The Last Templar Read online

  Tess watched Jansson sink back into his seat and run a hand up the back of his head. His face clouded. The man clearly didn’t take kindly to being thwarted on anything having to do with hard, researchable data.

  “So maybe Vance hasn’t figured it out yet either,” Aparo offered.

  Tess hesitated before stepping in. “I wouldn’t count on it. It’s his area of expertise. References to somewhere like that may not come up in widely published works that you might have in your database. They’re more likely to be found in some obscure manuscript of the time, the kind of rare book that someone like Vance would know where to find.”

  Jansson studied her, seemingly mulling it over for a moment. Seated next to him was De Angelis. His gaze was locked on her. She couldn’t read him, though. Surely, of all the people in the room, he had to appreciate the value of what they’d just had the privilege of participating in. But he hadn’t shown any signs of wonder and hadn’t said a word throughout the meeting.

  “All right, we need to figure this one out if we want to catch this guy,” Jansson grumbled. He turned to De Angelis. “Father, your people can probably be a big help here.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll make sure our best scholars work on it. We have a huge library. It’s just a matter of time, I’m sure.”

  “Time we may not have.” Jansson turned to Reilly. “The guy’s definitely going to be on the move, if he hasn’t left the country already.”

  “I’ll make sure the CBP gives this top priority.” The Bureau of Customs and Borders Protection was in charge of keeping track of whom and what entered and exited the country. “Wherever it is, it’s got to be in the eastern Mediterranean somewhere, right?” He turned to Tess. “Can we narrow down the possibilities of where he’s headed?”

  Tess cleared her throat, thinking about it. “It could be anywhere. They were blown off course so radically…Do you have a map of the area?”

  “Sure.” Kendricks leaned over, pulled the keyboard over to him, and tapped in a few keys. A world map soon appeared on the huge plasma screen facing them. He punched in a few more keys and the screen shifted, zooming in on the map several times until it displayed the eastern Mediterranean.

  Tess stood up and walked over to the map. “According to his letter, they left Acre, which is right here in what is now Israel, just north of Haifa—and sailed for Cyprus. They would have sailed north before crossing west, but the storm hit them before they could get anywhere near it…” She considered the map some more and couldn’t help but let her mind drift a little, conjuring up images of their perilous journey that seemed so real that, for a moment, she felt she had actually been there with them. She mustered her thoughts, concentrating on the task at hand. “It all depends on which way the storm took them. Did it push them east of the island—in which case they could have washed up anywhere along the Syrian coast, or the southeastern Turkish coast along here…” She traced the route with her finger. “Or did they pass to the west of Cyprus, in which case we’re talking about this area here, the southwestern coast of Turkey, from the Gulf of Antalya to Rhodes.”

  “That’s a pretty big target area,” Jansson noted vexedly.

  “The landscapes along that whole coastline are pretty much the same,” Tess said. “There’s nothing in the letter that would suggest one or the other. But I can’t imagine they were that far off the coast if they managed to spot it in the middle of a huge storm.”

  Reilly nodded, studying the map. “We can start by alerting our people in Turkey and in Syria.”

  Jansson’s brow furrowed in apparent confusion. “So what’s this Vance thinking? That whatever they buried is still out there waiting for him? The letter eventually seems to have made it to France. How does he know the Templars didn’t send people back to recover it?”

  Tess thought back to Vance’s story. They say the man never smiled again. “The timing is key. Vance said the old man who showed the manuscript to the priest, remember, the one who turned white at the news—he said the old man was one of the last surviving Templars. De Molay and the others were burned at the stake in 1314. His dying Templar had to come after that. And that’s more than twenty years after the ship sank. I guess Vance is hoping that if they hadn’t been able to recover it by then, there was no one else left to do it after that.”

  The room fell silent. This was a lot to take in, especially for the others in the room who weren’t as well-schooled as she was in making sense of the distant past. Kendricks, who was probably the closest to her in appreciating the historical value of what they were considering here, spoke up. “We’ll run some simulations of the ship’s route. Factor in seasonal winds, currents, that kind of thing. See if any details in the text match up to the geography of the land and try and get you a handle on its whereabouts.”

  “Might be a good idea to cross-check with any wrecks found in the area. Who knows, one of them could be this Falcon Temple.” Jansson’s impatient body language indicated the meeting was over. He turned to De Angelis. “You’ll keep us posted?”

  “As soon as I hear anything.” The monsignor was as calm and unmoved as ever.

  REILLY WALKED TESS TO the foyer by the elevators. No one else was waiting there. She was about to hit the down button when she turned to face him with a curious look on her face.

  “I was kind of surprised you asked me to come in for this. After that whole ‘you’ve got to let go of this thing’ speech the other day.”

  Reilly grimaced, massaging his brow. It had been a long afternoon. “Yeah, and I’ll probably be kicking myself for bringing you in on it.” His face turned more serious. “To be perfectly frank, I was in two minds about it.”

  “Well, I’m glad the less boring one won the toss.”

