"I can't see a thing!" Reilly shouted. Aparo, using the butt of his gun, pounded the windscreen and on the third blow it busted out and flipped up, flying over the car and spinning to a rest on the roof of a parked car.
Screwing up his eyes against the buffeting wind, Reilly could see a no-entry sign where the street narrowed abruptly. Would the man risk it? If he met something, he'd be a goner. Spotting an opening on the right, maybe fifty yards short of the no-entry, Reilly guessed that's where the cab would go. He urged more power out of his car, hoping he might push the other driver into overcooking the turn. The Chrysler charged closer to the cab.
He almost succeeded. The cab screeched into the opening, its rear fishtailing wide to the left, lighting up the tires as it smashed into the brickwork on the corner of a building.
As Reilly followed into the new street, Aparo muttered, "Oh shit," as they both saw a kid on a skateboard gliding across the roadway ahead of the cab. The boy had earphones on and was totally oblivious to the approaching storm.
Instinctively, Reilly slowed, but there was no corresponding flash of braking lights from the cab, which was charging straight at the kid.
He's gonna hit him. He's gonna obliterate him.
Reilly jammed the horn, willing it to cut through the boy's private concert. The cab got closer. Then the boy nonchalantly glanced to his left, saw the cab mere feet away, and dove away in time as the cab bulldozed through, chewing up the skateboard as it streaked ahead.
As they passed the stunned boy, Reilly realized that the street ahead was relatively quiet. No moving vehicles. No pedestrians. If he was going to try something, now was the time to do it.
Before this thing turns really ugly.
He floored it again and gained on the cab. He saw smoke coming from its rear left wheel and guessed that the sideswipe of the wall had jammed the bodywork onto the tire.
Aparo noticed how close they now were. "What're you doing?"
Reilly rammed the Chrysler into the cab's rear end, the repercussion of the jolt cannoning through his neck and shoulders.
Boom. Once.
Twice.
He dropped back, floored it, and rammed him a third time.
This time, the cab went into a helpless spin before lurching over the sidewalk, catapulting onto its side, and scraping through a storefront window. As he stood on the brakes and the Chrysler screeched to a halt, Reilly looked over and saw the back of the cab, still on its side, sticking out of what he now saw was a musical instrument store.
As the Chrysler stopped, Reilly and Aparo scrambled out. Aparo already had his gun out and Reilly was reaching for his but soon realized that it wasn't needed.
The driver had flown through the front windshield and was lying facedown amid broken glass, surrounded by bent and twisted musical instruments. Pages of sheet music fluttered to a rest on his inert body.
Cautiously, Reilly poked the toe of his shoe under the driver's body and rolled him onto his back.
He was clearly unconscious, but he was breathing, his face slashed to bloody ribbons. With the movement, the man's arms spread sideways. A gun slid loosely from one hand. As Reilly nudged it away with his foot, he spotted something else.
From under the man's coat poked a jeweled gold cross.
Chapter 17
O nly a few messages awaited Tess when she walked into her office at the Manoukian Archaeological Institute on Lexington and Seventy-ninth. Predictably, half of them were from her ex-husband, Doug; the other half, almost as predictably, were from Leo Guiragossian, the head of the Manoukian Institute. Guiragossian never made any secret of the fact that he tolerated Tess only because having Oliver Chaykin's daughter at the Institute was very useful when it came to fund-raising. She disliked the balding creep, but she needed the job, and with current budget restraints sparking rumors of staff cuts, now was not the time to act the way she would like to act toward him.
She tossed all the messages into the wastebasket, ignoring the rolled eyes of Lizzie Harding, the demure and motherly secretary she shared with three other researchers. Both Leo and Doug would want the same thing from her: the gory details of Saturday night's events. Her boss's reasons for wanting to know, out of morbid curiosity, were, in a way, slightly less irksome than Doug's self-serving ones.
