Paul Christopher: The Templar conspiracy

Peggy shifted the car into reverse and dropped her foot down on the gas in a long, smooth motion. The Aston Martin raced backward as the F150 came at them, gaining with each second. Peggy suddenly twitched the wheel to the right and simultaneously dragged up on the emergency brake to the left of the driver's seat.

The big car went into a sliding, perfectly executed bootlegger's turn and stopped. Peggy released the hand brake with one hand and pushed the shift lever into second gear. They were now facing back the way they'd come. She hit the gas again and the car gathered speed until they seemed to be skating over the snow, the rear end of the car fishtailing as they went around every turn. The only things that kept it from plunging off the road and into the woods were its weight and its low center of gravity. Throughout the whole operation neither Peggy nor Holliday said a word, Peggy completely focused on her driving and Holliday doing some quick computations in his head.

No matter how he figured it, the truck was almost sure to catch up with them before they reached the relative safety of Military Road. The chains on the tires gave the truck better traction, and it had four-wheel drive, sticking it to the snow-covered road like superglue. What was it one of his instructors at Ranger School had told him? "Fight or flight. If you can't take flight, then turn and fight."

Holliday looked behind them. The F150 was less than a hundred yards away and closing fast. "That turn, can you do it again?" he yelled.

"Say when!" Peggy answered. Holliday took the Beretta out of his pocket, jacked a round into the chamber and then used his right hand to pull open the door latch.

"Now!"

Again Peggy went through the moves for a bootlegger's turn, ending up facing the oncoming truck. Holliday threw open the door and flung himself out onto the snow-covered road. He gripped the gun in both hands, leveled the pistol at the upper sill and began to fire, aiming for the windshield, adjusting his aim from left to right.

At twenty yards the big truck suddenly swerved, tried to climb the incline to the left, then dropped backward in a spin that took it over the drop on the right, eventually stopping as it struck a stand of three oak trees broadside to the road above. Never one for taking half measures, Holliday dropped out the empty clip into the snow, fumbled around in his pocket for the second clip and rammed it into the butt of the pistol.

He began firing, squeezing the trigger again and again, trying to concentrate his fire on the driver's-side window. Halfway through the second clip there was a brief flash of sparks from a ricochet toward the center of the chassis. A split second later there was a flash and then a thunderous explosion as the thirty-gallon gas tank exploded, the concussion throwing the truck over on its side and igniting the trees all around it.

Holliday stuffed the Beretta back into his jacket pocket and climbed into the Aston Martin again, slamming the door behind him. Peggy stared at the blazing truck and the trees turned into torches, her eyes wide and horrified.

"There were people in that thing," said Peggy, a ghastly look on her face made even more grotesque by the play of the shadows from the flickering flames.

"Better them than us," said Holliday, his voice cold. "Drive."

She dropped the Aston Martin into gear, then eased the car into a narrow turn and headed north toward Military Drive. Behind them the fiery truck faded into darkness. In the far distance they could hear the first sounds of approaching sirens. Holliday reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out his cell phone. He punched in the number for the Prospect Street house. On the sixth ring Brennan answered hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"It's Holliday. Get out of there now; the house has been compromised. No packing, no nothing-just go." He paused for a second. "On second thought, bring my laptop. It's in a case in the study. Make it fast. You probably don't have more than a few minutes. Don't wear your collar, nothing that identifies you as a priest. Walk down to M Street and get a cab. Tell the driver to get to the Capital Hilton on Sixteenth. It's a couple of blocks from the White House. We'll be registered under the name of Dr. Henry Granger."

"I don't understand…" began Brennan.

"I'll explain later. Go. Now." He snapped the phone closed. For the rest of the drive into the city they traveled in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

"Why here?" Peggy asked as they crossed the discreet and dignified lobby of the Capital Hilton. The lobby was all low lighting and mahogany. It looked like the reception area of a high-priced law firm. Quiet was the order of the day.

"The valet parks the Aston Martin in a garage somewhere nearby, which gets it off the street for the moment, and we have a place where we can lay our weary heads while we figure out what to do next."

"Why did you tell Brennan the Prospect Street house had been compromised?"

"Because it almost certainly has been," said Holliday. "We know it wasn't Potsy's people who came after us, ergo it has to be someone who knows what he knows, and which also means they almost surely know where we live. It's got to be Sinclair's people."

"Why couldn't it have been this Potsy friend of yours?"

"Why go to all the trouble?" Holliday said. "Why put a memory stick in the pipe if the dead drop was just bait? Why go through the charade at McDonald's?" He shook his head. "It wasn't Potsy's people, so it probably wasn't one of the other alphabet agencies either: CIA, NSA, DIA. Someone who wants to put us down because we know too much about the assassination that they want to keep to themselves. If the killer really was this William Tritt guy and he's on Sinclair's payroll, then she'd go to any lengths to keep it quiet. Rex Deus would be haunted by it for decades. They have to keep up this terrorist front."

They reached the long reservation counter and a pleasant lady with a brass-colored plastic name tag that read ANNE V. booked them into a suite on the sixth floor and then handed Holliday a note. It was from Brennan: In the lounge. It was signed with the scrawled letter B. Anne pointed out a curtained area at the far end of the lobby, and they found Brennan in one of the orange-curtained alcoves across from the bar. He was sipping from a fat glass filled with a rust-colored drink that was too dark for Irish whiskey and too light to be Bourbon.

"I must admit a certain fondness for Canadian rye," said the priest as Holliday and Peggy sat down. "It's somehow a little bit uncivilized, like something you'd make in a bathtub." Brennan looked forlorn without the white-notched collar of his profession. His usual ash-flecked black shirt was covered with a ratty green, ash-flecked sweater that had seen better days. "I always imagine grizzled farmers in Saskatchewan wearing bib overalls and sweating over a hot poteen still hidden in their barns."

A waitress appeared and took their orders. Holliday asked for a Beck's beer and Peggy settled on a Jager Bomb-an Australian monstrosity that consisted of a shot glass of Jagermeister German "digestif" tipped into a larger glass of Red Bull energy drink. The waitress went away to fetch their orders, and they got down to business.

Holliday filled Brennan in about the snowplow attack as the priest worked his way through a second Crown Royal on the rocks.

"I didn't know you were such a driver," commented Brennan.

"Me neither." Holliday laughed. "I was hanging on for dear life."

"I took the photos for an executive protection article for the New York Times Magazine a few years back, so while I was there I took the whole course. That's the first time I ever used what I learned."

"Well," said Brennan, "we should give thanks that you could use it when you needed it." He lifted his nearly empty glass. "Slainte," he said, pronouncing the ancient Irish toast as "slancha." He put his glass down on the table. "So, now what, Colonel?"