The Templar conspiracy t-4 Page 11

  "Shit," said the general. The jet flew on through the night.

  17

  Early on the morning of the sixth day following the assassination of the Pope, dignitaries of varying status began arriving at Pratica di Mare Air Force Base, lining up in their positions on the overlong single runway like so many preening pheasants. By dawn there were two dozen heads of state and their aircraft on the tarmac, from France's Airbus A330 to Moldova's Yakovlev Yak-40. At precisely seven thirty in the morning United States Air Force One, carrying the president, the secretary of state and half a dozen guests in its distinctive blue-and-white livery, came lumbering down the runway and pulled to a stop. Two big C5 transports had arrived the night before, carrying two presidential limousines and four Cadillac Escalades, all black, all armored and all twice the weight of their civilian counterparts. Other than the Americans only the Russians and the Chinese brought along their own ground transportation; everyone else relied on local embassy vehicles.

  There was no movement on the runway, and the only sound was the steady whining of engine start generators. This was a visit of obligation, and as little time as possible would be spent on the niceties of state. The motorcades would move out in protocol order, and within an hour of the conclusion of the funeral almost everyone would be on their way back to the military airfield. By midafternoon all the aircraft would have departed for home.

  Peggy, armed with her brand-new Nikon and a long lens, stood with Brennan and Holliday on the domed roof of the PalaLottomatica, the sports complex that stood on the little garden island between the two enclosing arms of the Via Cristoforo Colombo. In their estimation, the PalaLottomatica roof was the most likely place for the assassin to strike from, but when the Vigilanza and the local Rome police had checked, there was no sign of the man, past or present.

  On the off chance that Brennan and his friends were right, the Italian police, in cooperation with the Vatican authorities, had established their own lookout point on the roof. After being woken out of a dead sleep Pat Philpot had cleared the way with his people in Rome and expressed his fears of a tangible threat to the Secret Service, although he hadn't mentioned Tritt's name or his onetime affiliation with the Company.

  While Peggy took a few shots of the observation post with her Nikon, Holliday paced around the very summit of the clamshell roof and Brennan listened to his police scanner. At ten past ten he looked up and spoke.

  "The American motorcade just pulled off airbase property. They'll be here in less than fifteen minutes."

  "This is a waste of time," said Peggy. "We should be doing something, not standing around waiting for the sky to fall."

  "We've still got the car," said Holliday. "Philpot's team is on the ground, keeping their eyes open for an Audi A8 with Swiss plates. There can't be too many of them in town."

  "We still haven't managed to trace all this back to the old witch, Sinclair," said Peggy, swinging her camera and its huge telephoto lens around. So far she'd noticed nothing even mildly suspicious.

  "First we stop her plan; then we stop her organization."

  "I'm still not sure about what she's doing," said Brennan, monitoring the scanner. "It all seems insane to me."

  "Kill the president, who's a little too liberal for her tastes, which installs our esteemed hard-hat vice president. A real 'whites of their eyes' type. When the Indian ambassador came over to arrange a state visit the VP asked the man if he was in the Cherokee caste or the Apache. He becomes president and appoints the young Senator Sinclair as his VP. Two terms later he backs our boy for the presidential nomination. She gets what she wants with a bullet, not an election." Holliday shook his head. "It is insane, but if you get enough insane people together who're still fighting the Civil War, it changes from insanity to political conspiracy."

  There was a burst of crackling Italian from the scanner.

  "What is it?" Holliday asked.

  "Masterpiece is eight miles out."

  "Masterpiece?"

  "The president's code name. The First Lady is da Vinci."

  "Where did that come from?" Holliday asked.

  "They must have liked the book. The secretary of state is called Symbol."

  "How long is eight miles, timewise?"

  "Five minutes, maybe six." The priest shrugged. "Motorcades can be pretty ponderous even under the best circumstances."

  Presidential motorcades are often made up of up to thirty vehicles, including two identical Cadillac limousines, both armored and with bulletproof glass. These are inevitably followed by several Secret Service Escalades, a communication vehicle and a number of other cars for the press and invited guests. Since the twin presidential limousines are identical, there is no sure way to know which one is occupied by the president at various times. The limousines and the Secret Service vans are known as the secure package and can separate from the rest of the motorcade within seconds.

