Lost City of the Templars Page 13

  Calthrop then picked up Neri under the armpits and dragged him across the living room to the bathroom. The tub was a large, circular Jacuzzi style, and after five minutes it was still less than a third full. Calthrop slipped Neri into the water, then waited patiently while it filled. Eventually there was enough to cover the body and then using the index finger of his right hand, Calthrop pushed the man’s head beneath the surface. The immersion would slow the decomposition process for a while, especially after he’d turned up the air-conditioning.

  He went back out to the living room, picked up the telephone and called the front desk. Calling himself Francisco Neri, he asked them to add another three days to his stay and said that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed, even by housekeeping; he had a great deal of work to do and needed absolute peace and quiet.

  He hung up the phone, picked up Neri’s leather computer case, emptied the man’s wallet of all the cash it held and left the suite, hanging the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door lever and returning to the lobby.

  In the lobby Calthrop used his cell phone to call Constantine. It was answered on the second ring.

  “Constantine.”

  “It’s me,” said Calthrop without identifying himself.

  “Is it done?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have the information?”

  “I have the computer.”

  “Excellent. When can you get it to me?”

  “The day after tomorrow. Early.”

  Constantine’s voice was hesitant. “Why so long?”

  “There were complications.”

  “What sort of complications?”

  “Switzerland was a feint. He got off one plane and onto another.”

  “Destination?”

  “Paris. He has a pied-à-terre here under the name of Nazorine.”

  “How droll,” said Constantine, his voice cold.

  “It’s in the St. Mandé district, Ten Avenue Foch. Through a porte cochere and in a courtyard, very discreet.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I made it look as though he had a stroke. He was behind the wheel of a rental car. He went off the D928 on the Route de St. Momelin and into the canal. A few miles outside St. Omer. They haven’t discovered the body or the car yet. They’ll presume he was going to the ferry at Dunkirk, I’d expect.”

  “Are cleaners necessary?”

  “At the house in Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only if you think he might have had something incriminating there.” Calthrop paused. “Be that as it may, I’ll be leaving by train tomorrow evening. I’ll get in the following morning.”

  “Why don’t you just fly?”

  “I don’t like the idea of someone looking into the subject’s computer files. It could be loaded with child pornography for all I know.”

  “I see your point,” agreed Constantine. “Come at nine.”

  “Nine o’clock it is.”

  Calthrop snapped the cell phone closed and smiled. Constantine would have plenty of time to get his cutout killer to Paris, but Calthrop would be waiting for him.

  • • •

  Holliday and Eddie sat at the long stone table in the main chamber of King Hiram’s palace, watching as Peggy and Rafi compared photographs and specimens as they sat together on the wide steps leading down into the prehistoric canyon. Out in the center of the jungle, Harrison Fawcett and King Hiram were walking along one of the narrow trails, their heads bent together in serious conversation. All around them King Hiram’s people collected strange fruit from the trees and gathered the plants that grew in such profusion. Far in the distance Eddie and Holliday could see three pairs of men gathering honey from the hives that were bulging heavily from cracks in the far walls of the canyon. Birds sang and screeched, small animals chattered and there was even the burbling of a small stream running out from a pool fed by a knife blade cascading waterfall that fell from the tabletop mountain’s summit.

  Eddie was smoking one of his last cigars. He was frowning.

  “I know what you’re thinking, compadre,” said Holliday.

  “Tú crees?” Eddie asked, raising one eyebrow. “Then tell me.”

  “You’re thinking that this place is like the perfect idyllic scene at the beginning of a horror movie where the beautiful young native girl slips off her loincloth and dives into the water and then gets eaten alive by a horde of hungry flesh-eating piranhas.”

  “Close enough, mi coronel. It was the movie where the Amazon riverboat captain is smoking in the stern of his boat just before he goes to sleep when a fifty-foot anaconda leaps out of the river and swallows him whole.”

  “But this really is paradise,” said Holliday.

  Eddie sighed. “We are too old for such dreams, amigo. And this place gives me the …”

  “Heebie-jeebies? Willies, creeps?”

