The Templar Salvation (2010) ts-2

by Raymond Khoury

  “Professor Jed Simmons, brainbox-slash-hunk. Who knew?” Reilly muttered wryly.

  Tess studied him curiously for a beat, then whisper-laughed. “Oh my God. You’re actually jealous, aren’t you?”

  Before he could find an answer to that, Ertugrul turned again to face them.

  “We also tracked down Behrouz Sharafi’s wife and kid. I went and saw her last night. She’s in bad shape, as you can imagine. Our friends here have got them under protective custody.”

  Reilly frowned. “What are they going to do?”

  “It’s a tough one. They can’t exactly go home to Iran, not given who might be behind all this.”

  “You talked to our guys?” Reilly asked him.

  Ertugrul nodded. “Yeah. The station chief spoke to the ambassador and the consul. Shouldn’t be a problem to get them political refugee status. She’s got cousins in San Diego, so that’s a possibility.”

  “And the research assistant?”

  “There’s no sign of him. It looks like he got out of Dodge already. Around the same time Sharafi went to Jordan it seems.” His expression darkened as his mind seemed to latch on to something else. “That poor bastard. I wonder if he was still alive before …” His eyes darted hesitantly sideways at Tess, and his voice trailed off. He then remembered something else, causing him to rifle through the paperwork in his hands before passing another sheet back to Reilly.

  “On that front, we got something,” he told him. “The unexploded bomb, the one that was in the car with you, Miss Chaykin?” He gave her a glance that was somewhat apologetic. “The bomb tech guys’ report came in. It was a serious piece of hardware. Twenty pounds of C4 jacked to a cell phone.”

  Reilly was already scanning the sheet. “No taggants?”

  “None.”

  “What are taggants?” Tess asked.

  “Manufacturers of explosives such as C4 and Semtex are bound by international conventions to add unique marker chemicals to their products, to help identify their provenance if needed,” Ertugrul explained. “And surprisingly, the system works. You rarely see untagged material. One place we have seen it, though, is in Iraq. In car bombs.”

  “Car bombs attributed to Iranian-backed insurgents,” Reilly added.

  Ertugrul turned back to Reilly. “Also, the architecture was identical to devices we’ve seen there. The way the circuit board was hot-wired. The solder points on the detonator caps. Right down to the wiring itself. Whoever put it together studied under the same jihad master.” He gave Reilly a pointed look. “We may not have much, but what we do have all seems to be pointing at Tehran.”

  Reilly caught a noticeable hardening in the Turkish intelligence officer’s jawline at the mention. The Turks and the Iranians weren’t exactly BFFs. It wasn’t a big secret that the Iranians had been supporting the Kurdish Workers Party separatists inside Turkey for more than two decades, supplying them with weapons and explosives and participating in their drug smuggling operations. The fact that the Kurdish militants had, in the last few years, spread their theater of operations to inside Iran itself, was only of little solace to the long-aggrieved Turks. If their quarry—who was already a wanted man in Turkey for the beheading of Sharafi’s daughter’s teacher—was an Iranian agent, the Turks would want nothing more than to get their hands on him and string him up to an outraged world.

  The highway ramped upward as they reached the big Karayolu interchange, opening up a clear view of the city’s full majesty. Its seven hills rose and fell gently in the distance, each one of them topped by a monumental mosque, their massive, squat domes and thin, rocketlike minarets giving the imperial city its unique, otherwordly skyline. In the far distance, to their right, was the largest of them all, Hagia Sophia, the church of the holy wisdom, for close to a thousand years the largest cathedral in the world, before it was converted into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. The city that was once known as “the city of the world’s desire,” the imperial capital that had endured more sieges and attacks than any other city on Earth, was the only city on the planet that straddled two continents. Ever since it was founded more than two thousand years ago, it had been a place where East and West met—and battled. A dual role that it was still, it seemed, destined to play.

  “So this piece of info … you said you think the target’s coming to Istanbul to try and find out where some old monastery is?” Ertugrul asked.

