The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (4 page)

Gita gnawed anxiously on her lower lip before saying, ‘There’s not a great deal to tell. When I left
Oxford at the end of Trinity term, I discovered that I was pregnant. My father was concerned that –’ She broke off in mid-stream, an anguished look in her hazel eyes. In that suspended instant, Caedmon could see that she was facing down her demons. ‘My father was afraid that my
predicament
would adversely affect his political career. Which is why he forbade me to contact you.’

‘He was the
Labor MP from Ealing Southall as I recall.’

She gave a terse nod. ‘Determined to keep my pregnancy under wraps, my father
hastily arranged a marriage for me, paying the groom and his family a small fortune to turn a blind eye.’

Caedmon
frowned, incensed – not at Gita, but at a man he’d never met. ‘Said groom was a Hindu, I take it?’

‘A computer engineer newly arrived from
Delhi.’ Gita punctuated the comment with a slight shudder. ‘Needless to say, it was a disastrous union, one that barely lasted four years. When I divorced Dev Malik, I took custody of Anala, retook my maiden name, and moved on with my life.’

Anala.
My daughter’s name is Anala.
For some reason, it’d not occurred to him to ask.

Lost in thought,
Caedmon stared at Gita Patel, culling from his memory banks that brief interlude at Oxford when they’d been inseparable, raging hormones and a shared love of history the glue that held them together. He had tried once or twice to contact her, but assumed the returned letters meant that, unbeknownst to him, the relationship had officially ended. In the decades since, he’d not given her a single passing thought. Even now, all he could recall with any certainty was that she was the product of a mixed marriage, she had an unnatural fear of spiders, and that her academic field had been Oriental Studies. Meaning that, for all intents and purposes, the woman sitting across from him was a virtual stranger.

‘
So that would make our daughter –’ Caedmon did a quick mental calculation ‘– twenty-two years of age. And her name is Anala, is that correct?’

‘Yes. Just a moment . . . I brought a current picture.’ Fumbling with the leather messenger bag still slung across her chest, Gita retrieved a wallet from which she removed a
color photograph. Clearly nervous, she handed it to him.

Equally nervous,
Caedmon raised the photograph to his face.

An instant later, his jaw slackened.
Un-bloody-believable.

Barely able to breathe, let alone move
, he stared at the photo, taken aback by the image of a brown-haired, blue-eyed young woman.

‘I never knew my mother . . .
she died in childbirth. That said, the resemblance in the face and eyes is uncanny,’ he rasped. So similar, it was as though he was peering at a ghost.

Afraid that he’d lose what little emotional control he still had,
Caedmon quickly shoved the image of his long-dead mother back into the mental lockbox that held all of his sepia-toned memories. Those things best forgotten or too painful to call to mind.

God Almighty.
When I am going to wake up from this nightmare?

Leaning towards him, Edie looked over his shoulder at the photo.

‘Anala is a lovely young woman,’ she said to Gita.

His hand visibly shaking,
Caedmon set the photo in the middle of the table. ‘Does she know about me?’

The question caused Gita to blush furiously.
Unable to look him in the eye, she gazed down at the table. ‘Anala thinks that my ex-husband is her biological father.’

‘
I see.’ Now it was Caedmon’s turn to stare at the table, feeling very much like a man who’d just been stomped and kicked when he was down.

His belly tightened painfully.
I have a daughter who doesn’t even know that I exist.

He took a deep breath, trying desperately to keep his emotions in check. ‘
What can you tell me about the abduction?’ he said abruptly, his voice noticeably hoarse.

‘Anala was kidnapped three
days ago from our home in Fort Cochin, India,’ Gita informed him. Pausing a moment, she tightly clasped her hands together. Presumably to stop the palsied tremble. ‘There was a message scrawled on her bedroom mirror in lipstick . . . “Don’t call the police or she dies.”’

‘Oh my God,’ Edie gasped, clearly horrified.

Equally horrified, Caedmon sat silent. He was listing so badly, he feared he might not be able to keep afloat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw their waiter approach, a tray expertly balanced on his fingertips. A blasé expression plastered on his Gallic features, he set down a
glass of chilled rosé for Edie and a small stainless steel pot of hot water with a cup and saucer for Gita. Then, with a flourish, he placed a Dubonnet Rouge in front of Caedmon, who was very tempted to tell the aproned bastard to save the theatrics for another customer.

Caedmon
waited until the waiter had departed before he cleared his throat and said, ‘Excuse me for being indelicate, but do you need money for a ransom?’

‘The captors
don’t want money.’

‘
If not money, then what the bloody hell do they want?’

Gita’s bottom lip began to quiver. ‘
They want an ancient gospel called the
Evangelium Gaspar.
’

Hearing that,
Caedmon stared at her, uncomprehending.
The kidnappers want an ancient gospel?
It made no sense. He shook his head, wondering if he’d heard correctly.

Edie turned to him. ‘Are you familiar with the
Evangelium Gaspar
?’

Floundering, he searched his memory banks for anything pertaining to the
Evangelium Gaspar.
To no avail. Other than the fact that ‘
Evangelium Gaspar
’
was Latin for ‘Gospel of Gaspar’, he drew a blank.

Think, man, think!

‘I’m afraid that I’ve never heard of it,’ he said at last, not a single bell having tolled.

Hazel eyes welled
with tears as Gita openly gaped at him. ‘But I . . . I was so certain that you’d be familiar with the
Evangelium Gaspar.
’

‘
And why would you think that?’ Befuddled, he returned her stare.

‘
Because the Knights Templar went to India in 1307 to retrieve it.’

