The Templar Conspiracy

by Paul Christopher

  “What did this Father Leeson say to him?”

  “He gave him absolution, of course. What else could he do? He thought the poor man was hallucinating. Whatever the case, he was terribly anguished.” Brennan took another sip of his drink. “And then John telephoned me.”

  “In Rome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “We were old friends. We used to know each other. He knew what I did for the Church. He trusted me.”

  Holliday thought for a moment and then it dawned on him.

  “He was one of yours, wasn’t he? Once in, never out—isn’t that it?”

  “What are you talking about?” Brennan said.

  “You were a mole in the IRA. You were working for Rome even then. What—the eighties, the seventies, even earlier?”

  Brennan was silent for a long time, looking out at the falling snow, remembering. He poured more of the Irish whiskey into his glass, then sighed and finally spoke.

  “I was already in before I was ordained,” he said. “I was just a stupid boy with rocks in my pockets and in my head, as well. When you live on Dairy Street just off Falls Road all you can think about is getting a job in America, and failing that, climbing the ladder in the IRA. I had no one to go to in America, so I joined the Republicans and that was that.”

  “And then you became a priest?” Peggy asked.

  “They asked me to. There were a lot of squeals in the Belfast priesthood in those days. Patriots, as well. They wanted me to find out who was who.”

  “Instead the priests turned you,” Holliday said.

  “They offered me a way out. I took it.”

  “And Leeson works for you?”

  “We were at St. Malachy’s together. Then we transferred to the college in Rome. We were both ordained in St. Peter’s. There are a lot like him in America and around the world. In the Mossad he would be called a ‘sayan,’ a volunteer helper.”

  “All right, so he phones you, tells you about the weird confession. When was this?” Holliday asked.

  “Three days before the assassination.”

  “Before? And you didn’t say anything?”

  “Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Colonel Holliday, but what was I supposed to say and to whom? He was a drunk parishioner four thousand miles away in a Virginia suburb, babbling about killing His Holiness. It made no sense.”

  “But now you think it had something to do with the killing of the Pope?” Peggy asked.

  “A thimblerig is the old-fashioned name for the shell game, three-card monte,” said Holliday. “‘Crusader’ sounds like some sort of code name. And that suburb in Virginia is where the CIA has its headquarters.”

  “It gets worse, I’m afraid,” murmured Brennan.

  “How’s that?” Holliday asked.

  “Father Leeson was murdered Christmas Day.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Two bodies were found in a car in the ditch on the Dolly Madison Parkway, late on the night of the twenty-fifth. The one in the passenger’s seat was unidentified. Father Leeson was behind the wheel. The unidentified body had been shot in the face. There was a .45 automatic in Father John’s lap. He’d been shot in the right temple. There was a note on the dashboard that said, ‘Apart in Life; joined in Death.’ They’re calling it a gay murder-suicide.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what it was,” suggested Peggy.

  “Except that John wasn’t gay.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Holliday asked skeptically.

  “Perfectly,” nodded Brennan.

  “How?” Peggy asked.

  “Because I’m gay, God damn you!” said Brennan, his face flushed from the drink. “I’d have known.”

  “How did you find out about all this?” Holliday asked.

  “The FBI called me very late last night. They said I was the last number he’d called on his cell phone. My name was in his address book.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. I said he’d just phoned up to ask about old times. I said he sounded a bit maudlin. Depressed. I played right into their preconceptions.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them the truth?” Peggy asked.

  “By then the Holy Father was dead. I’d figured out that the man confessing meant the Holy Father when he was talking about ‘our’ father. Anyone who can organize the assassination of the Pope is certainly capable of tapping John’s phone and mine. I had to speak to you face-to-face. I took the red-eye to Washington from Rome. I got in two hours ago.”

  “Why me, and why now?” Holliday said.

  “A lot of your background is in intelligence,” answered Brennan. “You have contacts that I don’t. And you know something about crusaders, certainly.”

