Paul Christopher: The Templar conspiracy

"No, no, I couldn't impose," said Brennan. "I'll just find a little hotel for the night."

"I insist," said Holliday, thinking about the strangeness of bringing an old enemy into the house. "It's bad luck to kick a priest out of your home on St. Stephen's Day." He smiled. "Besides, a 'little hotel' on M Street will cost you close to five hundred bucks a night."

"Good Lord," said Brennan. He stifled a yawn and got to his feet. "All right, Colonel, I'll accept your kind offer. No more than a few hours, mind; we're running out of time."

Holliday was on the telephone in the study when a bleary-eyed Brennan appeared in the doorway at ten thirty the following morning.

"Sweet Jesus, man, why did you let me sleep so long?" the priest said.

"Because you would have been useless otherwise," said Holliday. He scribbled something on a yellow pad. From the rear of the town house came the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. A few moments later Peggy appeared with a tray in her hands. Brennan flopped down onto one of the old, worn club chairs.

"Anything new?" Brennan asked.

"I've been on the phone since eight," said Holliday. Peggy poured everyone coffee and sat down in one of the other chairs, tucking her legs under her like only women seem able to do. "I'm calling in markers and favors from old friends. We've got some names."

"Bad guys?" Peggy asked.

"The worst," said Holliday, glancing down at the pad in front of him. "It's like a top-ten list. Four of them stand out because they specialize in very-long-range targets." He paused. "Dimitri Mikhailovich Travkin, GRU Spetsnaz in Afghanistan and Chechnya. He'd be in his early forties, but no one has seen him in years. There's a rumor that he retired when he first showed the early symptoms of Parkinson's disease, which would rule him out. The second name is a Frenchman, Gabir Francois Bertrand, part Algerian, worked with the French Parachute Regiment, which is the equivalent of our Delta Force. Bertrand was involved in some sort of sex scandal involving a superior officer's wife and they turfed him. He's supposedly living in Switzerland and taking contract work, mostly mercenary jobs in Africa."

"The third name?" Brennan asked, gratefully sipping his coffee and looking a little more alert.

"Edward Adler Fox, the top sniper in the British SAS. He was cashiered for insubordination, refusing to leave the front lines in Afghanistan. He wanted to stay with his men. Lives in a remote corner of England like some sort of hermit. Word is he's a little wacky in the head. No indication that he's active in any way."

"And the last?" Peggy asked.

"The only American. William Tritt. A good old boy from West Virginia. Shot squirrels as a kid because that's all they had to eat. Wound up in the SEALs and got an education-chemical engineering, and then a second degree in mechanical engineering. Apparently a whiz with any kind of machinery. He's also a dead shot. He won the Wimbledon Cup at Camp Perry three years running."

"Where is he now?" Brennan asked, helping himself to more coffee.

"He's a 'consultant' to both the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center. They find the terrorists; Tritt gets rid of them. They learned their lesson at Guantanamo; it's more cost-effective to kill terrorists than it is to capture them."

"You're saying that one of these men is responsible for killing the Holy Father?" Brennan asked.

"I'd bet on it," replied Holliday. "My sources are pretty sure of it, too."

"Then why aren't they looking for them?" Brennan asked.

"Maybe they are but no one seems to want to talk beyond the hypothetical. Something's scaring them off."

"What could scare such people off?" Brennan said. "You'd think finding the killer of the Pope would be a coup for everyone."

Peggy spoke up. "If nothing else, it's the politics of necessity," she said. "The Pope has been murdered. We in this room know there are four possible assassins-a Russian, a Frenchman, a Brit and an American. The last thing the governments of any of those countries want is to be associated with the assassin. The diplomatic damage would be enormous. Even the Italians are probably shying away from it. An Italian assassin killing the Pope? Absolute heresy. It would bring down the government." She took a sip of her coffee.

Brennan lit a cigarette, his first of the day, and gave a great, racking cough. "You mean no one is looking for this madman?" he asked finally.

"No more than they ever looked very hard for Kennedy's killer," agreed Holliday. "They had a convenient patsy in Oswald, who was just as conveniently murdered less than forty-eight hours later. Case closed and a potentially lethal diplomatic incident between the U.S. and the Russians was averted."

"So any investigation is nothing more than a dog and pony show?" Brennan asked.

"Until they find out who did the 'wet work' and who hired him," said Holliday. "You seem to think Kate Sinclair is involved. Among other things Kate Sinclair's father was a war hero who hit the beaches at Normandy, a senator himself and a deputy director of Central Intelligence during the Eisenhower years. He finished up his career as an ambassador. You're screwing around with the daughter of a true-blue American hero. Neither the present administration nor the CIA would like that particular piece of dirty laundry to be revealed, I can assure you. It's much tidier to simply say this is the work of jihad extremists and go with that."

"So what do we do?" Brennan asked. "It's David and Goliath."

"We gather irrefutable evidence," said Holliday.

"And how, pray, are we to do that?" Brennan said.

Holliday smiled. "We go to McDonald's for a Big Mac and fries and we ask the right questions."

The McDonald's in question was on a barren triangle of asphalt at the intersection of Old Dominion Drive and the Dolly Madison Parkway. Unlike the J. Gilbert's Wood-Fired Steaks and Seafood next door, McDonald's was unlicensed, which ruled out martini lunches, and it also had the advantage of three or four picnic tables for alfresco dining in the emission fog of the highways bordering the restaurant on all three sides of the triangle it occupied.

From an intelligence officer's perspective, it was the perfect place to avoid surveillance-except for the chilly weather, which didn't seem to bother Holliday's companion at all. Unless you were in the parking lot you couldn't be seen from the street, and the constant drone of passing traffic only a few feet away beyond the sickly screen of trees would befuddle even the most sensitive parabolic microphones. The fast-food joint was almost exactly a mile away from the National Counterterrorism Center main entrance at the Dolly Madison Parkway and the Lewisville Road.

"I've only got about half an hour," said Pat Philpot. Philpot was a senior domestic analyst at NCTC, which meant he tracked smaller fish that had slipped through the nets and traps set up by Homeland Security, covered the Mexican and Canadian borders, and kept his eyes and electronic ears out for a few potential Timothy McVeighs lurking in the backwoods of the continental United States.

He opened up the first of two Quarter Pounders with Cheese and began to eat, alternating bites of the dripping burgers with slurps from his large strawberry shake. Pat was a walking commercial for a heart attack, and it was hard to remember that the man across the picnic table from him had once commanded a first-strike combat team for the Rangers.

"So, what do you know about the Pope?" Holliday asked. He sipped his coffee and waited for Philpot to swallow an enormous wad of cheeseburger.

"He wears a funny hat and he speaks Latin," the big man answered.

"I don't need your bad jokes, Potsy. You wanted to talk to me here, not at the center, so that means you know something. Spill."