by Martin Rua
Fortunately we managed to convince Josè Ferrer, the young Chilean seminarian, to come with us, in the hope that it would increase our chances of being able to speak to Father Palminteri.
We raced through the traffic we found on the short trip to the Vatican, crossed Piazzale degli Eroi and headed quickly for the Holy See, parking in an alley in Borgo Pio and briskly making our way to the entrance in Via di Porta Angelica.
Josè couldn’t get hold of Father Luigi, whose phone was either off or unreachable, and the receptionists at the Vatican refused to put us through to him. Our only chance, therefore, was to go there and look for the priest in person.
We spotted the blue uniforms of the Swiss guards standing at the entrance to the gate. Josè showed them his seminarian student’s badge, and the guards made it clear that only he could enter. For the duration of the international summit there was a large red zone with the Vatican in the middle. In order for the boy to be taken seriously, Oscar came up and showed his police badge.
Upon hearing Josè’s words and at the sight of Oscar’s badge, the young Swiss guard’s face grew grave. He went into his small office and called someone on the phone.
“The police are coming to pick you up to take you to Father Palminteri,” he said, coming back to us, and a few minutes later a black Alfa Romeo arrived at the gate.
Two men climbed out of it, one wearing a black suit and the other in the blue uniform of the Vatican police. The one in black walked over to the Swiss guard and then to us. “I am Captain Rocco Barucci of the Vatican police, please tell me what the problem is.”
Oscar’s eyes, burning with determination, never left Barucci’s. “I’m Commissioner Oscar Franchi from the San Ferdinando station in Naples. Captain, we’ve asked to speak with Father Luigi Palminteri, father general of the Missionaries of the Temple of Jerusalem—”
“I know perfectly well who Father Palminteri is, Commissioner,” replied Barucci curtly.
“Why are you looking for him? What are you doing here, so far from your jurisdiction? The Swiss guard spoke about a matter of the utmost urgency.”
Oscar decided he had to turn up the heat. “Captain, it seems there is a madman intent on setting off a bomb in a crowded part of the city. This person has made some demands and perhaps Father Palminteri can help us.”
Barucci stiffened and his face became ashen for a few seconds, then he seemed to recover.
“First of all, Commissioner, Rome is not the Vatican. If this individual has mentioned Rome, then you must speak to your colleagues in Rome. Tomorrow an international meeting is taking place and we’ve already had dozens of threats—”
“Chief, please take what I’m saying seriously,” Oscar said. “The threat is real, believe me. All I’m asking for is to talk to Father Palminteri.”
Barucci sighed, then gestured to the officer who had come with him and ordered him to get another car.
*
Within minutes we were in front of the Governorate.
Barucci let us in and told us to wait in a small room.
“I hope you’re not simply spreading unnecessary alarm, Commissioner. That would be extremely unhelpful.”
“Quite the opposite, though I wish I was,” came Oscar’s tart reply.
After a few minutes, Barucci returned with Father Palminteri.
An expression of total surprise appeared on the priest’s face when he saw us there, along with Josè, which soon turned into one of chagrin.
“I should have guessed that you wouldn’t settle for what I told you this morning.”
I looked at the clock – we had two hours left until the deadline Raymond had granted us.
“Father, we’ll discuss our unconventional methods later. Right now we need you to tell us everything you know about the Baphomet. Anastasio Elpìda was my grandfather, Lorenzo Aragona senior. We know almost everything. Just like you – right?”
To confirm my story I showed him the keys of the Lodge of the Nine I had got from Sean. Palminteri’s eyes opened wide, and he turned to Barucci, saying in a trembling voice, “Chief, give us a quiet room and come with us. We need to listen to what they have to say.”
39
Lethal Weapon
Events reconstructed on the basis of the statement of Anna Nikitovna Glyz
Rome, January 2013
Anna, her face covered in bruises, was huddled up on her bed in the room where she was kept. Anyone watching her would have though she was asleep, exhausted by the beating she had taken, but in fact she was thinking about the few words she had managed to grasp of the message found in the mithraeum.
If you, oh stranger, have arrived here—
She was sure that they contained another clue for finding the Baphomet, another code to decipher using a Cardan grille, just like in Kiev. Woland had been so angry that he hadn’t realised and had thrown it away. If only Camille hadn’t noticed as she was trying to hide it in her pocket. But torturing herself over it wasn’t helping. The only thing to do now was find a way to escape. She had undergone Bastian’s beating, trying only not to let his blows hit her too hard. At the end of it she was black and blue, but at least she had studied her enemy. Now it was his turn.
Stifling a moan of pain and rubbing her hip, she got up from the bed and looked around herself again.
At first glance, there didn’t seem to be any cameras around, but with people like this, she knew, one should always expect the worst. Anyway, she didn’t have a choice: it was time to act. She had to stop acting like a victim, don her hunter’s mask, and finally face her enemies out in the open. She closed her eyes for a moment to concentrate. She knew that the only way she could hope to take on ten armed men with no weapons apart from her hands was to use her excellent knowledge of the martial arts, but she had no way of knowing exactly who she would be facing, and that was a problem she mustn’t overlook.