  The priest downed the last of his drink and stared across the coffee table at Holliday. “While the attention of the world is focused on Rome and the events taking place there, this Crusader organization will be planning their next attack somewhere else, and we’ve only got five days to find out exactly where and what that attack will be.”

  “I still don’t understand why you came to me. There are lots of other medieval historians in the phone book.”

  “I think Crusader is nothing more than a front for something else. Something much more sinister.”

  Holliday sighed. “Get to the point.”

  “The supposedly unidentified man in the car with Father Leeson was someone named Carter Stewart.”

  “This is getting a little Byzantine,” commented Peggy.

  “Who is, or was, Carter Stewart?” Holliday asked.

  “He was one of ours,” said Brennan.

  “Vatican Secret Service?”

  “Yes. A lay operative. Like the Israeli Mossad’s sayanim.”

  “And why is this important?”

  “Because he’d managed to infiltrate the office of an American senator.”

  “Which one?”

  “Richard Pierce Sinclair, Kate Sinclair’s son. I think Crusader is actually Rex Deus.”

  4

  “Sinclair’s son is hard to miss these days with all that crowing he does about the imminent threat of another 9/11 in the Senate, but you don’t hear much from his mother,” said Holliday.

  “She’s retired,” said Brennan. “On the surface it would appear that Rex Deus is in ruins, but I’m not so sure.”

  “Is she still at that Hickory Hill place or whatever it was called?”

  “Poplar Hill,” corrected Brennan. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s got a private island in the Bahamas, a country place called Edinburgh House in Scotland, a huge spread in Colorado and some sort of estate in Switzerland. She’s usually in one place or the other.”

  “But why would she want to assassinate the Pope?” Peggy asked. “What does she get out of it?” She shook her head.

  “Forget about motive for the moment,” said Holliday thoughtfully. “And forget her delusions of grandeur about her blowhard son. Let’s look at some basic facts.” He turned to Brennan. “Have the cops in Rome figured out anything?”

  “They’ve narrowed the search for the sniper’s position to somewhere on the Capitoline Hill. It’s the closest area that has the elevation for a clear line of sight to St. Peter’s.”

  “What’s the range?” Holliday asked.

  “At least nine hundred meters—a thousand American yards. Possibly more.”

  “Then he’s a pro, just like I thought,” said Holliday emphatically. “Military or private. You can pretty much guarantee he was military at one time or another; it’s really the only way to get that kind of training. I’m also willing to bet that he’s under forty. Much past that and the eyes and the hands start to go. You don’t have the reflexes anymore. Carlos Hathcock did all his best work in his mid-twenties.”

  “Who is Carlos Hathcock and what was his work?” Peggy asked.

  “He was a sniper in Vietnam. He killed people,” answered Holliday. “I met him once, years
later.”

  “Nice friends you’ve got, Doc.”

  Holliday ignored the comment. “The longest successful shot in modern times was by a Canadian at a mile and a half, but our guy is probably an American, Russian or a Brit. There’s probably no more than twenty or thirty men in the world who could have shot the Pope from that distance and been sure of success. Whoever hired him would have gone for the best. He shouldn’t be hard to track down.”

  “Then why haven’t the Italian cops already found him?” Peggy asked.

  “Because they don’t believe such a shot is possible,” answered Brennan. “Their ballistics experts tell them a thousand yards, but they think the shots came from much closer. Initially the medical examiner assumed the round had been a line-of-sight shot from straight ahead, so they concentrated their search to the east, assuming that the assassin had fired from some high ground like Castel Sant’Angelo. The bullet disintegrated on impact so the wound was a mess, but the examiner eventually found a concentration of fragments behind the left scapula—the shoulder blade.”

  “Which means the shot hit at an angle from right to left. Southwest, not east at all,” said Holliday.

  “Which means the range was a thousand yards,” sighed Brennan. “The Italians love to complicate things.”

