The Templar throne t-3

by Paul Christopher

  Thousands of bodies were exhumed, packed in ossuary boxes and taken to the islands. The canal was filled in, making the two islands into one, and a wall was built around the entire perimeter.

  Within a few years new burials took precedence over the old and special funeral gondolas plied the waters between the city and the island with the regularity of a bus route. Napoleon's prim, gardenlike cemetery with its parks, lines of tall trees and statuary became a cluttered slum of headstones and monuments that ranged from the simple and plain to the ornately vulgar.

  Over time the "Island of the Dead" attained a certain romantic cachet and it became the final destination for a broad spectrum of the famous and the infamous, from Joseph Brodsky, the exiled Russian poet; Ezra Pound, the exiled American poet; Igor Stravinsky, the composer; and Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, the dance impresario and founder of the Ballets Russe. A little more than two hundred years from its beginnings the island had apparently now become a tourist attraction.

  The boat edged around to the near side of the island and a small wharf. With the sun shining brightly out of a clearing sky, the passengers obediently trudged off the barge and headed through a gate in the wall that led to the cemetery.

  "Now what?" Sister Meg asked.

  "We have to get to the mainland," said Holliday as they followed some stragglers along a broad gravel pathway. The cemetery had been subdivided into immense neat squares, each square crammed with hundreds of headstones, new and old. From the looks of things there were only a few real mourners; the rest were tourists taking photographs and peering at inscriptions.

  "I think the tour is heading back to the city when we're finished here. I heard people talking about getting to the hotel in time for dinner."

  "There has to be another way off the island," said Holliday. "They're almost certain to have found the kid by now."

  "It looked like there was another little dock farther along the wall," suggested Meg. "Maybe we can find someone to rent us a boat or something."

  The path they were on ended at the facade of San Michele in Isola, an early Renaissance church fitted into one corner of the island. There was a redbrick cloister attached to one side of the church. Sandaled, dark-robed Franciscan monks were tending the flower beds around the church. More Franciscans, thought Holliday, the male counterparts to the Poor Clare nuns of the St. Agnes convent in Prague. A Franciscan conspiracy? That was right up there with The Da Vinci Code on the religious conspiracy paranoia scale. The Vatican might be a hotbed of conspiracy, but all of them were inevitably and invariably about money.

  He shook the feeling off and looked for a way around the church. In the far corner, against the brick wall of the cemetery, they found a simple wooden door. Checking to see if anyone was watching, Holliday gently tried the latch. The door creaked open on rusty hinges. Just beyond the doorway he caught the ripe smell of rotting wood and seaweed.

  "Come on," he said, and stepped through the doorway.

  They found themselves standing on a narrow breakwater. The only thing between them and the dark waters of the ship channel was a row of tarred beams creating an artificial barrier against erosion.

  To their right was the rear facade of the church, to the left a small brick boathouse. In front of the boathouse was an old cabin cruiser that looked almost homemade-sheets of plywood painted flat, robin's egg blue for the stubby hull, with more painted plywood for a simple deckhouse.

  The tired-looking craft was powered by a big Mercury outboard clamped to the frail-looking transom. The boat was hugely overpowered. An engine that size at full throttle would tear itself off the transom. The name on the stern identified the ramshackle boat as the Casanova III and its home port as Venice. There were half a dozen long fishing poles scattered on the roof of the deckhouse, and the afterdeck itself was cluttered with more fishing equipment, most of it obviously untended for a long time. A wooden five-spoked wheel was positioned on the cabin bulkhead and a set of controls was bolted to the port gunwale. A narrow door led into the cabin proper.

  "Our chariot awaits," said Holliday.

  "Where's the owner?" Meg asked. "We can't just steal it." She paused. "Can we?"

  "I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth," said Holliday. He went quickly along the narrow sea-wall and jumped down into the boat. There were bow and stern lines looped around cast iron rings set into the blackened, railway-tie-sized beams. "Cast off the lines," he said.