‘
The Knights Templars!’ Caedmon spat out the exclamation like a cherry pit. One that he was very close to gagging on. ‘
In India!?’

‘Yes, India,’ Gita Patel reiterated. ‘According to your author website, you wrote your master’s thesis on the Knights Templar.’ Which was the very reason why she’d travelled five thousand miles to see Caedmon Aisquith.

How could he not know about the Templar’s voyage?

‘I also wrote my dissertation on those blasted knights, but that’s another story.’

‘Are you
absolutely
certain that you have never heard of—’

‘If
the Templars ever sought a relic known as the
Evangelium Gaspar
, I’m unaware of it,’ Caedmon interjected. Shrugging apologetically, he said, ‘While they did have the largest standing navy in medieval Europe, as far as I know they never sailed to India.’

Refusing to retreat, Gita hurriedly opened the flap on her leather bag and
removed a compact computer notebook. ‘And I can prove to you that they
did
sail to India.’

As she waited for the laptop to boot up, Gita stole a quick sideways glance at
Caedmon. Although she’d recognized him immediately when she’d caught sight of him on the street, at closer range she could see that he’d changed considerably in the last twenty-three years. At Oxford he’d been a lanky, loose-knit teenager. Somewhere along the line, he’d grown into his height, his shoulders, chest, even his face, broader now than in his youth. Befitting his age, there were horizontal lines on his brow and vertical lines bracketing his mouth. Only the head of deep auburn hair was unchanged; that, and the faint smattering of freckles on the back of his hands. Or, more precisely, on the back of his right hand; his left was marred with raised criss-crossing scar tissue and a ragged surgical incision.

Realizing that she was staring at
Caedmon’s ravaged hand, Gita hastily averted her gaze.

In retrospect, she supposed that she should have apologized for not telling him about his daughter. Yes, she had regrets, too many to enumerate, but after so many years an apology seemed like a paltry atonement. Although if he required an apology, she’d go down on bended knee. Grovel, if that’s what it took to secure his cooperation, her pride be damned. Over the last two decades, she’d given up everything for her daughter: family, friends, her youth. Humbling herself to the man seated across from her seemed inconsequential compared to all of that.

Self-consciously aware of two sets of eyes quizzically peering at her laptop, Gita hurriedly opened the computer file labeled ‘Maharaja Plate’. The file contained two digital photos, front and back, of an engraved copper plate that measured six by nine inches; approximately the size of a reporter’s notebook. She spun the computer around so that Caedmon and Edie could see the two side-by-side images.

Squinting,
Caedmon leaned forward slightly. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘
Three months ago, this 700-year-old copper plate was uncovered during an excavation at the ancient port of Muziris, which is located on the Malabar Coast of India. It’s a Royal Grant issued by the Maharaja in the year 1307,’ Gita informed him, watching closely for his reaction. ‘As you can plainly see, it’s scribed in the Tamil language.’

‘
What exactly is the, um, Maharaja granting?’ Edie Miller inquired, cutting to the chase.

‘The Maharaja is
granting a Knights Templar named Fortes de Pinós, who’s listed as the designated emissary of the Grand Master Jacques de Molay, official permission to seek out the St. Thomas Christians in Malabar regarding a gospel written by someone named Gaspar in the year 52 AD.’ Gita underscored the statement by pointing to several lines of highly decorative script.

Caedmon
glanced up from the computer screen. ‘How did this Maharaja plate come to be in your possession?’

‘Forgive me . . . I th-thought I told you already,’ she stammered. ‘I’m the curator at the
Kerala Cultural Museum.’

‘I see.’ A long silence followed as
Caedmon continued to examine the digital photos. Finally, frowning at the screen, he said, ‘The oldest known gospel manuscript dates to 125 AD. Not only is it a fragment, it’s a copy of a copy. That said, if the
Evangelium Gaspar
actually exists, it would be the oldest original gospel ever written. Bloody hell . . . those damned Templars.’

Nerves frayed, uncertain whether she could count on
Caedmon to lend his expertise, Gita picked up the wrapped tea bag that the waiter had earlier set down in front of her. Fumbling with the small paper packet, she tried, unsuccessfully, to open it.

Without uttering a word,
Edie Miller reached across the table and eased the packet from her trembling hands. Extricating the tea bag from the packet, she dunked it in the pot of hot water. ‘Slow, deep breaths,’ she said with a sympathetic smile.

Grateful, Gita shyly nodded her thanks. ‘Afraid that I’m all thumbs.’

‘Perfectly understandable given the circumstance.’

Taller than average, with long curly brown hair, Edie had a decidedly Bohemian air about her. However, her deep-set umber-brown eyes and straight brows gave her a serious mien at odds with the
colorful attire and corkscrew curls.

Earlier, when
Gita had followed Caedmon and Edie down rue Saint-Benoît, it’d been abundantly clear to her that they were quite enamored. In fact, they’d seemed so enthralled – touching, laughing, sharing glances – that for one hideous, gut-wrenching moment, she feared Caedmon would spurn her overture. After all, he had a flourishing career, a happy relationship –
why should he care about a daughter he didn’t even know existed?
Had the situation not been so dire, Gita would never have approached him.

‘
Do you mind if we backtrack a moment?’ Edie said, tapping her index finger on the computer screen. ‘There’re two things that I’m curious about. First of all, who are the St. Thomas Christians? And, secondly, who’s Gaspar?’

‘St
. Thomas was one of the original twelve apostles,’ Gita replied as she attempted to raise her tea cup to her lips without sloshing the contents.

‘
Better known as “Doubting Thomas”,’ Caedmon clarified in a quick aside. ‘I believe it was in the Gospel of John that he famously poked his finger into the risen Lord’s side.’