Templar Conspiracy

by Paul Christopher

  “Aix-les-Bains,” answered Philpot. A narrow gravel road appeared on the left and Philpot took it, guiding the old Mercedes up between the scruffy pines, the road winding around outcroppings of rock until they reached a broad, flat meadow on a small plateau. Directly ahead of them was a classic French country house right out of Toujours Provence: a rectangular building of old whitewashed stone, a few deep windows and a steep-pitched tile roof. At the end of the lane a roughly constructed carport with a green, rippled fiberglass roof sagged against the side of the house. Under it, gleaming in deep, dark blue was an expensive two-seater Mercedes SLK 230.

  “Whoever this guy is, he must do pretty well for himself.” Holliday grunted, spotting the car.

  “Pretty well indeed,” Philpot agreed. “The war on terrorism declared by our recent leader had much the same effect as Woodrow Wilson declaring war on alcohol. It’s always been the same way: one way or the other war is good for business. There’s a great deal of demand for Rich’s skills these days.”

  “Rich?” Holliday asked.

  “Richard Arbruthnot Pyx. It’s too absurd to be anything but his real name.” Philpot laughed.

  There was a wooden sign over the door, a name chiseled out in neat letters: LE VIEUX FOUR.

  “The Old Kiln,” Philpot translated, without being asked. He pulled their Mercedes in behind the sports car and switched off the engine, the old diesel dying with a shudder and a cough. They climbed out into the cool of early morning, Holliday and Peggy stretching and yawning, Philpot lighting a cigarette. Pyx must have had some kind of early warning system because he was already waiting at the door, a broad smile on his friendly face. He certainly didn’t look like a forger to Peggy. In fact, he looked more like a rock star on vacation than anything else. He was tall, slightly stooped, wearing jeans and a white shirt with the tails hanging out. There were sandals on his bare feet. He had thick, tousled, dark hair and two days’ growth of beard, and behind round, slightly tinted glasses a pair of extraordinarily intelligent brown eyes. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties.

  “Paddy!” Pyx said happily. “Brought me some business, have you? Or just stopping in for a pain au chocolat and a cup of my excellent coffee?” On top of the good looks he had an Irish accent like Colin Farrell’s.

  “Business actually, but I don’t think we’d turn down pastry and coffee.” He turned to Peggy and Holliday. “Would we?” He introduced them, one after the other, and Pyx stood aside and ushered them into his kitchen. It was relentlessly low-tech with the exception of a bright red Gaggia espresso maker that was hissing and steaming on a simple plank countertop that looked as old as the house. The floor was dark flagstone, the ceiling plaster with exposed oak beams, the walls whitewashed stone. There was an ancient refrigerator, a freestanding pantry, a separate oven and a large, professional-looking set of gas burners.

  Herbs hung from nails, copper-bottom pots and cast-iron frying pans hung from the beams and early morning sunlight poured in through a single, multipaned window with rippled old glass set into the wall beside the grill. Outside Peggy could hear birds chirping. At any other time it would have been an idyllic moment in the country; right now it was edged with fear, worry and terror. Pyx sat them down at a yellow pine kitchen table in the middle of the room, brought out a plate of warm and aromatic chocolate croissants from the pantry and busied himself at the exotic-looking coffee maker for a moment, making them each a large, foaming cup of cappuccino, which he then brought to the table. He sat down himself, dunked one end of a croissant into his coffee and took a bite of the soggy pastry. Peggy did the same. There was so much butter in the flaky crust that it really did seem to melt in her mouth. Philpot took two.

  “So,” said Pyx. “You don’t look like the kind of people Paddy here usually brings to me, but I’ve learned that appearances can be deceiving.”

  “Passports,” said Philpot, his mouth full. “And all the other paraphernalia.”

  “Talk to me,” said Pyx, turning to Peggy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Say something—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m trying to see if you have an accent.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Depends on your point of view. In Castleknock I wouldn’t have an accent but here I do. Speak.”

  Peggy did as she was told.

