Paul Christopher - The Templar conspiracy

"And just how did you arrive at such a detailed conclusion?" Brennan said skeptically. "You're friends with that MacGyver fellow, are you?"

"That's the west face of Mont Blanc," said Peggy, looking out at the high, spiny mountain looming above them. "I actually climbed it doing a photo shoot for National Geographic Traveler. A lot easier going up than coming down, believe me. Especially if you're in the middle of a blizzard, which we were."

"Fascinating, I'm sure. But we're still trussed up like poultry ready for the oven, and these people are going to kill us as soon as they get what they want from your uncle-and they will; believe me."

"I wouldn't be quite so quick to count Doc out if I were you," Peggy warned. "He might surprise you."

He dreamed of blood and war and the death of his wife, Amy, so long ago now. And then surprisingly he dreamed of baseball and the smell of pine tar.

And then he woke up. There was a dull pain dead center in his back where the first Taser had hit him and a second dull ache high on his left shoulder where the other cop had zapped him through Peggy's broken window.

That was no ordinary cop stop, he thought, his senses focusing again. Holliday opened his eyes. It was dark but he could see well enough to know that he was in what looked as though it might have been a cell-like servant's bedroom. At the end of the narrow bed he was on there was a small TV set with rabbit ears on a chest of drawers, and a straight-backed chair next to it. A single small window was covered by chintz curtains with a blue flower pattern. There were no pictures on the walls.

He got to his feet and went over to the window. He pulled back the curtains. Outside it was dusk. Enough pale winter light to see the wall of pine trees twenty feet from the window. He was in the middle of a forest. There was a heavy layer of snow on the ground. The window was eighteen inches square under a deeply overhanging roofline; even if he broke the glass there was no way he was going to squeeze through the opening, and it was a good thirty feet to the ground, anyway.

Holliday turned away from the window and went to the door. Locked. He sat down on the bed and looked around the room. Nothing much in the way of weaponry. The cops had been fake, or bought, at the very least. The question was, Who had kidnapped them and why?

The CIA was a good bet, but it was even more likely that it was Kate Sinclair and her religious fanatic friends. Fanatic, perhaps, but like a lot of zealots, Sinclair also had an animal shrewdness that could be lethal. Her Jihad al-Salibiyya had caught the imagination of the dozen or so men and women who chose what went into the news cycle, and by achieving that she was getting to the basic fears of most Americans.

Sinclair was rattling the Muslim sword and doing it extremely effectively. It was the same pattern of guilt by religious association that Hitler had used against the Jews, but it didn't seem as though the cultural history of the United States went back that far. Heaven help the news pundit who pointed out that little bit of history. Holliday was as patriotic as the next guy and had the battle scars to prove it, but sometimes it seemed to him that his country was blind to its own deeply entrenched, xenophobic madness. Who knew? The CIA had been infiltrated by the Soviets; why not by Kate Sinclair's people? Maybe there really was an inner CIA cabal of Rex Deus members steering American intelligence into its own, self-serving waters. After seeing Matoon at Sinclair's vineyard estate he was willing to believe just about anything now.

He looked around the room again. Eventually someone was going to come for him and he had to be ready when they did. He'd probably have only a second or two to make his move and he had to make it count. His chance came sooner than he expected. Someone on the lower floor had clearly heard Holliday walking around and knew he'd risen from his electrically induced slumber.

There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock of the bedroom door and a moment later it opened.

"Vo bist hellwach,"-you're awake-said the man in the doorway. German Swiss, 260 pounds, six-four and built like a linebacker. He had huge feet encased in sturdy hiking boots. In one ham-sized hand he held a chubby little HK P30 9mm, and in the other the door key. He was smiling, thick lips parted to show a single gold tooth in the corner of his mouth. He had brown eyes with eyelashes a debutante would have killed for.

Holliday didn't hesitate for a second.

He took one lunging step forward as he slid the snapped-off TV rabbit ear he'd hidden up his sleeve into his hand and rammed the broken end as deeply as he could into the big man's left eye. The eye burst like a grape, fluid dripping down the man's cheek like a sudden gush of tears, and he made a brief whoof sound as the rough metal end of the stainless steel antenna sliced through his frontal lobe and Broca's area and then slid through the occipital lobe to finally scrape against the back of his skull. There was almost no blood. The man was dead standing up, and Holliday had to act quickly, grunting as he took the full weight of the fresh corpse under the armpits and gently lowered him to the floor. He slid the gun out of the man's hand and checked the magazine. It was fully loaded. He went through the man's pockets. A wallet, a set of car keys, an extra magazine for the HK and an SWR suppressor. He kept the extra magazine and the car keys, and screwed the suppressor onto the barrel of the HK.

Holliday slipped off his shoes and stuffed them into the front of his shirt. As quietly as he could he jacked a round into the chamber of the pistol and opened the door. He found himself in a dark, short hallway. There was a narrow doorway to the left that was either a closet or a bathroom, and a steep flight of stairs.

He went to the head of the stairs and listened. From somewhere he could hear a TV blaring, a news program by the sound of it, and kitchen noises. There was the sudden gassy hiss of a soda can being popped open and then footsteps, the squeak of springs and finally a sonorous belch. The TV channel switched. A game show in French and then a sitcom in German. Happy Days, judging from the music. Somebody was working a remote.

Holliday headed barefoot down the stairs, keeping to the wall, the HK held in two hands at gut level. Eight rounds in the magazine. If he needed more than that he was in serious trouble. He reached the bottom of the stairs and another short hallway. An archway on his left led into a brightly lit kitchen. To the right he could see the jumping shadows of the TV show on the far wall of the living room. He took a step to his right and a floorboard creaked.

"Heinrich? Ist ihm hellwach sein?"

"Ja," said Holliday, unable to come up with something more original. He took a turning step into the living room. In front of him was a leather couch. The man seated on the couch half turned his head. At the sight of Holliday with a gun in his hand the man's eyes widened and he struggled to get up and haul his weapon from its shoulder holster. On the big plasma screen, the Fonz was flirting shyly in German with Mrs. Cunningham.

Holliday shot him in the right shoulder. The silenced pistol made a sound like somebody bursting a paper bag. The man screamed. Holliday fired again, this time shattering the right elbow, the bullet exiting in a blur of blood and tissue, finally hitting Henry Winkler right in his leather jacket. The plasma-screen image blurred, then dissolved like melting candle wax. A can of Fanta grape soda dropped from the man's hand and he sagged back onto the couch, moaning. No one else appeared. Leaving the wounded man where he was, Holliday checked the kitchen and the dining room. No one. He turned his attention back to the wounded man.