The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (5 page)

‘
Oh,
that
Thomas.’ Connection made, Edie slowly nodded her head.

Gita set her tea cup on the saucer; to her dismay, the two pieces of porcelain rattled noisily. ‘A
ccording to the Indian legends, the Apostle Thomas arrived at the port city of Muziris in the year 52. Whereupon he immediately began to convert the locals to Christianity. The descendents of those early converts are still known to this day as the St. Thomas Christians; although they refer to themselves as the Nazrani. As for Gaspar . . .’ Gita gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Being a Hindu, I’m afraid that my knowledge of Indian Christianity only goes so far. Perhaps Gaspar was one of Jesus’ disciples who accompanied Thomas to India.’

‘
Makes perfect sense,’ Caedmon concurred with a nod. ‘I can’t imagine Thomas setting off on the Silk Road without an entourage. Safety in numbers and all that.’ To Gita’s surprise, he suddenly reached over and placed a hand on her wrist. ‘In case we can’t find the
Evangelium Gaspar
,
I have contacts within Her Majesty’s government who can –’

‘
No!’ she exclaimed vehemently. Putting the kibosh on Caedmon’s suggestion, Gita slid her hand free. ‘I was expressly warned not to mention the abduction to the authorities. I shouldn’t even be here, but . . . I’m desperate, Caedmon. These people won’t return my daughter until I find the
Evangelium Gaspar
.’

‘
Our
daughter.’ Correction made, Caedmon continued to examine the digital photos of the Maharaja plate.

Although she should have been pleased that
Caedmon so readily acknowledged paternity, for some inexplicable reason the fact that he did made her acutely uncomfortable.

Ill-at-ease, Gita turned her head and stared listlessly at the nearby streetscape. She’d always wanted to travel to Paris, but had never got beyond the initial dreaming stage.
Paris was a city for lovers. Not a lone woman, map in hand, trying to find the Louvre.

‘
I’ll need a list of everyone who has knowledge of the Maharaja plate.’

Hearing that, Gita glanced back at
Caedmon. The late-day sun slanted across the pavement, throwing his face into shadow.

‘
It’s not a very long list,’ she told him. ‘Although I should mention that soon after the plate was brought to the museum, I contacted the Vatican Secret Archives.’

‘
You did
what
?!’

Anala ripped the strap of duct tape binding her wrists, having used the metal screw head to cut through the restraint.

Hands freed, she yanked the piece of tape from her mouth and gulped in a mouthful of musty air. Not that she minded the poor air quality. It was better than no air. Which is what she’d be breathing in the grave. Bending forward, she removed the straps of tape from her ankles. Unshackled, she was ready to make a prison break. While she had no idea where she was or how long she’d been unconscious, she only knew that she
had
to escape before the mustachioed kidnapper returned to the room.

She glanced at the slanted beam of dust-laden light that shone through the dirty panes of glass; the window set approximately six feet above the floor.

Good. She preferred to escape in broad daylight rather than dead of night.

Ready to leave, Anala surged to her feet. Only to sway unsteadily, hit simultaneously with a dizzy undertow and an excruciating burst of pain radiating from her skull. Grasping the bed frame, she refused to give in to the siren’s call to lie back down on the lumpy mattress.

She waited a few seconds for the lightheaded hubbub to diminish. Hobbled by aching joints and a walloping headache, she put a hand to the paneled wall. Holding on to it for support, she moved gingerly around the perimeter of the room towards the exit.

A few seconds later, she reached for the door knob.

Damn!
It was locked from the outside.

Frustrated, she leaned her head against the door. Of course it was locked from the outside. She’d been a fool to think that it would actually have been unlocked. Why would anyone have gone to so much trouble to abduct a woman from her home, only to deposit her in an unlocked room?

Angry that she’d wasted valuable time – worried that the warden would return at any moment – Anala shuffled back to the metal-framed cot. Gritting her teeth, she dragged it several feet, flinching at the harsh grating sound that ensued. It took several determined tugs for her to maneuver the bed under the window. But the effort cost her. Panting from exertion, she bent at the waist and promptly vomited a stream of watery stomach bile on to the linoleum floor.

Straightening, Anala spat out a mouthful of acidic residue before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. At that moment, she’d gladly
have given her back teeth for a gulp of fresh water.

Needing to quicken the pace, she snatched the grungy-looking pillow and wadded it over her right forearm and hand. She then stood on top of the cot and bashed her padded fist through the window pane, shattering the glass on contact.

She peered through the opening, taken aback by the lavish vista of verdant scenery.
Lush trees. Rolling hills. Flowering shrubs.
She blinked, her ocular nerve overloaded with every imaginable shade of green – hunter, forest, fern, pine and shamrock. At a glance, she could see that it wasn’t the tropical green of India.

More like the bucolic green of
England.

Dumbfounded, she scanned the horizon, unable to see a house or building. Or any structure that suggested human habitation.

The warm sunshine heated her face, inciting a second wave of nausea. She waited a few seconds for the queasy roiling to abate before she began to hurriedly extract jagged pieces of glass out of the frame. She needed to remove all of the remaining pieces before she shimmied through the window. Otherwise, she’d cut herself to ribbons.

‘Sod it!’ she muttered under her breath, pricking her thumb.

About to wipe away the crimson blob, she instead kept plucking shards and flinging them on to the plush carpet of grass on the other side of the window frame.

Stay focused and finish the job!

Tossing aside the last piece of glass, she put her hands on the frame. Ready to hoist herself through the cleared opening, she suddenly heard the door open.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ a deep voice snarled in English.

Before Anala could react, she was grasped by the waist and yanked backward, the irate captor flinging her on to the mattress. She caught only a blurred glimpse of a dark-skinned, dark-eyed man before she saw the balled fist that, in the next instant, painfully connected with her jaw.

