The Templar throne t-3

by Paul Christopher

  "Sort of like a double blind," Sister Meg said, nodding.

  "Exactly. Cover up the truth with a well-articulated lie. What's that old proverb about the devil? 'The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people that he didn't exist'?"

  "So where does that leave us?"

  "The Zeno family was in business as ship brokers for a hundred years before the Crusades and a long time afterward. They kept meticulous books, which will be in the financial and business fonds of the State Archives. We do a little grunt work and find out if they leased a ship to a knight named Jean de Saint-Clair between 1307 and 1314."

  10

  The State Archives of Venice are located in an old convent appended to the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari at the end of the Rio di San Paulo Canal, itself a right-angled intersection of the Rio di Maddonetta, which runs off the Grand Canal. The archives, a thousand years and ninety miles of shelving's worth, have been there for the better part of two hundred years, having been consolidated within the abandoned convent shortly after Napoleon's sudden departure in 1814. The convent was formed from two very large cloisters around a central courtyard, which had been subdivided into dozens of individual rooms and small research "studies."

  Holliday and Sister Meg took a vaporetto water taxi from a small dock on the Grand Canal almost directly in front of the hotel. The vaporetti in the movies are always portrayed as classic wooden speedboats from the twenties and thirties, but the reality is a little different. Most of the water taxis were simple open dinghies or lifeboats equipped with fifty- or seventy-five-horsepower outboard engines clamped to the transom. There were larger "water buses" that followed specific routes around the city, but none of them went even close to the archives.

  They sat in the center of the boat while their driver, wearing a Guns N' Roses T-shirt and smoking a reeking pipe, cruised southwest down the Grand Canal to the Palazzo Maddonetta, where they swung right onto the much narrower Maddonetta Canal. They turned west again onto the sludgy and very narrow brown water of the Rio di San Paulo, toward the Campanile, or tower, of the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, known by the locals simply as Frari. They arrived at the set of wide stone steps that served as a dock, the huge brick basilica only fifty feet or so away.

  Holliday gave the boatman a ten-euro note.

  "Aspettare mi?" said the boatman.

  "No, grazie," said Holliday, shaking his head. The vaporetto driver nodded, pulled a paperback out of his pocket and settled back in his seat, reading and puffing on his pipe. The title of the book was La Giovane Holden by J. D. Salinger. It took Holliday a second but then he got it; the book was the Italian edition of The Catcher in the Rye. Trust the Italians to change the title. They probably called Moby-Dick Una Balena Bianca to make it sound like one of their own.

  They crossed the campo and turned down a narrow side street on the right, then walked a hundred feet or so to the plain entranceway of a large, heavily stained and slightly down-at-the-heels-looking Romanesque four-story building. The inner tympanum of the simple pediment capping the roofline was inscribed with the words "Archivo Di Stato," deeply carved in classic Roman letters three feet high.

  "This must be the place," said Holliday.

  They opened the simple wooden door and stepped inside. There was a small glass-enclosed foyer with a uniformed and armed guard on the other side. Holliday noticed that he had a heavy-looking Beretta 93R automatic pistol poking out of the holster on his highly polished Sam Browne belt. It was the same weapon carried by Italian antiterrorist forces and could empty its twenty-round magazine in under a second; essentially it was a pistol-sized machine gun. The guard looked as though he was about twenty- five years old and extremely fit. He also had a permanent look of suspicion on his face. Apparently the Venetians valued their history.

  They waited for a few seconds and then the glass door swung open. They stepped out and the guard beckoned them forward through an archway that Holliday presumed was a metal detector. They stepped through the arch.

  "Do you speak English?" Sister Meg asked.

  "Some, yes." The guard nodded, but he turned and pointed to a poster-sized sign on the wall behind him, written in English:

  NO CAMERAS, NO SCANNERS, NO BRIEFCASES, NO PARCELS NO SMOKING.