  Meg didn't hesitate. She undid the twin lines, tossed them inboard and jumped into the deck well herself. While Holliday figured out how to start up the Casanova, she picked up a long gaff hook and pushed them away from the wooden breakwater.

  Holliday examined the rudimentary controls. There was a single throttle connected by a cable to the outboard. The ignition switch looked as though it had come out of an old car, but instead of a key there was a yellow-handled Phillips screwdriver jammed into the mechanism. It was a wonder that the boat hadn't been stolen long before this, thought Holliday.

  He twisted the screwdriver. There was a preliminary whine and cough from the engine and then it caught, the full-throated sound of the big outboard shattering the somber calm and quiet of the church and the cemetery beyond.

  Holliday notched the throttle into the forward position and spun the wheel, taking them away from the island. Directly ahead of them was the much larger island of Murano. To the port side Holliday could see the dark line of the train bridge connecting Venice to the mainland.

  He closed his eye briefly, trying to recall the simple map he'd seen back at the hotel. On the far side of Murano was open water and Marco Polo Airport. Twenty minutes across the bay and they'd be home free. He ratcheted the throttle a little farther forward and the decaying old boat started bouncing over the small waves, the deck beneath his feet as springy as a trampoline.

  As a child he'd often gone fishing with his uncle Henry on Canadaway Creek a few miles inland from Lake Erie in upstate New York. Every now and again, just for the hell of it, his uncle would take their flat-bottomed rowboat down to the lake and let the little twenty-five-horsepower trolling engine rip. They'd go flying over the lake, skipping like a stone across the water, the bottom of the boat thumping and jumping just like the Casanova was now. Remembering his uncle and missing him, Holliday let out a whoop of pleasure to his memory as they pounded across the bay; luck was with them once again.

  It was a wonder that the boat hadn't been stolen long before.

  Holliday had a sudden, vivid image of the shower scene from Psycho. He'd had recurring nightmares for weeks after he'd seen the film one afternoon while playing hooky from the Christian Brothers Parochial School.

  For a while he'd even believed his confessor, who'd told him the nightmares were divine retribution for the sin of cutting classes.

  The screwdriver in the ignition.

  Casanova III had been stolen.

  "Oh, crap," groaned Holliday, putting it together. The hairs on the back of his neck rose in warning, giving him a split-second advantage as the flimsy cabin door burst outward and Antonin Pesek hurtled through the opening, a dark flat automatic already raised in his hand.

  Instinctively, Holliday threw the wheel hard over and the flat-bottomed boat slewed drunkenly to port, throwing the assassin off balance, the pistol flying out of his hand as he fought to stay on his feet. The weapon spun across the deck, lost in the clutter of equipment around the transom.

  The killer barely paused, a broad-bladed knife appearing almost magically in his right hand. Pesek lunged and Holliday backed against the gunwale as the lethal instrument slashed across his belly. Another quarter inch and Holliday would have been gutted like a fish.

  Somehow Pesek had been one step ahead of them. He'd seen Holliday and Meg get on the tour boat and managed to get to the Misericordia marina before them. He'd stolen the cabin cruiser and reached the cemetery island before the lumbering tour boat, lying in wait, knowing that Holliday and the nun would be desperate to get off the isla
nd and to the mainland. The Casanova had been a baited trap and Holliday had stepped into it like an amateur.

  The Casanova was swerving wildly now, reacting to the slightest swell or wave, the wheel spinning freely. If they weren't thrown overboard they'd be swamped or they'd hit another boat.

  They were in the middle of the shipping lane from the east, and out of the corner of his eye Holliday could see a massive red-and-black-hulled oil tanker bullying its way across their bow less than a quarter mile ahead, the sheer side of the ship tall as a cliff and getting closer with each passing second.

  Pesek lunged again. Behind him, Sister Meg thrust the gaff hook toward his ankles. The assassin's feet went out from under him and he stumbled forward, cursing and giving Holliday a chance to spin out of his way, one hand clamping the killer's wrist and dragging him into a close embrace, probably the safest move in a knife fight.

