The Templar Salvation (2010) ts-2

  The Templar Salvation (2010)

  ( Templar Secrets - 2 )

  Raymond Khoury

  At last, the book more than a million fans are waiting for: the sequel to The Last Templar.

  With its iconic title and unmistakable cover, Raymond Khoury's million-copy- selling The Last Templar remains one of the most memorable thriller publications of the last decade. Finally, after four long years, Khoury returns to the world of the Templars with The Templar Salvation, a sequel that's every bit as eye-popping and as gripping as its predecessor. Constantinople, 1203: As the rapacious armies of the Fourth Crusade lay siege to the city, a secretive band of Templars infiltrate the imperial library. Their target: a cache of documents that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Doge of Venice. They escape with three heavy chests, filled with explosive secrets that these men will not live long enough to learn. Vatican City, present day: FBI agent Sean Reilly infiltrates the Pope's massive Vatican Secret Archives of the Inquisition. No one but the Pope's trusted secondi get in-but Reilly has earned the Vatican's trust, a trust he has no choice but to violate. His love, Tess Chaykin, has been kidnapped; the key to her freedom lays in this underground tomb, in the form of a document known as the Fondo Templari, a secret history of the infamous Templars... With his trademark blend of incendiary history and edge-of-your-seat suspense, Raymond Khoury's The Templar Salvation marks a triumphant return to the rich territory that launched his bestselling career.

  ALSO BY RAYMOND KHOURY

  The Last Templar

  The Sanctuary

  The Sign

  Copyright (c) 2010 by Raymond Khoury

  All rights reserved

  For my father,

  the kindest soul I ever met.

  Prologue

  CONSTANTINOPLE

  JULY 1203

  Stay low, and keep quiet,” the grizzled man whispered as he helped the knight clamber onto the walkway. “The ramparts are swarming with guards, and this siege has them on edge.”

  Everard of Tyre glanced left and right, scanning the darkness for any sign of a threat. There was no one around. The towers to either side were distant, the flickering torches of the night watches manning them barely visible in the moonless night. The Keeper had chosen their entry point well. If they acted fast, there was a reasonable chance they could scale the rest of the fortifications and make their way into the city unnoticed.

  Making it back out safely—that was a different matter.

  He yanked on the rope three times to signal the five knight-brothers who waited below, in the shadows of the great outer wall. One by one, they climbed up the knotted rope, the last one of them pulling it up behind him. With their swords now unsheathed and clenched tightly in their calloused hands, they slithered across the rampart in a silent single file, following their host. The rope was unwound, this time down the side of the inner wall. Minutes later, they’d all touched solid ground and were trailing a man none of them had ever met, advancing into a city in which they’d never set foot.

  They crouched low, uncertain of where the Keeper was leading them, wary of being spotted. They wore black surcoats over dark tunics instead of their traditional white mantles, the ones bearing the distinctive red, splayed cross. There was no need for them to announce their true identity. Not when traveling through enemy territory, and even less when sneaking into a city that was under siege by Pope Innocent’s crusaders. After all, they were crusaders. To the people of Constantinople, the Templars were the pope’s men. They were the enemy. And Everard was fully aware of the grisly fate that awaited knights who were captured behind enemy lines.

  But the warrior-monk didn’t consider the Byzantines the enemy, and he wasn’t here at the pope’s behest.

  Far from it.

  Christian against Christian, he thought as they slipped past a church that was closed for the night. Is there no end to this insanity?

  Their journey had been long, and arduous. They had ridden with only the briefest of pauses for days, exhausting their horses to near-death. The message that had come from the Keepers, deep inside the Byzantine capital, was unexpected—and alarming. The city of Zara, on the Dalmatian coast, had been inexplicably sacked by the pope’s army—inexplicably, given that it was a Christian city, and not just a Christian city, but a Catholic one at that. The Venetian fleet ferrying the rapacious men of the Fourth Crusade was on the move again. Constantinople was their next target, ostensibly to restore its deposed and blinded emperor, and his son, to the throne. And given that the Byzantine capital wasn’t even Catholic, but Greek Orthodox—and given the massacre that had taken place there a couple of decades earlier—the portents for the city didn’t look promising.