  "No problem," Holliday said and smiled, wondering what precautions they'd taken against people bringing in the hundred and one brands of ceramic fountain pen knives, key ring knives, credit card knives and assorted plastic box cutters being manufactured and which were impervious to magnetometers and even X-rays. Presumably the sign and its warning were to prevent the theft of valuable documents from the archives, but without any trouble Holliday could think of a dozen ways to sneak things out of the building.

  Another sign on the wall read Informazioni with an arrow pointing down a short hallway. They followed the sign to a pleasant-looking woman dressed in a blazer and skirt combination that made her look like an airline stewardess. She was sitting behind a desk with a placard like the sign on the wall, Informazioni, this time repeated in several languages, including a single large question mark.

  The stewardess flashed a smile as though she was terribly happy to see them.

  "May I help you?"

  The English was perfect, with a flat mid- Atlantic accent, probably learned in a Swiss finishing school or a Berlitz course.

  "We're looking for information about the Zeno family," said Holliday, trying to match the young woman's smile. "They were ship brokers in Venice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, perhaps even later."

  The young woman consulted a computer monitor on her right and tapped at the keyboard for a few seconds.

  "Third floor reference," she said. "You'll find several workstations in the front room at the top of the stairs. When a workstation becomes available you may begin your search. Identify the language you would like to use then type 'Nautical, Business, Genealogy' into the search box. It will ask for the family name. The resulting fond number will give you the location of the fond in question and tell you if the documents are available either as original works, facsimiles or have been transferred to microfiche. One of our researchers will be happy to bring the material to you at your workstation. There is a nominal fee for this service. We accept most major credit cards or cash. We do not accept personal checks."

  "How nominal is the fee?" Sister Meg asked.

  "Twenty-five dollars American, or nineteen euro for each request."

  "How many languages can you do your little speech in?" Holliday asked.

  "Nine," said the young woman, clearly pleased to have been asked. "English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian and Japanese. Presently I am working on Mandarin. I have a facility."

  "You certainly do," said Holliday. "Where do we go to find the way to the third floor?"

  "There is a stairway at the end of the hall. There are no elevators, I'm afraid."

  The hallway was old, plaster over stone, the wide pine floors worn and scarred by time. Holliday and Sister Meg walked toward the stairway.

  "Do you always flirt like that?" Meg asked, a note of censure in her voice. Holliday wondered when the red-haired nun had last laughed at a joke.

  "Always," answered Holliday. "It's fundamental to my philosophy of life."

  "You have a philosophy of life?"

  "Absolutely," he said and nodded. "Whenever possible say something nice to the person who's helping you. What's wrong with that?"

  "But only if it's a pretty girl helping you."

  "I like looking at pretty women." He shrugged. "What's wrong with that? You can't have something against pretty women since you're one yourself."

  "You're insufferable," snapped Sister Meg, her face reddening. She was even prettier when she blushed.

  Holliday smiled.

  They reached the end of the hall and began to trudge up the narrow flight of stairs. Like the floors the steps were worn, especially in the center. At each landing there
was an arched narrow window that looked out onto a courtyard in the cloister below. There was obviously access from the main floor because there were people sitting on benches, smoking, eating, drinking coffee or simply sitting on the scattered benches and looking at the plantings in the flower beds as they soaked up the dappled sunshine filtered through the trees.

  They reached the top of the stairs and went through an archway into another small foyer. Sunlight poured through another arched window. A young man in a white shirt and wire-framed spectacles was tapping furiously at a computer keyboard. Behind him were four computer workstations, each one with its own partitioned carrel. It was like being back in the library at Georgetown, thought Holliday.

  Holliday and Meg stepped up to the desk but the young man kept typing, ignoring them.

  "Mi scusi," said Holliday. "But can you help us?"

  Irritated, the young man looked up briefly, then gestured to his right.

  "La Stazione a sinistra," he said.

  "Grazie," said Holliday.