  The radio crackled again. "Vigilanza Twenty-nine." One of Brennan's.

  "Vigilanza Twenty-nine, andare."

  "Confermato Automobile nero, Audi A8, Targa Svizerri SZ193."

  "He's got the car!" Brennan hissed.

  "Where?" Holliday asked.

  "Dove?"

  "Viale Europa. Davanti Gioielliere Brusco."

  "Got it," said Peggy, the big Nikon in her hands. "One block up, one block over, once you get over the bridge. No action on the roof so far."

  "Give me your gun," demanded Holliday.

  Brennan hesitated for a moment, then handed it over. "I've never seen that gun in my life," said the priest. In other words Holliday was on his own if he was caught with it. "I'll stay with the radio."

  Holliday took the small transmitter-receiver out of his pocket, looping it over his ear like a Bluetooth device. Peggy had slipped the telephoto off and was snapping on a standard lens.

  "I'm going with you," she said. There was no room for argument in her voice and Holliday didn't even try.

  "Come on, then," he said.

  They scrambled around the roof to the maintenance stairwell, went to the shipping elevator and rode down to the main floor of the gigantic, empty arena.

  "Masterpiece now five miles out. Four minutes," said Brennan's voice in Holliday's ear. Holliday found their rental car and climbed in, Peggy hard on his heels. He cranked up the little Fiat and, tires spinning, zoomed across the empty parking lot to the exit ramp. Barely slowing, he threw the car into traffic. They tore across the bridge, over the artificial reflecting pool, then hurtled down the Viale America ramp and went into the brief darkness of the underpass. They popped out into the sunlight and headed west.

  "Masterpiece at two miles. Ninety seconds, maybe less."

  "Shit," said Holliday. Dead ahead in the far distance was the dome of the enormous Peter and Paul Basilica.

  "There!" Peggy yelled. She'd spotted the jewelry store.

  They went through the yellow light and through the striped crosswalk, Holliday blessing his good luck at renting one of those ridiculous smart cars. He slipped into an empty spot across from the jewelry store on the corner and jumped out of the car without bothering to lock it. He ran across the wide street, setting up a symphony of horns and shouts as he dodged through the oncoming traffic, Peggy right beside him.

  They reached the sidewalk. To the left of a pair of graffiti-covered recycling bins there were two doors, one leading into Brusco's watch and jewelry store, the other into a miniature lobby with nothing in it but an elevator door. The outer door was locked. Directly in front of the jeweler's was a sleek black Audi A8.

  Holliday didn't stop to think about it. He pulled out Brennan's automatic and used the butt as a hammer on the glass next to the lock mechanism. Nothing happened. He hit the glass even harder, aware that someone was screaming for the police. This time the entire bottom half of the glass door disintegrated into thousands of little hexagons. Holliday freed the broken glass with the pistol butt, reached in and turned the latch. The door opened. A woman's shrill voice kept cal
ling for the police. In a few more seconds people would start paying attention.

  "We have movement on the roof! Dark-haired man carrying a sports bag, black. Motorcade is in sight. It looks like a big black snake. Mother of Christ, Holliday, hurry!"

  Holliday jammed his palm against the single button and thankfully the door slid open immediately. He and Peggy crowded into the little cage and a few seconds later the door hissed shut and the elevator began its long, slow grind upward. It stopped automatically at every floor, and by the time they reached the top floor Holliday's nerves were wire taut.

  He racked the slide on the little automatic. "You stay back, Peg. I'm not kidding. I've got a peashooter. This son of a bitch has a guided missile. Remember that."

  "Yes, Uncle John, Doc, sir," she mocked, grinning broadly and hefting the camera.

  "Rafi would string me up in the Negev if anything happened to you," said Holliday.

  "Yeah, he would, wouldn't he?" Peggy laughed. "Such a romantic." The elevator door hissed open onto the top floor. Holliday stepped out into the corridor with Brennan's gun extended. Empty. Three doors on the left, three doors on the right and an exit light at either end beaming out USCIRE. Holliday headed along the corridor toward the exit, the gun steady in his hand.

