The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (32 page)

‘
Would you mind grabbing the journal out of my rucksack?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to need more blank paper.’

Happy to
oblige, Edie walked over to the king-sized bed. Dramatically canopied with a length of luxurious fabric in deep crimson shot through with gold threads, the bed was a magnificent lodestone. Juxtaposed with the stone walls and beamed ceiling, it was fairy-tale perfect. Under any other circumstance she’d find the medieval ambiance wildly romantic. A scene right out of
Camelot.
But not this night.

As she removed the journal from
Caedmon’s rucksack, a photograph slipped free, having been stuffed between the pages. To Edie’s surprise, it was a picture of Anala and Gita standing side-by-side in front of a college at Oxford. On the verge of asking about the photo, she glanced at Caedmon. For days now, he’d been pushing himself to the physical limits. All to save the life of the daughter he’d never met.

Without saying a word, she tucked the photo into the journal. Obviously he cared more than he let on.

Although he’d not broached the subject, she wondered if Caedmon regretted not having been involved in Anala’s life. Coming into the story mid-book, he’d missed all of the watershed moments that define fatherhood. While she could only imagine the turmoil that he suffered, Edie had no difficulty empathizing with Anala Patel. Orphaned at a young age, she, too, had endured the emotional havoc of growing up without a father, having to make the tumultuous passage from adolescence to adulthood on her own.

‘H
ow about a cup of coffee?’ Edie glanced at the tray that room service had earlier delivered.

As
Caedmon took the journal from her, his lips curved ever so slightly. ‘One sugar, please.’

A few moments later, two cups of fresh-brewed coffee in hand, Edie sat down at the writing desk
. The oversized baroque chair nearly swallowed her whole. She noticed that Caedmon had removed his wristwatch and set it on the desktop, in plain sight, the secondhand inexorably pulsing around the dial. A visual reminder that the deadline loomed.

Caedmon
drummed his fingers on the desktop as he stared at the encrypted message. ‘It’s a little-known fact that the Templars invented international banking as a means to protect defenseless Christians on pilgrimage.’

Wrapping her hands around her coffee cup, Edie
wondered if she’d fallen asleep and missed something. ‘Sorry, I’m not following. What does that have to do with Fortes de Pinós’s code?’

‘More than meets the eye,’ he informed her. ‘
Before pilgrims set out on their months-long journey to the Holy Land, Rome or Santiago de Compostela, they would deposit the balance of gold and silver that they’d need for the upcoming trip at a Templar preceptory. The pilgrim would then be issued a paper check that indicated the amount of the deposit.’

‘
Okay, I see where this is headed. When the pilgrim then needed cash to pay for food and lodging, he’d stop at the nearest Templar preceptory, traveler’s check in hand, and make a withdrawal.’ Detecting a glaring flaw in the system, Edie said, ‘What was to stop someone from pulling a fast one and forging a check?’

‘
The Templars had devised an ingenious system of codes that was foolproof. If history is to be believed, there were no check frauds committed on the Templars’ watch.’ Gaze narrowed, Caedmon stared at the series of slashes and dots. ‘I’ve studied many of those codes. However, this doesn’t fit any of the known patterns.’

‘
But you told G-Dog that you could crack the code.’

‘
And I
will
crack it,’ Caedmon said as he carefully drew a blank grid on to a clean sheet of paper. With his jaw clenched tight, Edie could see that he was determined to do the impossible and ‘pull a fast one’ on the Knights Templar.

‘
Obviously, there’s something here that we’re not seeing.’ As she spoke, Edie raised a hand, beating him to the punch line. ‘And, please, no droll asides about my
extraordinary
powers of deductive reasoning. I’m just flipping to a fresh page.’

‘
You’re very good at thinking outside the box,’ Caedmon said quietly, having the good grace to look chagrined. ‘And I appreciate any help that you can –’ He stopped in mid-sentence and picked up his vibrating mobile phone. ‘Excellent. I’ve just received an email from Trent Saunders, my old group leader at MI5.’