  “The word in Cuba is horripilante,” said Eddie, “but I like your creeps much better. Like someone crossing my grave in very cold boots.” The Cuban shook his head. “I have put my brain to it, but I can’t see it yet, comprendes?”

  “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that was made with too few pieces. You can’t get the full picture no matter how much you try.”

  Peggy had gathered up her cameras and rushed back up the steps and into Hiram’s “palace” or “villa,” depending on how you judged a house cut out of a single piece of the native rock. Behind her Rafi was following at a slower pace with what looked like a small wooden box cradled in his hand.

  Peggy set the camera on and pointed at the large screen on the back. “What does that look like?”

  Holliday stared. “A flying rat with a long beak, claws and big teeth. It looks like it’s a miniature delta-wing fighter landing on a tree branch.”

  “It’s a Sharovipteryx,” said Rafi, joining Peggy at the table. “Half reptile, half bird.” He slid back the lid of the little box. Inside was a perfect skeleton of the same type of creature Peggy had photographed. “We saw a microraptor, as well— a two-foot-long flying lizard with feathers. It’s like time just stopped down here. This is a goddamn time machine!”

  They sat and talked for the better part of an hour, Holliday speaking little, letting Peggy and Rafi chatter away, allowing their enthusiasm to carry them away, watching their pure, almost childlike awe and pleasure at discovering not a lost world, but a brand-new world. They were having the time of their lives in paradise, and it wasn’t paradise at all. Eventually Harrison Fawcett returned from his discussion with Hiram and sat down at the table with the others.

  “You’re looking very thoughtful, Colonel,” commented the lost explorer’s grandson.

  “I am,” murmured Holliday.

  “A penny for them.” Fawcett smiled.

  “Careful, my friend. You might get more than a single penny’s worth,” warned Eddie.

  “Why so gloomy, Doc?” Peggy asked. “Rafi’s in heaven. This place is a gift to science.”

  “I haven’t seen much giving going on, just a lot of secrecy. Harrison and good old King Hiram won’t let you out of here with a single specimen or photograph … if he lets any of us out of here at all.”

  “Now, hold on a minute, Colonel—”

  “No, you hold on a minute, Fawcett. This place is exactly what it looks like, a paleontological lost world, and you’re doing just about anything to see that it stays that way. At any cost.”

  “I’m trying to protect my people,” argued Fawcett.

  “Which is why there’s an entire tribe of indigenous river people going off to destroy the Itaqui Dam, and they’re not going to do it with blowguns and spears, Fawcett. They’re going to do it with explosives, which you purchased for them. You’re distracting whoever’s really interested in this place and for whatever reason, and you’re willing to send hundreds, maybe even thousands of people to their deaths … all for your little secret.”

  “Their environment is being destroyed,” said Fawcett. “We’re on their side, a
nd if you can’t see that you’re not as smart as I gave you credit for being, Colonel.”

  “If they succeed, which they probably won’t, their environment will be flooded instead of being parched. One way or the other your grandfather’s old friends at what they used to call the White Glove won’t take it lying down. They’ll firebomb or gas or murder the river people one way or the other. It’s genocide no matter what you call it, and you’re just as responsible, Mr. Fawcett.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There’s lots I don’t know and I think it’s time I got a few answers.”

  “Then ask your questions, sir,” said Hiram, appearing in the doorway. He was dressed entirely in white with a gold-beaded belt to cinch his robes.

  “Why did Raleigh Miller, who presumably was actually Raleigh Miller, Jack Fawcett’s friend, run away from the expedition? Was it because he knew that escaping was the only way out from here?”

  “No, it was because he killed Jack,” said Harrison Fawcett.

  “Why would Miller kill him? They were good friends.”

  “Because he caught Miller stealing his father’s notebooks and because Jack found out he was spying for the Glove.”

  “So why didn’t he report back to them when he returned to England?”

  “They’d promised him fame and fortune in Hollywood if he discovered where the relics were hidden, but by the time he came out of the jungle, he must have realized the truth—he was nothing to them except a witness, and the Glove did not abide witnesses to their secrets very well.”