  The young man went back to his typing.

  "He's not very polite," said Meg as they walked over to the carrel on the far right.

  "Ah, well," sighed Holliday. "They can't all be pretty girls."

  Meg glared at him but said nothing; glaring seemed to be her most common expression, like a grade school teacher whose class is in a constant uproar.

  "Did you ever teach grade school?" Holliday asked.

  "For a short time, as a novice," answered the nun. "Why do you ask?"

  Aha!

  "Just curious," answered Holliday mildly, sitting down on a hard plastic chair in front of a Zucchetti brand computer. He followed the instructions given to him by the multilingual information lady downstairs, chose the little Union Jack flag for his preferred language and began navigating through the system.

  "Find anything?" Sister Meg asked after a few moments.

  "I'm afraid so," Holliday said.

  "What?"

  "Zeno Nautica-financial records: 1156-1605. Fifteen thousand pages, a hundred and fifty-seven ledgers."

  "Maybe they break it down ledger by ledger, or year by year," suggested Sister Meg.

  "So I should try 1307 to 1314?"

  "Makes sense, don't you think?"

  "Let's give it a shot," said Holliday.

  He typed in the appropriate dates and waited. A moment later he had his answer.

  "What does it say?" Sister Meg asked.

  "One thousand and eight pages and fourteen ledgers. Busy people, these Zenos." Holliday sighed. "It would take forever."

  "We know they came back in 1314, or at least the Blessed Juliana did. Wouldn't there be a notation when they brought back the ship?"

  "I knew there was a reason for having you here," said Holliday, smiling.

  "I'm not taking the bait," said Meg disdainfully. "So just get on with it."

  Holliday typed in the date.

  "One hundred and sixty-four pages, one ledger. Available in facsimile."

  There was a pen on a chain and a pad of scratch paper at the workstation. Holliday jotted down the fond number for the ledger and took it to the young man at the desk, who was still typing furiously. He looked up at Holliday, pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and scowled.

  "Cosa c'e?" said the young man petulantly. What do you want?

  "I want you to do your job instead of sitting there on your fanny writing romantic poetry to your girlfriend, or maybe it's your boyfriend. Pal," snapped Holliday, using his best West Point bracing tone. He dropped the slip of paper onto the boy's keyboard.

  "Diciannove euro," muttered the young man without looking Holliday in the eye. Holliday brought out his wallet and dropped a twenty-euro note on the desk. "No denaro," said the young man, sweeping up the money with one hand and putting it into his drawer.

  "Keep it," said Holliday.

  The young man ostentatiously locked the drawer, picked up the slip of paper and went through a closed door at the other side of the room. Holliday went back to Sister Meg and the workstation.

  "Now what?" Meg said.

  "We wait," answered Holliday.

  11

  "Where the hell is he?" Holliday said, looking at his watch. The sour-faced young man at the desk had been gone for forty- five minutes. "This place is big, but it's not that big."

  "Maybe he's having a nap somewhere," said Sister Meg, standing at the window and looking down into the courtyard below.

  "More likely a smoke in some stairwell," grunted Holliday. Stairwells were always the cadet favorites at the Point. He frowned a little, surprised at himself. He missed teaching a lot more than he thought he would. West Point had been his first real home in a lot of years, and now it was gone and he was a wanderer again, plagued by an incurable and inevitable restlessness.

  "Maybe you should go and look for him," said Sister Meg. "Give him a demerit point or whatever it is you do at West Point."

  "You sound like you're on his side," said Holliday.

  "You were awfully mean to him."

  "I told him what he needed to hear."

  "He's very young."

  "He won't be any different fifty years from now. He resents the job he has to do too much to do it well. He thinks he's better than the work. You can bet your last dollar he thinks his boss has it in for him and is preventing him from getting a promotion. Nothing is ever his fault. I've heard it all a million times." Holliday shook his head. "He's probably a budding movie director or a novelist just waiting for his big break."

