The Templar conspiracy t-4

by Paul Christopher

"What car are we talking about?"

  "A black Audi A8. Owned by an American."

  "Sure, I know it."

  "You're Marcel?"

  "Yes." He stepped out onto the narrow, crumbling sidewalk, closing the old door behind him.

  "What did you do for him?" Holliday asked.

  "What's it worth for you to know?"

  "Five hundred euros," Holliday said.

  "A thousand."

  "Six hundred," said Holliday.

  "Seven fifty," said Marcel.

  "Done," said Holliday.

  "Cash," Marcel demanded.

  Holliday took out his wallet and counted out the money. "Talk."

  "He wanted to know if it was possible for me to bypass one set of headers on the exhaust system and run them through a single pipe."

  "Plain language, please," asked Holliday.

  "The A8 has twin pipes. He wanted one of them to be a dummy."

  "Why would someone want that?"

  "He also told me he wanted the baffles removed. He wanted a stash."

  "How big?"

  Marcel held his hands about a yard apart. "A meter, maybe a little more."

  "How wide?"

  "Twenty-five, maybe thirty centimeters."

  "Ten inches."

  "Enough for half a dozen kilos of heroin." Marcel smiled.

  "He told you he was smuggling heroin?"

  "He was pretty clear about it," Marcel said. "He knew the right names, anyway."

  "When did you do the job?"

  "Four days ago. He picked up the car yesterday. Paid extra for the rush."

  Holliday couldn't think of anything else. He thanked Marcel for the information.

  "Anytime. Bring money." The man in the leather apron grinned and slipped back into his shop.

  They walked back to the rental car, then found a place to stop for lunch in Thonon-les-Bains.

  "Why would he be smuggling heroin?" Peggy asked.

  "He wouldn't," said Holliday.

  "Then the false muffler was for something else?" Brennan asked.

  "Presumably." Holliday nodded.

  "Then it's a riddle," said Peggy, using her chopsticks to sort through the small delicacies in the bento box she'd ordered. "What's a yard long and ten inches in diameter?"

  "Some sort of weapon, perhaps?" Brennan said.

  Something tickled the edge of Holliday's memory. Something about America's first foray into the impossible country called Afghanistan.

  "It's your town," said Holliday to Brennan. "What airport would Air Force One use?"

  "Pratica di Mare Air Force Base, southwest of the city. It's a little bit out of the way but it can be absolutely secured. The Holy Father uses it."

  "So that's how all the foreign heads of state would arrive?"

  "Almost certainly."

  "What route would they use to get into the city?"

  "The Pope uses the Via Cristoforo Colombo. A highspeed auto route where you can control access and there are no tall buildings until you get into the city proper. Even for our assassin it would be an impossible target. Kennedy's limousine was traveling at something like eleven or twelve miles per hour when Oswald shot him. The Holy Father's limousine generally travels at a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour-roughly seventy miles per hour. No assassin in the world could make a shot like that."

  "He could if he had the right weapon," murmured Holliday. He poked thoughtfully at the tiny salad on his plate.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Peggy asked.

  "He knows security around the Vatican is going to be fierce. He knows that there will be countersnipers, dogs, dozens-if not hundreds-of highly trained Secret Service types from every major nation in the world. Trying to kill the president in an environment like that would be suicide. Somehow I don't see our man as a martyr to the Rex Deus cause. He's going to do the job efficiently and he's going to get away with it unless we stop him."

  "You said something about the right weapon," prompted Brennan.

  "I once saw a man named Emil, dressed in rags and rubber-tire sandals, destroy a Russian Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter from two miles away." He turned to Peggy. "It's the answer to your riddle, Peg. What's a yard long and ten inches in diameter? A portable Stinger missile. Just about the only one-man device capable of opening up the presidential limousine like a tin of sardines."

  14

  Driving out of Thonon-les-Bains, they headed west, back toward Geneva. There were trees and small villages scattered along the busy strip of two-lane highway as it meandered along a few miles inland from the lake.

  "If you're right about the Stinger, we have to go to the cops; there's no choice anymore," said Peggy.

