The Templar conspiracy t-4

by Paul Christopher

  "It's the fortieth reunion in a few weeks," murmured the president.

  "It's been that long?" Morrie said. The fact was enough to make him take the bottle and its accompanying shot glass from his drawer and pour himself a wee dram.

  "I'll go to the funeral if you'll come with me to the game," said the president, opening his eyes.

  "The game?" Morrie said. And then he remembered. "Not the Abbey School-Winter Falls High game?" The chief of staff groaned.

  "Glory days," the president said with a grin.

  "For you, maybe," said the chief of staff. He snorted. "You were the star, the captain of the team. I was a third-string goalie because I had weak ankles."

  "It'll be fun," said the president.

  "Shannon O'Doyle," said Morrie. He poured himself another shot.

  "Shannon O'Doyle." The president nodded, remembering the Winter Falls Snow Queen as though it was yesterday. All that long blond hair and the whisper of her panty hose when she crossed her legs.

  "You sure you want to remind the electorate you went to a fancy prep school?"

  "What have I got to lose?" the president said.

  12

  They woke early, asked for a car to be delivered from Hertz, had a quick breakfast and were on the road to Aigle by nine. They took Highway 1 out of Geneva and headed north, staying close to the shoreline of the long, silt-colored lake. They were almost halfway to Aigle before anyone spoke.

  "Remind me why we're going to this place," said Peggy.

  "Aigle is the area code on that number on the back of Tritt's desk. When I called the number it was for a vineyard called Chateau Royale des Pins. I did some checking on the computer; it's about two miles outside the town. Apparently they make a nice Chablis."

  "Never cared much for white wine," said Brennan from the backseat.

  "It sounds like a bit of a wild-goose chase," said Peggy. "If there's anything to find it will be at that private garage on the French side." She shook her head and stared out the window at the passing landscape. There was a dusting of snow on the ground and a cold wind was blowing in gusts, pushing a flotilla of sailboats around the lake. "We should be in Rome," she grumbled softly. "That's where the action's going to be."

  "That would be your veritable needle in a haystack." Brennan laughed. "There's two and a half million people in Rome. How do you propose we track him down?"

  "You got a picture of him in that file from your friend in counterintelligence, didn't you?" Peggy said.

  "Tritt must know there's a CIA file on him at the very least," said Holliday. "It's easily a decade old. He'll have changed his look since then." The photograph in the computer file showed a handsome, narrow-faced man with aristocratic features and neatly parted honey blond hair. If he was an actor he could have played the part of an Oxford student or the ne'er-do-well son of an English lord.

  "Still, it's a photograph of the bastard; it's something to go on."

  Holliday couldn't fault Peggy's enthusiasm, but after half a lifetime in intelligence he'd learned that enthusiasm, intuition and hunches had little to do with it. Finding and identifying Tritt would be a matter of hard, slogging work, assembling small pieces of information like a jigsaw puzzle until the whole picture took shape. Privately he gave them one-in-a-million odds on finding the assassin before the president arrived. They simply didn't have enough time.

  Even though traffic was fairly light, it took them the better part of two hours to make the fifty-mile trip around the lake to Aigle at the head of the Rhone valley. The town was a quaint little Alpine village of eight thousand, named for the eagles that circled on the upward air currents of the valley below, looking for rabbits taking shelter under the camouflaging grapevines in the summer months and foxes in the winter.

  Aigle had been the seat of government for the canton since the eleventh century. Still the seat of municipal government for the district, now the town relied heavily on tourism and the vineyards in the area. They stopped at the Place de la Gare in the center of town to ask for directions and were told to follow the Chemin du Fahey to its end two and a half miles east of the town.

  Fifteen minutes and two wrong turns later they reached Chateau Royale des Pins. Less a chateau than a full-blown castle, it sat at the summit of a large, flat-topped hill. It was surrounded by pruned grapevines that made it look like a gigantic military cemetery filled with makeshift, gnarled crosses, dark against a recent fall of fresh snow.

