The Pegasus Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Jacob chuckled as he held up a hand in surrender. “Okay, enough. What makes you think this Pegasus can be found by Echelon?”

  “Because there are no electronic transmissions it doesn’t pick up. That’s how Boeing beat Airbus in the bidding for new aircraft for several Mideast countries.”

  “You know American intelligence agencies are forbidden to do such things, Langford. They assure us all they only use such technology to keep track of terrorists, bin Laden, North Korea, sale of missiles to certain Arab nations.”

  Lang rolled his eyes. “And of course diverting billions of dollars to U.S. companies would not be sufficient incentive to deviate from that policy.”

  Jacob glanced around, making sure no one had entered the building since the conversation began. “Even if what you say is correct, how could a single name be sorted out? There must be millions of transmissions daily.”

  “Done easily enough by programming keywords into the computer.”

  “Like ‘bomb’?”

  “Like. Story a few years ago was that an Irish comedian was playing on stage in Soho. Opening night, called his girlfriend in Belfast, was nervous about his act. Said he was afraid he was going to bomb out. Two blocks were cordoned off before he even got to the theater. Bomb squad, dogs, the works. MI5 blamed it on that all-time favorite, the anonymous tip.”

  Lang could hear fingernails rasping against a heavy five-o’clock shadow as Jacob scratched his chin. “So, if someone were to have the ability to intercept Echelon’s product, ‘Pegasus’ could be a keyword, any communications concerning it gathered in. A tall order, as you say, for a small, poor operation like Mossad.”

  Lang chuckled. “Small, yes. Poor, perhaps. Most efficient in the world, undoubtedly.”

  Jacob was staring somewhere past Lang. “This is all you know about these people who have killed so many, that they are somehow connected to this Pegasus?”

  “And that’s only a hunch.” Lang reached into a pocket and showed Jacob the medallion from the truck driver. “This is the only thing I’m certain of, that the two men who tried to kill me were wearing one of these, four triangles meeting at the center of a circle. Hardly a coincidence.”

  Jacob squinted at the medallion. “No, no coincidence. Not four triangles, either.”

  He had Lang’s undivided attention. “Oh?”

  “Try a Maltese cross in a circle.”

  “How d’you get that?”

  He pointed. “There, all around you.”

  Lang turned, half expecting another assassin. Behind him, carved into the walls, the device was evenly spaced. The centuries had almost obliterated them and he hadn’t noticed until now.

  Lang felt as though his jaw was hanging open. “I don’t get it.”

  Jacob stepped over to the wall and rubbed his fingers across one of the circled crosses. “This was a Templar church, one of only two or three in the world that haven’t been destroyed, let fall into ruin or radically altered. It would seem reasonable that the design has something to do with them.”

  “Impossible!” Lang blurted. “The Templars were fighting monks sworn to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land from Moslems. The order was disbanded by papal decree in the fourteenth century.”

  Jacob pursed his lips. “Impossible or not, you see the symbol, same as you have in your hand.”

  This was beginning to sound like time travel out of bad sci-fi. Next, Lang would discover Richard the Lion-Hearted was the one who wanted him dead. “Why would a monastic order from seven, eight hundred years ago be interested in a painting? And if they exist, they’re a holy order, not murderers. How does any of that make sense?”

  Jacob shook his head. “My friend, as a Jew, I have little interest in Christian holy orders. Too many of them served their religion by killing practitioners of mine. But I do have a friend who might have an answer, a fellow at Oxford, Christ Church. He teaches medieval history. Oxford is, what, an hour’s train ride?”

  “Great. Except I’d just as soon stay away from train stations. I’m sure the police are watching them.”

  Jacob scratched his chin again. “I’ll call him tonight, tell him you’re coming. Stay with me and tomorrow you can have my Morris. Hopefully there won’t be another truck trying to run over you. Maybe I’ll have some information from Echelon by the time you return.”

