The Last Templar Read online

  Hurriedly getting out of the way of the horses, Tess looked down the corridor where, partway along, she could see the fourth horseman and beyond him, way back at the far end of the corridor, yet more people were scattering into other parts of the museum. She searched for her mom and her daughter again. Where the hell are they? Are they all right? She strained to pick out their faces from the blur of the crowd, but there was still no sign of them.

  Hearing a commanding shout, Tess spun around to see that the police officers had finally made it through the fleeing mob. Weapons drawn and shouting above the mayhem, they were closing in on one of the three horsemen who, from beneath his robe, pulled out a small, vicious-looking gun. Instinctively, Tess dropped to the floor and covered her head, but not before witnessing the man loose a burst of bullets, moving the gun from side to side, spraying the hall. A dozen people went down, including all of the policemen, the broken glass and smashed cases around them now splattered with blood.

  Still crouched on the floor, her heart pounding its way out of her chest, and trying to keep as still as she could even though something inside was screaming at her to run, Tess saw that two of the other horsemen were now also brandishing automatic weapons like the one their murderous consort was carrying. Bullets ricocheted off the museum walls, adding to the noise and to the panic. One of the horses reared suddenly and its rider’s hands flailed, the gun in one of them sending a fusillade of bullets up one wall and onto the ceiling, shattering ornate plaster moldings that came showering down onto the heads of the crouching, screaming guests.

  Risking a glance from behind her cabinet, Tess’s mind raced as she evaluated routes of escape. Seeing a doorway to another gallery three rows of exhibits beyond to her right, Tess willed her legs forward and scurried toward it.

  She had just reached the second row when she spotted the fourth knight headed straight toward her. She ducked, darting quick glances as she watched him weave his mount among the rows of still undamaged cabinets, apparently uninvolved and unconcerned with the mayhem his three companions were wreaking.

  She could almost feel the breath venting from his snorting horse as the knight suddenly reined to a stop, barely six feet away from her. Tess crouched low, hugging the display for dear life, urging her beating heart to quieten. Her eyes drifted up and she spotted the knight, reflected in the glass displays around her, imperious in his chain mail and his white mantle, staring down at one cabinet in particular.

  It was the one Tess had been looking at when Clive Edmondson had approached her.

  Tess watched in quiet terror as the knight drew his sword, swung it up, and brought it thundering down onto the cabinet, smashing it to bits and sending shards of glass spewing onto the floor around her. Then, sliding his sword back into its scabbard, he reached down from the saddle and lifted out the strange box, the contraption of buttons, gears, and levers, and held it up for a moment.

  Tess could barely breathe and yet, against all rational survival instincts she believed she possessed, she desperately needed to see what was happening. Unable to resist, she leaned out from behind the display case, one eye barely clearing the edge of the cabinet.

  The man stared at the device, reverently it seemed, for a moment before mouthing a few words, almost to himself.

  “Veritas vos libera—”

  Tess stared, entranced by this seemingly most private of rituals, when another burst of gunfire snapped both her and the knight out of their reverie.

  He wheeled his horse around and for an instant, his eyes, though shadowed beneath the visor of his helmet, met Tess’s. Her heart stopped as she crouched there, utterly and helplessly frozen. Then the horse was coming her way, straight at her—before brushing past and, as it did so, she heard the man yelling to the other three horsemen, “Let’s go!”

  Tess rose to see that the big horseman who had started the shooting was herding a small group into a corner by the main staircase. She recognized the archbishop of New York, as well as the mayor and his wife. The leader of the knights nodded his head and the big man forced his mount through the knot of distraught guests, grabbed the struggling woman, and lifted her up onto his horse. He jammed his gun into the side of her head and she went still, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  Helpless, angry, and afraid, Tess watched as the four horsemen moved toward the doorway. The lead knight, the only one without a gun, she noticed, was also the only one without a bulging sack tied to his pommel. And as the horsemen charged away through the galleries of the museum, Tess stood up and rushed through the debris to find her mother and her young daughter.

