The Last Templar Read online

  Reilly turned, leaned out, and tried to squeeze off a shot, but the man he knew as “Gus” had crept up right behind the gallery owner. He was too close to him. Reilly couldn’t get a clear shot. More urgently, he couldn’t do anything about the gallery owner who had now fallen to his knees, his cries of agony reverberating across the now deserted street.

  Just then, Gus moved away from the burning man, firing a couple of rounds in the direction of the other agents. Time seemed to slow down as Reilly saw the opportunity and grabbed it. He held his breath and popped up from behind the car door, cradling his Hi-Power in a two-handed, straight-armed stance, and, in a split second, he lined up the front post and the rear notch on the gun and pulled the trigger in a smooth, even motion, using steadily increasing force. The bullet thundered out of the Browning’s barrel. A red splatter burst out from Gus’s thigh.

  Reilly scrambled to his feet to rush to the burning man. Gus tried to cut short the heroic plans the agent was formulating when a delivery van chose that moment to come lumbering into the street.

  LUCIEN WAS ROLLING AROUND, arms flailing, desperately trying to quash the flames. Gus knew he had to make a run for it when something hit him in his left thigh, sending him staggering sideways. He felt the area of the wound, his hand coming up dripping with blood.

  Sonofabitch. The cops had gotten lucky.

  Then he saw the van and, blasting away at both sets of cops, he used it as cover and made his move. He limped around the corner and now it was his turn to get lucky. A cab had pulled over, dropping off a fare, a Japanese businessman in a pale suit. Gus shouldered the man aside, snatched open the door, reached in, and dragged the driver out onto the street. Scrambling behind the wheel, he put it in gear, and then felt something hit him on the side of the head. It was the driver, out to reclaim his car, yelling in some unintelligible language. The dumb fuck. Gus shoved the muzzle of the Beretta out the window, squeezed the trigger, and popped a bullet into the man’s furious red face. Then he was away, hurtling down the street.

  Chapter 16

  Flooring the black department Chrysler, Reilly ramped it over the sidewalk and past the delivery truck, catching a glimpse of a cluster of people leaning over the dead cabdriver.

  On the radio, Aparo was talking and listening as Buchinski was organizing backup and roadblocks. Too bad this had been rushed. They should have had the street totally sealed off, but then, like Buchinski had said, they might have scared away the big man before he even reached the gallery if the normally busy street had been unnaturally quiet. He thought about the blazing figure he had seen stagger from the shop, and the cabdriver blown backward from a head shot. Maybe it would have been better if scaring off the suspect was all that we’d done.

  He glanced in his rearview mirror, wondering if Buchinski was with them.

  No. They were on their own.

  “Watch the road!”

  His attention snatched back by Aparo’s interjection, Reilly jinked the Chrysler through a chicanelike cluster of cars and trucks, most of them already blaring angry horns at the cab that had flashed past them. Now the cab spun into an alley. Reilly followed through a swirling cloud of trash, trying but failing to get his bearings.

  “Where the hell are we?” Reilly yelled.

  “Heading toward the river.”

  A big help that was.

  As the cab burst from the alley, it pulled a screaming right and moments later Reilly did the same.

  Cars thundered past, seemingly heading in all directions. There was no sign of the cab.

  It was gone.

  Reilly darted looks left and right while trying to avoid the rushing traffic.

  “There,” Aparo yelled, pointing.

  Reilly rapiered a look, hit the hand brake, hung a tire-smoking left into another alley, and there was the cab. He floored the gas pedal as they bounced down the narrow street, swiping past garbage Dumpsters, which sent sparks flying down the side of the car.

  This time, when they came out into a street, it was crowded with parked cars and he heard the screech of metal on metal as the cab ripped fenders and hubcaps from other vehicles, the impacts fleeting, but enough to slow the cab’s progress.

  Another right turn and this time Reilly could see signs announcing the Lincoln Tunnel. More to the point, they were closing in on the cab. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Aparo had his gun on his lap.