  As they walked back to Jacob’s office, Lang noticed a man on a bench reading one of London’s tabloids. “Murder in the West End,” the headline screamed. He couldn’t be sure at that distance, but Lang thought he recognized his own picture, the one from his Agency service file.

  7

  Westminster

  1650 hours

  The afternoon sun was streaking the pewter gray of the Thames with orange, or at least that part of the Thames Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam could see from his office at Scotland Yard six floors above Broadway. He stood at the window a moment longer before returning to the papers on his desk.

  After four years with the fugitive squad of the Metropolitan Police, he was fully aware how unlikely it had been that he would be able to accommodate that American chap. What was his name? Morse, yes that was it, Morse with the Atlanta police. The Met had more than enough criminals to keep it busy without larking about looking for those the Yanks had let slip through what he perceived to be rather loose fingers.

  That dreadful murder of the antique dealer in the West End, Jenson. Constable had just about caught the killer in the act, red-handed, one might say if one found puns amusing. Wonder the lad hadn’t slit the constable’s throat as well. The description the frightened young policeman had given the artist had fit rather well with a picture in the international fugitive file in the computer if one ignored the moustache and chubby cheeks.

  Overrated things, computers. Admittedly, Fitzwilliam would never have recognized the chap, not with what was a disguise making him look older, heavier. Professional job, that disguise. As it should be, turned out. The information that came from the States said that the bloke was former CIA, Yank equivalent of MI6. Didn’t know what was the most surprising, that the fugitive was one of that cloak-and-dagger lot or that the CIA had admitted it. Dreadfully embarrassing that, to have one of your old mates go ‘round the bend, kill two people for no apparent reason. No reason if, in fact, this Reilly chap really was no longer one of them.

  Computers. Fact was, Reilly would have eventually been identified by old-fashioned, thorough police work. Even without all the modern glitz, the fingerprints on that umbrella had been confirmed by Washington. They were Reilly’s. And the brelly, well, now, that had been lucky. Just bought that day, it turned out, at Fortnum and Mason, paid for with a credit card belonging to a Heinrich Schneller, nobody the chappies at Visa had ever heard of. That was a bit of information Fitzwilliam was going to keep close to his chest, as the Yanks said, quietly put out a trace to be notified if that card were used again. And make sure every copper at every major international airport had a picture of Herr Schneller, with and without his bloody moustache.

  Fitzwilliam sat down with a sigh, his eyes on the face staring up at him from his desk. Amazing resolution these days—photo could have been a shot from someone’s holiday last week. Pushing the picture aside, the inspector reread the material that had accompanied it.

  This Reilly chap had spent some time in London before, had a list of acquaintances. And an odd lot they were. A Mossad operative, probably retired by now; a German national he had been boffing, a rather striking woman from the picture he guessed came from her service jacket; and any number of publicans where he had his pint as regular as any working-class sod. Fitzwilliam’s forehead creased in a frown. It was going to be a spot of bother, pulling men off investigations to go ‘round and chat up all these people.

  He reached for the phone. Best get to it. The cousins were waiting and they were an impatient lot. Worse, they believed their own cinema, that Scotland Yard had the ability to do anything asked of it. He snorted as he punched in numbers. The Ya
rd should have the resources of the sodding Yank FBI.

  THE TEMPLARS:

  THE END OF AN ORDER

  An Account by Pietro of Sicily

  Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.

  3

  Nothing I learned from the cellarer had prepared me for the manner of provisioning a ship. Each vessel was but ten rod1 in length and half that high at bow and stern. A single mast carried a single sail,2 all other space being crowded with as many as one hundred people. Each person required two barrels of water as well as a mat of straw, a quilt, meat, cooking utensils, and spices as would make the meat fresh to the taste such as ginger, cloves and mace. The cost of this provisioning paid to the merchants of Trapani was, according to Guillaume de Poitiers, forty ducats for a knight.

