The Last Templar Page 29

  Reilly glanced back at the Land Cruiser, which looked like it was too heavily damaged to be of any use to the shooter, and then the Turk was pulling on the rifle again, trying to free it from Reilly’s grasp. As they struggled, the pickup reached the edge of the dam and bounced onto it without slowing down.

  It sped along the concrete roadway that ran across the top of the dam, racing to cross to the other end. Standing now, Reilly punched the Turk repeatedly, finally succeeding in wrenching the rifle loose, only for the man to wrap his arms around Reilly’s chest and squeeze hard. Too close to effectively use his knees, Reilly lashed out with his foot, kicking the man on the inside of his right ankle. The man’s grip loosened, and Reilly managed to push him off. They were up against the cab now, and Reilly caught a fleeting glimpse of Tess, who was struggling with Vance, urging him to stop. She grabbed hold of the wheel, and the pickup swerved and hit the retaining wall. Reilly lost his grip on the rifle, which slithered along the bed and fell clattering onto the concrete roadway, and saw the Turk’s alarmed look as it disappeared in the distance. Panicking, the man lunged recklessly at him. Reacting instinctively, Reilly rolled backward underneath the Turk’s rushing body and brought up his feet to throw him over the side of the speeding pickup, which again hit the wall with a resounding crack. The man flew off the truck and went straight over the wall, hurtling down the dry side of the dam, his scream vanishing in the roar of the pickup’s motor.

  They had reached the end of the dam, and Vance spun the wheel to send the pickup sliding onto the dirt track that Reilly and Tess had followed that morning. As they bumped down the rutted trail, Reilly knew they were now shielded from the hilltop where he reckoned the sniper was positioned. Given the road conditions, Vance was forced to slow down, but there was no need to stop him just yet.

  He let him drive on for a few miles before rapping on the top of the cab. The professor nodded his acquiescence and, moments later, the pickup rolled to a halt.

  Chapter 65

  After reaching in and yanking the keys out of the ignition, Reilly walked around the truck and surveyed the damage. They had gotten off lightly. Apart from some bruising and the throbbing pain in his left leg, all three of them had nothing more than cuts and grazes, and, while the Toyota was heavily dented and pockmarked, he was impressed by how well it had held up.

  Vance’s door creaked open and the professor and Tess emerged from the truck. Reilly could see that both she and Vance looked badly shaken. He had expected it in Tess, but not in Vance. Was I wrong about him? He studied the man’s eyes and saw, mirrored in them, the same uncertainty that was gnawing at him. He’s as surprised as I am. He wasn’t expecting this. It confirmed something that felt wrong from the moment he’d first laid eyes on the professor, out on the lake. The first shot that had taken out the big Turk henchman had also triggered an alarm inside Reilly’s mind.

  Vance didn’t kill the other horsemen. Someone else is after this thing.

  The thought bothered Reilly. This was a complication he would have been happier without. Although the possibility of an “overseer” had been considered when the dead horsemen started popping up, it had been discounted long ago. Everything seemed to be pointing to Vance eliminating his accomplices; he seemed to be running his own show. The shots at the lake tore right through that theory. Someone else was involved, but who? Who else knew what Vance had been after and, more to the point, was more than willing to murder several people to get to it?

  Vance turned to Tess. “The astrolabe…?”

  Tess nodded as if emerging from a haze. “It’s safe,” she assured him. She reached into the cabin and brought the instrument out. Vance stared at it and nodded his head approvingly, then lifted his gaze up at the ridge they’d just scurried down. Reilly watched him quietly contemplate the deserted mountains around them. He thought he spotted resignation in the professor’s eyes, but they quickly turned insolent and blazed with unsettling determination.

  “What went on back there?” Tess joined Reilly.

  He glanced away from the professor. “You okay?” he asked, checking out a small graze on her forehead.

  “I’m fine,” she winced before looking up at the tree line surrounding them like a huge fence. The mountains were eerily quiet, especially after the fury that had engulfed them minutes earlier. “What the hell’s going on? Who do you think is out there?”