  “Don’t risk it,” Reilly said. “You might get lucky and hit him.”

  Causing the cab to crash at that speed on this street could be a disaster.

  Then the cab turned again, scattering pedestrians who were ambling over a pedestrian crossing.

  Reilly saw something emerge from the driver’s window of the cab. Couldn’t be a gun. A man would have to be stupid to drive and shoot at the same time. Stupid or certifiable.

  Sure enough, a flash and smoke blossomed.

  “Hang on,” Reilly said.

  Swinging the wheel, he swerved the Chrysler into a lumbering fishtail, spotted a gap where a building had been torn down, and drove into it, ripping through chain-link fencing and raising a cloud of dust.

  Seconds later, the Chrysler was spinning out of the vacant lot and was once again on the trail of the taxi. So far as Reilly could see, the driver’s arm and gun were no longer sticking out of the window.

  Aparo yelled, “Watch it!”

  A woman walking a black terrier tripped, cannoning into a delivery man wheeling a stack of beer crates that tumbled into the Chrysler’s path. Reilly jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding the people, but not the crates, one of which bounced up and over the hood, smashing into the windshield, which held but was now spider-webbed all over.

  “I can’t see a thing!” Reilly shouted. Aparo, using the butt of his gun, pounded the windscreen and on the third blow it busted out and flipped up, flying over the car and spinning to a rest on the roof of a parked car.

  Screwing up his eyes against the buffeting wind, Reilly could see a no-entry sign where the street narrowed abruptly. Would the man risk it? If he met something, he’d be a goner. Spotting an opening on the right, maybe fifty yards short of the no-entry, Reilly guessed that’s where the cab would go. He urged more power out of his car, hoping he might push the other driver into overcooking the turn. The Chrysler charged closer to the cab.

  He almost succeeded. The cab screeched into the opening, its rear fishtailing wide to the left, lighting up the tires as it smashed into the brickwork on the corner of a building.

  As Reilly followed into the new street, Aparo muttered, “Oh shit,” as they both saw a kid on a skateboard gliding across the roadway ahead of the cab. The boy had earphones on and was totally oblivious to the approaching storm.

  Instinctively, Reilly slowed, but there was no corresponding flash of braking lights from the cab, which was charging straight at the kid.

  He’s gonna hit him. He’s gonna obliterate him.

  Reilly jammed the horn, willing it to cut through the boy’s private concert. The cab got closer. Then the boy nonchalantly glanced to his left, saw the cab mere feet away, and dove away in time as the cab bulldozed through, chewing up the skateboard as it streaked ahead.

  As they passed the stunned boy, Reilly realized that the street ahead was relatively quiet. No moving vehicles. No pedestrians. If he was going to try something, now was the time to do it. Before this thing turns really ugly.

  He floored it again and gained on the cab. He saw smoke coming from its rear left wheel and guessed that the sideswipe of the wall had jammed the bodywork onto the tire.

  Aparo noticed how close they now were. “What’re you doing?”

  Reilly rammed the Chrysler into the cab’s rear end, the repercussion of the jolt cannoning through his neck and shoulders.

  Boom. Once.

  Twice.

  He dropped back, floored it, and rammed him a third time.

  This time, the cab went into a helpless spin before lurching over the sidewalk, catapulting ont
o its side, and scraping through a storefront window. As he stood on the brakes and the Chrysler screeched to a halt, Reilly looked over and saw the back of the cab, still on its side, sticking out of what he now saw was a musical instrument store.

  As the Chrysler stopped, Reilly and Aparo scrambled out. Aparo already had his gun out and Reilly was reaching for his but soon realized that it wasn’t needed.

  The driver had flown through the front windshield and was lying facedown amid broken glass, surrounded by bent and twisted musical instruments. Pages of sheet music fluttered to a rest on his inert body.