  THE KNIGHTS STORMED OUT through the doors of the museum and into the glare of the television floodlights. Despite the sobbing of the frightened and the moaning of the injured, it was suddenly a lot quieter and around them came shouts; men’s voices, police mostly, with random words identifiable here and there: “…hold your fire!” “…hostage!” “…don’t shoot!”

  And then the four horsemen were charging down the steps and up the avenue, the knight with the hostage protectively bringing up the rear. Their movements were brisk but not urgent, contemptuous of the approaching police sirens sawing at the night, and in moments they had disappeared back into the marled darkness of Central Park.

  Chapter 4

  At the edge of the museum’s steps, Sean Reilly stood carefully outside the yellow and black crime scene tape. He ran a hand over his short brown hair as he looked down at the outline where the headless body had lain. He let his eyes drift down lower, following the trail of blood splatters to where a basketball-sized mark noted the position of the head.

  Nick Aparo walked over and peered around his partner’s shoulder. Round-faced, balding, and ten years older than Reilly’s thirty-eight, he was average height, average build, average looking. You could forget what he looked like while you were still talking to him, a useful quality for an agent and one he had exploited very successfully during the years Reilly had known him. Like Reilly, he wore a loose-fitting, dark blue Windbreaker over his charcoal suit with big white letters, FBI, printed on the back. Right now, his mouth was twisted in distaste.

  “I don’t think the coroner’s gonna have too much trouble figuring that one out,” he observed.

  Reilly nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off the markings of where the head had lain, the pool of blood leading down from it now dark. Why was it, he wondered, that being shot or stabbed to death didn’t seem quite as bad as having your head chopped off? It occurred to him that official execution by beheading was standard procedure in some parts of the world. Parts of the world that had spawned many of the terrorists whose intentions had the country gripped by heightened alert levels; terrorists whose trails consumed all of his days and more than a few of his nights.

  He turned to Aparo. “What’s the word on the mayor’s wife?” He knew she had been dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the park, along with the horses.

  “She’s just shaken,” Aparo answered. “She’s got more bruises to her ego than to her butt.”

  “Good thing there’s an election coming. It’d be a shame to see a good bruising go to waste.” Reilly looked around, his mind still coming to terms with the shock of what had taken place right where he was standing. “Still nothing from the roadblocks?”

  Roadblocks had been set up at a ten-block radius and at all bridges and tunnels leading into and out of Manhattan.

  “Nope. These guys knew what they were doing. They weren’t waiting around for a cab.”

  Reilly nodded. Professionals. Well organized.

  Great.

  As if amateurs couldn’t do as much damage these days. All it took was a couple of flying lessons or a truckload of fertilizer, along with a suicidal, psychotic disposition—none of which were exactly in short supply.

  He surveyed the ravaged scene in silence. As he did, he felt an upwelling of utter frustration and anger. The randomness of these deadly acts of madness, and their infuriating propensity to catch everyo
ne off guard, never ceased to amaze him. Still, something about this particular crime scene seemed odd—even distracting. He realized he felt a strange detachment, standing there. It was all somehow too outlandish to take in, after the grim and potentially disastrous scenarios he and his colleagues had been trying to second-guess for the last few years. He felt as if he were stuck outside the big tent, distracted away from the main event by some freakish sideshow. And yet in a disturbing way, and much to his annoyance, he felt somewhat grateful for it.

  As special agent in charge heading up the field office’s Domestic Terrorism Unit, he had suspected the raid would end up in his corner from the moment he’d gotten the call. Not that he minded the mind-boggling job of coordinating the work of dozens of agents and police officers, as well as the analysts, lab technicians, psychologists, photographers, and countless others. It was what he always wanted to do.

  He had always felt he could make a difference.

  No, make that known. And would.