  “Westchester, New York, but you’ve recently spent a lot of time in Israel.” Pyx nodded.

  Peggy stared. “How did you know that?”

  “Vast experience,” he said, grinning. “It’s what I do.” He turned to Holliday. “Now you,” he said. “Same thing.” Holliday grudgingly repeated the line of doggerel.

  “Born in West Virginia but raised in upstate New York, right?”

  “Close enough.” The man was dead-on, of course. He’d spent his first four years in Norfolk after his father came out of the navy and before he joined the railway.

  “Neither of you have an accent that anyone’s going to be able to pick up unless they’re an expert, which most U.S. passport control officers aren’t. We’ll make you Canadians. Either of you done much traveling there?”

  “I’ve been to Toronto a few times, and Montreal,” said Peggy.

  Pyx turned to Holliday. “You?”

  “Same.” He frowned. “Why not make us Americans?”

  “They’ve got access to U.S. databases. I’m presuming you’re persona non grata there at the moment or you’d be using your own names.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Aren’t they all?” said the Irishman. “Ontario, then. Easy. They’ve got simple birth certificates and driver’s licenses. You’ll have to have a health card, as well.”

  “Health card?”

  “It’s free. Ontario government. Very efficient about having the cards, and for some sort of privacy-act reason they’re not allowed to cross-index the databases between the bureaucracies. Good photo ID. I can do the health card, the driver’s license and the birth certificate right here.”

  Peggy didn’t understand a word of what the man was saying.

  “The passports,” Philpot prodded.

  “Even simpler.” Pyx smiled. “But first the photographs.” He stood up and led the way to the rear of the house. They turned into an L-shaped hallway lined with bookcases leading to the bedroom, but instead of moving on Pyx stopped at the turn of the L and pulled out a volume from the bookcase. There was a faint clicking sound and the case swung open on a completely invisible hinge.

  “Open sesame,” said Pyx, and stood aside to let them enter. He followed and shut the bookcase doorway behind them. Peggy looked around the secret room. It was large, fifteen feet on a side, and windowless. Work-height counters ran around three walls with built-in shelves above. There were dozens of neatly labeled binders on the shelves, color coded, and in one corner there was an array of half a dozen large, flat-screen monitors. Beneath the monitors on steel racks there was a row of featureless black computer servers, each one with a blinking green light on its front surface. The counters were loaded with an array of peripherals from large flatbed scanners to photo light tables and several very professional-looking color printers and photo printers. Along the far wall was a complex three-screen LightWorks computer editing console for motion pictures.

  “You’re awfully free with your secrets,” said Holliday. “We could have been cops.”

  “You’re not,” said Pyx. “Paddy would have killed you by now if you had been. He also let me know you were coming, and if he hadn’t I would have known about it from the moment you turned off the main road.” He smiled, clearly taking no offense at Holliday’s comment. “And I wouldn’t have greeted you with coffee and chocky croissants, believe me.” He shrugged and nodded toward the LightWorks console. “Besides, I have a perfectly valid film-editing enterprise going on. There’s nothing here that’s particularly incriminating except on the drives, a
nd I can dump data faster than any copper could ever get into this room.”

  Holliday frowned. “I didn’t see him call you.”

  “He text messaged me from Pilsen. I gather you had a little trouble in the land of bad Czechs.”

  “Some,” said Holliday.

  Peggy’s attention was suddenly drawn to a large camera mounted on a professional tripod against the wall, facing the bookcase doorway. “That’s a Cambo Wide DS with a Schneider 35 XL Digitar lens, and a Phase One P25 medium-format back.” Her eyes widened. “That’s, what, thirty grand?”

  “More like thirty-five,” said Pyx. “Just about the most expensive point-and-shoot you can buy.”

  “I’d hardly call it point-and-shoot,” said Peggy.

  To Holliday it looked like a fat lens attached to a big, flat, square piece of metal. It didn’t really look like a camera at all.

