorities’ investigation.”
“You can’t sideline me on this,” Reilly protested. “This guy suckered me into it. I need to do this.” He looked around the room and noticed Brugnone studying him.
Tilden spread his hands open in a resigned, helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to play out for now.”
Reilly shot up to his feet. “This is insane,” he railed, his hands cutting the air emphatically. “We have to move fast. We’ve got a crime scene to process. We’ve got an unexploded bomb to analyze. We may have prints in the cars and in the archives and vidcaps on CCTV footage. We need to get a BOLO out to all ports of entry, we need to liaise with Interpol.” He focused on Delpiero. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. I know you’re pissed off. So am I. But I can help, and I’m here now. You can use FBI resources on this and you can’t afford to wait until they figure out who to send and fly them over. He could be long gone by then.”
Delpiero seemed unmoved by Reilly’s plea. Three chairs away, however, Brugnone cleared his throat conspicuously, drawing everyone’s attention as he rose out of his seat.
“Let’s not rush into anything.” He slid a glance at Reilly and said, “Agent Reilly. Walk with me to my chambers, won’t you?”
Delpiero shot to his feet. “Eminenza Vostra,”—Your Eminence—”begging your forgiveness, but … what are you doing? This man should be under arrest.”
Brugnone stilled him with a languid flick of his hand that, however understated, carried great authority. “Predersela con calma.” Calm down.
It was enough to stop Delpiero in his tracks.
Reilly got up, glanced uncertainly at Tilden and at Delpiero, and followed the cardinal out.
Chapter 14
Reilly accompanied the cardinal secretary across the leafy garden square of Piazza Santa Marta. It was past noon by now, and the air around them was scorched. Fifty yards to their left, the rear facade of St. Peter’s Cathedral soared high into the sky. Only faint wisps remained of the black cloud from the car bomb, but the square itself, usually lively with cars, buses, and tourists at this time of year, was deserted. Even though the second bomb had been defused and cleared, the Vatican felt like a ghost town, and seeing it like this made Reilly feel even lousier than he had felt in the inspector’s office.
The cardinal walked in silence, his hands clasped behind his back. Without turning to look at Reilly, he asked, “We didn’t get a chance to speak after your last visit—how long ago was it, three years?”
“That’s right,” Reilly confirmed.
Brugnone nodded, deep in thought. After a moment, he asked, “It wasn’t a pleasant time for you either, was it? The questions you had, the answers you got … and then, after all that, getting sucked into that catastrophic storm …”
Memories of that episode of his life came flooding back. Even three years later, he could still taste the salt water in his throat and feel the deep chill from the long hours spent half-dead in the sea, floating on a makeshift raft miles away from the coast of some tiny Greek island. But it was the words he remembered the cardinal saying to him back then that chilled him the most: I’m afraid the truth is as you fear it. It reminded Reilly that he hadn’t had the closure of a definitive answer to his question. He remembered standing on that cliff top with Tess and watching helplessly as the sheets of parchment fluttered down into the roaring surf, robbing him of the chance to know whether they were the real deal or just an elaborate forgery.
“Today wasn’t a cakewalk either,” Reilly replied.
The cardinal didn’t get it. “A ‘cakewalk’?”
“It wasn’t an easy day,” Reilly clarified. “For some reason, my visits here never seem to be,” he lamented.
Brugnone shrugged and brushed the comment away with a flick of his big hand. “This is a seat of great power, Agent Reilly. And where there is power, there is bound to be conflict.”
They crossed the road and entered the sacristy, a three-story building that had been tacked onto the south side of the cathedral. Once inside, they turned left and cut through the sumptuous halls of its Treasury Museum. With each step, the acres of rare marble and the bronze busts of past popes weighed heavily on Reilly. Every inch of this place was steeped in history, in the very underpinnings of Western civilization—a history he now knew a lot more about.
The cardinal asked, “You were quite a devout person when we first met. Do you still attend mass?”
“Not really. I help out Father Bragg with the kids’ softball on Sunday mornings when I can, but that’s about it.”
“If I may ask—why is that?”
Reilly weighed his words. The adventure he and Tess had survived three years earlier, and its disturbing revelations, had left their mark on him, but he still held Brugnone in great esteem and didn’t want to be in any way disrespectful. “I’ve read a lot, since we met … I’ve thought about it all, and … I guess I’m less comfortable with the whole concept of institutionalized religion than I used to be.”
Brugnone brooded over his reply, his hooded eyes distant with thought. Neither of them spoke as they reached the end of the frescoed gallery and entered the south transept of the cathedral. Reilly had never been inside the great basilica, and the sight that greeted him was a jaw-dropper. Arguably the most sublime piece of architecture on the planet, its every detail dazzled the eye and lifted the soul. To his left, he glimpsed Bernini’s papal altar, the twisted barley-shaped columns and exquisite canopy of the prodigious baldachino dwarfed by the mammoth dome that towered above it. To his right, he could barely make out the distant entrance at the far end of the nave. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the clerestory windows high overhead, bathing the cathedral in an ethereal glow and rekindling a spark deep within him that had died out over the last few years.
Brugnone seemed to notice the effect it all had on Reilly and paused by the intersection of the transept arms to give him a moment to savor it.
“You’ve never had the time for a proper visit, have you?”
“No,” Reilly replied. “And it’s not going to be this time, either.” He paused, then asked, “I need to know something, Your Eminence.”
Brugnone didn’t flinch. “You want to know what’s in those trunks.”
“Yes. Do you know what he’s after?”
“I’m not sure,” the cardinal said. “But if it’s what I think it might be … it would be even worse for us than what that man Vance was after.” He paused for a beat, then asked, “After what he did today … does it matter?”
Reilly shrugged. It was a fair point. “Not really. But it would help to know. We need to find him.”
Brugnone nodded, clearly making a mental note of Reilly’s request. He studied Reilly for a spell, then told him, “I heard what you said back there. And while I don’t condone what you did or agree with your decision to exclude us from your deliberations, I can appreciate that you were in a tough position. And the fact is, we are indebted to you. You did us a great service three years ago, one that I realize was hard for you to stomach. But you kept true to your principles, despite your doubts, and you put your life on the line for us, and that’s not something any man would have done.”
Reilly felt a twinge of guilt. What Brugnone was saying was partly true, but the cardinal didn’t know the whole truth. Upon their return from Greece three years ago, Reilly and Tess had agreed to tell a slightly redacted version of what had really happened. They’d lied. Big-time. They’d told the brass at the FBI and the Vatican’s representative in New York that the storm had led to the deaths of everyone involved, everyone except for the two of them, that is, and said the wreck of the Falcon Temple had never been found. They’d promised not to talk about what they’d been through after the raid at the Metropolitan Museum, when four horsemen dressed as Templar knights had stormed the Vatican’s big gala and trashed the joint before making off with an old Templar decoder. And that was that. As far as the Vatican was concerned, Reilly had fought valiantly right to the end to defend its cause—which also wasn’t strictly true. And the fact that Reilly and the cardinal were now standing by the Altar of the Lie—a monumental Adami mosaic depicting what Reilly recognized was the punishment of a couple who had lied to St. Peter about how much money they’d been paid for a piece of land and were struck dead for their deception—wasn’t helping.
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