Edie mentally crossed her fingers, hope renewed. ‘Please tell me that the spooks at Five have sent glad tidings.’

He glanced up from the mobile. ‘They’ve traced G-Dog’s phone number to a listing in Dutchess County, New York. The number belongs to an organization called Sanguis Christi Fellowship.’ Glancing back at the email, his brow furrowed. ‘I’ve seen that name recently, but damned if I can remember where.’

‘I’m guessing that “Sanguis Christi” is a Latin phrase.’

‘It means “Blood of Christ”.’ Recognition dawning, he slapped his palm against the desktop. ‘Sanguis Christi was engraved on to the cover of Javier Aveles’s bible. I came across it in his hotel room when I paid an unexpected visit.’

‘Javier Aveles is the third bandito, right?’

Caedmon nodded. ‘Now that we have a lead, let’s see where it takes us.’

Reaching for her iPad, Edie typed ‘Sanguis Christi Fellowship Dutchess County New York’ into the search
engine. ‘We’re in luck. There are quite a few entries on the Internet,’ she said, pulling up a
New York Times
article from 2006. She held the computer pad so that they could both read the article at the same time.

New York City

June 15, 2006

Father Gracián Santos, the founder and current director of the Sanguis Christi Fellowship, is the latest recipient of a $100,000 Opus award given in recognition for his faith-based gang intervention program.

The Sanguis Christi Fellowship, which assists former gang members in the New York City area, is instrumental in reshaping lives and giving hope to inner-city youths through an outreach program that includes education and vocational training.

Attending last evening’s award ceremony, Fr. Santos profusely thanked his mentor, Archbishop Franco Fiorio, who played an instrumental role in establishing the Catholic fellowship in the mid-1990s.

Santos has pledged to use the monetary windfall to renovate an abandoned nineteenth-century college situated on 300 acres in Dutchess County, New York. ‘With the new facility, we will be able to provide at-risk youths with multi-level solutions that go beyond vocational training to include a charter high school, as well as gainful employment in several industries which we hope to develop with local business leaders.’

Past Opus recipients have included –

Edie stopped reading once the article veered off-topic. ‘The photograph of the awards ceremony seals the deal: G-Dog and Father Gracián Santos are definitely one and the same.’

‘The good padre forgot to mention that his “multi-level solutions” include murder, abduction and extortion,’ Caedmon snapped, his cut-crystal accent more clipped than usual. ‘Making Sanguis Christi
a crime syndicate rather than a Catholic fellowship.’

‘
I’m not so sure that Father Santos is the godfather that you’re making him out to be,’ Edie countered, struck by the glaring disconnect between the admirable do-gooder in the article and Caedmon’s criminal mastermind. ‘Don’t get me wrong – Santos is up to his eyeballs in this mess. But you gotta admit that the guy’s a Nervous Nellie. It almost makes me think that the timorous Father Santos is acting against his will. Perhaps he’s being pressured by someone.’

Her
defense of the priest didn’t go over well, the conversation instantly nose-diving into a brooding silence.

Scowling,
Caedmon reread the article. A few moments later, he sighed resignedly. ‘It pains me to say that you may have a point. And, of course, we still haven’t accounted for the individual who sent the original ransom email to Gita, the self-styled Irenaeus.’

‘
The newspaper article mentioned that Santos has a mentor who aided him with the fellowship, an archbishop.’ Inspired, Edie typed ‘Archbishop Franco Fiorio’ into the computer search engine.

‘Did you find anything?’

‘
Oh . . . my . . . God
,’ she murmured, stunned. ‘The archbishop is now
Cardinal
Franco Fiorio, the prefect and head librarian at the Vatican Secret Archives. What do you wanna bet that he’s –’

‘Irenaeus,’
Caedmon interjected, beating her to the punch. Grabbing the iPad out of her hands, he examined Cardinal Fiorio’s official Vatican photograph. ‘“Let us detest all priestcraft,”’ he grated between clenched teeth, his scowl deepening.