  And so Everard and his brother-knights had left the Templar stronghold at Tortosa in a great rush. They had ridden north all the way up the coast, then west, crossing through unfriendly Cilician Armenian and Muslim Seljuk territory, navigating across the arid moonscapes of Cappadocia, steering clear from any settlements and towns, doing their best to avoid confrontation. By the time they reached the environs of Constantinople, the crusader fleet—more than two hundred galleys and horse transports under the command of the formidable Doge of Venice himself—was well entrenched in the waters surrounding the greatest city of its time.

  The siege was on.

  Time was running out.

  They sheltered in the shadows while a patrol of footmen trudged past, then they followed the Keeper through a small cemetery to a thicket of trees where a horse-drawn wagon awaited them. Another graying man, one whose solemn expression couldn’t mask a deep unease, waited alongside it, holding the reins. The second of three, Everard thought as he gave him a small nod, while his men climbed into the back. They were soon advancing deep into the city, affording the burly knight an occasional glance through the narrow slit in the wagon’s canvas cover.

  He had never seen such a place.

  Even in the near-darkness, he could make out the hulking silhouettes of the soaring churches and monumental palaces that were of a scale he hadn’t imagined possible. The sheer number of them was astounding. Rome, Paris, Venice … he’d had the good fortune to visit them all, years earlier, while accompanying his grand master on a trip to the Paris Temple. They all paled by comparison. The New Rome was indeed the greatest city of them all. And when the wagon finally reached its destination, the sight that greeted him was no less awe-inspiring: a magnificent structure fronted by a soaring Corinthian colonnade, its pediment disappearing high overhead in the near-darkness.

  The third Keeper, the eldest among them, was waiting for them at the top of the edifice’s grand stairs.

  “What is this place?” Everard asked him.

  “The imperial library,” the man nodded.

  Everard’s expression flagged his surprise. The imperial library?

  The Keeper caught it and his face lightened up with the merest hint of a grin. “Where best to hide something than in plain sight?” He turned and headed in. “Follow me. We don’t have much time.”

  The older men escorted the knights up the flight of steps, through the entrance vestibule, and deep into the cavernous building. The halls were deserted. The hour was late, but it was more than that. The tension in the city was palpable. The humid night air was heavy with fear, a fear that was stoked by the uncertainty and confusion that only got worse with every new day.

  They pressed on by torchlight, passing the vast scriptoriums that held most of the knowledge of the ancient world, shelves upon shelves of scrolls and codices that included texts salvaged from the long-lost library of Alexandria. They went down a spiral stairway at the very back of the building and through a labyrinth of narrow pa
ssages and more stairs, their shadows creeping along the speckled limestone walls, until they reached an unlit corridor that was lined with a series of heavy doors. One of the hosts unlocked the door at the farthest end of the passage and led them inside. It was a large storeroom, one of many, Everard imagined. It was cluttered with crates, its walls lined with cobwebbed shelves that housed scrolls and leather-bound codices. The air was musty and stale, but cool. Whoever built this place had known that humidity had to be kept at bay if the parchment and vellum manuscripts were going to survive. And they had—for centuries.

  Which was why Everard and his men were there.

  “The news isn’t good,” the eldest of the Keepers told them. “The usurper Alexius lacks the courage to take on the enemy. He rode out with forty divisions yesterday, but didn’t dare engage the Franks and the Venetians. He couldn’t get back inside the gates fast enough.” The old man paused, his eyes despondent. “I fear the worst. The city is as good as lost, and once it falls …”

  Everard could already imagine the vengeance that would be taken out on the city’s nervous inhabitants if the Latins ever breached their defenses.