When she re-opened her eyes, they were sparkling with determination. She walked over to the door and banged loudly to attract attention.
“Hey, I need a piss! Open the door!”
A few seconds later she heard the key turning in the lock, so she moved rapidly and flattened herself against the wall. A dim light from the doorway spread across the floor of the room, and a gun appeared, together with a few words that would never have time to become a sentence.
“Calm dow—”
A bottom-up kick sent the gun flying into the air, the hand holding it was yanked in the room and a straight chop to the throat took out the owner of the hand completely. Anna instantly seized the gun in preparation for the arrival of more guests, then leaned a few centimetres out into the corridor. She saw another figure coming towards her in the semi-darkness and at the thought of her next attack, a pleasant thrill ran down her spine: it was Bastian.
The giant approached the door slowly, a vague smile imprinted on his stony face. He was so cocky he wasn’t even carrying a weapon.
“Ok then, my dear Goliath,” thought Anna, “your David’s going to face you without a sling.”
She walked out of the room, showed Bastian the gun and then placed it on the floor about a metre from her.
“Want some more fun, do you, you damn gorilla? This time we play by my rules, though.”
Bastian remained silent, then launched himself at her with all his weight.
“Too easy.”
With an agile aikido move, Anna moved sideways and, leveraging his momentum and weight, gave her opponent a light push which sent him crashing to the ground. Bastian got up faster than expected and was instantly ready to fight back, but this time he looked less sure of himself.
“Surprised?”
Anna heard rapid footsteps on the stairs which led to the upper floor.
“What’s going on down there?” said one of Woland’s men, appearing with a gun in his hands. Bastian raised a huge arm.
“Leave her to me,” the giant grunted, before attacking the girl again.
This time, Anna’s move was more sophis
ticated: she ran towards Bastian and, a moment before impact, slid between his legs. As she went, she punched him hard in his groin, causing him to shout in pain and clamp his hands to his privates as he closed his legs and fell to his knees. Anna was already behind him and, with a kick to his back, knocked him down, jumped over him and attacked the other man, who in the meantime had been pointing his gun at her. The girl moved out of the way the precise moment the man pulled the trigger and the bullet struck Bastian dead in the chest as he was trying to stand. Anna grabbed the man’s arm, snapped it as easily as though it were a twig, then finished him off with a blow to the throat.
Bastian was on all fours, one hand grasping his chest and blood dribbling from his mouth.
Anna walked over to him, and whispered, “I wish I had time to make a little video of you to send your boss, you piece of shit – but my priorities have changed.”
She gave him a powerful kick to the face, and Bastian passed out. For ever.
Anna didn’t wait for the others to arrive. She picked up both of the guns her opponents had dropped and left the basement, heading up towards the ground floor. Two armed men were rushing towards her. They had just enough time to raise the muzzles of their guns a few centimetres before Anna gunned them down with surgical precision. She had already taken out five men, how many more could there be in the house?
She didn’t waste any time looking for an answer: even though the guns all had silencers, the shots produced a dull thud like a hammer blow, and the noise would certainly have attracted the attention of the other guests. She had no choice but to face them all. She reached the main hall and this time Woland’s men were ready for her and started firing first. Anna managed to take cover behind a sofa, but didn’t wait for her enemies to attack. She lifted her gun over the cushions and started shooting blindly. When she heard a suffocated moan, she peeped out and shot one of her assailants in the leg. While two of them lay there, convulsed with pain on the floor, another appeared and immediately started shooting towards the sofa. The sound of the shots was strange, and when Anna looked at the wall behind her she saw dozens of little needles, like arrow tips, sticking out from the plaster. The tips sparked slightly then the wall started to corrode as though it were being attacked with a powerful acid.
“A damned high-voltage taser, or something like that.”
A normal taser would usually shoot two darts, which would release a low-intensity high-voltage charge, but this one looked far more dangerous. Anna didn’t waste time trying to understand what the hell the weapon was: a moment after seeing the darts strike the wall she had already shot the attacker, who found himself with a hole in his shoulder and without his gun. Appearing from behind him, another man was about to fire a similar weapon, but Anna didn’t give him the chance. She shot him dead using the Beretta she had taken from the man she’d knocked down a few moments earlier, then ran into another room and quickly closed the door behind her, realising with immense relief that she was in the villa’s entrance hall. She was about to open the front door when two men appeared from another doorway, Woland and Camille behind them.
“Catch that whore!” shouted the president of Nanotech.
Anna dived towards the door, shooting with both of the guns she had taken and hitting both the men in the chest as their shots went wide.
The body count stopped at nine.
A moment before leaving the villa, Anna and Camille’s eyes met. The French woman stood there, at once petrified and fascinated. Anna sensed Camille’s admiration and gave her a defiant smile.
“Who the hell is she?” murmured Camille, without moving a muscle.
40
The Knights from The Mists of Time
Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragona
Vatican, January 2013
Before beginning, Father Luigi Palminteri looked over all the people there: Oscar, young Josè, Captain Barucci and me.