  “The Templar at the heart of what’s going on is a knight called Conrad. There’s very little about him out there, but the guys at the Vatican archives found references to him in the scans of the Registry,” Reilly explained. “That’s what our target was after. See, Conrad was in Cyprus after the crusaders got kicked out of Acre in 1291. Simmons knew that already. But there was more info in the Registry, about what happened to him after that.”

  He deferred to Tess. She picked up the baton. “In the months and years after the arrest warrants were issued in 1307,” she told Ertugrul, “a small army of inquisitors were sent out to round up any fugitive Templars and confiscate whatever Templar assets they could get their hands on. One of those inquisitors, a priest who’d been dispatched to Cyprus to track down the Templars who’d been exiled from there, had sailed on to the mainland and spent a year roaming the area between Antioch and Constantinople hunting them down. In his journal, he recorded coming across a derelict monastery tucked away up in the mountains that was strewn with the skeletons of its monks. He then recorded finding the tombs of three Templars in a canyon not far from there. According to the markings he found by the tombs, one of the knights buried there is our man Conrad.”

  “What mountains was he talking about?”

  “Mount Argaeus,” Tess said. “It’s an old Latin name. You probably know it as Mount Erciyes.”

  Ertugrul nodded, recognizing the name. “Erciyes Dagi. It’s an extinct volcano.” He gave them a dubious look. “It’s big.”

  “I know,” Reilly said somberly.

  “It’s bang in the middle of the country, in Anatolia. There’s a skiing resort there somewhere.” Ertugrul thought about it for a moment, then said, “So that’s the monastery you want the guys at the Patriarchate to help you locate?”

  Reilly nodded. “Right now, Conrad’s trail ends with his grave. I think there’s a good chance that’s where our target’s headed, hoping to find some clue to the location of what the knights took back from the monks. But we don’t know exactly where those graves are, and he doesn’t either. In his journal, the inquisitor only described the location of the canyon relative to the monastery—but we don’t know where that is.”

  “Can’t we extrapolate his journey by trying to fit it to the terrain around the mountain?”

  “The area is riddled with valleys and canyons. Without knowing where the inquisitor set off from, we’d be guessing,” Tess told him. “We need to know where the monastery is to use it as a starting point, to know what direction to look in.”

  “What we do know is that it’s a Basilian monastery,” Reilly added. “Meaning it’s an Orthodox monastery.”

  “And if there’s any record of it, the first place to look would be at the heart of the Orthodox Church,” Ertugrul inferred.

  “Exactly,” Reilly agreed. “If we find the monastery, we can follow the inquisitor’s pointers from there to get to the Templars’ graves. And if we can get there first, maybe we’ll find our bomber—and Simmons—there.”

  “Well, I spoke to the archbishop’s secretary after we spoke,” Ertugrul told him. “They’re expecting us.” He shrugged and added, “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Reilly felt a boil of rage bubble up inside him as he remembered how perfectly the bomber had played his role, from the point he’d met Reilly at the airport in Rome until Reilly had confronted him in the Popemobile. The man didn’t seem to leave anything to chance, and Reilly didn’t think they ought to be hoping for a lucky break here either. It was going to take more than that to bring him down.

/>   They got off the highway and slipped into the chaotic streets of central Istanbul. Loud diesel belches from old trucks and buses and irate car horns blared around them as they cut through the city, heading toward the defensive walls that lined the calm waters of the Golden Horn. The small convoy navigated through a few turns before veering into a narrow, one-way lane that rose up a gentle hill, skirting a tall wall to its left.

  “There’s the Phanar,” Ertugrul told them, referring to the Patriarchate by its nickname as he pointed out the window.

  Reilly and Tess looked out. Beyond the wall lay the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which was to the Orthodox Church what the Vatican was to the Catholics—though nowhere near as grand. The Orthodox Church wasn’t a unified movement and didn’t have one spiritual leader at its head. It was fragmented and had a different patriarch wherever it had a large body of followers, such as in Russia, Greece, or Cyprus. The ecumenical patriarch of Istanbul, however, was considered its ceremonial leader—the “first among equals”—but his Patriarchate was still nothing more than a humble cluster of unprepossessing buildings.