  He also said the unwary paid as much for the worst as for the best, this in reference to the mat and quilt. A man paid five ducats for those items but they were sold back to the merchants by arrivals for half that, so that many were worn and rife with vermin.

  The upper stage of the vessel was desirable over the lower, the latter being smoldering hot and sultry. But it was in these lower quarters the low-born such as Phillipe and I were quartered. I was to suffer greatly, for this lower deck was also the repository for horses, oxen, swine3 and other animals, the stench of whose excrement never left this area.

  The days at sea were such as to try my faith. The ship rolled and pitched in such a devilish manner as to nearly toss me into the waters when I ventured from my pallet beneath the deck. Most of my time I spent suffering from a malaise I learned to be common to many who venture upon the waters for the first time. The vapors of the sea cause the stomach to tighten, refusing to retain whatever victuals are put in it while trying to reject that it has already sent forth.

  Such was my misery that the captain of our vessel, a heartless, vile man who delighted in the misery of others, took great glee in calling down to those of us ill in the lower deck, “Shall I make you meat anon?”

  Then he would laugh as he told all that would hear, “They have no use for the meat they have purchased. Better we should consume it than it go bad.”

  It is God’s mercy that after some period of time, the body develops an imperviousness to these atmospheres of the sea that cause such illness. Thanks be to heaven and its merciful Lord, such proved to be the case and I was delivered from such suffering as I had never before experienced and know now that I never shall again. The agony that I face is of a different sort.

  By God’s will we reached Genoa where we replenished our supplies and set out for France.

  With God’s kindness in abating my illness, I took note of my surroundings. I had never had the opportunity to observe the workings of a ship. Most interesting were the maps used by the navigator on which lines were drawn, dividing the portions of the earth into squares,4 in which the ship was placed by careful nocturnal observation, thereby demonstrating our position on the sea in relation to points of land. These charts gave me pause as being not those sanctioned by God.5

  I was to learn this was not the only rule of God that found its exception among these Knights of the Temple.

  We disembarked at Narbonne in that region of Burgundy known as the Languedoc. As we journeyed away from the sea, we traveled along a valley where the soil was as white as the Knights’ surcoats. To our left the River Sals ran south to the ocean we had left.

  As we progressed, I became increasingly aware of a huge castle6 crouched atop a mountain on the far side of the river. I was told this was Blanchefort, an edifice that had been in the hands of the Knights since it was given by a family of that name to Hughes de Payens, Grand Master of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon in the year of his return from The Holy Land.7

  “The Blancheforts were truly devout servants of God,” I remarked to Guillaume de Poitiers when he trotted his charger to the rear of the train to verify that Philippe and I were keeping up. “The gift of such an estate to the Order would surely find favor in heaven.”

  He leaned from his saddle to check the bindings of the load carried by one of the horses. “The abbey at Alet as well as barracks at Peyrolles. Master de Payens was a rich man indeed.”

  “You mean the Order was enriched,” I said.

  He looked at me in silence before he replied, “No, little brother, those are not the words I spoke. Master de Payens was given those lands himself so that the Order might profit as he saw fit.”

  “But the vow of poverty . . . ?”

  He shook his head. “Think you instead of the vow of obedience which forbids asking your betters impertinent questions.”

  He left me to ponder how a member of a holy order could own such riches as the properties as the aforementioned. Once again, the monastic vows I understood did not seem paramount to this Order.

  We rested and encamped for the night outside the village of Serres. At daylight, we forded the river and made a rearwards turn. I could not help but note that the morning sun was on my left just as it had been on my right the day before.

  “Are we not but returning from whence we came by another path?” I asked one of the older esquires.

  “Indeed we are progressing to the south,” he said, “just as we marched to the north yesterday. Serres was the nearest place to cross the water and now we are proceeding to the castle at Blanchefort.”

  Shortly thereafter, we began an ascent up a mountain. Where vegetation failed to cover it, the soil was as chalky in colour as it had been in this region since we left sight of the sea. It was claylike to the touch and I pondered what victuals might grow in dirt so different from the loamy black humus of Sicily.

