Paul Christopher - The Templar conspiracy

With those few actions in the middle of the frozen Kansas hinterland, Tritt had put 270,000 pounds of the primary explosive element for the biggest truck bomb ever made into the system. Within the next seven days it would arrive in Portland. During those seven days the other members of Maine's Right Arm would collect the 2,700 gallons of diesel fuel necessary to add to the explosive-grade prills in the containers. The resulting explosion, effectively ignited, would be roughly one thousand times greater than the Oklahoma City bombing.

When Tritt was done, he disconnected the computer and rapped on the side of the truck. The cable snaked out through the little porthole and disappeared. Tritt opened the driver's-side door of the truck and stepped out into the cold, his breath hanging like fog in the still air. He watched as young Barnes gathered up the extra cable, then closed the door of the junction box. He replaced the combination lock he'd snapped off with the crowbar with an identical one from his jacket pocket.

"All done," Barnes said, grinning at Tritt. The assassin looked up at the dull gray sky. It was beginning to snow. Big, wet flakes. Perfect.

"Good job. Now drop the extra cable onto the ground."

"Beg pardon?" Barnes said.

"Drop it, soldier."

"Sure, sir," the young man said, frowning and obviously confused. He did as he was told, however, dropping the extension cable onto the snowy ground. Tritt unzipped his jacket, took the Mossberg Bullpup shotgun out of its sling and shot Barnes in the head. From the neck up Stephen Barnes vanished, pieces of flesh, brains and skull as small as shining pennies went rising into the air like a cloud of spray, settling invisibly on the snow behind and beyond the rest of the young man's body.

The corpse crumpled like a Kleenex. Tritt replaced the shotgun in its sling under his arm and went to the corpse. He took a pair of large biohazard bags out of his pocket and the small hatchet off the dead boy's tool belt. He neatly hacked off the boy's hands, putting one into each biohazard bag.

He sealed the bags, put one in each pocket of his down jacket and then picked up the wound-up length of cable. He used his toe to nudge the corpse into the ditch by the side of the road. Eventually, after a few more nudges, the boy's body toppled over into the ditch.

Tritt kicked snow into the ditch until the headless, handless body was roughly covered. With luck the boy's decomposed and leathery remains wouldn't be discovered until spring planting time. It would probably be longer than that before the corpse was identified, if ever.

He gathered up the cones, got back into the truck, switched on the engine and the heater, then tossed the coil of cable and the traffic cones into the back of the vehicle. He headed east, toward Wichita Airport. He'd park the truck in the long-term lot, wipe it down and that would be that.

His basic kit was in an overnight bag in a locker there. He'd rent something from one of the big agencies, drive a couple of states over and buy a food processor in some anonymous Wal-Mart. He'd grind up poor Steve's hands and flush the pureed remains down the toilet in an equally anonymous motel at least one state over from where he'd shopped at the Wal-Mart.

He'd rinse the food processor in a bath of Clorox in a motel one state farther on, and finally he'd donate the food processor to a Goodwill in some big city he was passing through. It was overdoing it, Tritt knew, but better too much than too little, as his old grandma used to say, whether it was for making pies or anything else in life.

"You've got to be kidding me," muttered Chief Randy Lockwood of the Winter Falls Police Department. "Why is he coming here?"

Mayor Dotty Blanchette sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Because Mr. Know-It-All went to the Abbey School and it's his fortieth graduation reunion."

"I don't think you're supposed to call the President of the United States that kind of name."

"Just stating a fact. And, anyway, he's the lame-duck President of the United States."

Lockwood sighed. "When exactly?"

"Ten days. Advance team arrives in a week. Apparently it's the annual grudge game scheduled between Winter Falls High and the Abbey School and he's been invited to drop the puck. A photo op, I guess. I'm supposed to be his escort since his wife is off in Thailand or somewhere, trying to save twelve-year-old hookers from AIDS or something."

"He was hockey, right, not football?" Randy asked. "I barely remember him."

"Yeah, he was captain of the Abbey School hockey team. The only reason they made him captain was because his old man bought the hockey rink for the school," said Dotty. "He got into Andover, but the Abbey had a better hockey team so he spent four years there before he legacy'd his way into Yale. Thought he was God's gift to women, too, which he was, of course. Handsome as hell and all sorts of charisma. He could smile a girl into bed. Not me, though. Too charming by a long shot."

"Women can be so cruel." Lockwood grinned.

"Water under the bridge," she said. "The good old days. Best forgotten."

"How's he getting here?" Randy asked. "When his dad came up in the summers he always took a float plane. The lake is frozen, so that's out."

"In their great wisdom the Secret Service hasn't seen fit to tell me a goddamn thing at this point," said Dotty. She leaned forward in her big, old, leather swivel chair and took a long sip from her stainless-steel Starbucks cup. The coffee was obviously cold and old and she winced as she sucked down the bitter brew. "Sometimes I think I'm pickled in caffeine," she said. "It's the only thing keeping me alive. Not easy running this town, even in the winter, let alone without presidents tripping over their own feet."

"I think it would be a good job," said Lockwood with a twinkle in his eye. "All those perks-chain of office, getting to ride in one of Mark Horrigan's Cadillacs at the head of the Trout Parade every year."

"Speaking of Horrigan, did you ever find his kid?"

"Vanished into the clear blue," said Randy. "Word is his dad sent him down to his mother's place in Florida."

"Going to go after him?"

"Why rock the boat?" Randy shrugged. "He'll get into trouble down there soon enough. Let them handle it." He got up from his seat in front of Mayor Dotty's desk. City Hall was in the old Municipal Building and through Dotty's arched windows he could see across the square to the parked cars on Main Street. Time to give out a few parking tickets to swell the town's treasury. "Besides," he said, smiling, "I've got more important things to think about than Tommy Horrigan. I've got to look after the GD President of the United States."

The first person to see Aix-les-Bains for what it was worth was probably a Roman centurion on his way into Gaul from Italy to conquer the unruly barbarians. When he mustered out of the army he returned to the pretty lakeside spot, built a pool over the hot springs, called it Aquae Grantianae and a tradition was born.

Located under the shadow of Mont Revard by the shores of Lake Bourget, the largest body of fresh water in France, the little town of Aix-les-Bains has been soothing the arthritic joints of its wealthy patrons for the last two thousand years. It came into particular favor in the 1880s after a visit from Queen Victoria of England. She decided she liked it so much Her Royal Majesty attempted to buy it from the French government. They graciously declined and then built a casino and a racetrack to further fleece the charming resort's guests, renaming the hot springs Royale-les-Bains.

Special trains arrived from Paris full of high society who came to paddle on the plage. Steamers churned their way across the English Channel, filled with the straw hat- and-tennis set, intent on whiling away the hot summer months in the refreshing Alpine air as wives cheated on husbands, husbands on wives and best friends on each other while Clara Butt sang "The Keys of Heaven" on the gramophone. It was la belle epoque, and as with all epoques, it faded away like an old soldier, the gilt in the ceilings beginning to peel, the marble floors cracking and the pipes carrying the hot springwater making a terrible clanking noise and sounding much like the joints of the patrons it had once serviced. The small and ancient town hidden away in the mountains was virtually forgotten, which was exactly why Mr. Richard Pyx, the document provider, lived there. That and the town's proximity to his numbered bank accounts less than a hundred miles away in Geneva, Switzerland.