  The boat lurched across another wave and Holliday rammed his knee into Pesek's groin. The killer twisted to one side, taking the blow on his hip, and brought the knife up again, slashing at Holliday's eyes, forcing him back against the gunwale again.

  The oil tanker now completely filled Holliday's field of view; another few seconds and they'd be nothing but splintered plywood wreckage spread across the water. An earsplitting air horn blasted as someone on the tanker's bridge saw the approaching cabin cruiser.

  As Pesek came after him again, Holliday dropped to the deck, then rolled back toward the transom, scrabbling for the gun.

  "Grab the wheel!" Holliday bellowed to Sister Meg. His fingers found the hard weight of the weapon and he rolled onto his back just as Pesek's boot smashed down toward his face.

  Suddenly the Casanova went into a wide lurching turn, the hull hammering into the enormous wave thrown up by the tanker's bulbous, half-submerged bow. Pesek's foot came down into a tangle of rope and Holliday squeezed the unfamiliar trigger of the compact, Czech-made 9mm automatic, firing upward. The round took Pesek under the chin and drilled up into his brain, killing him instantly. He folded silently, like a suit of clothes without a body to hold it up.

  Holliday clambered to his feet and lurched toward Meg as the boat virtually surfed along the hull displacement wave of the tanker. High above them a small group of spectators had gathered at the ship's rail to take a look at the idiots who'd almost powered into them.

  Holliday reached around Meg and took the wheel, his hands covering hers. She turned her head, eyes wide and flashing. They broached the churning wake of the tanker and headed into open water. Directly ahead of them a mile or so distant Holliday could see a jumbo lifting off from one of the two runways that ran parallel to the water.

  "Is he dead?" Meg asked, turning to look over her shoulder.

  "Very," answered Holliday.

  "Good!" said Meg, a savage note in her voice. She sagged back against Holliday, slipping her hands off the wheel, glad to give up control.

  "An eye for an eye?" Holliday said, enjoying the feel of her body against his, every altar boy fiber of his adult body screaming "sacrilege!"

  "Something like that," said Meg. She wasn't making the slightest attempt to wriggle out of Holliday's embrace. He stepped back, taking one hand off the wheel to let her go before the situation got too complicated.

  Suddenly embarrassed, Meg ducked out from beneath Holliday's enclosing arm. She stared at Pesek, crumpled on the garbage-strewn deck a few feet away. Holliday followed her glance. The entry wound under his chin was totally hidden and there was no exit wound; the bullet was still lodged somewhere in the dead man's brain. He looked oddly peaceful, eyes open as he stared up at eternity and the blue sky overhead.

  "Mrs. Pesek is going to be pissed," said Holliday.

  "I believe you're right," said the nun.

  14

  Cornwall is the dangling foot of England, toes tentatively dipping into the English Channel at Land's End and the Lizard. It has always been a place apart, a place of lonely moors, strange sights and fog, the birthplace of mythic kings, druids and magicians. The language is secretive and musical and history is its stock in trade. Once it was a land of wrecking beaches on its cruel black coast and mines cutting deeply into the rock and peat, the miners looking for precious tin and silver.

  It was Meg's turn at the wheel of the Peugeot rental. They'd left the airport hotel at Heathrow shortly after breakfast. It was noon now and they still had a hundred miles or so to reach their destination. They were roughly in the center of Dartmoor, just past the village of Two Bridges. In the distance the sky was a dark mass of roiling clouds the color of tarnished silver. The first few drops of rain were already spattering the windshield.

  Holliday sat in the passenger seat beside the young woman, staring out the window at the dreary, almost sinister landscape. This was the Dartmoor of Her Majesty's Prison and Conan Doyle's infamous Hound of the Baskervilles. It was a long way from Venice.