  They parked in the lot at the bottom of the hill and trudged up the narrow path to the top, snow crunching under their shoes. They reached the old gatehouse at the entrance to the huge stone building. Left and right were turrets and arrow slits in the heavy walls. Here and there Holliday could actually see rusted cannonballs embedded in the walls that probably dated back to Napoleonic times. They went through a pair of imposing oak, iron-strapped doors and stepped into the castle.

  They found themselves in a large foyer with La Boutique de Chateau on one side and the requisite suit of armor on display to the right. The boutique was really nothing more than a souvenir shop selling castle key chains, wine-bottle key chains, bottle-opener key chains, eagle key chains, assorted postcards, a Swiss Post Office first-day cover of a stamp to commemorate the castle and View-Master slide sets that looked as though they'd been on the shelves, untouched, for decades.

  Feeling the beady eyes of the concierge staring at him suspiciously, Holliday bought a wine-bottle key chain and gave the woman, a faint mustache distinguishable on her lip, a smile. The woman took his money and didn't smile back.

  A bored-looking tour guide who was probably the concierge's husband levered himself up off his stool and started giving them the tour, not bothering to see if they were following. Finally he turned and spoke.

  "English?"

  "American," answered Holliday.

  The man nodded. "American. Of course," as though it should have been obvious to him.

  Holliday spent the next hour learning far more about Chablis than he ever wanted to know; it was made from high-altitude Chardonnay grapes that were slightly more acidic than the grapes grown in a warmer, lower valley environment. He also learned that Chateau Royale was a traditional winemaker, storing the wine in oak casks rather than the more modern stainless-steel tanks. When Holliday asked a simple question about Chateau Royale's ownership he was basically told it was none of his business.

  The tour was confined to the main floor, which contained the shop and a viticulture museum, and the old dungeons in the basement, now used as the actual manufacturing, fermentation and storage area. The upper floors of the castle held the private apartments housing the owners, who demanded strict privacy.

  Holliday began thinking that Peggy had been right-the whole thing was a waste of time. He didn't see how he was going to find any proof of a connection between whoever owned Chateau Royale and William Tritt, the onetime CIA assassin.

  The tour finally ended with a quick run through the museum and a brief history of the Chateau Royale label, carefully skirting the whole matter of ownership. The little group exited the suite of expansive rooms that made up the museum and stepped out into the looming entrance hall with its inlaid marble floor and tapestries on the walls.

  As they headed back to the shop, Holliday thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned slightly. He recognized the man instantly. The last time they'd met Holliday had elbowed him in the throat hard enough to crush his windpipe.

  He tried to keep his expression neutral and carefully turned his face away. The man kept on coming down the stairs, then turned and went into the museum. Five minutes later the trio was back out in the cold again, heading down the steep path to the parking lot.

  "Well, that was a bust," said Peggy.

  "I thought it was quite educational myself," said Brennan. Peggy shot him a look to make sure she wasn't being mocked.

  "I found out exactly what I needed to know," said Holliday, dropping his little bombshell.

 
"Which would be?" Brennan said.

  "As we were going out in the main hall, did you see the man coming down the stairs?"

  "Big man. Jowls, distinguished-looking. Gray tips at the temples. Maybe seventy or so," answered Peggy.

  "That's the one." Holliday nodded.

  "And who would he be to us?" Brennan asked.

  "His name is Angus Scott Matoon," explained Holliday. "He's one of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. He's also Rex Deus. He was at that meeting where I was supposed to play pet archaeologist. I hit him pretty hard when I made my unceremonious exit from Sinclair House."

  "Did he see you?" Brennan asked.

  "I don't think so," said Holliday, shaking his head. "And if he did, he didn't recognize me."

  "You'd better hope not," said Brennan. Holliday got behind the wheel.

  "Where to now?" the priest asked.

  "France," answered Holliday. "Thonon-les-Bains."