Tess kept her computer and telephone positioned so that, with a slight turn of her head, she could look out into the paved garden that lay behind the brownstone. The house had been lovingly restored years before her time by the Institute's founder, an Armenian shipping magnate. A massive weeping willow dominated the garden, its elegant foliage cascading down to shelter a bench as well as scores of pigeons and sparrows.
Tess turned her attention back to her desk and fished out the number Clive Edmondson had given her for Jeb Simmons. She dialed it and got his answering machine. She hung up and tried the other number she had for him. His secretary at the History Department at Brown University informed her that Simmons was away on a dig in the Negev desert for three months, but could be reached if it was important. Tess said she'd call back and hung up.
Recalling her conversation with Edmondson, Tess decided to try another tack. She checked the online Yellow Pages, clicked on the dial icon, and got through to the switchboard at Columbia University.
"Professor William Vance," she said to the reedy voice that answered.
"One moment, please," the woman said. After a momentary pause, she was told, "I'm sorry, I don't show anyone listed by that name."
She expected as much. "Can you connect me with the History Department?" A couple of clicks and buzzes and she was speaking to another woman. This one seemed to know who Tess was talking about.
"Sure, I remember Bill Vance. He left us . . . ooh, it must be five or six years ago."
Tess felt a surge of anticipation. "Do you know where I can reach him?"
"I'm afraid I don't, I believe he retired. I'm sorry."
Still, Tess was hopeful. "Could you do me a favor?" she persisted. "I really need to talk to him. I'm with the Manoukian Institute, and we met years ago on a dig. Perhaps you could ask around, see if any of his colleagues at the department know where he can be reached?"
The woman was only too happy to help. Tess gave her name and contact numbers, thanked the woman, and clicked off. She mused on it for a moment, then went back online and did a White Pages search for William Vance. She started in the New York area, but got no hits. One of the disadvantages of cell-phone proliferation, most of which weren't listed. She tried Connecticut. No hits either. She widened the search nationwide, but this time there were just too many matches. She then entered his name into her search engine and got hundreds of hits, but a quick trawl through them didn't reveal any that pointed to his current affiliation.
She sat there, thinking for a moment. In the garden, the pigeons were gone and the sparrows had doubled their presence and were squabbling among themselves. She swung her chair around, letting her eyes range over her bookshelves. An idea struck her and she redialed Columbia University, this time asking to be connected to the library. After identifying herself to the man who answered, she told him she was looking for any research papers or publications they had that were written by Vance. She spelled the name for him and pointed out that she was particularly interested in anything that dealt with the Crusades, knowing Vance probably wouldn't have written papers dealing specifically with the Templars.
"Sure, hold on a moment," the librarian told her and disappeared. After a few moments, he came back. "I just called up everything that we have by William Vance." He read out the titles of the papers and articles Vance had written that seemed to fulfill Tess's requirements.
"Any chance you can send me copies of them?"
"Not a problem. We'll have to charge you, though."
Tess gave him her office address and made sure he billed her in her own name. Right now was not a 41
good time to upset the budget watchers at the Institute. She hung up and felt strangely elated.
It brought back memories of the field and of the excitement, particularly at the beginning of a dig, when everything was possible.
But this wasn't a dig.
What are you doing? You're an archaeologist. This isn't detective amateur hour. Call the FBI, tell them what you're thinking, and let them follow it up. Tess wondered if not telling them what she was working on was in any way hindering their progress. Then she dismissed the thought. They'd probably laugh her out of the building. Still. Detectives and archaeologists. They weren't that different, were they? They both uncovered what happened in the past. Okay, so two days ago wasn't really a time frame archaeologists usually focused on.
It didn't matter.
She couldn't help herself. She was way too intrigued by it all. She was there, after all. She was there and she'd made the connection. And most of all, she really, really missed a bit of excitement in her life. She went back online and dove back into her research into the Knights Templar. She glanced up and noticed Lizzie, the secretary, looking at her curiously. Tess smiled at her. She liked Lizzie and occasionally confided in her over personal matters. But, having already talked with Edmondson, she wasn't about to confide in anyone else. Not about this. Not to anyone.