  THE FEELING HAD crystallized during his years at Notre Dame’s law school. Reilly felt that a lot of things were wrong in this world—his father’s death, when he was only ten, was painful proof of that—and he wanted to help make it a better place, at least for other people, if not for himself. The feeling became inescapable the day when, working on a paper involving a case of race crime, he attended a white supremacist rally in Terre Haute. The event had affected Reilly deeply. He felt he had been witnessing evil, and he felt a pressing need to understand it more if he was going to help fight it.

  His first plan didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped. In a youthful burst of idealism, he had decided to become a navy pilot. The idea of helping rid the world of evil from the cockpit of a silver Tomcat sounded perfect. Fortunately, he turned out to be just the kind of recruit the navy was looking for. Unfortunately, they had something else in mind. They had more than enough Top Gun wannabes; what they needed were lawyers. The recruiters did their best to get him to join the Judge Advocate General Corps, and Reilly flirted with the idea for a while, but ultimately decided against it and went back to focus on passing the Indiana bar exam.

  It was a chance meeting in a secondhand bookstore that diverted his path again, this time for good. That was where he met a retired FBI agent who was only too happy to talk to him about the Bureau and encourage him to apply, which he did as soon as he passed the bar. His mother wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of his spending seven years in college to end up as what she called “a glorified cop,” but Reilly knew it was right for him.

  He was barely a year into his rookie stint in the Chicago office, logging some street duty on robbery and drug-trafficking squads, when on the twenty-sixth of February 1993 everything changed. That was the day a bomb exploded in a parking lot underneath the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over a thousand. The conspirators had actually planned to topple one of the towers onto the other while simultaneously releasing a cloud of cyanide gas. Only financial limitations had prevented them from achieving their objective; they simply ran out of money. They didn’t have enough gas canisters for the bomb that, apart from being too meager to fulfill its nefarious purpose, was also placed alongside the wrong column, one that wasn’t of critical structural importance.

  The attack, although a failure, was nevertheless a serious wake-up call. It demonstrated that a small group of unsophisticated, low-level terrorists with very little funding or resources could cause a huge amount of damage. Intelligence agencies scrambled to reallocate their resources to meet this new threat.

  And so less than a year after joining the Bureau, Reilly found himself working out of the Bureau’s New York City field office. The office had long had the reputation of being the worst place to work because of the high cost of living, the traffic problems, and the need to live quite a ways out of the city if one wanted anything more spacious than a broom closet. But given that the city had always generated more action than anywhere else in the country, it was the dream posting of most new, and naive, special agents. Reilly was such an agent when he’d been assigned to the city.

  He wasn’t new, or naive, anymore.

  AS HE LOOKED AROUND, Reilly knew the chaos surrounding him was going to monopolize his life for the foreseeable future. He made a mental note to call Father Bragg in the morning and let him know he wouldn’t be able to make softball practice. He felt bad about that; he hated to disappoint the kids. If there was one thing he tried not to allow his work to trespass, it was those Sundays in the park. He’d probably be in the park this Sunday, only it would be for other, less congenial reasons.

  “You want to have a look inside?” Aparo asked.

  “Yeah.” Reilly shrugged, casting one last sweeping look at the surreal scene around him.

  Chapter 5

  As he and Aparo stepped carefully over the scattered debris, Reilly’s gaze took in the devastation inside the museum.

  Priceless relics lay strewn everywhere, most of them damaged beyond repair. No yellow and black tape in here. The whole building was a crime scene. The floor of the museum’s Great Hall was an ugly still life of destruction: chips of marble, slivers of glass, smears of blood, all of it grist to the crime scene investigators’ mill. Any of it was capable of providing a clue; then again, all of it could fail to offer a single damn thing.