  Kate Sinclair sat in the baronial hall that passed as a living room in the castle's private apartments, drinking coffee and staring out through the three churchlike arched windows at the panorama of the Alps, rising only a few miles distant to the north. Pacing up and down across the giant Tabriz carpet that covered the cold stone floor, General Angus Scott Matoon sipped from a snifter of Dudognon Heritage Cognac and scowled as though the expensive brandy had gone sour. He looked somehow diminished out of uniform, thought Sinclair.

  "Did he see you?" the brittle woman asked.

  "I saw him, so I'm assuming he saw me," answered Matoon.

  "Excellent," said the elderly woman.

  "You're sure that leaking Crusader is a good idea? Holliday was only a lieutenant colonel but he's got some very heavy connections in the intelligence business. He could be big trouble."

  "For God's sake, get some spine! You're one of the Joint Chiefs! We're far too wealthy to have big trouble. We simply have problems we have to surmount," said Sinclair. She let out a smoker's coughing laugh and lit another cigarette. "Quit worrying about Holliday. It'll be taken care of." She paused for a moment. "When they left, which way were they going?"

  "North," answered the general. "I had Jean-Pierre follow him for a while like you asked. He says they turned west, heading for the border on the coast road."

  "France," murmured Sinclair. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, then let the smoke dribble out through her aristocratic nostrils. "They're going to Thonon-les-Bains."

  "What's there?" Matoon asked.

  "Bad news for the colonel and his friends, I'm afraid."

  13

  Thonon-les-Bains is a town of eighty thousand, about halfway down Lake Geneva on the French side. The old Roman baths have long since lost their cachet and the town now relies on tourism for the better part of its income. It didn't take them long to find the self-service garage used by William Tritt. There were only two in the city: Auto Express, which was a too upscale and open concept for Tritt by a long shot. The second was more his speed-a run-down, narrow, tin-roofed warehouse at the end of a narrow street, its twenty or so cubicles roughly divided by rotting canvas curtains hung on thin steel frames. There was a pneumatic lift, a workbench, an assortment of tools and a canvas flap over the rear of the cubicle that afforded some privacy. The place was called Paulie's Garage and it was Paulie himself who oversaw the place, seated on a creaking, old wooden office chair behind an invoice-piled desk. Paulie was immensely fat. He sweated profusely even with a fan blowing directly over him. He wore bib overalls with the bib section dropped around his waist. Underneath he wore only a sagging, stained wife-beater undershirt. His English was fluent.

  Holliday took out the photocopy of the picture Potts had given him. "You ever seen him?"

  "Maybe yes; maybe no."

  Holliday put a hundred-euro note on Paulie's desk.

  "Seen him?"

  "Maybe yes; maybe no."

  Holliday added another hundred euros.

  "Seen him?"

  "Yes."

  "Where?"

  "He has a booth here."

  "Which one?"

  "Nineteen, down at the end, a main gauche. The left side."

  "Mind if we look around?"

  "I feel bad letting you go through another man's things."

  Holliday laid another hundred on the pile. "Feel better?"

  "Much better, monsieur." The big man scooped up the money and stuffed it into his overalls. "My conscience is clearing as we speak."

  "What kind of car does he drive?"

  "Audi A8. Black. Brand-new."

  "Nice car," said Holliday appreciatively.

  "At a hundred and fifty thousand euros, it better be nice," said Paulie, laughing like a large barnyard animal clearing its throat.

  "What kind of thing was he doing to a brand-new car? You'd have thought it would still be under warranty."

  "One would think so, oui, m'seiur."

  "So why did he need to rent a cubicle from you?"

  Paulie just shrugged his big, fleshy shoulders.

  "You don't know or you're just not talking?"

  "I am having, how you say, moral doubts."

  "Losing the doubts?" Holiday asked, laying another hundred-euro bill on the desk.

  "They are completely gone, as quick as magic," said Paulie, sweeping up the bill and slipping it into his pocket with the others.