  There and then, he decided he really liked that mischievous grin. Everything about her was drawing him in. He thought back to the exhilaration that beamed across her face when she saw the replica of the encoder in the conference room. It was intoxicating; this woman could still find intense, genuine, unabashed pleasure in life, something that seemed to elude most people and had certainly eluded him for as long as he could remember.

  “Look, Tess, I know how big this must be for you, but—”

  She pounced on the brief pause. “What about you? What does it mean for you?”

  He flinched; he wasn’t used to being probed about his motives. Not when he was working a case. It was a given. At least, it usually was. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is locking Vance up all you want out of this?”

  He thought the answer was simple. “For the time being, I can’t afford to think beyond that.”

  She was on fire. “I don’t believe that for a second. Come on, Sean,” she pressed. “You can’t tell me you’re not intrigued by this. They wrote a coded message, for God’s sake. About something their whole future depended on. They were burned at the stake for it, wiped out, eradicated. Aren’t you in any way curious to know what’s buried in that grave?”

  Reilly was finding it hard to resist the enthusiasm radiating from her. “Let’s get him first. Too many people have died for this already.”

  “More than you think. If you include all the Templars that died back then.”

  Somehow, her comment brought it all home for him in a way he hadn’t considered before. For the first time, the magnitude of what they were dealing with was dawning on him. But he knew the bigger picture would have to wait. His priority had to be to close the METRAID case file. “See, that’s why I didn’t want you involved in this anymore. It’s just got too strong a hold over you, and that worries me.”

  “And yet you called.”

  There it was. That playful grin again. “Yeah, well…it does look like we could use your help right now. With a bit of luck, maybe we’ll pick him up at some border crossing, but, in the meantime, it would be nice to have some of our people waiting for him at Fonsalis, wherever it is.”

  Tess hit the down button. “I’ll put my thinking cap on.”
r />   He looked at her, standing there, the corner of her mouth curled up just a touch, her green eyes glinting mischievously. He shook his head imperceptibly and couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle. “I didn’t know you ever took it off.”

  “Oh, it’s been known to happen.” She glanced at him, coyly. “On rare occasions.”

  Two discreet tones chimed as the elevator doors slid open. The cabin was empty. He watched her step in. “You’ll be careful?”

  She turned, holding the doors open. “No, I intend to be totally, wantonly, inexcusably reckless.”

  He didn’t have time to answer her as the elevator doors slid shut and she disappeared from view. He stood there for a moment, the image of her beaming face still etched in his mind, before the familiar ping of an arriving elevator snapped him back to his grinding reality.

  THE CURL AT THE edge of her mouth was still there as Tess walked out of the building. She knew something was definitely going on between her and Reilly, and she liked what she felt. She hadn’t danced the dance for quite a while, and the early stages of it, as in her work, had always been the most enjoyable—at least, in her experience. Trust me to find a parallel between archaeology and men. She frowned at the realization that, as in archaeology, the surge of anticipation early on in a relationship, the mystery, the optimism, and the hope, never quite fulfilled their promise.

  Maybe this time would be different. On both fronts.

  Yeah, right.

  As she walked in the crisp, spring air, the one notion she couldn’t beat into submission was De Angelis’s suggestion that the hidden secret had to do with alchemy. It kept hounding her, and the more she considered it, the less credible it seemed. And yet, the Vatican envoy had seemed so confident about it being that. A formula to turn lead into gold. Who wouldn’t go to great lengths to hide it from rapacious eyes? And yet, something about it simply didn’t compute.

  Most intriguing of all was that Aimard had thought that the storm had been a display of God’s will. That He was willing the sea to swallow whatever it was they were carrying and bury it forever. Why would he think that? And then there was the issue of its size. A reliquary. One small chest. What could it possibly hold that men would die, and kill, for?

  Fonsalis.

  She had to figure it out if she was going to stay in the game.

  She decided that a few sleepless nights were in the cards. And she would make sure that her passport was in order.

  She knew she would also have to face a tough phone call with her mother, in which she’d tell her that it would be more than just a couple of days before she would be joining them in Arizona.

  DE ANGELIS HAD RETURNED briefly to his room at the hostel. Preoccupied with the potential problems at hand, he sat on the edge of the hard bed and called Rome. He spoke directly to a colleague far removed from Cardinal Brugnone’s circle. This was decidedly not the moment to be faced with probing questions.

  Aware that the edge he had, when tracking down the four horsemen, was now long gone, and similarly conscious that being close to the foundering investigation no longer served any useful purpose, he knew that he would soon have to go his own way. He gave orders that would ensure that everything was in place so that, when he did choose to move, he could do so swiftly.

  That done, he pulled out a sheaf of photographs from his briefcase, fanned them out on the bed, and examined them one by one. Tess coming in and out of Federal Plaza. Leaving and returning to her home in Mamaroneck. Her office at the Manoukian Institute. Long shots, mediums, close-ups. Even in two grainy dimensions, she exuded the confidence and determination she showed in real life. She had also proved herself to be imaginative and eager. Unlike the FBI, she had quickly thrown off the constraints of thinking that all of this was mere theft.