Chapter 18
N either Reilly nor Aparo had been hurt, just a few seat belt bruises and a couple of minor lesions from windshield debris. They had trailed the speeding ambulance carrying Gus Waldron up the FDR Drive to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Once Waldron was in the operating room, a black nurse with a short temper persuaded them to let her check them over. When they finally relented, she cleaned and bandaged their cuts, more brusquely than they would have liked, and they were free to go.
According to the doctors in the ER, their man was unlikely to be in any condition to talk to them for at least a couple of days, maybe more. His wounds were extensive. All they could do was wait for him to be fit for questioning, while hoping the agents and detectives now looking into the wounded raider's life got a handle on where he'd been holed up since the robbery.
Aparo told Reilly he'd call it a day and head home to his wife who had, in her midforties, managed to become pregnant with their third child. Reilly decided to stick around and wait until the raider came out of surgery before heading home. Although he was physically and mentally exhausted by the events of the day, he was never in that much of a rush to go back to the solitude of his apartment. Living alone in a city teeming with life did that to you.
Wandering in search of a hot cup of coffee, Reilly stepped into an elevator to find a familiar face staring back at him. There was no mistaking those green eyes. She gave him a brief, cordial nod before turning away. He could see she was preoccupied with something and looked elsewhere, his gaze setting on the doors of the elevator as they slid shut.
Reilly was surprised to find that the confines of the small elevator cabin made her proximity unnerving. As the elevator hummed its way down, he glanced over and saw her acknowledge him again. He hazarded something that was trying to be a smile, a quasi-smile, and was surprised to see a look of recognition crossing her face.
"You were there, weren't you? At the museum, the night of. . ." she ventured.
"Yes, sort of. I came in later." He paused, thinking he was being too coy. "I'm with the FBI." He hated the way tiiat must have sounded, although there was no simpler way of putting it.
"Oh."
There was an uncomfortable pause before they spoke at the same time, her "How is the—" colliding with his "So are you—." They both stopped and smiled mid-sentence.
"I'm sorry," Reilly offered. "You were saying?"
"I was just going to ask how the investigation was going, but then I don't suppose it's something you can discuss freely."
"Not really." That sounded way too self-aggrandizing, Reilly thought, quickly catching it up with,
"But it's not like there's that much to tell anyway. Why are you here?"
"I was just visiting a friend. He was hurt that night."
"Is he okay?"
"Yeah, he'll be fine."
The elevator pinged, having reached the ground level. As he watched her walk out, she turned, seeming to make her mind up about bringing something up.
"I've been meaning to contact your office again. Agent Gaines gave me her card that night."
"Amelia. We work together. I'm Reilly. Sean Reilly." He extended his hand.
Tess took it and told him her name.
"Is it anything I can help you with?" he asked.
"Well, it's just. . . she said to call if I thought of anything, and, well, there's this one thing I've been thinking about. It's actually something my friend who's here has been helping me with. But then I'm sure you guys have already looked into it."
"Not necessarily. And believe me, we're always open to new leads. What is it?"
"It's that whole Templar thing."
Reilly clearly didn't know what she was talking about. "What Templar thing?"
"You know, the outfits they were wearing, the decoder they took. And the Latin saying one of die horsemen said when he grabbed it."
Reilly looked at her, perplexed. "Do you have time for a cup of coffee?"
Chapter 19
The cafe on the ground level of the hospital was almost empty. After they had brought their coffees to a table, Tess was surprised when the first thing Reilly did was ask if it was her daughter who'd been with her at the museum.
"Yes, she was," she said, smiling. "Her name's Kim."
"She looks like you."
She was immediately disappointed. Even though she'd only glimpsed him fleetingly at the Met, and only actually met him minutes earlier, something about him felt comfortable. God, I've really got to get my male sensors recalibrated. She cringed as she waited for the inevitable guy-on-the-make's traditional compliment. You don't look old enough; I thought you were sisters; whatever. But he surprised her again when he asked, "Where was she when it all happened?"