  At the top, we halted in front of towering walls of white stone while the knights with us exchanged words I did not understand with those on the ramparts. During this conversation I noticed the walls were not stones crudely piled like the boundary of the abbey I had departed but carefully fitted so that each rested upon the other. I was later given to understand that the knowledge of how to make this so came from the Saracens.8

  Above the grand entrance was a portal of pure travertine of almost a rod9 square upon which was graven the likeness of a winged horse rampant, so cunningly done in detail that I would have not been astonished to see it leap from the stone in which it was encased. I had seen graven images occasionally on buildings of antiquity, those edifices erected in pagan times, which Christ’s Church had not yet replaced with Christian monuments, but I would have never expected such a likeness to dominate the entry to a place consecrated to a holy order.

  “It is Pegasus, the mythical horse of the Greek,” Guillaume de Poitiers explained. “It is the symbol of our order.”

  Once again, my surprise overcame my humility. “Is it not blasphemous to have a pagan symbol in such a place?”

  Rather than taking offense at my boldness, he smiled. “It is the worshipping of such images our Maker proscribes, not the observation. Besides, Pegasus reminds us of our humble origins.”

  It was difficult for me to comprehend how an order which owned castles such as this could possess any origin not majestic. “How so, m’lord?”

  He sat back in his saddle, his eyes not leaving the fixture of the horse. “When our order was young, we could afford but few horses. When two brothers traveled the same way, they shared a single animal. At a distance across the sands of the Holy Land, the two white surcoats flowing in the breeze resembled nothing so much as a winged horse. The emblem so reminds us of that humility and poverty which our order embraces as virtues.”

  I had observed neither among the order but for once held my tongue.

  Just then the portcullis rattled open and we entered an area reminiscent less of a humble cloister such that I had departed than of the inner baileys of the few nobles I had visited while soliciting alms for the abbey or assisting one of the brothers in some task for which we had been summoned. There were no asses, horses, or other animals at liberty therein nor the smell of the ordure of f
arm animals. Instead, the fragrance of orange trees greeted our entry, mixed with rosemary, thyme and lavender which grew in sculpted beds planted on the south side of the cloister to receive the sun’s full warmth.

  An elaborately carved fountain gave forth the musical sound of water from its place in the center of the cross formed by paths that divided the garth into quadrants. The yard was encircled by an arcade, shady and cool behind its columns and open spaces.

  Windows were not shuttered against the elements but were filled with glass, an extravagance I had never witnessed outside of the cathedral at Salamis, the city on an island near the place of my birth.

  The interior was richly furnished with Venetian silk and Flemish tapestries, and blessed with the most holy of relics: the roasted flesh of Saint Lawrence, albeit turned to powder by the years since his martyrdom, an arm of Saint George, an ear of Saint Paul and one of the jars holding the water which our Lord turned into wine.

  As was the wont of my former order after a journey, I went to the chapel to offer thanksgiving for my safe arrival. I was surprised to discover that it was round, a complete circle rather than the shape to which I had become accustomed. I subsequently learned that all Templar churches are of this design, as was the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The room was surrounded by columns of serpentine and red marble. The altar was in the middle, a wondrously carved solid block of the purest white marble, unveined, on which devices were carved depicting scenes from the Holy City. The cross thereon reflected the lights of a hundred tapers, for it was of solid gold. The cost of this place alone would far exceed the worth of the entire abbey from which I had come.

  Nor was this end of excess. The occupants of this most marvelous place greeted the return of their brethren with a feast shared even by humble esquires such as Philippe and myself. For the first time in my life, I tasted the meat of lampreys, partridge and mutton, accompanied by a wine so strong it made me giddy.

  All was as or more than Guillaume de Poitiers had promised. The meat I have described. I was given a cell larger than the sum of any two at my previous abbey and a bed soft with wool stuffed with straw.