Paul Christopher - The Templar conspiracy

Peggy Blackstock awoke as the first pink rays of the sun rose over the mountains and craggy hills that marked the edge of the French Alps of the Haute Savoie. She had made her way to the backseat of the Prague rental Mercedes somewhere along the way and Holliday was now sitting in the front with Philpot, who was still behind the wheel.

"Good morning," the chubby man said brightly as she sat up, blinking and looking around. "Almost there."

"Where is there?" Peggy yawned. She stared out the window. They were on a high mountain road. To the left banks of heavy forest tilted upward; below, in the reaching light she could see the geometric outlines of a town nestled at the far end of a long, wide lake.

"Aix-les-Bains," answered Philpot. A narrow gravel road appeared on the left and Philpot took it, guiding the old Mercedes up between the scruffy pines, the road winding around outcroppings of rock until they reached a broad, flat meadow on a small plateau. Directly ahead of them was a classic French country house right out of Toujours Provence: a rectangular building of old whitewashed stone, a few deep windows and a steep-pitched tile roof. At the end of the lane a roughly constructed carport with a green, rippled fiberglass roof sagged against the side of the house. Under it, gleaming in deep, dark blue was an expensive two-seater Mercedes SLK 230.

"Whoever this guy is, he must do pretty well for himself." Holliday grunted, spotting the car.

"Pretty well indeed," Philpot agreed. "The war on terrorism declared by our recent leader had much the same effect as Woodrow Wilson declaring war on alcohol. It's always been the same way: one way or the other war is good for business. There's a great deal of demand for Rich's skills these days."

"Rich?" Holliday asked.

"Richard Arbruthnot Pyx. It's too absurd to be anything but his real name." Philpot laughed.

There was a wooden sign over the door, a name chiseled out in neat letters: LE VIEUX FOUR.

"The Old Kiln," Philpot translated, without being asked. He pulled their Mercedes in behind the sports car and switched off the engine, the old diesel dying with a shudder and a cough. They climbed out into the cool of early morning, Holliday and Peggy stretching and yawning, Philpot lighting a cigarette. Pyx must have had some kind of early warning system because he was already waiting at the door, a broad smile on his friendly face. He certainly didn't look like a forger to Peggy. In fact, he looked more like a rock star on vacation than anything else. He was tall, slightly stooped, wearing jeans and a white shirt with the tails hanging out. There were sandals on his bare feet. He had thick, tousled, dark hair and two days' growth of beard, and behind round, slightly tinted glasses a pair of extraordinarily intelligent brown eyes. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties.

"Paddy!" Pyx said happily. "Brought me some business, have you? Or just stopping in for a pain au chocolat and a cup of my excellent coffee?" On top of the good looks he had an Irish accent like Colin Farrell's.

"Business actually, but I don't think we'd turn down pastry and coffee." He turned to Peggy and Holliday. "Would we?" He introduced them, one after the other, and Pyx stood aside and ushered them into his kitchen. It was relentlessly low-tech with the exception of a bright red Gaggia espresso maker that was hissing and steaming on a simple plank countertop that looked as old as the house. The floor was dark flagstone, the ceiling plaster with exposed oak beams, the walls whitewashed stone. There was an ancient refrigerator, a freestanding pantry, a separate oven and a large, professional-looking set of gas burners.

Herbs hung from nails, copper-bottom pots and cast-iron frying pans hung from the beams and early morning sunlight poured in through a single, multipaned window with rippled old glass set into the wall beside the grill. Outside Peggy could hear birds chirping. At any other time it would have been an idyllic moment in the country; right now it was edged with fear, worry and terror. Pyx sat them down at a yellow pine kitchen table in the middle of the room, brought out a plate of warm and aromatic chocolate croissants from the pantry and busied himself at the exotic-looking coffee maker for a moment, making them each a large, foaming cup of cappuccino, which he then brought to the table. He sat down himself, dunked one end of a croissant into his coffee and took a bite of the soggy pastry. Peggy did the same. There was so much butter in the flaky crust that it really did seem to melt in her mouth. Philpot took two.

"So," said Pyx. "You don't look like the kind of people Paddy here usually brings to me, but I've learned that appearances can be deceiving."

"Passports," said Philpot, his mouth full. "And all the other paraphernalia."

"Talk to me," said Pyx, turning to Peggy.

"What do you mean?"

"Say something-Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."

"I don't understand."

"I'm trying to see if you have an accent."

"I don't."

"Depends on your point of view. In Castleknock I wouldn't have an accent but here I do. Speak."

Peggy did as she was told.

"Westchester, New York, but you've recently spent a lot of time in Israel." Pyx nodded.

Peggy stared. "How did you know that?"

"Vast experience," he said, grinning. "It's what I do." He turned to Holliday. "Now you," he said. "Same thing." Holliday grudgingly repeated the line of doggerel.

"Born in West Virginia but raised in upstate New York, right?"

"Close enough." The man was dead-on, of course. He'd spent his first four years in Norfolk after his father came out of the navy and before he joined the railway.

"Neither of you have an accent that anyone's going to be able to pick up unless they're an expert, which most U.S. passport control officers aren't. We'll make you Canadians. Either of you done much traveling there?"

"I've been to Toronto a few times, and Montreal," said Peggy.

Pyx turned to Holliday. "You?"

"Same." He frowned. "Why not make us Americans?"

"They've got access to U.S. databases. I'm presuming you're persona non grata there at the moment or you'd be using your own names."

"It's a long story."

"Aren't they all?" said the Irishman. "Ontario, then. Easy. They've got simple birth certificates and driver's licenses. You'll have to have a health card, as well."

"Health card?"

"It's free. Ontario government. Very efficient about having the cards, and for some sort of privacy-act reason they're not allowed to cross-index the databases between the bureaucracies. Good photo ID. I can do the health card, the driver's license and the birth certificate right here."

Peggy didn't understand a word of what the man was saying.

"The passports," Philpot prodded.

"Even simpler." Pyx smiled. "But first the photographs." He stood up and led the way to the rear of the house. They turned into an L-shaped hallway lined with bookcases leading to the bedroom, but instead of moving on Pyx stopped at the turn of the L and pulled out a volume from the bookcase. There was a faint clicking sound and the case swung open on a completely invisible hinge.

"Open sesame," said Pyx, and stood aside to let them enter. He followed and shut the bookcase doorway behind them. Peggy looked around the secret room. It was large, fifteen feet on a side, and windowless. Work-height counters ran around three walls with built-in shelves above. There were dozens of neatly labeled binders on the shelves, color coded, and in one corner there was an array of half a dozen large, flat-screen monitors. Beneath the monitors on steel racks there was a row of featureless black computer servers, each one with a blinking green light on its front surface. The counters were loaded with an array of peripherals from large flatbed scanners to photo light tables and several very professional-looking color printers and photo printers. Along the far wall was a complex three-screen LightWorks computer editing console for motion pictures.