  "What cops?" Holliday asked grimly. "The FBI, the Italians, Homeland Security?"

  "How about the ones hanging off our back bumper?" Brennan said, looking out through the rear window. A dark blue police cruiser with its light bar flashing had cut in behind them, its two-tone siren suddenly blaring.

  "Now what?" Holliday muttered. He pulled the rental off into the first lay-by, which happened to be in front of a Chinese takeout place called l'Asian. He stopped the car and watched as two Gendarmerie Nationale cops climbed out of their cruiser and approached the rental, one on each side of the car.

  "Speeding?" Peggy asked.

  "On this road, no way," said Holliday shaking his head. A dark yellow Mercedes Sprinter panel truck with Chinese lettering on the side pulled out from the alley beside the takeout restaurant and stopped.

  One of the cops motioned for Holliday to roll down his window. The second cop squatted down and looked through the car on Peggy's side. Holliday rolled down his window.

  Why, thought Holliday, do cops all over the world think mirrored sunglasses are so cool?

  "Votre papiers, s'il vous plait," the cop said pleasantly.

  "Sure," said Holliday. He leaned over and pushed the button on the glove compartment.

  "Hey!" Peggy yelled. There was the sound of breaking glass and then a crackle of electricity.

  I've been here before, thought Holliday, as unconsciousness washed over him. Then everything went dark.

  Peggy Blackstock had a pretty good idea of where they were, at least in general terms, even though their captors had pushed blinding cloth bags over their heads once they were in the truck. Neither she nor Brennan had been Tasered by the phony cops, although the threat was there if they decided not to cooperate. The truck with the Chinese lettering on the side had driven for about an hour when she heard the sound of airplanes low overhead, which almost certainly meant the Geneva airport. After that they definitely were going uphill, the road twisting and turning enough to throw them around in the truck's interior. They were in the mountains outside Geneva, the Haute Savoie-the French Alps. The way the truck slowed, then speeded up, Peggy could tell that they were going through one alpine village after another. Baptieu, Les Contamines-Montjoie, maybe La Chapelle. Wherever they were, it was up one of the long, narrow, glacial valleys: ski country.

  Another hour, and then the rich scent of pine. The road was narrower with no traffic at all. They had to be climbing steeply because the truck engine was straining in its lowest gear. They were being taken to some out of the way spot in the mountains. But who was doing the taking? Fake cops, or bribed ones, plus access to private places in the Alps implied that whoever it was had a great deal of money. She'd dealt with everyone from Al-Qaeda to the Taliban to the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and most of their headquarters were in caves, mountain camps or jungle clearings; she'd never done a photo story about Swiss terrorists. Maybe Doc was right, and Jihad al-Salibiyya was an invention of Rex Deus, or-God save America-the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Across from her she could hear Brennan muttering under his breath. It was too Byzantine to think that the church was involved, but she'd made that mistake before. Brennan could be up to his neck in the whole thing. The little Irishman was certainly capable of cooking up any number of plots within th
e church hierarchy. He'd been party to at least a dozen murders that she knew about-he was hardly a trusted ally. The only people she could trust were Doc and Rafi.

  She felt a dull ache in the pit of her stomach at the thought of her archaeologist husband. He'd been so good to her after she'd lost the baby and he was even willing to give up his Africa expedition to stay with her. The ache grew worse, but it wasn't in her stomach; it was in her heart. He'd wanted a child so badly and she hadn't been able to give him one.

  "We've got all the time in the world," he'd soothed, but she knew it wasn't true. Another few years and she'd be in dangerous waters when it came to pregnancy, and she was goddamned if she was going to go through the infertility hell she'd seen some of her friends dealing with. Maybe they could adopt, cliche or not. She laughed briefly at the thought; Rafi had enough love for a dozen children. Maybe they could become the Israeli version of Brangelina.

  "You find this amusing?" Brennan asked as they continued to rattle up the mountain road.

  "I wasn't thinking about now," she answered quietly. "I was thinking about the future."