  “It’s in line with the digitizing equipment governments use,” said Pyx. “Which is how they make passports now, at least in the United States and Canada. It’s supposed to be foolproof. Instead of photographs being glued and laminated, they’re digitized, then thermal printed right onto the page.”

  “Must make your job harder,” Holliday said.

  “Much easier, as a matter of fact.” He gestured toward the back of the bookcase door. It was painted a neutral off-white and a pair of low-level lights placed high on either side of the doorway effectively washed out any shadow. “Stand there, would you?” he asked. Holliday positioned himself against the doorway. “Head up, no smile, mouth closed,” he instructed. There was a snapping sound and a bright flash, and Peggy realized the lights on either side of the door were photographic strobes. “Now step away and let Ms. Blackstock take your place.” Holliday moved and Peggy stood against the door. Pyx adjusted the tripod down to compensate for the difference in their heights and the strobes flared again. “Great.” Pyx nodded. He took the flash card out of the camera, slipped it into a special drive unit beside one of the flat screens, then typed a set of instructions into the computer. “Any name preferences?”

  “No,” said Holliday.

  “Me neither,” agreed Peggy.

  “Okay, you’ll be, uh . . . Norman Peterson, and Ms. Blackstock will be Allison Masters.”

  Pyx went back to the keyboard and started typing again. “Place of birth, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Date . . . 1981 or so. Mother’s maiden name . . . Father . . . Documents provided. Guarantor.” He typed on, humming under his breath, and finished the online form a few moments later. “Next thing is the routing, so it doesn’t come back to me here,” he explained. “First I grab an appropriate Canadian consulate—Albania, say—and put in their address as a point of origin.” He read it off the screen, “Rruga, Dervish Hima, Kulla, Number Two, Apartment Twenty-two, Tirana, Albania, and finally the packet-switching code.” He finished typing with a flourish.

  “What does all this accomplish?” Holliday asked.

  “This will tell the passport office computer in Ottawa that Mr. Norman Peterson and Miss Allison Masters, both presently in Paris, France, which is the closest actual passport-issuing office in the area, are renewing their passports, and have, in fact, already done so. It is telling the computer that the new passports are actually waiting at the embassy in Paris. Meanwhile a different set of instructions has been sent to new files, along with a request for a JPEG digitization of two new passport pictures. Everything gets backdated by a few days, the passports get printed during today’s run and they’ll be ready and waiting for you when you get to the embassy. Show them the birth certificates, driver’s licenses and Social Insurance Numbers I’ll provide you with and they’ll give you two perfectly authentic Canadian passports, hot off the press, orchestrated by yours truly. If one of their electronic forensics people tries to reverse analyze the transaction it will dead end at the Albanian consulate, which is probably located in a dirty little hole-in-the-wall office above whatever passes for a convenience store in Tirana. It’s a little convoluted, but it’s a perfect hole in the system. Bust into their own database, they assume that the instructions are their own and thus legitimate and authorized. Hasn’t failed me yet.”

  “Don’t you mean Social Security Numbers?” Peggy asked.

  “Don’t make that mistake at the embassy in Paris if anybody happens to question you, which they won’t. Social Security is American; Social Insurance is Canadian.”

  “But we’re not going to Paris,” Peggy argued.

  “Oh yes, you are,” said Paddy Philpot.

  With the exception of their passports, they had all the documents they needed by two in the afternoon. As a bonus Pyx had thrown in two valid Bank of Nova Scotia Visa cards in their new names, each with a ten-thousand-dollar limit that, according to the Irishman, would somehow be skimmed from the huge Canadian bank’s vast stream of invisible wireless transfers that pinged off satellites around the world each day.

  They spent most of their day at Le Vieux Four drinking ice cold Sangano Blonde beer, nibbling on cheese and pâté and listening to Paddy Philpot spin tales about his old cloak-and-dagger days. Holliday could almost forget why they were in this beautiful place. Almost.

