Paul Christopher - The Templar throne

"Wasn't there an easier way of getting here than by playing Tarzan?" Meg asked.

"Just being careful," said Holliday. "When you're tailing someone you usually use more than one person. If there was a second tail on the boat we lost him, too."

They began walking down the road toward the bridge.

"Do you honestly think all this cloak-and-dagger stuff is necessary?" Meg asked, her tone sour. "It really does seem a little over the top, you know, climbing over walls into graveyards and jumping off boats. Bald spies skulking about looking suspicious. People following us halfway across Europe. Come on now, Colonel."

"Come on, yourself," Holliday answered. "This ark you're looking for, how valuable would you say the contents are, if they exist?"

"They'd be priceless, of course," she replied.

"Right, and I've seen people killed for a lot less than 'priceless,' believe me, Sister."

The Prague Hilton was located just off the multilaned, elevated Wilsonova on Porezni Street, only a block away from the river. It was a huge place with a glass-pyramid-enclosed atrium and everything a well-heeled international traveler could want. It took less than ten minutes for Holliday and his companion to reach the hotel from the island and half an hour more to shop for the things they needed, including a couple of small designer suitcases for their purchases.

It was three in the afternoon by the time they finished, so they took a taxi for a short ride to the station. They picked up tickets in the new belowground station and then walked down the long concourse to the original Art Nouveau station, which had been turned into a large kavarna, or cafe.

They sat in the big stained-glass-domed restaurant drinking excellent coffee and snacking on jam-filled palacinky, the Czech version of crepes. At four fifteen the early boarding call for sleeping car passengers on the through train to Venice via Vienna was called and they went back down the concourse to the main station and boarded.

Neither Holliday nor Sister Meg had noticed the slight, neatly bearded man and his attractive companion seated on the concrete bench next to the waiting train, and they wouldn't have recognized them even if they had noticed, although Holliday had once seen them from a distance in front of a hotel on the Cote d'Azur more than a year ago.

Like Cue Ball, the bearded man and the woman had been waiting outside the convent that morning and had followed them to the Vlatava restaurant as well. They'd seen Holliday and the nun do their little vanishing act and had watched, amused, as Cue Ball panicked.

The man and the woman hadn't bothered to keep up their surveillance. The man had already correctly deduced Holliday's eventual destination and the woman concurred. They might go back to their hotel, but from the look on their faces it was clear that they'd discovered something in the gallery-convent, and it was equally clear that they'd assume that the airport at Ruzyne just outside the city would be under surveillance as well.

The train station was the most likely answer. They'd arrived well before Holliday and Sister Meg, and they'd been behind them in the line when the ex-Ranger and the nun bought their tickets to Venice. They followed suit, purchasing a double berth two doors down from Holliday's compartment. The bearded man then bribed a porter to let him wait for the train to be called at trackside and they watched as the couple boarded the train.

Calmly, Antonin Pesek, Father Thomas Brennan's chosen arm's-length assassin, and his Canadian wife, Daniella Kay, got up from the bench and stepped aboard themselves. A few minutes later amid a flurry of horns and clanging bells the lumbering overnight train to Venice left the station.

Venice stinks like an open sewer. Although rarely mentioned in the brochures, this is a simple, smelly fact of life in that otherwise beautiful city; household waste is flushed out with the tide every day, but some of the backwater canals remain stagnant and repulsive. Serenely beautiful Venice is not quite as romantic as it's cracked up to be.

Holliday and Sister Meg arrived at the Venice Mestre train station on the mainland just after eight in the morning and took a double-decker commuter train to the Santa Lucia station on the far side of the Liberty Railway Bridge. The day was already blisteringly hot by the time they arrived and the vaporetto they hired had no canopy. By the time they reached their hotel Holliday had a flaming headache and Meg was showing the first flushed sign of sunburn.

They booked two single rooms at the Rialto, the only hotel Holliday knew in Venice. He'd been to the city only once before, honeymooning with his late wife, Amy; married at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, where he'd been based at the time, honeymooned in Italy.

They'd laughed when it had rained throughout their precious ten days-while Hawaii was having perfect weather-but they didn't really care. It had been hideously expensive fifteen years ago; it was a nightmare now. Almost sixteen hundred dollars a night for two junior suites overlooking the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge for which the hotel was named, the only available accommodation in the hotel.

But it was familiar and that was all that counted right now.

"I can't afford a place like this," whispered Sister Meg, looking around the ornate marble and woodpaneled lobby. The floor was laid out in black and white marble squares like a chessboard and polished to a brilliant sheen. It made you want to take off your shoes.

"Neither can I, at least not for long," Holliday whispered back. It wasn't entirely true, but Holliday wasn't about to reveal that he had access to the various Templar numbered accounts he'd discovered in Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Malta, and Cyprus.

Their suites were side by side on the fifth and top floor of the pink stucco hotel; the decor was something out of a Merchant Ivory film with lots of dark furniture and gauzy curtains on four-poster beds blowing in the breeze coming in from the balcony, except for the fact that the arched doors leading to the narrow balcony were closed and the only breeze was coming from the air conditioner, which was set at arctic levels and was making Holliday's headache even worse.

He pulled the heavy drapes closed, blotting out the view, and kicked off his shoes. Twenty minutes flat on his back with his eyes closed would fix him right up. He dropped down onto the gigantic bed and was sound asleep within seconds of his head hitting the soft down pillow.

Holliday heard a faint knock on his door and opened his eyes. It was dark in the room and for a moment he was disoriented. Then he realized the drapes had been drawn shut.

"Coming," he said groggily. He yawned, then stood up and half staggered to the door. Probably the nun wanting to rant at him about something. He yawned again and cracked open the door an inch. It was Sister Meg. She was dressed in jeans and a man's white shirt, although she'd kept on the idiotic head covering.

"I was getting worried," she said.

"About what?"

"You."

"Why?"

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Holliday glanced at his watch. Eight fifteen; that couldn't be right.

"Eight?" He frowned. "Time for dinner?"

"Breakfast. Eight in the morning. You've been asleep for almost twenty-four hours."

"You're kidding."

"I am not."

Holliday stared at her for a moment, blinking away sleep.

"Give me a few minutes," mumbled Holliday.

"I'm going down to the dining room," she said. "I'll order you some coffee."

"And an orange juice," added Holliday. "A big one." His mouth tasted like the bottom of a birdcage. His breath had to be atrocious.

The nun nodded, still looking worried, and turned away. Holliday retreated into his suite and headed for the bathroom, stopping briefly to get his toothbrush and toothpaste out of his bag. He splashed water on his face and began brushing his teeth, staring at himself in the mirror. If he didn't know better he might have thought someone had drugged him, but in his heart he knew that it was simply age catching up to him.