  Reilly studied the trees. There was no sign of life. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, I can think of a lot of people who wouldn’t want something like this to come out,” Vance countered. He turned to face them, a satisfied smirk crossing his lips. “They’re obviously getting nervous—which means we must be close.”

  “I’ll feel better once we put a few miles between us.” He gestured toward the pickup. “Come on.” He ushered Vance and Tess into the truck.

  With Tess squeezed between the two men, Reilly shoved the car into gear and the battered Toyota edged down the slope, its occupants lost in silent contemplation of what lay ahead.

  THE SECOND HE SAW the pickup charge out of the small compound and race down the dirt track, De Angelis regretted putting the Land Cruiser sideways across the dirt path to block any eventual escape. The jarring din of the truck plowing into their car didn’t augur well, and now the sight of the big SUV’s pulverized right fender and front grille confirmed his worst fears.

  He didn’t need Plunkett’s confirmation to know that the car wasn’t going anywhere. He yanked the rear hatch open and rummaged through their gear, retrieving the GPS monitor and angrily flicking it on. The cursor blinked, displaying no movement. The tracker was stationary. De Angelis scowled at the small screen as he recognized the coordinates as those of Rüstem’s compound and realized that the tracker must still be on the bag in Reilly and Tess’s stranded Pajero. He’d have to find another way of locating them, which wouldn’t be easy in this forested, mountainous terrain.

  The monsignor discarded the monitor and turned to face the lake, fuming at the turn of events. He knew he couldn’t really blame Plunkett for their dismal situation. He realized something else was at work.

  Hubris.

  He had been too confident.

  The sin of pride. Something else for the confessional.

  “Their SUV. It’s still at the compound. Maybe we can use it.” Plunkett was holding the big rifle, edging away from the Land Cruiser, raring to go.

  De Angelis didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there calmly, staring at the glassy surface of the lake.

  “First things first. Hand me the radio.”

  Chapter 66

  Reilly stared back along the track, listening intently. There was no sound other than birdsong, which in the present circumstances felt strangely disconcerting. They’d gone eight or nine miles before the encroaching darkness had forced them to make plans for the night. Reilly had chosen to veer off the dirt road and follow a side trail that brought them to a small clearing by a stream. They’d have to rough it out until daybreak before making a run for the coast.

  He was pretty sure that the big Land Cruiser had been crippled by Vance’s spirited charge. On foot, whoever had attacked them would still be hours away; in a vehicle, they could at least be heard approaching. As he watched the last glints of sunlight melt away behind the mountains, Reilly hoped the descending darkness would provide them with some measure of cover. There would be no campfires tonight.

  He’d left Vance by the side of the pickup, having tied his hands behind his back. The rope was secured to the truck. A quick search of the pickup had uncovered no hidden weapons, providing some basic comforts instead, in the form of a small gas cooker and some canned food. They found no clothes to change into. He and Tess would have to stay in their wet suits for the time being.

  Reilly joined Tess at the water’s edge, kneeling down for a much needed drink before settling onto a large rock next to her. His mind was a jumble of concerns and fears, all jostling for attention. He had accomplished what he had se
t out to do; he just had to bring Vance safely back to the United States to face justice. There was little chance his prisoner could be spirited out of the country quietly. Local crimes had been committed, people had been killed. Reilly thought ahead, irked by the prospect of inevitably messy extradition proceedings with the Turkish authorities. More pressingly, he had to get them all off the mountain and back to the coast safely. Whoever had shot at them was clearly in a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later frame of mind, while they were unarmed, had no radio, and were out of cell-phone range.

  As salient as those concerns were, they quickly took a backseat to the bigger issue that was hounding him. And from the uncertain look on her face, he could see that Tess was gripped by the same concerns.

  “I always wondered how Howard Carter must have felt when he found King Tut’s tomb,” she finally said, somberly.

  “I’m guessing he had a better time.”