  The compound was built around the Cathedral of St. George, a plain, domeless church that had started off as a convent. The whole church could probably have fit inside the nave of St. Peter’s cathedral, with room to spare. Still, it was the spiritual center of Orthodoxy, a beautifully decorated church that housed several treasured relics, including part of the Column of Flagellation to which Jesus was tied and whipped before His crucifixion. The leafy compound also included a monastery, some administrative offices, and—of most interest to Reilly and Tess—the Patriarchate Library.

  About seventy yards or so from the compound’s entrance, the cars ahead of the armored SUVs slowed to a crawl. The approach road, which rose to the top of the hill before dropping back softly, was lined with parked cars on both sides, and was only wide enough for a single lane of traffic, which was now grinding to a halt. A couple of impatient car horns were quick to challenge the delay. Reilly, frustrated by the holdup, leaned sideways for a better look. Up ahead, about a dozen cars down the lane, a small crowd was clustered around the Patriarchate’s main gate. They seemed agitated and were all looking at something inside the compound and pointing up at it. A small tour van and a taxi that were dropping off some visitors were also stalled there, their drivers out of their vehicles and looking up in the same direction.

  Reilly followed their gazes across and into the compound, and saw what they were all looking at. A plume of black smoke was rising from the far corner of one of its buildings.

  And then he saw something else.

  A lone figure, walking out of the compound.

  A man with short, dark hair, wearing the black cassock of a priest, walking with a casual gait, maybe a bit hurried, but not in a way that would draw attention.

  A burst of blood flushed through Reilly’s temples.

  “That’s him,” he blurted, climbing out of his seat as he pointed dead ahead. “That priest, right there. That’s our guy. The son of a bitch is right there.”

  Chapter 19

  Amad panic erupted inside the lead SUV as all six of its occupants lasered their attention onto the gathering crowd outside the entrance of the Patriarchate.

  “Where?” Ertugrul asked as he craned his neck left and right and scanned ahead. “Where is he?”

  “Right there,” Reilly growled, now leaning forward so far off his seat that he was almost climbing over the back of the legat. He fought to keep his target in view, but the man in the priest’s cassock was moving away and disappearing behind the crowd. “We’re going to lose him,” he rasped, and seeing that the cars weren’t going anywhere, he clambered over the back of the middle row of seats and over Ertugrul, flung the car door open and burst out into the street.

  Just as he was exiting the car, he heard the police chief bark something angrily to their driver, spurring the young trooper to do what was probably the worst thing he could have done: slamming his hand down on the horn and leaning out of his window, shouting and gesturing at the driver of the car ahead of him to move out of the way.

  Reilly was already charging away from the armored Suburban when he saw the bomber react to the misjudged outburst. Without slowing down, the man spun his gaze around and their eyes met.

  Wrong move, Reilly cursed inwardly as he sprinted forward and drew his handgun. Wrong fucking move.

  ZAHED SAW REILLY STORM OUT of the black SUV and spurred his legs to life. There wasn’t a second to lose. Reilly was now rushing toward him, gun drawn, a dozen or so car lengths away. Other men were also pouring out of the black Suburban and from another one just behind it.

  All of which took him by surprise.

  They’re good, Zahed seethed. No, not they, he corrected himself. Reilly. Reilly’s good.

  He stowed the concern. There were more pressing matters at hand.

  He’d parked his rental car down the hill from the Patriarchate’s gates, and he instantly realized he’d have to abandon it there. It was about fifty yards away down the lane, too far to reach safely, and besides, there was no time to coax it out of its tight spot.

  He decided on a far more efficient escape route.

  Moving with the cool facility of someone who’d practiced the routine a hundred times for the final of a reality show, he banked right and doubled back and headed uphill—cutting through the crowd toward Reilly but, more relevantly, beelining his way to the vehicles that were stopped outside the compound’s gate.