  It had only been twenty years or so since that the Latins of Constantinople had been massacred. Men, women, children … no one had been spared. Thousands upon thousands of them, wiped out in a murderous frenzy the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the taking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. Venetian, Genoese, and Pisan merchants and their families who had long settled in Constantinople and who controlled its seafaring trade and its finances—the entire Roman Catholic population of the city—had been slaughtered in a sudden upwelling of anger and resentment by the envious local population. Their quarters had been reduced to ash, their graves upturned, any survivors sold off as slaves to the Turks. The city’s Catholic clergy didn’t fare better at the hands of their Greek Orthodox enemies: Their churches were burned, and the pope’s representative was publicly beheaded before his head was tied to a dog’s tail and dragged through the city’s blood-soaked streets in front of a jubilant crowd.

  The old man turned and led the knights deeper into the storeroom, to a second door, which was partially hidden by some heavily laden shelves. “The Franks and the Latins talk about taking back Jerusalem, but you and I both know that they’ll never get that far,” he said as he fidgeted with the door’s locks. “And in any case, they’re not really out to reclaim the Holy Sepulchre. Not anymore. They only thing they care about now is lining their pockets. And the pope would like nothing more than to see this empire fall and have its church brought under the authority of Rome.” He turned, his expression darkening. “It’s been long said that only the angels in Heaven know the date of the ending of our great city. I fear they’re not the only ones to know it now. The pope’s men will take Constantinople,” he told the knights. “And when they do, I have little doubt that there’ll be a small contingent of them whose sole task will be to lay their hands on these.”

  He swung the door open and led them in. The room was bare, save for three large wooden chests.

  Everard’s heartbeat spiked. As one of the chosen few within the highest echelons of the Order, he knew what lay within the simple, unadorned trunks. He also knew what he now had to do.

  “You’ll need the wagon and the horses, and Theophilus will help you again,” the old man continued, glancing to acknowledge the youngest of the three Keepers, the one who had helped Everard and his men sneak into the city. “But we’ll need to be quick. Things could change at any moment. There’s even talk of the emperor fleeing the city. You need to be on your way by first light.”

  ” ‘ You’ … ?” Everard was surprised by the man’s words. “What about you? You’re all coming with us, aren’t you?”

  The elder exchanged a mournful look with his cohorts, then shook his head. “No. We need to cover your trail. Let the pope’s men think that what they were after is still here long enough to make sure you’re clear of any danger.”

  Everard wanted to object, but he could see that the Keepers wouldn’t be swayed. They’d always known that a time like this might happen. They’d been prepared for it, as had every generation of Keepers before them.

  The knights lugged the chests onto the wagon, one at a time, four of them hefting each heavy load while two others stood guard. By the time they had set off, the first hints of dawn were seeping into the night sky.

  The gate that the Keepers had chosen, the Gate of the Spring, was one of the more remote entries into the city. It was flanked by two towers but also had a smaller postern to one side of the main gates, which was where they were headed.

  As the heavily laden wagon driven by two cloaked figures clattered toward it, three footmen converged to block its path, eyeing it curiously.

  One of them raised his hand in a blocking gesture and asked, “Who goes there?”

  Theophilus, who was at the reins, let out a pained cough before mumbling a low reply, saying they urgently needed to get to the Zoodochos monastery that was just beyond the gates. Seated next to him, Everard watched in silence as the Keeper’s words did the trick and seemed to intrigue the guard, who moved closer and spat out another question.

  From under the cowl of his dark tunic, the Templar watched the man approaching them and waited until he was close enough before launching himself onto him and plunging his dagger deep into the guard’s neck. In the same instant, three knights rushed out of the back of the wagon and silenced the other guards before they could sound the alert.

  “Go,” Everard hissed as his brothers rushed to the gatehouse, while he and two of the knights crouched down and scanned the towers overhead. He motioned for Theophilus to sneak away into cover, as they had agreed. The old man’s work was done, and this was no place for him; Everard knew all hell could break loose at any second—which it did when two more guards emerged from the gatehouse just as the knights had pulled off the first of the crossbars.

