Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  “Sure.” Holliday smiled pleasantly. He knew exactly what the bank manager was thinking. “I’m going to a particular destination that doesn’t take credit cards of any kind.”

  Bloom nodded. Cuba. Now it made sense. “I see,” said the bank manager. “I’d be happy to get the cash for you myself.”

  “I’d love to come with you,” said Holliday. “I’ve never really seen the inside of a bank vault before.” The only way to ensure that Bloom didn’t run off to make a phone call to the local FBI was by accompanying him.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” said Bloom coyly, “but by all means, follow me.”

  They went to the vault in the basement of the bank and Bloom chose two banded ten-thousand-dollar bricks and broke the band on a third brick, then counted out another five thousand dollars from it. The manager found a bank envelope and slipped the money inside. They went back upstairs, where Holliday signed the requisite forms and Bloom finally handed him the money. Their cat-and-mouse game over, Holliday shook hands with Bloom and left the bank.

  They carried on to the large pink-stuccoed train station surrounded by large beautiful palm trees and went inside. Holliday bought three tickets for the short trip to Miami. They went to the waiting room and sat down.

  “Now what?” said Hannah.

  “Yes, now what?” Lazarus said.

  “I’ve got a plan,” said Holliday.

  “Do tell,” said Lazarus.

  * * *

  Enoch Snow was furious. Holliday had outthought him at every point along the way. He’d listened to Holliday’s teasing on the FM receiver. He waited in his room three floors above and thought furiously. He’d clearly made some kind of mistake that had alerted Holliday or one of his companions and now he was paying for it. He went to his suitcase, took out a Beretta 92FS and screwed a suppressor onto the tapped muzzle. He popped the magazine, checked that it was loaded and slammed it back into the grip. He pumped the slide once, ensuring that there was a cartridge up the spout. Snow left the room with the pistol held in his right hand and hidden under his jacket. He walked down the hallway to the stairwell and made his way carefully down the three flights that would put him on Holliday’s floor. He reached Holliday’s suite, took out his master key card and slipped it into the lock. Snow then tapped the door slightly open with his foot. He stood, all of his well-honed senses hard at work. All he could feel was emptiness behind and failure beyond the slightly opened door. Using the splayed fingers of his left hand, he pushed the door fully open and stepped inside, but he was already sure it was too late. He took the silenced pistol from under the coat and with a two-handed grip he moved quietly down the little hallway. He stepped into the sitting room and took in the overturned couch and the paintings lying on the floor. He had failed and now it was too late.

  “Fecking hell,” said Enoch Snow.

  * * *

  It was eight twenty in the evening, dusk quickly turning to full night. Holliday, Lazarus and Kruger sat in the rental car directly across from the Bingham Gallery. Holliday took the ball of Semtex out of his pocket and tore it in half. He sniffed. It was odd that the bomber had chosen such an exotic plastic explosive. The Czech-made explosive was usually confined to use in Eastern Europe and sometimes by terrorists in Paris and London. The only thing this told Holliday was that the bomber in the hotel room was probably European. An American killer would more likely have used C-4 or any one of the dozens of DuPont products, all of which were readily available on the black market.

  Holliday formed half of the Semtex ball into a palm-sized pancake roughly half an inch thick. He took the assassin’s jury-rigged cell phone trigger, inserted a small wire into the pancake and folded the plastic explosive up around the phone. He casually climbed out of the rental, walked across the street and slapped his little package just above the lock on the front door. Just as casually he turned around and walked back to the car and sat down. He took his own cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Lazarus, who was beside him in the passenger seat.

  “Dial yourself,” said Holliday.

  “What then?” asked Hannah, sitting in the back.

  “Duck,” said Holliday. “But roll down your window first.” With all four windows lowered Lazarus dialed his own phone number, its chip now in the assassin’s trigger mechanism. They all ducked. The response to his call took as long as it took for the signal to bounce up to the nearest cell tower and down again to the object on the Bingham Gallery door.