  From underneath his cassock, he pulled out the big Glock.

  And without missing a beat, he started firing.

  He loosed his first six shots into the air, just firing into the sky as he yelled, “Get out! Move! Now!” while waving his arms in the air like a madman. The effect was instantaneous—a torrent of screams cascaded outward as the terrified onlookers stampeded for cover, heading away from him and running straight into Reilly’s path.

  Zahed was still moving briskly and went right up to the driver of the vehicle at the root of the backed-up traffic. The man had been standing by the door of his van and was just rooted there, startled and confused. Zahed squeezed off a round virtually point-blank, and before the man even knew what hit him, the force of the .380-caliber shell ripped the driver’s chest open and flung him backward with a vicious snap. Zahed kept moving. Oblivious to the mayhem around him, he just loped past the driver’s open door and raised his handgun again, this time at the taxi that was stopped behind the van. The taxi driver, who was standing next to it, looked at the gun-toting priest in terror and raised his arms, his legs crippled with fear. A dark, wet patch bloomed around his crotch. Zahed held his gaze for a second, then his emotionless eyes swung away from the man in concert with his gun hand until both settled on the car’s right front wheel. Zahed pulled the trigger again, and again, then a third time, shredding the tire to bits and causing the car to lurch and drop heavily onto its rim.

  He glanced over the hobbled taxi’s roof and caught a glimpse of Reilly battling the tide of escaping onlookers. The agent was now less than thirty yards away. He raised his handgun and tried to line Reilly down its sight, but there was too much commotion around the agent and Zahed couldn’t get a clean shot.

  Time to vamoose.

  With his weapon still in his grip, he leapt behind the wheel of the van, slammed it into drive, and floored it.

  REILLY HAD LOST SIGHT OF his target for no more than a few intakes of breath before the first shots sent the crowd scurrying in his direction.

  They were coming right at him—men and women of all ages and sizes, screaming and yelling and running for their lives. He tried dodging and cutting through the onslaught, but it was hard enough for him just to hold his ground. Precious seconds ticked away as blurred bodies slammed into him and scurried past, seconds during which he heard another shot, then a few more, each one of them whipping his neurons and urging him forward.

  He held his gun up close to his face and used his other
arm to clear a path through the frenzy, yelling and waving “Get down” as he fought his way forward—and then he heard it, the wail of a burdened engine and the squeal of scrubbed tires and the last of the crowd streamed by to reveal the van tearing down the lane.

  Reilly sprinted after the van as fast as he could, then skittered to a stop and lined up a shot and pulled the trigger once, twice, a third time—but it was pointless at that distance. The van was already disappearing from view. He spun around, his instincts doing a lightning-fast assessment of the situation around him. He registered the black smoke now billowing out of a window on an upper floor of one of the compound’s buildings, the priests spilling out of the Patriarchate in panic, Ertugrul and the Turkish cops rushing toward him, the shot man sprawled on the ground, another man standing by a taxi with a petrified stare on his face, the taxi’s tilt and low stance on the driver’s side, the fact that it was blocking all the cars behind it and didn’t look like it was going anywhere, not soon enough anyway.

  Which meant he only had one option.

  To run, as fast as he could, and hope for a miracle.

  Chasing after the van that was now disappearing around a bend down the road, he bolted forward, breathing hard, his palms cutting through the still air, his elbows rowing him forward, the soles of his shoes hitting the asphalt hard in a staccato of crisp slaps. He must have covered twenty or so car lengths before he spotted his miracle, a middle-aged woman who was getting into her car, a small burgundy VW Polo.

  There was no time for lengthy explanations.

  Within seconds, Reilly had blurted out a couple of apologetic words, snatched the keys out of her hand, jumped behind the wheel, and screeched out of the parking spot, leaving the woman’s incensed shouts in his wake as he rocketed after his prey.

  Chapter 20

  Mansour Zahed scanned the view from the van’s windshield with heightened concentration.