  As he glanced briefly at the dozen or so white-suited CSIs who were working their way systematically through the debris and who, on this occasion, were joined by agents from the ERT—the FBI’s Evidence Response Team—Reilly mentally checked off what they knew. Four horsemen. Five dead bodies. Three cops, one guard, and one civilian. Another four cops and over a dozen civilians with bullet wounds, two of them critical. A couple of dozen cut by flying glass, and twice that number bruised and banged about. And enough cases of shock to keep rotating teams of counselors busy for months.

  Across the lobby, Assistant Director in Charge Tom Jansson was talking with the rail-thin captain of detectives from the Nineteenth Precinct. They were arguing over jurisdiction, but it was a moot point. The Vatican connection and the distinct possibility that what had happened here involved terrorists meant that overall command of the investigation was promptly transferred from the NYPD to the FBI. The sweetener was that, years earlier, an understanding had been reached between the two organizations. When any arrest was to take place, the NYPD would publicly take credit for the collar, regardless of who actually made it happen. The FBI would only get its share of the plaudits once the case went to court, ostensibly for helping secure the conviction. Still, egos often came in the way of sensible cooperation, which seemed to be the case tonight.

  Aparo called over a man Reilly didn’t recognize, and introduced him as Detective Steve Buchinski.

  “Steve’s happy to help us out while the dick-measuring contest’s sorted out,” Aparo said, nodding over to the ongoing debate between their superiors.

  “Just let me know what you need,” Buchinski said. “I’m as keen as you are to nail the sons of bitches who did this.”

  That was a good start, Reilly thought gratefully, smiling at the blunt-featured cop. “Eyes and ears on the street. That’s what we need right now,” he said. “You guys have the manpower and the networks.”

  “We’re already running it down. I’ll borrow a few more shields from the CPP, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Buchinski promised. The precinct adjoining the Nineteenth was Central Park; horseback patrols were a daily feature of their work. Reilly wondered briefly if there might be a link and made a mental note to check on that later.

  “We could also use some extra bodies for the follow-up interviews,” Reilly told the cop.

  “Yeah, we’re up to our eyeballs in witnesses,” Aparo added, motioning up at the Grand Staircase. Most of the offices above were being used as makeshift processing rooms.

  Reilly looked over and spotted Agent Amelia Gaines coming down the stairs from the gallery. Jansson had put the striking, ambitious redhead in c
harge of interviewing witnesses. Which made sense, since everybody loved talking to Amelia Gaines. Following her was a blonde who was carrying a small replica of herself. Her daughter, Reilly guessed. The child looked like she was fast asleep.

  Reilly looked again at the blonde’s face. Usually, Amelia’s alluring presence made other women pale into insignificance.

  Not this one.

  Even in her current state, something about her was simply mesmeric. Her eyes connected briefly with his before looking down to the clutter under her feet. Whoever she was, she was seriously shaken.

  Reilly watched as she headed for the door, picking her way through the debris with unease. Another woman, older but with a vague physical resemblance, was close behind. Together, they walked out of the museum.

  Reilly turned, refocusing. “The first sort-through’s always a huge waste of time, but we’ve still got to go through the motions and talk to everybody. Can’t afford not to.”

  “Probably more of a waste of time in this case. The whole damn thing’s on tape.” Buchinski pointed at a video camera, then another. Part of the museum’s security system. “To say nothing of all the footage from the TV crews outside.”

  Reilly knew from experience that high security was all very well for high-tech crimes, but no one had allowed for low-tech raiders on horseback. “Great.” He nodded. “I’ll get the popcorn.”

  Chapter 6

  From his seat at a large mahogany table, Cardinal Mauro Brugnone glanced around the high-ceilinged room that was located close to the heart of the Vatican, studying his fellow cardinals. Although, as the only cardinal-bishop present, Brugnone outranked the others, he deliberately avoided sitting at the head of the table. He liked to maintain an air of democracy here, even though he knew that they would all defer to him. He knew it and accepted it, not with pride, but through pragmatism. Committees without leaders never achieved anything.