  The shock wave of the Semtex’s detonation was enough to lift the left side wheels of the rental car a foot into the air and set off every car alarm for blocks. As the rental car rocked back to an upright position, there was a furious fireball that reached out to the middle of the street before it back-drafted into the interior of the gallery.

  “Go!” Holliday ordered, his voice booming. They all tumbled from the car and ran toward the cavernous opening where the doorway to the Bingham Gallery had once been.

  Holliday’s plan had been simple and direct. It was unlikely that the West Palm Beach Police Department had either a bomb squad or anything else capable of dealing with a large explosion. They’d probably spend time talking to public works about gas mains before dispatching a fire truck and a squad car or two. He prayed that the cops’ response time would leave them a window to get in and out of the Bingham Gallery and back to the train station before all hell broke loose.

  Ignoring the ruined interior of the gallery, all three of them headed for the now shattered glass door leading to the stairway up to the office area. They worked as quickly as they could, gathering up paperwork and ledgers. Holliday used his foot to smash in a locked fire drawer in what had to be Bingham’s desk and scooped up two long, slim ledgers.

  “I think this is it,” he said. “Time’s up.”

  He gathered up the ledgers and pushed Lazarus and Hannah toward the stairway, following close behind. As they stumbled over the debris in the gallery, Holliday could hear the distant sound of sirens. They raced out of the gallery, crossed the street and jumped back in the car, dropping everything onto the floor. Holliday eased out of the parking spot and drove away.

  * * *

  His name was Jean-Pierre Devaux, his surname attached to the Templar Order for the better part of a thousand years. A Devaux had been one of the founding members of the order and there had been a Devaux instrumental in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of which lay partially open on the table in his laboratory.

  Devaux’s laboratory was his own. He had no connection to any university, and he would never have called himself a scholar. In fact, Devaux was an archaeologist for hire, a profession that was becoming more and more common in these modern times. Private archaeologists were thriving, giving developers clearance from any possible connection to Indian tribes, sacred burial grounds or any other historical reason for a large development to be stalled. Devaux’s part of that professional circle was an elite one: he verified and authenticated stolen historical artifacts from around the world. And for this, he was remarkably well paid.

  His laboratory was in his home, a large apartment on Avenue de Wagram, one block from the Arc de Triomphe, seven stories above a bar with the unlikely name of Le Paradis du Fruit.

  It had taken him almost a year to unroll the scroll, which revealed four pages of the faint Aramaic script. As any archaeologist would, he photographed every tiny section of the scroll as it was revealed with a regular digital camera and an ultraviolet fluorescent camera. By the time a large section had been unrolled, he had brought over his portable X-ray unit and filmed it a third time. As the sections were unrolled, a long, absolutely smooth plate of Plexiglas moved on rollers on the table immediately covering and protecting each new section. It was a tedious business, but it was Devaux’s philosophy that things should be done well or not at all.

  He stood up, arched his back and sighed. He was getting too old for th
is kind of thing. Although never a professor, he did have a professorial look about him. He was a thin man in his late fifties, and his graying brown hair was balding into a large half-moon above his forehead. He wore old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles that continually slipped down his nose until he’d begun to wear a small piece of white adhesive tape as a brake. He had never married and had never been tempted.

  Life for Jean-Pierre Devaux was a never-ending series of projects. He took two vacations a year: one to the Costa del Sol in Spain and one to Las Vegas. On the Costa del Sol, he tanned himself on the beaches and enjoyed the spectacular food. In Las Vegas, he enjoyed the spectacular women, as many as he could absorb in a ten-day visit. Refreshed in both cases, he would return to work, his true passion.