The assault happened so quickly, there was no time to scream, let alone fend off her attacker.
In the span of a brief instant, Anala was hurled into an enveloping darkness.

‘If you must know,
I had a very good reason for contacting the Vatican Secret Archives,’ Gita Patel retorted in a defensive tone of voice. ‘The only information that I could find on the Internet pertaining to Fortes de Pinós was an official prisoner list of Templar knights held at Chinon Castle in France. And that list merely indicated his name and the date that he was arrested.’

Hearing that,
Caedmon asked the obvious, ‘Which was?’

‘
March the eighth, 1308.’

‘Mmmm . . . interesting. Given that t
he Knights Templar were arrested en masse on October thirteenth, 1307, Brother Fortes obviously wasn’t caught in Philippe le Bel’s original dragnet.’

‘Perhaps he was still in
India on that particular date,’ Gita conjectured. Reaching for the stainless-steel pot, she poured the remains into her tea cup, Caedmon relieved to see that the trembling in her hands had steadied considerably. ‘According to the Maharaja plate, Fortes de Pinós was in Muziris during the latter part of 1307.’

Having yet to touch his
own drink, Caedmon stared morosely at the yellow bit of lemon peel that jockeyed for position with the melting nuggets of ice.

Those damned Templars.

There had been a time, many years ago while he was at Oxford, when he’d been thoroughly enamored with the white-robed warrior monks. In his dissertation he’d asserted that the Knights Templar had been exposed to ancient esoteric rites; an exposure that colored their Christian beliefs. To his horror, the head of the history department at Queen’s College denounced his hypothesis as little more than an unfounded fairy tale. Realizing that his advanced degree would not be conferred, he left Oxford, mortified by the very public put-down.

Whereupon he’d promptly been recruited by MI5, Britain’s Security Service.

As fate would have it, Five actively sought men like him, defrocked academics keen to prove their worth. Grateful to have a job, he’d spent eleven years in Her Majesty’s Service before returning to his first love, history. No longer concerned with how his peers might react to his controversial theories, he’d written
Isis Revealed.
And though many critics disagreed with the book’s premise – that the medieval Cathars of the Languedoc had been an Isis Mystery cult – Caedmon had seen the proof of it with his own eyes.

‘Assuming that Fortes de Pinós returned to France some time in early 1308, he would have learned that his brother knights had been arrested soon after he docked at the
Templar naval harbor at New Rochelle,’ Caedmon said thoughtfully. Then, frowning, he posed the obvious: ‘So why didn’t Brother Fortes pull up anchor and elude capture while he still had a chance to save himself?’

‘I wondered the same thing,’ Gita replied as she opened a paper packet and dropped a sugar cube into her tea cup. ‘That’s the reason why I contacted the Vatican Secret Archives.
Since the archives are only open to scholars and researchers, I used my museum credentials to make an official request for the Inquisition records pertaining to Fortes de Pinós.’

‘In your request, did you happen to mention the Maharaja plate or the
Evangelium Gaspar
?’

In the process of raising the cup to her lips, Gita instead lowered it to the table. ‘I mentioned both of them at length,’ she informed him, her brows drawing together.

‘Back up a minute,’ Edie said, inserting herself into the conversation. ‘If the archives are secret, how can someone request, let alone examine, the records?’

Shifting his hips slightly,
Caedmon turned in her direction.
‘The name is misleading. Although the
Archivo Segreto Vaticano
is the repository for all records pertaining to the Holy See, it’s merely “secret” in the medieval sense of the word, meaning that those records are the personal property of the Pope. In fact, the archives have been opened to scholars since the late nineteenth century.’ He returned his attention to Gita. ‘Did anyone at the Vatican Secret Archives answer your request?’

‘Not exactly.’ A strange look crept into her eyes. ‘While
I did receive the requested Inquisition records, it wasn’t sent by anyone at the Vatican. It was forwarded by an unaffiliated person named Irenaeus.’

Caedmon
took a moment to consider the admittedly odd twist. ‘A tongue-in-cheek alias, I’ll warrant. St Irenaeus was the early Church Father who decreed which gospels would be included in the official canon. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that because there were four corners of the earth, there could only be four authentic gospels. All other gospels, of which there were scores, were condemned as “heretical”.’ His jaw tightened. In the aftermath of that sweeping ban, books were burned and whole libraries destroyed. ‘And I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the records weren’t sent by someone at the Vatican,’ he added, wondering if the Church was still trying to root out the Templar heresy. If so, it meant the clerics in Rome not only had a long memory, but a very long reach.

Just what the hell was contained in the
Evangelium Gaspar
?

‘
When did you receive the Inquisition records?’

‘The records were sent to me on t
he same day that Anala was abducted.’ Tears welling in her eyes, Gita wrapped both hands around her tea cup, the trembling having recommenced. ‘The email stated that Anala was being held for ransom and that she wouldn’t be released until I found the
Evangelium Gaspar.
’ Sniffling softly, she snatched a paper napkin from the table and swiped at an errant tear.

‘
Did you bring the Inquisition records with you?’ Caedmon asked in a neutral tone, hoping to put a wet flannel on Gita before she combusted.

Still sniffling, she said, ‘I have it on my laptop. Irenaeus
sent both the Latin original and a translated copy.’

‘What a considerate bastard.
Did you reply to his email?’

Gita nodded shakily. ‘
I informed Irenaeus that I couldn’t possibly locate the
Evangelium Gaspar
based on the Inquisition transcript that he sent to me.’ She spun the notebook computer in her direction and pulled up a new file. ‘Although I begged him to send additional information, he sent only a five word reply: “Find it or she dies.”. Which is when, out of sheer desperation, I immediately booked a flight to Paris.’