“Of course captain Barucci already knows already what I’m about to tell you regarding our missionary order. However, he too is still unaware of what our most delicate mission in the past hundred years has been.”
We hung on his every word, despite our frequent glances at on our watches.
“As you all know, in 1314 the order of The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Knights Templar, officially disappeared, after the execution of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, following the attack ordered by the King of France with the tacit approval of the Pope.
Not all our brothers in the various European kingdoms, however, suffered the same fate, and some of them were given more lenient treatment, so to speak. To cut a long story short, in some European kingdoms, the ex-Knights Templar were left relatively in peace and were allowed to join other orders and continue serving Christ and the Church, while still nurturing their own interests. But this is not all. A large group of knights who took refuge in Scotland continued to follow the order’s principles, to respect the Rule that Bernard of Clairvaux had given them, and to guard the codes and papers they had managed to take with them. Among their documents there were two which were very important. An original patent, a licence, written by the Grand Master de Molay, in which those brothers were named the only legitimate heirs of the Order, and the Chronica Gondemarensis, a text from the twelfth century containing the story of how the Baphomet, was re-discovered. Thus, thanks to those Templars, the brotherhood was never actually extinguished.
Let us take a leap forward in time. At the end of the nineteenth century, a Scottish catholic priest, Sean Bruce, was granted authority to found a missionary order by Pope Leo XIII, and to call it the Missionaries of the Temple of Jerusalem. Bruce came from a noble family which was linked to the Templars and was an ancestor of old Sean, whom you met this morning. Thanks to that, the Templars were able to partially emerge from secrecy and return, wearing a different habit.”
“Are you saying that you are Templars?” I asked in astonishment.
“Yes, Doctor Aragona, that’s exactly what I am saying,” admitted Father Luigi innocently. “I am the Grand Preceptor of the Italian province, which has its offices in Rome, in Villa Gondemar, but I am also the provincial Father of the Missionaries of the Temple of Jerusalem – the ’public’ face of the Order, if you will. Of course both as missionaries and as Templars we deal with works of charity, theology, archaeology and—”
“And—?”
“…and we also study the esoteric sciences.”
“I see. And is the Pope aware of that?” I asked, a hint of sarcasm creeping into my voice.
Father Luigi didn’t seem to be rattled in the slightest and answered coldly, “The Holy Father knows everything, Doctor Aragona.”
The Templars, Scotland, the Freemasons. All these coincidences fitting together as perfectly as the pieces of a jigsaw.
“But now let’s proceed with the part very few know,” Father Palminteri continued. “When you came to the mission this morning, I knew the moment your grandfather had so long awaited had finally arrived.”
The atmosphere grew expectant.
“I know perfectly well who you are, gentlemen. As you said, Mr Aragona, I know everything,” Father Luigi continued, “because in the past our Templar brothers worked together with the Lodge of the Nine to keep the Baphomet safe. And the Lodge of the Nine was created by the Templars themselves. The Baphomet was discovered by the first knights in 1118, in the depths of Solomon’s Temple, in Jerusalem. It is a relic of Chaldean origins which is able to evoke the entity known as Guardian of the Threshold. To maintain this secret, a restricted circle of nine brothers was formed inside the Order, with the aim of keeping the Baphomet a secret but also of using it when necessary. With time, these nine members began to be considered a corps unto itself, free from the obligations the Rule imposes but still controlled by the Order. It is funny, but the accusations made against the Templars – that they worshipped an idol – did contain a grain of truth. Only they did not worship it – they sa
feguarded it.
In any case, the idol was moved many times over the centuries. The last safe refuge, an abbey in the heart of the Languedoc, was abandoned in 1790, when the French Revolution caused many places of worship to be destroyed. The members of the Lodge of the Nine were all killed by the revolutionaries, except for one, who managed to escape after confiding the secrets of the Lodge to a Templar brother he had contacted. Thanks to him, the Lodge was founded a second time with new members and from that moment its principal goal became that of retrieving the idol, which seemed forever lost. In 1944 it was finally located in the abbey of Montecassino. The Lodge of the Nine attempted to retrieve it, but the relic was stolen during the allied bombing thanks to a traitor among the nine who was in fact a Nazi spy.
In 1945 we managed to locate the Baphomet again. We discovered it had been moved to the heart of the Third Reich, in Berlin, which had already been decimated by bombing. We could have waited for the imminent end of the war, but the risk of losing it again was too great so we organized an operation together with secret service teams from several countries. These teams specialized in dealing with extraordinary phenomena and artefacts. It was an act of genuine white magic, carried out thanks to the grace of God, against the forces of evil. It was also a suicide mission, though, because amidst the bombing, our men had to secretly penetrate the heart of Berlin, the Third Reich’s last bastion of defence.”
“Your men?” I interrupted. “You mean the Lodge of the Nine, right? You sent them, didn’t you?”
“Nine minus one, the traitor. Those eight were the only ones able to manipulate the power of the Guardian of the Threshold – nobody else could have gone. There was one grave casualty: the captain of the mission himself, an American of Navaho origins, the one called the Elect by the Lodge of the Nine, because if he has all the others’ keys, he can activate the sequence by himself and evoke the Guardian—”