  "So, what was he fixing?"

  "It had something to do with the exhaust system."

  "How could you tell that?"

  "Because he came in here two days ago with a complete left-hand side, after-market set of mufflers and pipes. That would leave me to assume that he was working on the exhaust system, n'est-ce pas?"

  "When did he leave?"

  "Very late that same night."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "One in the morning. I have rooms in the back."

  "And did the car sound quieter?"

  "If anything it sounded louder." Paulie shrugged.

  "Show us his cubicle."

  "That wasn't the bargain you made."

  "Which would you rather have?" Holliday bluffed. "Your guts turned into tails for your best tuxedo or a nice hot cup of battery acid?"

  "I don't have a tuxedo," whined Paulie.

  "Try to imagine it," said Holliday. "Just like the John Lennon song."

  "And if you can't imagine that, imagine us stuffing your private parts down your mother's throat," offered Brennan mildly. "A revelatory vision, I am sure, my son." He took the little Beretta Storm out of his black clerical jacket and aimed it at the big man's sweaty forehead. "As is this," Brennan added with a smile.

  "Viens m'enculer," said the garage owner, eyes widening, horrified by the sight of a parish priest with a gun in his hand.

  "The man, which booth did he work in again?" asked Holliday. "Show us."

  Paulie stumped down the center aisle of cubicles to the last one in the row. The fat man pushed open the grimy canvas curtain. Inside, the cubicle was as neat as a pin. It looked as though every surface had been washed down with some ammonia solution, which it probably had. Set out on a workbench were a series of what appeared to be brand-new baffles for a muffler. Holliday spotted a small slip of paper caught behind the bench and grabbed it. It was a receipt for something incomprehensible from a place called Activite Audi on the Chemin Margentel.

  "Where is this place?" Peggy asked.

  "Three blocks from here."

  "Who owns it?" Holliday asked.

  "An encul from Marseille. He runs-comment… how do you say it?-a chop shop. Sometimes he will steal a car to order for you. His name is Marcel."

  "Call him. Tell him you have three customers who want to see him."

  "He'll tear my face off if he finds out I set him up."

  Brennan brought an old-fashioned switchblade out of his jacket pocket, flicked it open and held it to Paulie's neck.

  "And I'll slit your throat if you don't call him."

  Paulie called. He spoke for a moment, then hung
up the phone.

  "He's expecting you."

  Brennan used the switchblade to slice through the line of the rotary telephone on Paulie's desk.

  "Warn him and I'll come back and slit more than your throat," said the priest.

  Paulie nodded mutely.

  It took them less than five minutes to walk the three short blocks. The district was full of places like Paulie's and a scattering of small, anonymous warehouses, small windows painted over on big sliding doors, and hasps hung with sturdy locks.

  There was a plain sign made of stick-on, fake bronze letters on the narrow door that read ACTIVITE AUDI. Beside the narrow door was a big, windowless roll-up. From behind it they could hear the faint echoing sounds of cutting torches, hammers and drills.

  Holliday hammered his fist on the small door. It looked as though it had about fifty coats of paint on it, each color some pastel variation of yellow, blue, red or green. There was no response, and he knocked a second time, even harder. Eventually the door opened a few inches revealing a tall, skinny man in a blue boiler suit and a leather workman's apron. He appeared to be in his fifties. He had a heavy wrench in his right hand.

  "Qu'est-ce que tu veux?" asked the man. Holliday noticed a long, thin scar that ran from the man's eye socket down to his chin, pale against the stubble on his cheek. Once upon a time someone had opened up his face with a very sharp knife or a razor.

  "We're here to see Marcel. Paulie sent us."

  "Paulie is a pig. Why do you want to see Marcel?"

  "To ask him about a car he worked on."

  "Who are your friends?" He nodded toward Brennan and Peggy.

  "Colleagues."

  "You a real penguin?" the man asked Brennan, nodding toward his collar.

  "Yes," said the priest.