  “And there were no relics anyway; he would have been the bearer of bad news.”

  “The relics are here, I assure you.”

  “You’re lying.” Holliday shook his head sadly. “Logic makes you a liar.”

  “What logic is that?”

  “The logic that any one of your various enemies has figured out by now. The logic says that the relics commonly called the Ark of the Covenant would never be given to a Phoenician ship and sent off over the edge of the world.”

  “There is concrete evidence that the Phoenicians reached the New World,” argued Fawcett.

  “There may be evidence back then, but they didn’t have it then. They knew that beyond the Pillars of Hercules it was anybody’s guess, and you don’t put the greatest relic that ever existed into a situation with odds like that.”

  “So why did the Templars come?”

  “I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other. I think they were looking to hide their hoard somewhere where the Catholic Church couldn’t get their hands on it, and I think they died of disease. You took the survivors prisoner and simply took the gold. The whole thing is just one rumor piled on the other. It’s all sleight of hand.”

  “You’re almost exactly right in your deductions, Colonel,” said Hiram, smiling.

  “Where was I wrong?”

  “There is a relic here, a very important one.”

  “Show me,” said Holliday.

  21

  Hiram left the large, ornately decorated chamber, Fawcett going with him. Peggy glared at Holliday, and Rafi was clearly upset.

  “You may have been right in some of your assumptions, Doc, but you didn’t have to be so blunt about it.”

  “I don’t like being led around by the nose, which is how I’m beginning to feel about this whole adventure. I don’t like being a pawn on somebody else’s board.”

  “Pawn or not,” said Peggy, “this place is a treasure house even if there are no artifacts. This place could rewrite the book on evolution. Rafi said he’s found dozens of plants and insects that no one has ever heard of. It’s a time machine and an invaluable asset to science.”

  “It might be if I thought they were going to make its existence public,” answered Holliday.

  “He can’t stop us from leaving,” said Peggy.

  “I wouldn’t push that too far, kiddo. They’ve kept this place secret for a couple of thousand years. I don’t think they’re going to break the pattern now.”

  “If we are to leave here, it must be secretly,” advised Eddie.

  “I agree,” said Holliday.

  “You’re both crazy,” snorted Peggy. “These are the gentlest people in the world.”

  “Said Captain Cook as he was beaten and stabbed to death by his friends the Hawaiians,” Holliday answered.

  Hiram and Harrison Fawcett returned, followed by four men carrying what appeared to be an extremely heavy object on a wooden litterlike carrying device. The four men set the object down in the center of the stone table and left the room. It was a stone box, possibly limestone or granite, roughly two feet deep, three feet wide and five feet long. It was clearly very, very old.

  “It’s an ossuary,” said Rafi. “Is there an inscription?”

  Hiram stuck his fingers in a goblet of water and smeared it across the long side of the box facing Rafi. A faint line of lettering etched into the chalky stone appeared.

  “It’s Aramaic,” said the Israeli. “Ancient Hebrew.”

  Matityahu ben Yohanan HaKohen

  “What does it mean?” Peggy asked.

  “Mattathias ben Johanan. He was a high priest in the first temple. He died in 169 B.C. He was also the father of Judas Maccabeus, one of the great Hebrew warriors right along with Joshua, Gideon and David.”

  “As in David and Goliath?”

  “Yes,” Rafi answered.

  “So it’s not St. Matthew.”

  “Way before that.”

  “It’s interesting as a biblical artifact,” said Holliday. “But why all the fuss? It’s not Christ’s bones or the Spear of Destiny or the Shroud or any of the so-called Relics of Power that people like these neo-Templars or Hitler or any loony you could name get all hot and bothered about.”

  “Perhaps you are being a little quick to judge,” said Hiram mildly.

  “I just don’t see it,” said Holliday, “or how the Phoenicians saw it two millennia ago, or the Templars a thousand years after that.”

  “Can you remove the top?” Rafi asked.