  “I’m not so sure. He did have a curse to contend with, remember?” A faint smile crossed her features as she brightened up a bit, momentarily lifting his spirits. But it was still there. That pile of bricks pressing down on the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t about to go away, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He had to understand more clearly what they had gotten themselves into.

  Steeling himself, he got up and walked over to Vance. Tess followed, close by. He knelt down by the tied man, checking the rope around his wrists. Vance just stared at him quietly. He seemed oddly at peace with his situation. Reilly frowned inwardly as he debated whether or not to go into it, but decided he couldn’t avoid it.

  “I need to know something,” he ventured tersely. “When you said ‘the truth about this fairy tale’…what were you talking about? What do you think they hid on the Falcon Temple?”

  Vance lifted his head, his gray eyes piercing with clarity. “I’m not entirely sure, but whatever it is, I suspect it’s something that might not be too easy for you to accept.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Reilly shot back.

  Vance seemed to consider his words carefully. “The problem is that like most true believers, you’ve never stopped to think of the difference between faith and fact, the difference between the Jesus Christ of faith and the factual Jesus of history, between truth…and fiction.”

  Reilly was unmoved by the mocking he thought he detected in Vance’s tone. “I’m not sure I’ve ever needed to.”

  “And yet you’re happy to believe everything that’s in the Bible, right? I mean, you do believe in all that stuff, don’t you? The miracles, the fact that He walked on water, that He cured a blind man…that He came back from the dead?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  A faint smile crossed Vance’s lips. “Okay. So let me ask you this. How much do you know about the origin of what you’re reading? Do you know who actually wrote the Bible—the one you’re familiar with, the New Testament?”

  Reilly was far from certain. “You’re talking about the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?”

  “Yes. How did they come about? Let’s start with something basic. When they were written, for instance?”

  Reilly felt an invisible weight pressing down on him. “I don’t know…they were His disciples, so I guess shortly after His death?”

  Vance glanced at Tess and let out a demeaning chortle. His discomforting gaze settled on Reilly again. “I shouldn’t really be surprised, but it’s amazing, isn’t it? Over a billion people out there, worshipping these writings, accepting every word as God’s own wisdom, slaughtering each other over them, and all of it without having the vaguest notion of where these scriptures really come from.”

  Reilly felt a rising anger. Vance’s haughty tone wasn’t helping either. “It’s the Bible. It’s been around long enough…”

  Vance pursed his lips and shook his head gently, quickly dismissing it. “And I suppose that makes it all true, then, does it?” He leaned back, his eyes wandering off into the distance. “I was like you, once. I didn’t question things. I took them on as a matter of…faith. I can tell you, though…once you start digging for the truth…” His gaze settled onto Reilly again, darkening visibly. “It’s not a pretty picture.”

  Chapter 67

  “What you need to realize,” Vance explained, “is that the early days of Christianity are just one big scholarly black spot, when it comes to verifiable, documented facts. But if there isn’t much we can definitely say did happen in the Holy Land almost two thousand years ago, there’s one thing we do know: none of the four gospels that make up the New Testament was written by contemporaries of Jesus. Which,” he remarked as he noted Reilly’s reaction, “never fails to take followers of the faith, like you, by surprise.

  “The earliest of the four,” he clarified, “the Gospel of Mark—or rather, the one we refer to as the Gospel of Mark, since we don’t even really know who wrote it, as it was common practice at that time to attribute written works to famous people—is thought to have been written at least forty years after Jesus’s death. That’s forty years without CNN, without videotaped interviews, without a Google search turning up scores of eyewitness reports from those who actually knew Him. So at best, what we’re talking about here are stories that were passed on by word of mouth, over forty years, without any written record. So you tell me, Agent Reilly—if you were running an investigation, how accurate would you consider such evidence, after forty years of primitive, uneducated, superstitious people telling stories around their campfires?”

