The Templar Salvation (2010) (18 page)

“Come on,” Reilly questioned, “what do you mean, ‘perfectly equidistant’? How could they figure that out, what, seven hundred years ago? Even today, with GPS mapping and—”

“It’s bang in the center, Sean,” Tess insisted. “North-south, east-west, draw those lines, and where they cross, that’s where it is. Jed checked it using GPS coordinates. It’s really there. And that location has a major occult significance: controlling the epicenter of a territory was meant to give you magical dominance over it. And there are other geographic peculiarities to that location that have to do with the pilgrims’ road to Santiago and other Templar holdings. Now, is it all just a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe the Templars really believed in that mumbo jumbo. And maybe it’s more than mumbo jumbo.”

Reilly exhaled heavily. Whatever it was, it was something the man he was after was prepared to kill for. And maybe that really was all he needed to know.

“Bottom line … it could be anything,” Reilly concluded.

“Yup,” Tess nodded as she finished off the last piece of escalope.

Reilly studied her curiously, then shook his head slowly and blew out a small chortle.

Tess eyed him curiously. “What?”

“I know you. You’re just thinking about how this is all going to be great fodder for your next book, aren’t you?”

She set down her fork and stretched lazily, then sank back into the pillows. She turned on her side to face him. “Can we talk about something else?” She grinned, her expression dreamy. “Or even better, how about we don’t talk at all for a while?”

He smiled at her, cleared the plates off the bed and onto the room service table cart in one fell swoop, and sank into her.

THE BUZZ OF A TELEOHONE jolted his senses with the velvet touch of a taser and yanked him out of a dreamless sleep that had eluded him for hours.

He’d tossed and turned forever. It had been an emotionally devastating day, with highs and lows coming at him fast and furious. The night was harder. Images of the devastation and the carnage at the Vatican were suffocating any elation he felt at being with Tess again. He found himself replaying the events over and over in his mind, trying to rationalize what he had done, but he couldn’t escape the haunting feeling that he was responsible for it all and wondered how he was going to live with the burden of guilt that was growing inside him.

He pushed himself to his elbows, feeling dazed. Fine strands of sunlight were streaming in through small openings in the shutters. It took him a couple of seconds to register where he was. He glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table. It showed that it was just after seven o’clock in the morning.

Tess stirred next to him as he answered the phone.

He listened, then said, “Put him through.”

As he grunted one-syllable replies, Tess sat up, all groggy and tousled, and looked him a question.

He cupped the phone’s handset. “It’s Bescondi,” he mouthed. “They’ve got a hit. In the Registry.”

“Already?” Then her eyes lit up. “Conrad?”

“Conrad.”

Chapter 17

PARQUI DI PRETURO AIRFIELD, L’AQUILA, ITALY

A
s he steered the car down the last of the switchbacks and drove up to the gate that stood at the end of the scenic country lane, Mansoor Zahed once again felt pleased with his choice of pilot. The airfield seemed as somnolent as it had been when they’d landed there two days earlier. The pilot he’d hired, a South African by the name of Bennie Steyl, clearly knew what he was doing.

Huddled in a quiet valley in the Abruzzo region of Italy, the small facility was only an hour and a half’s drive from Rome. As Zahed approached it, he could see that, as before, there was little discernible activity. Recreational flying was far more expensive in Italy than it was in the rest of Europe due to highly taxed aviation fuel and steep charges for everything from the use of airspace to snow removal and de-icing services—a compulsory fee, even in Sicily at the height of summer—and the quiet airfield had gradually fallen into disrepair until an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck the region in the spring of 2009. The narrow, winding roads in and out of the area were clogged by fleeing locals, but the fact that the remote, run-down facility was within a stone’s throw from the devastated towns and villages made a massive rescue and humanitarian effort possible, which in turn inspired the Italian prime minister to relocate that summer’s G8 Summit from Sardinia to the small medieval town of L’Aquila to show solidarity with the earthquake’s victims. The airfield had been hastily spruced up in order to receive the leaders of the developed world, before it reverted to its natural, sleepy state.

A state that suited Zahed perfectly.

He pulled up to the small gatehouse. In the distance, he could already see Steyl’s plane waiting idly on the tarmac, its white fuselage glinting in the morning sun. The twin-engined Cessna Conquest was parked off to one side, away from the dozen or so smaller, single-engined aircraft of the L’Aquila Aero Club that were lined up alongside the short asphalt runway. The beefy gateman set down his pink-paged
Gazetta Dello Sport
newspaper and greeted him with a lethargic wave. Zahed waited as the unkempt, potbellied man pushed himself out of his cratered woven-cane chair and lumbered over to the car. Zahed explained that he needed to drive in to drop off some luggage and other supplies to the plane. The gateman nodded slowly, padded over to the barrier, and settled his meaty arm on its counterweight. The barrier tilted up just enough for Zahed to be able to drive through, which he did, with a courteous wave of gratitude to the perspicacious guard.

The gateman didn’t ask him about the drowsy man with the dark sunglasses who was half-asleep on the passenger seat. Zahed hadn’t expected him to. In a quiet, out-of-the-way airfield like this—kudos to Steyl, again—security wasn’t anywhere near as important as the latest football scores.

Zahed drove up to the plane and pulled up alongside it. Steyl had cleverly positioned it so that its cabin door faced away from the other planes, the flying club’s hangar, and, farther afield, the simple yellow-and-blue structure that housed the facility’s offices and its modest control tower. The precaution was probably unnecessary. There was no one else around.