Caedmon
stared at the photograph of the red-caped bastard. At that moment the rallying cry of the English Enlightenment seemed as bang-on relevant as it had 400 years ago.

Although he had no proof, his gut instinct was that Cardinal
Franco Fiorio was the mastermind behind Anala’s abduction, Father Gracián Santos his reluctant minion.

‘
They’re not all bad apples,’ Edie remarked, quick to come to the Church’s defense. ‘There are plenty of good priests on the tree.’

‘
While that is undoubtedly true, the problem is, and always has been, that it’s impossible to regulate an entity that holds the keys to heaven. They have the congregation right where they want them and they know it.’ Still holding the iPad, Caedmon committed Cardinal Franco Fiorio’s thickly jowled, balding features to memory. ‘Pudgy little porker,’ he scoffed uncharitably.

The impolite slur caused a frown to instantly materialize on Edie’s face.
‘Do you think that they’re holding Anala in Dutchess County at the Sanguis Christi Fellowship?’ she asked, abruptly changing the subject.

‘
They’re certainly not holding her at the Vatican. A remote 300-acre complex in upstate New York seems a likely location.’
To commit a whole host of crimes
,
he thought but didn’t dare utter. If he couldn’t find the third plate, there was no doubt in his mind that ‘Irenaeus’ would carry out his deadly threat against Anala.

Of course, Cardinal Fiorio won’t be the one pulling the trigger
.

The clergy never do. They had a
despicable habit of hiring mercenaries to do their ‘wet work’. It was how they absolved themselves of their more heinous crimes.
Ecclesia non novit sanguinem
– ‘The Church never sheds blood’ – was a doctrine that dated to the fourth century when Priscillian, the bishop of Ávila, was beheaded, the first Christian heretic put to death by fellow Christians. The Catholic synod of bishops had condemned Priscillian to death, but let Emperor Magnus Maximus carry out the execution order. It was a barbarous tradition that reached its zenith during the Inquisition and surely the most atrocious hypocrisy ever perpetrated by a religious entity that supposedly embraced the teachings of the Prince of Peace.

‘
We can compile background dossiers on the principals and download satellite imagery of the Sanguis Christi compound later. Right now, we need to decipher this blasted code.’

‘In that case, another cup of
coffee is in order,’ Edie said. Scooting her chair back, she walked over to the service tray.

Picking
up the sheet of paper on which he’d drawn a grid cipher, Caedmon refocused his attention on the series of slashes and dots. Although he knew that it was his imagination, the lines seemed to bleed, one into the other.

Fuck the Knights Templar!
And the horse they both rode in on.

He bit
back the profane utterance. Scrunching up the sheet of paper, he tossed it across the room, the ‘ball’ landing in the trash bin next to the bedside table.

Hag
-ridden, he lurched to his feet. His ribs ached with a brutal intensity; the four aspirin that he’d earlier ingested merely put a dent in the pain. And a small one at that.

Needing to clear his mind, he strode to the window and unlatched the metal lock.
Then, very slowly, his bruised body protesting each and every movement, he slid the window open and inhaled deeply. The smell of rain was thick in the air.
The scent of the gods
. Or so the ancients believed, unaware that the unique odor emanated from plant oils released during a rain shower.

He stared at the moody landscape, the rain falling with a monotonous patter.

Just then, a fork of lightning broke free from the charcoal-colored clouds and pierced the night sky. The atmospheric pyrotechnics briefly illuminated the monumental bronze equestrian statue set in the middle of a nearby roundabout. In that burst of bright light, he could see that the bloke on the horse was a medieval Knights Templar. The Keeper of the Secret riding off into the rain-drenched night. Willing to risk life and limb to safeguard the
Evangelium Gaspar.

Edie approached
and, smiling wearily, handed him a cup of coffee. Long moments passed as they stood, silent, at the window. Two etiolated sprigs clinging to a wilted vine.