  Cautiously, Reilly poked the toe of his shoe under the driver’s body and rolled him onto his back. He was clearly unconscious, but he was breathing, his face slashed to bloody ribbons. With the movement, the man’s arms spread sideways. A gun slid loosely from one hand. As Reilly nudged it away with his foot, he spotted something else.

  From under the man’s coat poked a jeweled gold cross.

  Chapter 17

  Only a few messages awaited Tess when she walked into her office at the Manoukian Archaeological Institute on Lexington and Seventy-ninth. Predictably, half of them were from her ex-husband, Doug; the other half, almost as predictably, were from Leo Guiragossian, the head of the Manoukian Institute. Guiragossian never made any secret of the fact that he tolerated Tess only because having Oliver Chaykin’s daughter at the Institute was very useful when it came to fund-raising. She disliked the balding creep, but she needed the job, and with current budget restraints sparking rumors of staff cuts, now was not the time to act the way she would like to act toward him.

  She tossed all the messages into the wastebasket, ignoring the rolled eyes of Lizzie Harding, the demure and motherly secretary she shared with three other researchers. Both Leo and Doug would want the same thing from her: the gory details of Saturday night’s events. Her boss’s reasons for wanting to know, out of morbid curiosity, were, in a way, slightly less irksome than Doug’s self-serving ones.

  Tess kept her computer and telephone positioned so that, with a slight turn of her head, she could look out into the paved garden that lay behind the brownstone. The house had been lovingly restored years before her time by the Institute’s founder, an Armenian shipping magnate. A massive weeping willow dominated the garden, its elegant foliage cascading down to shelter a bench as well as scores of pigeons and sparrows.

  Tess turned her attention back to her desk and fished out the number Clive Edmondson had given her for Jeb Simmons. She dialed it and got his answering machine. She hung up and tried the other number she had for him. His secretary at the History Department at Brown University informed her that Simmons was away on a dig in the Negev desert for three months, but could be reached if it was important. Tess said she’d call back and hung up.

  Recalling her conversation with Edmondson, Tess decided to try another tack. She checked the online Yellow Pages, clicked on the dial icon, and got through to the switchboard at Columbia University.

  “Professor William Vance,” she said to the reedy voice that answered.

  “One moment, please,” the woman said. After a momentary pause, she was told, “I’m sorry, I don’t show anyone listed by that name.”

  She expected as much. “Can you connect me with the History Department?” A couple of clicks and buzzes and she was speaking to another woman. This one seemed to know who Tess was talking about.

  “Sure, I remember Bill Vance. He left us…ooh, it must be five or six years ago.”

  Tess felt a surge of anticipation. “Do you know where I can reach him?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, I believe he retired. I’m sorry.”

  Still, Tess was hopeful. “Could you do me a favor?” she persisted. “I really need to talk to him. I’m with the Manoukian Institute, and we met years ago on a dig. Perhaps you could ask around, see if any of his colleagues at the department know where he can be reached?”

  The woman was only too happy to help. Tess gave her name and contact numbers, thanked the woman, and clicked off. She mused on it for a moment, then went back online and did a White Pages search for William Vance. She started in the New York area, but got no hits. One of the disadvantages of cell-phone proliferation, most of which weren’t listed. She tried Connecticut. No hits either. She widened the search nationwide, but this time there were just too many matches. She then entered his name into her search engine and got hundreds of hits, but a quick trawl through them didn’t reveal any that pointed to his current affiliation.

  She sat there, thinking for a moment. In the garden, the pigeons were gone and the sparrows had doubled their presence and were squabbling among themselves. She swung her chair around, letting her eyes range over her bookshelves. An idea struck her and she redialed Columbia University, this time asking to be connected to the library. After identifying herself to the man who answered, she told him she was looking for any research papers or publications they had that were written by Vance. She spelled the name for him and pointed out that she was particularly interested in anything that dealt with the Crusades, knowing Vance probably wouldn’t have written papers dealing specifically with the Templars.