  "The way things stand right now, I'm not sure the future looks very bright, dearie," said the priest, a sour note in his voice. "We're tied up with bits of plastic in the back of a truck. On top of that, your uncle's been spirited off. We'd better start thinking about the immediate present because I'm afraid we're on our own." Suddenly the truck jerked and stopped. They'd reached their destination. The doors banged open noisily and Peggy felt herself being lifted down out of the truck. There was gravel beneath her feet, and then as she was pushed forward, the gravel changed to something softer. Grass, maybe. The air was fresh and clean and even through the bag she thought she smelled snow. They were definitely in the mountains.

  She stumbled up a short flight of wooden steps with Brennan right behind her, if his colorful swearing was any indication. Suddenly her nostrils were filled with the definite smell of cedar. A chalet of some kind. She was brought up short by a hand on her shoulder. Two voices began a heated discussion in Italian and then a third joined in. Finally one of the voices, clearly someone in charge, judging by the tone, commanded quiet. Peggy was pushed forward, and a few seconds later Brennan came stumbling after her. The bag was removed from her head and she caught a brief glimpse of a man's face, and then the door in front of her was slammed shut. A key turned in the lock.

  There was absolutely no furniture in the room.

  "Fecking hell!" Brennan's voice boomed. "What in the name of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is going on here?" His hood was still on; presumably Peggy was supposed to remove it, so she did.

  "I didn't think priests were allowed to swear or take the Lord's name in vain," Peggy said with a grin.

  "Vanity has nothing to do with Jesus, Mary or Joseph, and the word 'feck' isn't swearing in the Republic. Little children say it."

  "Little children say it in America, too, believe me," said Peggy, laughing.

  "I don't find any of this funny at all. I don't," said Brennan, his Irishness growing with his anxiety. "You don't speak Italian, now, do you?"

  "Ciao, bella is about the extent of it," replied Peggy. "Why?"

  "Our captors were having a discussion just before they threw us in here."

  "I heard," said Peggy.

  "The question of the day was whether they should slit our throats now or later. Thankfully they chose later. We're being held hostage until your uncle tells them what they want to know."

  "Which is?"

  "The location of a certain notebook." Brennan eyed her closely. "Do you have any idea what notebook they're talking about?"

  "Not the slightest," lied Peggy. She'd seen the bloodstained notebook put into Doc's hands by the dying monk, Helder Rodrigues, on the tiny island of Corvo in the Azores-a notebook that contained the secrets of the immense Templar fortune lost to the world centuries before.

  "You're absolutely sure of that, are you?"

  "Perfectly," said Peggy, not liking the sudden, feral look in the old priest's eye. She walked to the high, small leaded window and looked out into the purple light of dusk.

  "On top of everything else we don't have the foggiest idea where we are," muttered Brennan. He tried the door handle, but it was futile. They'd been locked in a room about the size of the average bathroom. It wasn't much bigger than a walk-in closet.

  "I know exactly where we are. We're in the French Alps, facing east. We're about nine miles south of Chamonix and about three thousand feet directly above the resort town of Les Contamines," said Peggy.

  "And just how did you arrive at such a detailed conclusion?" Brennan said skeptically. "You're friends with that MacGyver fellow, are you?"

  "That's the west face of Mont Blanc," said Peggy, looking out at the high, spiny mountain looming above them. "I actually climbed it doing a photo shoot for National Geographic Traveler. A lot easier going up than coming down, believe me. Especially if you're in the middle of a blizzard, which we were."

  "Fascinating, I'm sure. But we're still trussed up like poultry ready for the oven, and these people are going to kill us as soon as they get what they want from your uncle-and they will; believe me."

  "I wouldn't be quite so quick to count Doc out if I were you," Peggy warned. "He might surprise you."

  15

  He dreamed of blood and war and the death of his wife, Amy, so long ago now. And then surprisingly he dreamed of baseball and the smell of pine tar.

  And then he woke up. There was a dull pain dead center in his back where the first Taser had hit him and a second dull ache high on his left shoulder where the other cop had zapped him through Peggy's broken window.

