Paul Christopher: The Templar conspiracy

"And then you became a priest?" Peggy asked.

"They asked me to. There were a lot of squeals in the Belfast priesthood in those days. Patriots, as well. They wanted me to find out who was who."

"Instead the priests turned you," Holliday said.

"They offered me a way out. I took it."

"And Leeson works for you?"

"We were at St. Malachy's together. Then we transferred to the college in Rome. We were both ordained in St. Peter's. There are a lot like him in America and around the world. In the Mossad he would be called a 'sayan,' a volunteer helper."

"All right, so he phones you, tells you about the weird confession. When was this?" Holliday asked.

"Three days before the assassination."

"Before? And you didn't say anything?"

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Colonel Holliday, but what was I supposed to say and to whom? He was a drunk parishioner four thousand miles away in a Virginia suburb, babbling about killing His Holiness. It made no sense."

"But now you think it had something to do with the killing of the Pope?" Peggy asked.

"A thimblerig is the old-fashioned name for the shell game, three-card monte," said Holliday. "'Crusader' sounds like some sort of code name. And that suburb in Virginia is where the CIA has its headquarters."

"It gets worse, I'm afraid," murmured Brennan.

"How's that?" Holliday asked.

"Father Leeson was murdered Christmas Day."

"Murdered?"

"Two bodies were found in a car in the ditch on the Dolly Madison Parkway, late on the night of the twenty-fifth. The one in the passenger's seat was unidentified. Father Leeson was behind the wheel. The unidentified body had been shot in the face. There was a.45 automatic in Father John's lap. He'd been shot in the right temple. There was a note on the dashboard that said, 'Apart in Life; joined in Death.' They're calling it a gay murder-suicide."

"Maybe that's exactly what it was," suggested Peggy.

"Except that John wasn't gay."

"You're sure about that?" Holliday asked skeptically.

"Perfectly," nodded Brennan.

"How?" Peggy asked.

"Because I'm gay, God damn you!" said Brennan, his face flushed from the drink. "I'd have known."

"How did you find out about all this?" Holliday asked.

"The FBI called me very late last night. They said I was the last number he'd called on his cell phone. My name was in his address book."

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing. I said he'd just phoned up to ask about old times. I said he sounded a bit maudlin. Depressed. I played right into their preconceptions."

"Why didn't you tell them the truth?" Peggy asked.

"By then the Holy Father was dead. I'd figured out that the man confessing meant the Holy Father when he was talking about 'our' father. Anyone who can organize the assassination of the Pope is certainly capable of tapping John's phone and mine. I had to speak to you face-to-face. I took the red-eye to Washington from Rome. I got in two hours ago."

"Why me, and why now?" Holliday said.

"A lot of your background is in intelligence," answered Brennan. "You have contacts that I don't. And you know something about crusaders, certainly."

The priest downed the last of his drink and stared across the coffee table at Holliday. "While the attention of the world is focused on Rome and the events taking place there, this Crusader organization will be planning their next attack somewhere else, and we've only got five days to find out exactly where and what that attack will be."

"I still don't understand why you came to me. There are lots of other medieval historians in the phone book."

"I think Crusader is nothing more than a front for something else. Something much more sinister."

Holliday sighed. "Get to the point."

"The supposedly unidentified man in the car with Father Leeson was someone named Carter Stewart."

"This is getting a little Byzantine," commented Peggy.

"Who is, or was, Carter Stewart?" Holliday asked.

"He was one of ours," said Brennan.

"Vatican Secret Service?"

"Yes. A lay operative. Like the Israeli Mossad's sayanim."

"And why is this important?"

"Because he'd managed to infiltrate the office of an American senator."

"Which one?"

"Richard Pierce Sinclair, Kate Sinclair's son. I think Crusader is actually Rex Deus."

"Sinclair's son is hard to miss these days with all that crowing he does about the imminent threat of another 9/11 in the Senate, but you don't hear much from his mother," said Holliday.

"She's retired," said Brennan. "On the surface it would appear that Rex Deus is in ruins, but I'm not so sure."

"Is she still at that Hickory Hill place or whatever it was called?"

"Poplar Hill," corrected Brennan. "No," he said, shaking his head. "She's got a private island in the Bahamas, a country place called Edinburgh House in Scotland, a huge spread in Colorado and some sort of estate in Switzerland. She's usually in one place or the other."

"But why would she want to assassinate the Pope?" Peggy asked. "What does she get out of it?" She shook her head.

"Forget about motive for the moment," said Holliday thoughtfully. "And forget her delusions of grandeur about her blowhard son. Let's look at some basic facts." He turned to Brennan. "Have the cops in Rome figured out anything?"

"They've narrowed the search for the sniper's position to somewhere on the Capitoline Hill. It's the closest area that has the elevation for a clear line of sight to St. Peter's."

"What's the range?" Holliday asked.

"At least nine hundred meters-a thousand American yards. Possibly more."

"Then he's a pro, just like I thought," said Holliday emphatically. "Military or private. You can pretty much guarantee he was military at one time or another; it's really the only way to get that kind of training. I'm also willing to bet that he's under forty. Much past that and the eyes and the hands start to go. You don't have the reflexes anymore. Carlos Hathcock did all his best work in his mid-twenties."

"Who is Carlos Hathcock and what was his work?" Peggy asked.

"He was a sniper in Vietnam. He killed people," answered Holliday. "I met him once, years later."

"Nice friends you've got, Doc."

Holliday ignored the comment. "The longest successful shot in modern times was by a Canadian at a mile and a half, but our guy is probably an American, Russian or a Brit. There's probably no more than twenty or thirty men in the world who could have shot the Pope from that distance and been sure of success. Whoever hired him would have gone for the best. He shouldn't be hard to track down."

"Then why haven't the Italian cops already found him?" Peggy asked.

"Because they don't believe such a shot is possible," answered Brennan. "Their ballistics experts tell them a thousand yards, but they think the shots came from much closer. Initially the medical examiner assumed the round had been a line-of-sight shot from straight ahead, so they concentrated their search to the east, assuming that the assassin had fired from some high ground like Castel Sant'Angelo. The bullet disintegrated on impact so the wound was a mess, but the examiner eventually found a concentration of fragments behind the left scapula-the shoulder blade."

"Which means the shot hit at an angle from right to left. Southwest, not east at all," said Holliday.

"Which means the range was a thousand yards," sighed Brennan. "The Italians love to complicate things."

Across the coffee table Holliday could see Brennan's eyes begin to flutter. The priest was fighting jet lag and a six-hour time difference. It seemed he'd collapse where he sat any minute.

"There's a guest room on the second floor," offered Holliday. "Turn left at the top of the stairs; it's the last door at the back."