  The door at the end of the room opened and the boy reappeared, lugging an enormous cardboard slipcase. He carried the heavy box over to the workstation and dropped it heavily on the table.

  "Mi dispiace, Signor," apologized the archive attendant, his cold, unpleasant expression at odds with the words coming out of his mouth.

  Holliday shrugged. "Per me va bene," he answered. He handed the young man another slip of paper, this one with the number of the next fond in the series on it. Then he took out his wallet and gave the archive attendant another twenty-euro note.

  "Mi dispiace," said Holliday. "Realmente." His expression was a model of sincerity.

  The young man looked at the twenty-euro note, looked at Holliday, and looked as though he was about to say something and then thought better of it. Holliday might seem like a grizzled old man in the boy's eyes, but he was a grizzled old man who stood six-two in his bare feet and could still do an easy hundred one-armed push-ups without breaking a sweat. Not to mention the slightly intimidating patch over his ruined eye. The kid wisely kept his mouth shut. He turned on his heel and went back through the door on the far side of the room.

  "What was that all about?" Sister Meg asked. "He looked furious."

  "I sent him back to get the next ledger in the series," explained Holliday. "The one for 1315."

  "That was cruel!" said the nun angrily. "You're just punishing him!"

  "It has nothing to do with punishment!" Holliday barked, annoyed. "After the little twerp went off the first time it occurred to me that they'd probably been using the Julian Calendar back then. The Gregorian Calendar was instituted in Venice sometime during the sixteenth century. The dates would have been way off by the year 1315-Christmas would be sometime in February. If your Blessed Juliana or whatever her name was didn't get back until late in the year it might be in the ledger as 1315, not 1314. The answer may well lie in the next ledger, not this one. We really do need to see it."

  The nun looked at him, still angry, but said nothing. She rejoined Holliday at the workstation as he pulled the facsimile ledger out of its slipcase. Unlike a regular accountant's ledger, each entry was written in longhand across the entire page, beginning with the number for the transaction and the date of the entry, followed by the name of the person making the entry, then the name of the person the entry was about, then the name and destination of the ship involved and finally the amount paid and the expected date of return.

&nbs
p; The name of the entrant, the lessor, the ship and the dates were all underlined. Each entry was effectively a longer or shorter paragraph according to the complexity of the transaction. An odd way of doing things, but efficient enough. Scattered through the entries were notations on separate lines for the return of ships and the final disposition of payments. The last notation on the final page of the facsimile was one of these. The handwriting was archaic and the Italian was obscure, but Holliday's command of Latin made it comprehensible. It read:

  13th December, 1314. Giorgio Zeno. Seen at Gibraltar, the Barca Santa Maria Maggiore, leased to Cavaliere Jean de St. Clair, en route from St. Michael's Mount.

  "Do you think they mean Mont Saint-Michel?" Sister Meg asked, reading over Holliday's shoulder.

  "Why would they translate the name into English? The notation is in Italian," said Holliday.

  "So he stopped at St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall on their return?" Sister Meg said.

  "Apparently," said Holliday. "It may have been a staging base for the outward leg as well."

  "Why would that be the case?" Sister Meg asked. "Jean de Saint-Clair was French."

  "What was France and what was England back then is a toss-up," explained Holliday. "Eleanor of Aquitaine didn't speak a word of English but she was the mother of Richard the Lionheart. Brittany and Aquitaine were both British possessions in France. He could have very well been English and with a previous alliance with Mount St. Michael rather than with Mont Saint-Michel. There's no way to know without going there."

  "Then we don't need to see the next ledger," said Sister Meg.

  "I'd like to see it anyway," said Holliday. "The closing entry might have some more information we could use."

  They waited for almost a full hour but there was no sign of the young man.

  "This is ridiculous," fumed Holliday.

  "You sent him on a wild-goose chase and he knows it," said Sister Meg.