"Kim? My mom had taken her to the ladies' room. While they were in there, she heard the uproar and decided to stay put."
"So they missed the bad part."
Tess nodded, curious as to his interest. "Neither of them saw anything."
"What about afterward?"
"I went to find them and made sure we stayed away until the ambulances were gone," she told him, still unsure about where he was going with this.
"So she didn't see any of the wounded or . . ."
"No, just the damage in the Great Hall."
He nodded. "Good. But she obviously knows what happened."
"She's nine, Agent Reilly. She's everyone's new best friend at school right now; they all want to know what it was like to be there."
"I can imagine. Still, you should really keep an eye on her. Even without actually witnessing it, something like this can have aftereffects, especially on someone that young. Could be just nightmares, could be more. Just keep an eye out, that's all. You never know."
Tess was totally thrown by his interest in Kim. She dazedly nodded, "Sure."
Reilly sat back. "How about you? You were right in the thick of it."
Tess was intrigued. "How'd you know that?"
"Security cameras. I saw you on the tape." He wasn't sure about whether or not that sounded mildly perverted. He hoped it didn't, but he couldn't tell from her look. "You okay?"
"Yeah." Tess flashed back to the horsemen trashing the museum and firing their guns and to the fourth horseman grabbing the encoder inches away from her, his horse literally breathing down her neck. It wasn't a sight she'd ever forget, nor would the fear she felt soon dissipate. She tried not to show it. "It was pretty intense, but . . . somehow it was so surreal that, I don't know, maybe I've tucked it away under the fiction section of my memory bank."
"Just as well." He hesitated. "I'm sorry to be nosy, it's just that I've been around circumstances like this and it's not always easy to deal with."
She looked at him, brightening. "I understand. And I do ap
preciate your concern," she said, mildly curious to note that while she was usually defensive when anyone talked to her about Kim, she did not take exception to this man. His concern appeared to be genuine.
"So," he said. "What's all this stuff about Templars?"
She edged closer, surprised. "You guys aren't looking into any kind of Templar angle?"
"Not that I'm aware of."
Tess felt deflated. "See, I knew it was nothing."
"Just tell me what you're thinking."
"What do you know about them?"
"Not much," he confessed.
"Well, the good news is you're not a lunatic." She smiled before quickly regretting her comment, which he didn't get, and moving on. "Okay. Let's see ... 1118. The First Crusade is over, and the Holy Land is back in Christian hands. Baldwin II is the King of Jerusalem, people across Europe are jubilant, and pilgrims are flocking to see what all the fuss was about. What the pilgrims often didn't know was that they were venturing into dangerous territory. Once they'd 'liberated' the Holy Land, the crusading knights considered their vows fulfilled and went back to their homes in Europe, taking their plundered riches with them and leaving the area precariously surrounded by hostile Islamic states. The Turks and the Muslims who had lost much of their lands to the Christian armies weren't about to forgive and forget, and a lot of the pilgrims heading there never made it to Jerusalem. They were attacked and robbed and often killed. Arab bandits were a constant threat to travelers, which kind of defeated the purpose of the Crusade in the first place."
Tess told Reilly how in a single incident that year, marauding Saracens ambushed and killed over three hundred pilgrims on the dangerous roads between the port city of Jaffa, where they landed on the coast of Palestine, and the holy city of Jerusalem. Bands of fighters soon became a fixture outside the walls of the city itself. And that's when the Templars first made their appearance. Nine pious knights led by Hughes de Payens arrived at Baldwin's palace in Jerusalem and offered their humble services to the king. They announced that they had taken the three solemn vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience but had added a fourth: a perpetual vow to protect the pilgrims on their journey from the coast to the city. Given the situation, the knights' arrival was very timely. The crusading state was in desperate need of trained fighters.
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