  He stepped into the stairwell, Peggy on the step behind him, and headed upward. The metal steps were noisy. The earpiece crackled but there was no sound. He was in some kind of audio dead zone. They reached a little vestibule at the top of the stairs. There was a metal door with a panic bar.

  "Stay back," he ordered, pushing down on the panic bar. He stepped out into the near-blinding sunlight that streamed down onto the gravel roof. His earpiece came to life in midsentence.

  "… not a Stinger. It's a-Dear Lord, he's fired!"

  There was a fireball riding the shoulder of the man on the far side of the roof. The fireball expanded with a snapping roar and the figure disappeared in a cloud of yellow-white smoke. Holliday aimed into the center of the smoke screen and fired, again and again. He was vaguely aware of movement, and then an enormous pain blossomed in the middle of his chest and the world went black. Somewhere Peggy screamed his name and then she was gone.

  PART TWO

  OPUS

  18

  "Fools rush in, Colonel Holliday, and there's no doubt that you're a fool," said Pat Philpot, overflowing a plain chair beside Doc's hospital bed. A big Starbucks cup and a pastry box full of fat cannoli sat on the night table beside him. The rotund CIA analyst took alternating sips and bites. Powdered sugar from the cannoli dusted his several chins.

  It was hard for Doc to remember back when the two of them used to jump out of airplanes into war zones together. Then again, it was hard for him to remember much at all except for the gigantic pain in his chest. It felt like someone had ripped out his heart and lungs and then forgot to put them back again. The anonymous hospital room wasn't much help to his memory; aside from a simple crucifix that hung over the bed, it was the same as every other civilian hospital he'd been in. It was a Catholic hospital, which meant that he was probably still in Italy. But why was Pat Philpot sitting beside him? Where were Peggy and Brennan?

  Philpot read his mind. "We don't know where your niece and her priest friend are. At the moment." He took a slurp of coffee, eyed a half-eaten cannoli in the box and then thought better of it. "If it wasn't for the fact that Ms. Blackstock almost certainly has a photograph of a known Company operative firing a Russian Igla missile at the presidential limousine, we'd have conveniently put a bullet in your brain and buried you in an olive grove by now."

  Holliday cleared his throat. "You're telling me that olive groves are the equivalent of the New Jersey Meadowlands here?"

  "Quit being a smart-ass, Holliday. You're in a lot of trouble; don't make it any worse."

  "Then tell me what happened, why I'm here."

  "Billy Tritt fired a Soviet Igla 'needle' missile at the lead limo in the motorcade and blew it all to hell and gone. He fired a Glock.40 at you, but you were smart enough to be wearing the wop equivalent of a bulletproof vest."

  "He killed the president?"

  "The VP and the secretary of state. It should have been the A car, but the Secret Service flipped at the last second because of the warning."

  "How did Tritt know?"

  "Because there was a big X on the roof of the lead car."

  "And nobody noticed?"

  "Nobody. The X was some clear coating and UV sensitive. Nobody could see it except for Tritt."

  "You're talking about an inside job, then," said Holliday.

  "I'm talking off the record, just like before. You mention any of this and you really will wind up in an olive grove."

  "Off the record, then."

  "Thank God it was an Igla and not a Stinger. It muddies the water some. On the other hand, some unfriendly colleagues of mine have an unregistered Beretta in their possession with your prints all over it. They also have evidence connecting you to a pair of homicides in Rock Creek Park a week or so ago. They can tie you to a conspiracy to assassinate the president without breaking a sweat. Get the picture?"

  "You're telling me there really is a rogue section of the Agency?"

  "I'm not speaking to you at all," said Philpot. He stuffed half a cannoli in his mouth and inhaled the sweet cream at its center, then savored the outer layers of flaky, butter-rich pastry. "In fact," he said, methodically licking his fingers, "this is so off the record that I'm not even here; I'm sitting at my desk in MacLean, picking my toes and wondering who's going to win the Super Bowl."

  "The Giants," said Holliday.

  "Bah, humbug." Philpot scowled. "It'll be the Steelers again."