  Across the coffee table Holliday could see Brennan’s eyes begin to flutter. The priest was fighting jet lag and a six-hour time difference. It seemed he’d collapse where he sat any minute.

  “There’s a guest room on the second floor,” offered Holliday. “Turn left at the top of the stairs; it’s the last door at the back.”

  “No, no, I couldn’t impose,” said Brennan. “I’ll just find a little hotel for the night.”

  “I insist,” said Holliday, thinking about the strangeness of bringing an old enemy into the house. “It’s bad luck to kick a priest out of your home on St. Stephen’s Day.” He smiled. “Besides, a ‘little hotel’ on M Street will cost you close to five hundred bucks a night.”

  “Good Lord,” said Brennan. He stifled a yawn and got to his feet. “All right, Colonel, I’ll accept your kind offer. No more than a few hours, mind; we’re running out of time.”

  Holliday was on the telephone in the study when a bleary-eyed Brennan appeared in the doorway at ten thirty the following morning.

  “Sweet Jesus, man, why did you let me sleep so long?” the priest said.

  “Because you would have been useless otherwise,” said Holliday. He scribbled something on a yellow pad. From the rear of the town house came the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. A few moments later Peggy appeared with a tray in her hands. Brennan flopped down onto one of the old, worn club chairs.

  “Anything new?” Brennan asked.

  “I’ve been on the phone since eight,” said Holliday. Peggy poured everyone coffee and sat down in one of the other chairs, tucking her legs under her like only women seem able to do. “I’m calling in markers and favors from old friends. We’ve got some names.”

  “Bad guys?” Peggy asked.

  “The worst,” said Holliday, glancing down at the pad in front of him. “It’s like a top-ten list. Four of them stand out because they specialize in very-long-range targets.” He paused. “Dimitri Mikhailovich Travkin, GRU Spetsnaz in Afghanistan and Chechnya. He’d be in his early forties, but no one has seen him in years. There’s a rumor that he retired when he first showed the early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which would rule him out. The second name is a Frenchman, Gabir Francois Bertrand, part Algerian, worked with the French Parachute Regiment, which is the equivalent of our Delta Force. Bertrand was involved in some sort of sex scandal involving a superior officer’s wife and they turfed him. He’s supposedly living in Switzerland and taking contract work, mostly mercenary jobs in Africa.”

  “The third name?” Brennan asked, gratefully sipping his coffee and looking a little more alert.

  “Edward Adler Fox, the top sniper in the British SAS. He was cashiered for insubordination, refusing to leave the front lines in Afghanistan. He wanted to stay with his men. Lives in a remote corner of England like some sort of hermit. Word is he’s a little wacky in the head. No indication that he’s active in any way.”

  “And the last?” Peggy asked.

  “The only American. William Tritt. A good old boy from West Virginia. Shot squirrels as a kid because that’s all they had to eat. Wound up in the SEALs and got an education—chemical engineering, and then a second degree in mechanical engineering. Apparently a whiz with any kind of machinery. He’s also a dead shot. He won the Wimbledon Cup at Camp Perry three years running.”

  “Where is he now?” Brennan asked, helping himself to more coffee.

  “He’s a ‘consultant’ to both the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center. They find the terrorists; Tritt gets rid of them. They learned their lesson at Guantánamo; it’s more cost-effective to kill terrorists than it is to capture them.”

  “You’re saying that one of these men is responsible for killing the Holy Father?” Brennan asked.

  “I’d bet on it,” replied Holliday. “My sources are pretty sure of it, too.”

  “Then why aren’t they looking for them?” Brennan asked.

  “Maybe they are but no one seems to want to talk beyond the hypothetical. Something’s scaring them off.”

  “What could scare such people off?” Brennan said. “You’d think finding the killer of the Pope would be a coup for everyone.”