  In the early afternoon, documents in hand, they thanked Pyx for his hospitality and the speed and quality of his work, then climbed back into the Mercedes and headed down the mountain to the valley below. Finding the auto route, they made the sixty-mile trip to Lyon in a little over an hour and Philpot dropped them off in front of the modern Part-Dieu railway station.

  “There are fast trains all the time. The trip to Paris takes about two hours. You should be all right. You remember the name of the hotel I told you about?”

  “Hotel Normandie. Rue de la Huchette between Rue du Petit Pont and the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the Left Bank,” said Holliday, repeating Philpot’s instructions.

  “Good man.” The CIA analyst smiled.

  “We owe you for the passports,” said Holliday grudgingly. “I haven’t forgotten, you know. We’ll pay you back.”

  “Think nothing of it, Doc. Consider yourself back on the Company payroll.”

  “What about you?” Holliday asked.

  “I have some people to see back in Prague. But we’ll meet up again back in the States.” He took a small black cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Holliday. “I’ll call you.” He smiled again, rolled up the window and drove off.

  Holliday and Peggy turned, crossed the broad sidewalk and went into the low-ceilinged modern terminus. They bought a pair of first-class tickets on the next highspeed train to Paris, a brand-new TGV Duplex double-decker with big, airplane-style seats, lots of legroom and a top speed of 186 miles per hour.

  They boarded the train, found their seats and settled in for the relatively short journey. So far they had seen nothing suspicious, but without passports and only forged documents to identify themselves they both felt vulnerable. The train was packed, mostly with tourists of various nationalities on their way back to Paris, but they had seats together and no one paid them any attention.

  The train headed smoothly out of the station, right on time, and a few minutes later they were gathering speed as they raced through the suburbs of the big French city. Neither one of them had spoken since leaving Philpot at the entrance to the station.

  “You want something to eat?” Holliday asked. He had taken the aisle seat, giving Peggy the window.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Drink?”

  “No, I’m not thirsty,” said Peggy, shaking her head. “Maybe later.”

  “Yeah, maybe later,” said Holliday awkwardly. Another moment passed.

  “What do you really know about Philpot?” Peggy asked finally.

  The train began to sway and vibrate slightly as they hit the open countryside and continued to gain speed. “I know he and Pesek got us out of a lot of trouble yesterday. He’s arranged for passports today. Stuff we couldn’t have done ourselves.”

  “Like some kind of guardian ange
l—is that it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You ever wonder whose side he’s on?” She frowned. “He could be part of Sinclair’s scheme. He could be part of the rogue group within the Agency. Lies inside lies inside lies.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “I can’t give you an answer because I don’t know. I only know what he’s done for us so far.”

  “There’s something wrong with the world when you suspect that everybody’s out to get you.”

  Holliday was silent for a moment. He stared at the striped fabric and the pull-down table on the seat ahead.

  “You ever watch a TV show or read a book and come to a place where you stop and ask yourself, why don’t they just go to the cops?”

  “Sure,” Peggy said. “It’s like in a horror movie when the girl goes down into the dark basement and everybody but her knows she should turn and run.”

  “But if she did, the movie would end right there,” agreed Holliday. “That’s where we are,” he went on. “We’re at the place where the movie should just end, because if we had any brains we’d run to the cops.”

  “But we can’t,” said Peggy.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Philpot’s keeping the movie going.” She paused. “And you can GPS us off that phone with the right equipment.”

  “So?” Holliday asked.

  “Why is he doing it?” Peggy said. “He and Pesek’s people save our bacon after they kidnapped us, and now he gets us passports. He wants us back in the middle of it all. Why?” She paused. “Is he setting us up like Brennan did?”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” Holliday said abjectly. “But what are we supposed to do about it now?” He turned and looked at Peggy. “I should send you back to Rafi in Jerusalem.”

  “Don’t be so retro, Doc. And besides, Rafi’s not in Jerusalem; he’s in Ethiopia or somewhere, looking for some lost Roman Legion or King Solomon’s Mines or something. And, anyway, I wouldn’t go. You need me.” Peggy looked out the window, then back at Holliday. “So, what do we do now?”