  The scroll in front of him was certainly authentic enough, although not terribly revealing. The four pages so far were nothing but a long-winded, elaborate introduction to the real meat of the scroll that was promised to come. On the other hand, the mention on several occasions of Yeshua ben Yosef, which translated to “Jesus, son of Joseph”—now commonly known as Jesus Christ—was certainly interesting. He had also uncovered the line “The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East.”

  One of the most fascinating things about the quotation was that the present owner of the scroll came from India, a man named Kota Raman. Having done a great deal of research, as he did for all his clients, buyer or seller, he knew that Raman almost certainly had not obtained the scroll in any legitimate way. Devaux, of course, couldn’t have given a damn either way. His entire career had teetered on the edge of crime for almost three decades and he was used to walking the razor’s edge.

  The scroll was in limbo. The group trying to purchase it had made an offer that he had passed on to Raman for consideration. The price offered had been almost beyond comprehension. But how much would you expect to pay for a Dead Sea Scroll, especially one that mentioned Christ and the Messiah rising in the East? It didn’t matter to Devaux. What mattered was that if he authenticated and brokered the scroll to its new owner, his commission of ten percent would keep him in the lap of luxury for the rest of his life. Even more important to Devaux was the fact that his part in selling such a marvelous artifact would make him a piece of history. He smiled, staring down at the stitched piece of two-thousand-year-old cured, scraped sheepskin parchment in front of him. It did wonders for one’s ego.

  * * *

  Unlike Raman, Rohit Bapat never stayed in one place for more than one or two nights. He could have occupied any of the high-rise apartment buildings in Mumbai, but he chose not to—and for good reason. A great deal of the Bapats’ revenue came from their control of the building industry. The family had long before infiltrated the tradesmen union, the construction unions and even the loose organization of monkey boys who ran up and down the frighteningly high bamboo scaffolding that was used instead of cranes. The monkey boys hauled everything up by hand, floor after floor. Bapat would no more live in the penthouse apartment of any of these buildings than walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Bapat of all people knew that the Mumbai building codes were covered in the dust of bad cement, bribes, subgrade materials of all kinds and general neglect. Architects on file were generally fictitious and the engineers involved in putting the buildings up were often educated only in a technical college, if that.

  Instead Bapat and his entourage of bodyguards and family members would rove through Mumbai occupying a variety of houses, small family hotels and other residences, all of which they owned and operated. Bapat’s most deeply held philosophy was to build his riches in small increments, one rupee at a time, just like the monkey boys and their buckets. It was an intelligent enough way to think in a city of twenty million. But Bapat had what could be called a fatal flaw. He was terribly envious. He envied Kota Raman’s wealth and status among the crime families of India, and was wildly jealous of the man’s enormous international reach. Somewhere in his small mind he knew that he could never quite attain such heights, but he knew he could destroy him. This was the reason for his first small attack on Raman.

  Today’s location for the Bapat traveling headquarters was in a small tumbledown hotel in central Mumbai. Bapat now generally used the building as a storage locker for stolen electronic goods, but today he’d taken it over for his own personal use. He sat in what had once been a Raj-style dining room, eating a meal of a Bombay sandwich, butter chicken and several Kingfisher lagers. Bobby Dhaliwal entered the room in all his glittering glory, which included a vastly oversized red leather jacket. He had Vijay Sen by the scruff of his neck.

  Bapat wiped his lips and chin with a large linen napkin that was tucked into the top button of his shirt. He took a swig of beer, wiped his lips again and gave an enormous closed-mouth belch, which Vijay thought sounded like he was choking to death. Bapat’s small eyes squinted. He was nearsighted but refused to admit it.

  “Who’s this, Bobby? Looks like a piece of rubbish you picked up off the streets,” Bapat said.

  “His name is Vijay Sen, sir. He was the one who killed the night watchman and opened the gates at the scrapyard last night.”

  Bapat took a bite of his sandwich and spooned up some of the butter chicken. He ate noisily, then swallowed. He drained the bottle in front of him and flipped the cap off a new one, then drank deeply. He put the bottle down and leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the little creature standing on the other side of the table.