  "So, what are you trying to tell me, Pat, seeing as how you aren't here?"

  "I'm telling you to find your pretty Peggy and get out of Dodge, pronto. There are people out there who want you dead and have the ability to make it happen."

  "We're talking about the so-called Jihad al-Salibiyya?"

  "We're not talking about anything. I'm not here, remember? Have a cannoli."

  Chief Randy Lockwood, head of the Winter Falls Police force for the last thirty years, strolled down South Main Street bundled up in an official Winter Falls Wolves jacket. The cold weather had creaked and blustered its way down from Canada, putting an even thicker layer of ice on Big Cache Lake. The iceboats were whizzing around, practicing for the races to be held the following month, and he could see half a dozen fishing boats already set up. It was all part of the Falls' somewhat limited attempt at turning itself into a winter wonderland as well as a summer resort.

  He reached Gorman's Restaurant, the unofficial divider between South Main Street and North Main Street. He pulled open the steel door with one leather-gloved hand and stepped into the overheated diner. His booth in the back next to the kitchen's swinging doors was empty, a glass of water and a copy of the Trumpet, Winter Falls' only newspaper, laid out on the Formica. At eleven in the morning, Gorman's was packed with the inner circle of Winter Falls' gossips and flapjaws, including Sandy Gorman, who was standing behind the counter and wrangling a huge pile of bacon that was being precooked for the all-day breakfasts that were one of the favorites. Beside the bacon was an equally huge pile of hash browns and beside the hash browns was Reggie Waterman, frying and scrambling eggs, turning sausages and even taking care of a few burgers and the French fry baskets.

  Randy, Sandy and Reggie had all been stars of the 1964 Winter Falls High School football team and they'd all gone off to serve in Vietnam two years later. Sandy Gorman had come back minus half a leg, and stumped around behind the counter on a prosthetic; Reggie Waterman scrambled eggs with a fork clamped to the hook that had once been his right arm. Randy returned with nothing but a Silver Star and a white streak of hair above his ear where a Vietcong bullet had creased his skull. In the years since, it had gradually earned him the nickname "Streak."

  Winter Falls, New Hampshire, was a resort town and always had been. It was
one of a half dozen towns that stood on the edge of Big Cache about sixty miles west of Portland, Maine, the closest city of any size. In winter the Falls had a population of a little more than six thousand. In summer it blew up to twice that, the number of parking tickets growing exponentially with enough revenue to pay the salaries of the entire sixteen-man, two-woman Winter Falls Police Department. There hadn't been a murder, rape or violent crime since the Hartwell twins' bizarre double suicide twelve years ago, and one missing person back in the mid-nineties that Streak Lockwood figured for a runaway. Pete Mc-Googan was a mean bastard living in the backwoods around Front Bay with a dull-witted wife and a beautiful sixteen-year-old who could have been a movie star. Her old man always had a strange, proprietary look on his face when he was around her, and if Streak had been in Cindy McGoogan's shoes he would have split for the big city himself.

  Whatever it all was it amounted to Winter Falls being voted number one of the top-ten safest towns in America by Time magazine for the fourth year in a row. There were about a hundred copies of the issue in Zeke's Smokes and Sundries down the way, but Cyrus Dorchester at the Trumpet pretended that no one in town had heard and had a huge headline announcing FALLS #1 AGAIN!!!

  The lake was just beyond Gorman's back-door patio and a sudden wind rattled the entire rickety, two-story clapboard building, the freezing air chattering through cracks in the joints and around the heavy double-pane storm windows. If it wasn't for the grill, ovens and fryers being fired up from dawn to dusk, the place would be as cold as the inside of a freezer.

  Lockwood dropped down into his booth, his back to the wall under a 1974 Boston Bruins calendar turned to February so it eternally showed the rampaging Phil Esposito grinning with his front teeth out, Sandy Gorman's favorite, even if Esposito was a Canuck.

  Reggie Waterman came out from behind the counter and slid onto the bench opposite Lockwood, a plate clamped in his steel claw and a cup of coffee in his good hand. He set the food down in front of his old friend and leaned back against the cracked green vinyl of the booth.