  Reilly didn’t have time to answer, as Vance quickly continued. “Far more troubling, if you ask me, is the story of how these particular four gospels actually came to be included in the New Testament. You see, over the two hundred years following the writing of the Gospel of Mark, we know that many other gospels were written, with all kinds of tales about Jesus’s life. As the early movement grew more popular and spread among the scattered communities, stories of Jesus’s life took on local flavors that were influenced by the particular circumstances of each community. Dozens of different gospels were floating around, often at odds with one another. We know this for a fact because, in December 1945, some Arab peasants were digging for fertilizer in the Jabal al-Tarif mountains of Upper Egypt, close to the town of Nag Hammadi, and they discovered an earthenware jar almost six feet high. At first, they hesitated to break it, fearful that a djinn—an evil spirit—could be trapped inside. But they did break into it, hoping to find gold instead, and that led to one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of all time: inside the jar were thirteen papyrus books, bound in tooled gazelle leather. The peasants, unfortunately, didn’t realize the value of what they found, and some of the books and the loose papyrus leaves went up in flames in the ovens of their homes. Other pages were lost as the documents found their way to the Coptic Museum in Cairo. What did survive, though, were fifty-two texts that are still the subject of great controversy among biblical scholars, as these writings—commonly referred to as the Gnostic Gospels—refer to sayings and beliefs of Jesus that are at odds with those of the New Testament.”

  “Gnostic?” Reilly asked. “Like the Cathars?”

  Vance smiled. “Precisely,” he nodded. “Among the texts found at Nag Hammadi was the Gospel of Thomas, which identifies itself as a secret gospel and opens with the line: ‘These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down.’ His twin. And there’s more. Bound in the same volume with it was the Gospel of Philip, which openly describes Jesus’s relationship with Mary Magdalene as an intimate one. Mary has her own text—the Gospel of Mary, in which Mary Magdalene is regarded as a disciple and a leader of a Christian group. There’s also the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the secret book of John. There’s the Gospel of Truth, with its distinctly Buddhist undertones…the list goes on.

  “A common thread in all these gospels,” he continued, “apart from attributing acts and words to Jesus that are pretty different from those in the gospels of
the New Testament, is that they considered common Christian beliefs, like the virgin birth and the Resurrection, to be naive delusions. Even worse, these writings were also uniformly gnostic, because, although they refer to Jesus and His disciples, the message they conveyed was that to know oneself, at the deepest level, was also to know God—that is, by looking within oneself to find the sources of joy, sorrow, love, and hate, one would find God.”

  Vance explained how the early Christian movement was illegal and needed to have some kind of theological structure if it was going to survive and grow. “The proliferation of conflicting gospels risked leading it to a potentially fatal fragmentation. It needed a leadership that was impossible to achieve if each community had its own beliefs and its own gospel. By the end of the second century, a power structure started to take shape. A three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons emerged in various communities, claiming to speak for the majority, believing themselves to be the guardians of the only true faith. Now I’m not saying these people were necessarily power-hungry monsters,” Vance declared. “They were actually very brave in what they were trying to do, and they were probably genuinely scared that without a set of widely accepted, rigid rules and rituals, the whole movement would wither away and die.”

  He told Reilly how, at a time when being a Christian meant risking persecution and even death, the very survival of the Church became contingent on the establishment of some kind of order. This grew until, around the year 180 and under the leadership of Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, a single, unified view was finally imposed. There could be only one Church with one set of beliefs and rituals. All other viewpoints were rejected as heresy. Their doctrine was straightforward: there could be no salvation outside the true Church; its members should be orthodox, which meant “straight thinking” and the Church should be catholic, which meant “universal.” This meant that the cottage industry of gospels had to be stopped. Irenaeus decided that there should be four true gospels, using the curious argument that as there were four corners to the universe and four principal winds, so there should be four gospels. He wrote five volumes, entitled The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-Called Knowledge, in which he denounced most of the existing works as blasphemous, settling on the four gospels we know today as the definitive record of God’s word—inerrant, infallible, and more than sufficient for the needs of the religion’s adherents.