  “Has he not been paid?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dhaliwal.

  “Does he want more?” Bapat asked. In point of fact the street urchin deserved far more than he had been given. Not only had the attack on the scrapyard been a small dagger in Raman’s thigh, but Bapat had also managed to remove three excavators and four dump trucks from the yard. He was sorry the dog had been killed. He liked dogs, especially big ones.

  “Then why is he here?” asked Bapat.

  “He came on his own,” said Dhaliwal. “He said he had something to tell you.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Vijay shook himself free of Dhaliwal’s grip and stepped forward. “I came to tell you that Mr. Kota Raman has paid me ten thousand rupees to spy on you.”

  Bapat eased himself against the back of his chair, the street urchin’s face a blur in front of him. His mind twisted through all the implications of the child’s simple statement. Was the child just trying to extort more money from them? Was he telling the truth or was he telling him what Raman had told him to say? It was all very confusing. Bapat sat forward and grabbed his bottle of beer. He took a long, thoughtful swallow and then sat forward again.

  “You’re a liar!” Bapat yelled.

  Vijay held his ground. “I am not lying.”

  “Prove it,” said Bapat.

  Vijay pulled a thin folded wad of well-circulated orange-and-red thousand-rupee notes from somewhere inside his pants and placed it carefully on the desk in front of him. Bapat reached out and picked up the greasy packet of notes and counted them. “There are only nine here,” said Bapat.

  “I put one of the notes in a safe place on the chance that you might take it all.”

  “Why do you tell me all this?” Bapat asked.

  “Because I thought it was important for you to know.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because everyone knows that you have now grown stronger than Raman. I want to be on the winning side in this great battle.”

  Bapat’s heart swelled at the little slumdog’s statement. If street thieves now thought of him as the stronger, then perhaps it was time to truly put himself at war with the Raman family. Why should he be content with what he had when he could have it all?

  “So what can you do for me?” Bapat asked Vijay.

  “I can spy on Raman’s movements and tell you his intentions.”

  “And how much would you like to be pai
d for these services?”

  Vijay shrugged. “Mr. Raman paid me ten thousand rupees,” Vijay said, an unassuming tone in his voice.

  Bapat sat back in his chair and bellowed with laughter.

  “This little thief will go far in this world,” Bapat said to the man in the red leather jacket and sunglasses.

  Dhaliwal frowned. Praise received by another was praise not received by him.

  “Would fifteen thousand rupees do?” Bapat asked.

  “I suppose,” Vijay said, sighing.

  “All right, then—twenty thousand a month. Good enough?”

  “A week,” said Vijay firmly.

  “Every two weeks,” said Bapat.

  “Every ten days,” Vijay countered.

  “Done!” Bapat said and let out a huge laugh.

  16

  Holliday and his companions gathered yet again in a hotel suite, this one in the Miami Hilton. The living room of the suite was pleasant, a mixture of classic and modern: the inevitable flat-screen TV sitting above a large black credenza, the walls golden yellow, the couch a long blue rectangle, the carpeting matching the walls. It was all very nice. There were papers strewn everywhere, the booty they’d mined from their assault on the Bingham Gallery. Holliday, Lazarus and Kruger were each working their way through separate piles of paper. In Holliday’s case, that meant the two ledgers.

  “It’s crazy,” said Holliday. “Bingham is dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars but none of it seems to stick for very long. It comes in and it goes out. There are inventory codes that probably match individual works of art. The same numbers are paired on the opposite page with amounts of money, but the inventory numbers show that the works of art are moving along another chain of buyers and sellers. If a forensic accountant ever saw these, he’d have a field day.”

  Lazarus held a bundle of pages in his hand. “There seem to be two major sellers, one named Fone and another one called Leonardo. Together they sold more than half a billion dollars of art in the last eighteen months alone. What the hell does ‘Fone’ mean?”