The pilot, a tall, sinewy, bearded man with slicked-back ginger hair and deep-set gray eyes, emerged from the cabin door and helped Zahed with Simmons, who was sedated to the edge of uncousciousness. They guided the archaeologist up the steps and settled him into one of the wide leather seats. Zahed checked him out. Behind the dark shades, Simmons’s eyes were staring blankly ahead, and his mouth was slightly open, a small gob of drool pooled at the edge of his lower lip. The American would probably need a top-up before they landed in Turkey.

“Let’s get out of here,” Zahed told Steyl.

“We’re ready to rumble,” the South African replied. His tone was gruff, but Zahed knew that was just the man’s way. “Leave the car by the edge of the taxiway so as not to draw attention to it. I’ll start the engines.”

Zahed did as the pilot suggested and abandoned the rental car by the side of the hangar. The Cessna’s turboprops were whining to life as he headed back to the plane, and just as he reached it, he spotted a man in a white T-shirt, a wide pair of black trousers held up by braces, and big, heavy boots emerge from the tower structure. The trousers seemed to have a reflective stripe going down the side of each leg. He had some papers in his hand and looked like he was in a rush. More than that, his body language was giving off a hint of fluster as he climbed onto an old bicycle and started pedaling, heading their way.

Zahed reached the plane before him and climbed in. He found Steyl in the cockpit, flicking switches as he ran through his preflight checklist. He pointed the man out through the pilot’s side window. “Who’s this guy?”

The pilot glanced out. “He’s a fireman. They have to have them around at all times to justify charging us for them. And since the odds of them actually having to deal with a fire are virtually zero, they usually double as paper pushers and help out the guy in the tower with the paperwork. This guy’s a bit of a fusspot, but not too much of a pain as long as you flash the cash.”

Zahed tensed up. “What does he want?”

Steyl studied the man curiously. “Damned if I know. I already paid him the landing fee and gave him our flight plan.”

They watched as the man pulled up in front of the plane, raised his right hand up, and moved it horizontally in a slicing motion, across his throat—the international marshaling sign for the pilot to kill the engines. Steyn nodded and complied.

“Get rid of him,” Zahed said.

Steyl stepped out of the cockpit area. Zahed followed him back to the cabin door.

The fireman, a balding, middle-aged carnival of twitches, climbed onto the retractable steps and peered into the cabin. He stank of cigarettes, and his T-shirt had big sweat stains on it. He looked all hot and bothered and a bit dazed as well, as if someone had roused him by shouting into his ears. In his hand were some documents that he was waving at Steyl.

“
Mi scusi, Signore
,” the man wheezed in between gulps of breath. Beads of sweat were trickling down his forehead. “I apologize for the trouble, but,” he continued, straining to find the right words, “as you know, there was a big terrorist attack in Rome yesterday. And now we have to check the passports of everyone flying in or out of this airport and fill out these papers.”

Steyl eyed him thoughtfully for a second, then slid a sideways glance at Zahed before giving the fireman a wide smile. “It’s not a problem, my friend. Not a problem at all.” He turned to Zahed. “This gentleman needs to see your passport, sir.”

“Of course,” Zahed replied politely.

Steyl then pointed toward the cockpit and addressed the fireman slowly and with exaggerated enunciation, as if he were trying to explain something to a Martian infant. “I’ll just get my passport from my flight bag, all right?”

The man nodded and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “
Grazie mille
.”

Zahed stepped back into the cabin, found his briefcase, and fished out the passports—both fakes. The one he picked out for himself, from a handful of passports of different nationalities, was Saudi. The one he’d had hastily crafted for Simmons had him as a citizen of Montenegro, like the ones he’d had made for Tess Chaykin and for Beyrouz Sharafi, courtesy of a boxload of blank passports previously acquired from a corrupt employee of that country’s interior ministry. Zahed hadn’t needed the documents on the way in. Two days earlier, after landing at the airfield, Steyn had locked up the aircraft, disembarked alone, and casually trudged over to the tower to deal with the landing formalities. He’d then returned to the plane with the rental car later that evening and helped Zahed smuggle his sedated companions under cover of darkness. This was getting more complicated, which Zahed had somewhat expected. And as he glanced at the fireman, he saw that the man’s gaze had settled on Simmons, who was just sitting there, facing forward, immobile and expressionless, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Zahed felt a twinge of unease, and shielded from Steyn and the fireman by the seat back, he reached into his case, pulled out his lightweight Glock 28 handgun, the one with the expanded nineteen-round magazine that he favored, and tucked it under his belt at the small of his back.

He and Steyl rejoined at the cabin door, passports in hand.

“Your friend—he is okay?” the fireman asked.

“Him? Oh, he’s fine,” Zahed shrugged as he handed the Italian the passports. He gave him a complicit wink. “A bit too much of your local
Montepulciano
last night, that’s all.”

“Ah,” the man relaxed as he flicked through the passports.

Zahed eyed him carefully, his muscles taut, his senses on edge.

The harried fireman was struggling to keep Zahed’s passport open while he filled out one of the forms on his knee. He completed it, moved it to the back of the pile, opened Simmons’s passport, then set it aside as he flicked through the clutch of papers in his hand, evidently looking for something. He looked up at Zahed and Steyn with embarrassment and gave them a sheepish smile, then went back to his sheets—then one of them snagged his attention. He flicked past it, then stopped, did a double-take and went back to it. He pulled it out of the pile and studied it curiously. And then he did what he shouldn’t have done: he glanced at Simmons. A glance that wasn’t casual or accidental. A furtive glance, one that was loaded with information. A glance that made Zahed reach behind his back and, in a calm and fluid motion, pull out the handgun and aim it at the fireman’s face.