  “Sure, hold on a moment,” the librarian told her and disappeared. After a few moments, he came back. “I just called up everything that we have by William Vance.” He read out the titles of the papers and articles Vance had written that seemed to fulfill Tess’s requirements.

  “Any chance you can send me copies of them?”

  “Not a problem. We’ll have to charge you, though.”

  Tess gave him her office address and made sure he billed her in her own name. Right now was not a good time to upset the budget watchers at the Institute. She hung up and felt strangely elated. It brought back memories of the field and of the excitement, particularly at the beginning of a dig, when everything was possible.

  But this wasn’t a dig.

  What are you doing? You’re an archaeologist. This isn’t detective amateur hour. Call the FBI, tell them what you’re thinking, and let them follow it up. Tess wondered if not telling them what she was working on was in any way hindering their progress. Then she dismissed the thought. They’d probably laugh her out of the building. Still. Detectives and archaeologists. They weren’t that different, were they? They both uncovered what happened in the past. Okay, so two days ago wasn’t really a time frame archaeologists usually focused on.

  It didn’t matter.

  She couldn’t help herself. She was way too intrigued by it all. She was there, after all. She was there and she’d made the connection. And most of all, she really, really missed a bit of excitement in her life. She went back online and dove back into her research into the Knights Templar. She glanced up and noticed Lizzie, the secretary, looking at her curiously. Tess smiled at her. She liked Lizzie and occasionally confided in her over personal matters. But, having already talked with Edmondson, she wasn’t about to confide in anyone else. Not about this.

  Not to anyone.

  Chapter 18

  Neither Reilly nor Aparo had been hurt, just a few seat belt bruises and a couple of minor lesions from windshield debris. They had trailed the speeding ambulance carrying Gus Waldron up the FDR Drive to the New York–Presbyterian Hospital. Once Waldron was in the operating room, a black nurse with a short temper persuaded them to let her check them over. When they finally relented, she cleaned and bandaged their cuts, more brusquely than they would have liked, and they were free to go.

  According to the doctors in the ER, their man was unlikely to be in any condition to talk to them for at least a couple of days, maybe more. His wounds were extensive. All they could do was wait for him to be fit for questioning, while hoping the agents and detectives now looking into the wounded raider’s life got a handle on where he’d been holed up since the robbery.

  Aparo told Reilly he’d call it a day and head home to his wife who had, in her midforties, managed to become pregnant with their third child. Reilly decided to stick arou
nd and wait until the raider came out of surgery before heading home. Although he was both physically and mentally exhausted by the events of the day, he was never in that much of a rush to go back to the solitude of his apartment. Living alone in a city teeming with life did that to you.

  Wandering in search of a hot cup of coffee, Reilly stepped into an elevator to find a familiar face staring back at him. There was no mistaking those green eyes. She gave him a brief, cordial nod before turning away. He could see she was preoccupied with something and looked elsewhere, his gaze settling on the doors of the elevator as they slid shut.

  Reilly was surprised to find that the confines of the small elevator cabin made her proximity unnerving. As the elevator hummed its way down, he glanced over and saw her acknowledge him again. He hazarded something that was trying to be a smile, a quasi-smile, and was surprised to see a look of recognition crossing her face.

  “You were there, weren’t you? At the museum, the night of…” she ventured.

  “Yes, sort of. I came in later.” He paused, thinking he was being too coy. “I’m with the FBI.” He hated the way that must have sounded, although there was no simpler way of putting it.

  “Oh.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause before they spoke at the same time, her “How is the—” colliding with his “So are you—.” They both stopped and smiled midsentence.

  “I’m sorry,” Reilly offered. “You were saying?”

  “I was just going to ask how the investigation was going, but then I don’t suppose it’s something you can discuss freely.”

  “Not really.” That sounded way too self-aggrandizing, Reilly thought, quickly catching it up with, “But it’s not like there’s that much to tell anyway. Why are you here?”