  That was no ordinary cop stop, he thought, his senses focusing again. Holliday opened his eyes. It was dark but he could see well enough to know that he was in what looked as though it might have been a cell-like servant's bedroom. At the end of the narrow bed he was on there was a small TV set with rabbit ears on a chest of drawers, and a straight-backed chair next to it. A single small window was covered by chintz curtains with a blue flower pattern. There were no pictures on the walls.

  He got to his feet and went over to the window. He pulled back the curtains. Outside it was dusk. Enough pale winter light to see the wall of pine trees twenty feet from the window. He was in the middle of a forest. There was a heavy layer of snow on the ground. The window was eighteen inches square under a deeply overhanging roofline; even if he broke the glass there was no way he was going to squeeze through the opening, and it was a good thirty feet to the ground, anyway.

  Holliday turned away from the window and went to the door. Locked. He sat down on the bed and looked around the room. Nothing much in the way of weaponry. The cops had been fake, or bought, at the very least. The question was, Who had kidnapped them and why?

  The CIA was a good bet, but it was even more likely that it was Kate Sinclair and her religious fanatic friends. Fanatic, perhaps, but like a lot of zealots, Sinclair also had an animal shrewdness that could be lethal. Her Jihad al-Salibiyya had caught the imagination of the dozen or so men and women who chose what went into the news cycle, and by achieving that she was getting to the basic fears of most Americans.

  Sinclair was rattling the Muslim sword and doing it extremely effectively. It was the same pattern of guilt by religious association that Hitler had used against the Jews, but it didn't seem as though the cultural history of the United States went back that far. Heaven help the news pundit who pointed out that little bit of history. Holliday was as patriotic as the next guy and had the battle scars to prove it, but sometimes it seemed to him that his country was blind to its own deeply entrenched, xenophobic madness. Who knew? The CIA had been infiltrated by the Soviets; why not by Kate Sinclair's people? Maybe there really was an inner CIA cabal of Rex Deus members steering American intelligence into its own, self-serving waters. After seeing Matoon at Sinclair's vineyard estate he was willing to believe just about anything now.

  He looked around t
he room again. Eventually someone was going to come for him and he had to be ready when they did. He'd probably have only a second or two to make his move and he had to make it count. His chance came sooner than he expected. Someone on the lower floor had clearly heard Holliday walking around and knew he'd risen from his electrically induced slumber.

  There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock of the bedroom door and a moment later it opened.

  "Vo bist hellwach,"-you're awake-said the man in the doorway. German Swiss, 260 pounds, six-four and built like a linebacker. He had huge feet encased in sturdy hiking boots. In one ham-sized hand he held a chubby little HK P30 9mm, and in the other the door key. He was smiling, thick lips parted to show a single gold tooth in the corner of his mouth. He had brown eyes with eyelashes a debutante would have killed for.

  Holliday didn't hesitate for a second.

  He took one lunging step forward as he slid the snapped-off TV rabbit ear he'd hidden up his sleeve into his hand and rammed the broken end as deeply as he could into the big man's left eye. The eye burst like a grape, fluid dripping down the man's cheek like a sudden gush of tears, and he made a brief whoof sound as the rough metal end of the stainless steel antenna sliced through his frontal lobe and Broca's area and then slid through the occipital lobe to finally scrape against the back of his skull. There was almost no blood. The man was dead standing up, and Holliday had to act quickly, grunting as he took the full weight of the fresh corpse under the armpits and gently lowered him to the floor. He slid the gun out of the man's hand and checked the magazine. It was fully loaded. He went through the man's pockets. A wallet, a set of car keys, an extra magazine for the HK and an SWR suppressor. He kept the extra magazine and the car keys, and screwed the suppressor onto the barrel of the HK.

  Holliday slipped off his shoes and stuffed them into the front of his shirt. As quietly as he could he jacked a round into the chamber of the pistol and opened the door. He found himself in a dark, short hallway. There was a narrow doorway to the left that was either a closet or a bathroom, and a steep flight of stairs.