  Their escape had been utterly anticlimactic. They'd taken the homemade cabin cruiser across the muddy shallows at the airport end of the lagoon, finding a twisting path through the marsh, glad of the plywood's springy flat bottom. Eventually they ran the boat up on the beach and Holliday stuffed Pesek's body into the makeshift forward cabin. It was already a warm day and the little cabin was even hotter. The assassin's body would be a maggot-infested, bloated carcass within a day; if they were lucky nobody would find him until much later, at which point the body would be much more difficult to identify. As a precaution he'd taken the man's wallet, passport, and inscribed gold Patek Philippe watch and tossed them all overboard.

  With the body hidden, Holliday and Sister Meg clambered off the boat and walked a quarter mile across a few farmers' fields to the village of Campalto on the main road to the airport. There they bought toiletries and fresh clothes, putting their purchases in a pair of old Alitalia flight bags they found in a thrift store.

  From there they continued down the Via Orlando, the village's main street, had some lunch in the hotel dining room, then caught a cab and went on to the airport, less than five minutes away. At three in the afternoon they were on a British Midlands flight to Heathrow, and an hour after that they were crossing the big glass-and-steel atrium of the Heathrow Hilton. Everything had gone without a hitch.

  "What I don't understand is why," Holliday said finally, looking out at the blurry countryside; the rain was coming down hard now, the wipers thumping back and forth rhythmically.

  "Pardon?" Meg asked, concentrating on the narrow two-lane highway unwinding across the moor.

  "We were nothing but tourists at Mont Saint- Michel, yet we get tailed across Europe by Cue Ball. In Prague Antonin Pesek, an expensive contract killer, picks up our scent and tries to take us out an hour after his wife skewers a junior clerk at the Venice Archives. The Peseks are pricey, and I'll bet Cue Ball wasn't cheap, either. And the big question is where are they getting their intelligence? Until I nailed Pesek on the boat they were always one step ahead of us. How are they managing that?"

  "According to you, this so-called Vatican spy network has had it in for you for quite a while," suggested Meg.

  "Maybe it's you they're keeping an eye on," answered Holliday, looking carefully at the young woman behind the wheel.

  "Why would they be interested in me?" Meg asked. "I'm an obscure nun doing some historical research into a religious who was only beatified in 1985; she's not even a saint yet."

  "Maybe it's this True Ark of yours," replied Holliday. "Could it have some real historical significance to anyone except the Catholic Church?"

  "You said it yourself," the nun said and shrugged. "The True Ark is more myth than anything else. I'm sure the Blessed Juliana was trying to keep something entrusted to her safe, but there's no real indication of what it was. It could just have easily been love letters she wrote to her onetime fiance, King Hedwig of Austria."

  "Well," said Holliday, "somebody's after something and we'd better find out what it is before it gets us both killed."

  Jo
seph Patchin, Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, stood in the half-acre backyard of his enormous stone colonial on Upland Terrace in Chevy Chase, orchestrating the three hired chefs at work in front of his Beefeater built- in barbeque and stainless steel outdoor kitchen. He had one hand in the pocket of his Gatsby-style cream-colored linen trousers and the other hand wrapped around a glass of vodka and tonic that was really just tonic. Had to keep your wits about you at parties like this, even if you were the one throwing it.

  The half-acre corner lot of the Upland Terrace house was surrounded by mature pines and cedars, as well as a six-foot cedar plank fence and an inner chain- link fence to comply with the neighborhood's strict codes about pool safety. The pool in question was a twenty-by-forty-foot concrete monster that had been installed when the house was built in the early 1950s and had been lovingly maintained by its various owners ever since. Pools in Chevy Chase were de rigueur because it meant you had the money to heat and maintain them and the time to make use of them. Patchin hadn't swum in the damn thing for a couple of years but he still enjoyed the happy asthmatic chugging of the automatic Kreepy Krauly pool cleaner blindly doing its job. The pool was just as much a status symbol as the car and driver that took him to and from the office every day. Conservatively, the house was worth about two million six.

  Patchin's wife, Karin, was standing by the steps at the shallow end with a martini in her hand, talking to Ted Axeworthy, the senior partner at Axeworthy, Tate, Zwicker and Lyle, the firm she worked for. Axeworthy had been one of her first lovers outside of their marriage, back when Karin was a young associate.