Paul Christopher: The Templar conspiracy

"Phooey," snorted Peggy. "Much more rest and I'll die of boredom. Besides, I knew Dario Biondi; he was a good friend."

"Biondi was the Vatican photographer?" Holliday asked.

"Ever since Mari hung up his Nikon."

"What could you do that's not already being done?"

"I've got access at the Vatican. Favors I can call in. To my knowledge there's never been a behind-the-scenes photo story about the funeral preparations for a Pope. Besides, by Friday of next week every world leader will be in the pews at St. Peter's."

"Why Friday?"

"A Pope has to be interred within six days of his death. I checked," she said, and then smiled ghoulishly. "Did you know that on his death the Pope's name is called out three times and they whack him on the head three times with a silver hammer to make sure he's actually gone?"

"No, Peg, I didn't know that. I'll file it for future reference," Holliday replied dryly. He was less interested in the particulars of a papal funeral than he was in the motive for such an assassination. Watching the tape again and again, one thing was clear: this was no Lee Harvey Oswald amateur taking a shot of opportunity; this was the work of a trained killer, and that meant that somewhere along the line, politics were involved. But who except someone else in the Vatican could benefit politically from the Pope's death?

"It's true. First they whack him with a hammer, then they smash his signet ring with another hammer and finally they steal his shoes."

"I beg your pardon?"

"They take his street shoes and replace them with red slippers."

"You seem to know a lot about it," said Holliday.

Peggy shrugged. "I've been surfing the Net." She sighed. "I really should be there, you know," she said again. Then she put a serious frown on her face. "It would sort of be like a tribute to Dario."

"Horse puckie," said Holliday, laughing. "You just want to get in on the action."

"Yeah, well, there's that, too," grumped Peggy.

Holliday threw down his red pencil and pushed away from the desk. "Come on," he said. "It's St. Stephen's Day, and it's a nice, brisk, sunny day out there. Let's bundle up and find an expensive restaurant on M Street to celebrate."

"St. Stephen's Day?"

"The second of the twelve days of Christmas. Second Night. Boxing Day."

"Oh," said Peggy brightly. "You mean Go out and Buy Batteries for the Kids' Toys Day."

"That's the one."

They both climbed into boots and ski jackets and left the house. The weather was crisp and the low gray sky promised snow, although so far it had been a totally green Christmas. They turned off Prospect onto Thirty-third and walked the one block down to M Street. From there they turned again and walked along M for half a dozen long blocks, looking for a decent restaurant that was open.

They passed a few options, but Peggy didn't want pizza and Holliday didn't want Mexican. Eventually they crossed Wisconsin Avenue and finally reached Mie N Yu, which, unsurprisingly, was open and doing a roaring trade. The cutely named restaurant may have been expensive, but it had something for everyone. Supposedly serving "Silk Road cuisine" from Turkey to Hong Kong in half a dozen, long, narrow, themed rooms, it served everything from chorizo-stuffed dates and banana pesto hummus to Bombay peanut salad and Cuban jerk pork sandwiches. All of this was overseen by a distinctly non-Asian executive chef named Elliot.

They settled on the Tibetan Tent Room, which was just that-the entire room was enclosed in a huge tent and furnished with plush couches and big leather ottomans. They found a reasonably quiet table and checked out the menu. Peggy chose the pupu mixed grill, because she thought the name was funny, as well as steak and egg fried rice, because it sounded impossibly odd. Holliday chose Virginia littleneck clams and the twelve-dollar Silk Road burger.

Both ordered watermelon beer just for the fun of it. It also sounded disgusting, which it turned out to be. The food, on the other hand, although a little strange, was uniformly excellent. At the end of the meal Peggy ordered a pecan and chocolate croustade, a puff-pastry concoction, and coffee, and Holliday, a bit of an ice-cream addict, had coffee and the homemade lime gelato. The only thing missing was Holliday's after-dinner Marlboro, but having quit more than ten years ago he barely noticed.

"I really think you should stay away from Rome," he said. He flagged down a waiter and ordered a coffee refill for both of them. "It's going to be a zoo until they run down the killer."

"Look, Doc, I'm not some frail Victorian maiden. While you were in Afghanistan, I was in China, uncovering baby farms with a lot of Chi-com thugs looking for me. While you were in Mogadishu, I was cutting my teeth in the photojournalism business, doing stories about the Cuban mafia in Miami. You're my cousin, not my father, Doc. I thought you were my friend. I need to do something right now, not sit around and mourn a child that never happened and probably wasn't meant to be."

"I am your friend, Peg, but I worry about you." He shrugged. "It's natural."

"It's overprotective. And it's silly. I'm not the same little kid you taught to swim in the river behind Grandpa Henry's house in Fredonia."

"What if I came with you? Held your camera bag or your lenses-whatever it is photo assistants do."

Peggy gave him a long, shrewd look across the table, enlightenment dawning. Suddenly she broke into a huge grin.

"That sneaky little devil! Rafi put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Of course not," answered Holliday unconvincingly.

"Liar."

"He told me to watch out for you while he was away, that's all. And not to let you do anything foolish. Going to Rome immediately following the very public assassination of the Pope constitutes foolishness."

"I didn't think you and the Vatican were on very good terms," said Peggy. "It's not like you haven't had a few run-ins over the last little while."

"The same goes for you," replied Holliday. "As I recall, your last contact with that esteemed organization involved your being kidnapped and held for ransom in a fishing shack on the banks of the Tiber."

"Nevertheless, Dario was my friend and someone murdered him indiscriminately. He was nothing but collateral damage. Everybody's concentrating on the Pope-nobody cares about the little Italian guy with the big camera."

"They're one and the same, Peg."

"No, they're not," she answered hotly. "It's all about the killing of His Holiness. Dario is doomed to be a footnote in history. Nobody's investigating for him."

"I see what you're getting at," Holliday said with a nod, "even though it's pretty subtle. It's like Lee Harvey Oswald killing J. D. Tippit. They were so busy focusing on J.F.K."

"Tippit was the cop Oswald shot for no particular reason, right?"

"That's right," said Holliday. "Nobody ever bothered to find out why."

"Just like Dario."

"I'm afraid so," Holliday said unhappily. On his tours of duty as a soldier he'd seen collateral damage from entire villages bombed out of existence in Vietnam to children with their hands and feet lopped off by machetes in Rwanda and the hellhole of the Congo. Enough for a lifetime of bad dreams and horror-filled memories.

"So I've proved my point," said Peggy.

"Sure," said Holliday. "Maybe Dario was the intended victim all along; the Pope was just collateral damage."

"You're making fun of me."

"It wouldn't be the first time one crime was used to cover another one. Like Shakespeare said: 'There are more things on heaven and earth…'"

"I'm not a baby and I'm not an egg that's about to crack. I can take care of myself, Doc."

"I know that." Holliday shrugged. "I just worry about your safety, that's all. Strangers poking around in the Italian State Police's investigations aren't going to be welcome. I guarantee it."