  Peggy spoke up. “If nothing else, it’s the politics of necessity,” she said. “The Pope has been murdered. We in this room know there are four possible assassins—a Russian, a Frenchman, a Brit and an American. The last thing the governments of any of those countries want is to be associated with the assassin. The diplomatic damage would be enormous. Even the Italians are probably shying away from it. An Italian assassin killing the Pope? Absolute heresy. It would bring down the government.” She took a sip of her coffee.

  Brennan lit a cigarette, his first of the day, and gave a great, racking cough. “You mean no one is looking for this madman?” he asked finally.

  “No more than they ever looked very hard for Kennedy’s killer,” agreed Holliday. “They had a convenient patsy in Oswald, who was just as conveniently murdered less than forty-eight hours later. Case closed and a potentially lethal diplomatic incident between the U.S. and the Russians was averted.”

  “So any investigation is nothing more than a dog and pony show?” Brennan asked.

  “Until they find out who did the ‘wet work’ and who hired him,” said Holliday. “You seem to think Kate Sinclair is involved. Among other things Kate Sinclair’s father was a war hero who hit the beaches at Normandy, a senator himself and a deputy director of Central Intelligence during the Eisenhower years. He finished up his career as an ambassador. You’re screwing around with the daughter of a true-blue American hero. Neither the present administration nor the CIA would like that particular piece of dirty laundry to be revealed, I can assure you. It’s much tidier to simply say this is the work of jihad extremists and go with that.”

  “So what do we do?” Brennan asked. “It’s David and Goliath.”

  “We gather irrefutable evidence,” said Holliday.

  “And how, pray, are we to do that?” Brennan said.

  Holliday smiled. “We go to McDonald’s for a Big Mac and fries and we ask the right questions.”

  The McDonald’s in question was on a barren triangle of asphalt at the intersection of Old Dominion Drive and the Dolly Madison Parkway. Unlike the J. Gilbert’s Wood-Fired Steaks and Seafood next door, McDonald’s was unlicensed, which ruled out martini lunches, and it also had the advantage of three or four picnic tables for alfresco dining in the emission fog of the highways bordering the restaurant on all three sides of the triangle it occupied.

  From an intelligence officer’s perspective, it was the perfect place to avoid surveillance—except for the chilly weather, which didn’t seem to bother Holliday’s com
panion at all. Unless you were in the parking lot you couldn’t be seen from the street, and the constant drone of passing traffic only a few feet away beyond the sickly screen of trees would befuddle even the most sensitive parabolic microphones. The fast-food joint was almost exactly a mile away from the National Counterterrorism Center main entrance at the Dolly Madison Parkway and the Lewisville Road.

  “I’ve only got about half an hour,” said Pat Philpot. Philpot was a senior domestic analyst at NCTC, which meant he tracked smaller fish that had slipped through the nets and traps set up by Homeland Security, covered the Mexican and Canadian borders, and kept his eyes and electronic ears out for a few potential Timothy McVeighs lurking in the backwoods of the continental United States.

  He opened up the first of two Quarter Pounders with Cheese and began to eat, alternating bites of the dripping burgers with slurps from his large strawberry shake. Pat was a walking commercial for a heart attack, and it was hard to remember that the man across the picnic table from him had once commanded a first-strike combat team for the Rangers.

  “So, what do you know about the Pope?” Holliday asked. He sipped his coffee and waited for Philpot to swallow an enormous wad of cheeseburger.

  “He wears a funny hat and he speaks Latin,” the big man answered.

  “I don’t need your bad jokes, Potsy. You wanted to talk to me here, not at the center, so that means you know something. Spill.”

  “I’m not even supposed to talk to you, let alone divulge state secrets. You haven’t had clearance for years.”

  “How’s Loretta?” Holliday asked, smiling. Loretta was Philpot’s wife. A jealous wife. Like a lot of women Holliday knew, she didn’t much care for her husband’s old friends, especially those who knew him when.

  “What does she have to do with this?”

  “It’s like John Lennon said—everyone’s got something to hide.”

  “This is about that thing in Panama, isn’t it?” Philpot asked darkly.

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “You’re blackmailing me?”