  Her background knowledge, her acquaintanceship with Vance before his attack on her, all helped to make her a useful ally and a dangerous opponent.

  He touched one of the photos, tapping his finger in the center of her forehead. Clever girl. Clever, clever girl. If anyone was going to figure this one out, his money was on her. But he also knew she wouldn’t be one to share her discovery.

  It would have to be prized out of her.

  Chapter 49

  Tess had lost track of time, but, from the accumulation of coffee cups on her desk and the amount of caffeine rushing through her veins, she knew it must have been many hours since she had logged on to her computer at the Manoukian Institute.

  The office was empty. Outside, the pigeons and sparrows were long gone, and the garden was bathed in darkness. Another long, frustrating night beckoned.

  The last couple of days were a blur. She had stayed at Columbia University’s Butler Library until she’d been virtually kicked out of there when they had closed at eleven. She’d made it home sometime shortly after midnight with a stack of books in tow and had worked her way through them, finally succumbing to sleep as the sun was making its appearance outside her bedroom window, only to be cruelly jolted back to consciousness ninety minutes later by her alarm clock/radio.

  Now, bleary-eyed and at her desk, she was still trawling through a small mountain of books, some she’d brought in with her, others from the Institute’s vast collection. Occasionally, something would jump out at her and she would excitedly fire off Internet searches, blessing Google for the hours it was saving her and cursing the search engine whenever it failed to deliver the goods.

  So far, the cursing was winning, hands down.

  She turned away from her desk, glancing out her window, rubbing her tired eyes. The shadows in the garden blended confusingly into each other. She found she couldn’t focus properly; her eyes were rebelling. She didn’t mind. She could use the break. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d read as much in such a short period. And one word was seared into her retinas, even though she had yet to find any reference to it.

  Fonsalis.

  Staring out into the night, her eyes were drawn to the big willow tree looming over the garden. It sat there, its wispy boughs swaying in the slight evening breeze, silhouetted against hints of streetlights that bounced off the towering brick party wall behind it.

  She looked at the empty bench underneath the tree. It looked so out of place, here in the heart of the city, so quiet and idyllic. She wanted to step outside, curl up onto it, and sleep for days.

  And that’s when an image flashed across her mind.

  A confusing one.

  She thought of the brass plaque mounted on a small post by the base of the willow tree. A plaque she had read a hundred times.

  The tree had been imported with great fanfare over fifty years ago by the Institute’s Armenian benefactor. He’d had it shipped over from his ancestral village in memory of his father who, along with two hundred other Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, had been murdered in the first days of the genocide of 1915. The Turkish Interior Minister had, at the time, bragged that he would give the Armenian people “such a staggering blow that they will not be able to get on their feet for fifty years.” His words had proved to be tragically prophetic; the nation of Armenia suffered one tragedy after another, a dark era from which it is only just starting to emerge.

  The tree had been, appropriately, chosen for its tearful symbolism. Weeping willows were commonly found in burial grounds stretching from Europe to China. The association dated back to the Old Testament, in which the tree’s boughs were said to have drooped from the weight of harps hung there by the exiled people of Israel. Arabian storytellers, much later, described how two angels had appeared before David, after he had married Bathsheba, and convinced him of his sin. Racked with grief, David was said to have thrown himself to the ground and lain there, weeping bitter tears of penitence for forty days and forty nights, during which time he was deemed to have wept “as many tears as the whole human race would shed on account of their sins, from then on until the Day of Judgment.” The two streams of tears were said to have flowed out into the garden, wher
e, with time, two trees then sprang up: the frankincense tree, constantly distilling tears of sorrow, and the weeping willow, its boughs drooping with grief.

  Tess’s mind raced to the writing on the brass plaque. She could visualize the inscription on it. She remembered that it described the tree as belonging to the broader genus known as Vitisalix.

  She also remembered that the plaque further mentioned the more specific taxonomic classification for the weeping willow.

  Salix Babylonica.

  It was staring her in the face.

  Chapter 50

  The next morning, Reilly and Aparo were both working the phones from their desks at Federal Plaza. Reilly was getting updated by Kendricks. The news wasn’t good. The brain boxes at the NSA were still stumped by the Fonsalis reference. Kendricks warned him that the progress from here on would be much slower. Phone calls to friendly experts around the world had failed to enlighten them, and electronic searches of relevant databases had long been exhausted. The analysts were now working their way through tomes of literature in the traditional way, physically reading through them, searching for any reference to the grave’s location.

  Reilly wasn’t holding his breath.

  From across his desk, Aparo shot him a grim nod before he ended his own conversation. Reilly could tell that whatever bad news his partner had, it seemed to at least have some urgency to it. Aparo soon confirmed it. The call was from Buchinski. A man’s body had been found earlier that morning in an alley behind an apartment building in the Astoria section of Queens. The relevance of the find was that the dead man had traces of Lidocaine in him. He also had telltale puncture marks in his neck. The victim’s name was Mitch Adeson.

  Reilly felt a deepening unease that the case was slipping away from them. “How’d he die?”