  The Templars recovered their swords and cut the guards down with stunning efficiency, but not before one of them had yelped out loudly enough to alert his companions in the towers. Within seconds, lanterns and torches were moving frenetically on the ramparts as alerts were sounded. Everard darted a look at the gate and saw that his brothers were still working on loosening the last of the crossbars—just as arrows bit into the parched ground next to him and by the hooves of the wagon’s horses, narrowly missing one of them. There was no time to lose. If one of the horses were to be felled, their escape would be scuttled.

  “We have to move,” he roared as he loosed a bolt from his crossbow, hitting a backlit archer high above and sending him tumbling down from the rampart. Everard and the two knights alongside him reloaded and fired again, spewing bolts upward, keeping the sentries at bay, until one of the knights yelled and the gates creaked open.

  “Let’s go,” Everard shouted as he waved his men on—and as they scrambled to get back on the wagon, a bolt slammed into the knight by his side, thudding downward into his right shoulder and lodging itself deep into his chest cavity. The man—Odo of Ridefort, an ox of a man—crumbled to the ground, blood spurting out of him.

  Everard darted over to him and helped him back onto his feet, calling out to the others. Within seconds, they were all over their wounded brother-knight, three of them firing upward defensively while the others helped him into the back of the wagon. With the archers covering him, Everard sprinted to the front, and as he climbed onto the bench seat, he turned to shoot a parting nod of gratitude to Theophilus—but the Keeper wasn’t where he’d last seen him. Then he spotted him—a short distance away, down on the ground, motionless, an arrow through his neck. He glanced at him for no more than a solitary heartbeat, but it was still long enough for the sight to brand itself permanently into his consciousness—then he leapt onto the wagon and whipped the horses to life.

  The other knights clambered on board as the wagon charged through the gates and out of the city under a deluge of arrows. As Everard guided it up
a hillock before turning north, he cast his eye over the glistening sea below and the war galleys that were gliding past the city’s walls, banners and pennants flying from their sterncastles, shields uncovered, bulwarks garnished, ladders and mangonels raised threateningly.

  Insanity, he thought again with a pained heart as he left behind the sublime city and the great catastrophe that would soon be upon it.

  THE ROAD BACK WAS SLOWER. They’d recovered their horses, but the cumbersome wagon and its heavy payload were holding them back. Avoiding towns and any human contact was more difficult than when they were just on horses and could roam away from the well-trodden trails. Worse still was that Odo was losing a lot of blood, and there was little they could to stop the bleeding while charging ahead. Worst of all was the fact that they weren’t traveling incognito anymore: Their exit from the besieged city hadn’t been as discreet as their entry. Armed men—ones from outside the city walls this time—would be coming after them.

  And sure enough, before the first day’s sun had set, they did.

  Everard had sent two knights ahead of the wagon and two others behind, early-warning scouts for any threats. That first evening, his prescience paid off. The convoy’s rear guard spotted a company of Frankish knights, thundering in from the west, hot on their tail. Everard sent a rider ahead to bring back the forward scouts before cutting away from the more obvious, and well-trodden, southeasterly route the crusaders would expect them to take and heading farther east, into the mountains.

  It was summer, and although the snows had melted, the bleak landscape was still tough to navigate. Lush, rolling hills soon gave way to steep, craggy mountains. The few trails that the wagon could take were narrow and perilous, some of them barely wider than the track of its wooden wheels and skirting the edges of dizzying ravines. And with every new day, Odo’s condition worsened. The onset of heavy rain turned an already terrible situation into an accursed one, but with no other options, Everard kept his men to the high ground whenever he could and trudged on, slowly, eating whatever they could forage or kill, filling up their gourds in the downpours, forced to stop when the light faded, spending the miserable nights without shelter, always tense in the knowledge that their pursuers were still out there, looking for them.