  “Certainly,” said Hiram. He gave a low whistle and the men who had borne the heavy stone box returned. He conversed with them briefly in his own language and they lifted the heavy stone lid from the ossuary and laid it down on the table. They set a thick, linenlike cloth down beside the lid.

  Rafi leaned over and looked into the box’s interior. “Unbelievable,” he whispered. Holliday looked over his shoulder and Peggy lifted her camera as Hiram reached into the box. Hiram gently lifted out a bundle of what were clearly human bones and laid them on the cloth. The bundle was held together by thick gold wire at each end.

  Peering into the interior of the ossuary, Holliday saw that the bottom and all four sides were lined with carefully welded sheets of gold—a box within a box. Neatly etched into the gold were what looked like schematics for a series of strangely convoluted circuits—a wiring diagram or … “What the hell is it?”

  “I know it like the back of my hand,” said Rafi, awe still in his voice. “Every archaeologist in the Middle East does, as well. I dug there as a student on my first field trip.”

  Holliday suddenly saw it. Plans for a settlement of some sort. “Why is it so important?”

  “These are the plans for the settlement at Khirbet Qumran, the place where the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. The large drawing on the bottom is for the Scriptorium, the Essene library of their beliefs. There is clear evidence that in His early days Christ was converted to the Essene Creed and formulated his own teaching into theirs.”

  There was a sudden commotion outside the palace and a small crowd began to form. A young man in a white tunic appeared, something cupped in his hand. At first Holliday thought it was some strange insect the boy had found, but then the boy tipped the object into Fawcett’s hands.

  “What on earth is it?”

  Holliday looked down at the object. It was about four inches long with roughly th
e same wingspan. The narrow body looked like some lightweight polymer, and the wings looked as though they were made of black, ultrathin sheets of mica. The creature’s single tiny eye was obviously a camera.

  “It’s an X-Drifter. They’re microsurveillance drones powered by sunlight and dropped in swarms from a larger unmanned vehicle like a Predator. Originally it was part of British Aerospace’s WASP division, Winged Aerial Surveillance Program. It was then taken over by the Pallas Group, which in turn is owned by my old enemy Kate Sinclair. They’ve been looking for us—now it seems they’ve found us.”

  • • •

  James Calthrop reached the Gare de Bercy a full two hours before his train left for Rome. He’d booked both a private compartment and a single coach seat on the Artesia night train. The train left at seven p.m. traveling through Dijon, Parma, Bologna and Florence before arriving in Rome at eight the following morning. The thirteen-hour trip was a rattrap for whatever cutout ghost assassin Constantine sent, but after twenty-five years assassinating people for a living, Calthrop knew most of the ways of the art, including being prey as well as predator.

  Bercy was a relatively new passenger station, built in the ’seventies to replace the existing freight station. The terminal was only three floors high, and sitting in the waiting room it was possible to see everyone coming into the station or leaving it.

  Calthrop spotted his quarry less than twenty minutes before the train left. The man was in his fifties or early sixties, round-faced, wearing wire-framed spectacles and an Ivy League cap used by a number of European men to hide their baldness. He wore a long, slightly rumpled brown cloth raincoat, scuffed brown shoes and carried an old-fashioned single-flap dispatch case under his arm.

  The man was utterly nondescript, the picture of a low-level bureaucrat with a timeless, weary look of faint worry on his face. His wife would be fat, his children would whine and he would have few, if any, friends. Most people wouldn’t give him a second glance.

  Calthrop, of course, was no ordinary person. The man whose job it was to fade into the background for all his brownness and wallflower appearance was perhaps just a little too perfect, the raincoat artfully rumpled to show his lack of care about his own appearance coupled with a clear vanity in the wearing of the tweedy little cap. Which meant that the cap was really worn to cover a recognizable baldness or even more likely a full head of hair, perhaps gray or even white. The man’s cheeks were perfectly shaven, even under the jaw, and the brown shoes were expensive brogues, either English or American and far too new to be that scuffed without the appropriate wearing down of the heels. He was a picture painted to look invisible, but the very artfulness of the image gave him away.