Paul Christopher - The Templar throne

From the interstate they made the brief thirty- minute commute to the state capital of Frankfort and finally, bypassing the small town of barely twenty-seven thousand, they arrived at Poplar Hill, home of the Sinclair family for almost two hundred years.

Originally Poplar Hill had been called Stoneacre Farm, named for the boulders that had been pulled from the soil by the earliest Sinclairs, and the farmhouse had been more like the impoverished cabin mentioned in the state song, "My Old Kentucky Home."

As the Sinclairs had prospered in the company of Rex Deus the old cabin on the hill overlooking the Kentucky River and the growing town of Frankfort had been replaced by larger and larger farmhouses, eventually becoming the gigantic combination neo-Norman, Gothic and Scots-Baronial style castle-mansion that sprawled over the summit of the hill today, a stone extravaganza that came complete with a granite porte cochere at the main entrance, several Disneyland turrets, a conservatory as big as a bowling alley, two secret passages-one on either side of the massive fireplace in the study-the Sinclair coat of arms inlaid in marble on the floor of the Main Hall and a tunnel leading from the basement kitchens to the stone stables and the coach house behind the main building. Half of the original stables were still used for their original purpose and held the Sinclair thoroughbreds, and the other half was used as a garage.

The building had been erected at obscene cost by Richard Oswald Sinclair, the present Richard Sinclair's great-great-grandfather. The chateauesque mansion had been built between 1888 and 1895 in direct competition with his art-collecting colleague, George Washington Vanderbilt, who built the famous Biltmore Mansion during the same period. The two men had wagered on who would build the largest mansion in the country. Vanderbilt won, with Biltmore coming in at 175,000 square feet to Poplar Hill's 165,000 square feet. Sinclair argued that if you included the stables, directly connected by the tunnel to the main house, he should have won. The two men never spoke again.

Holliday stayed in his seat for what seemed a long time and then one of the babysitters who had accompanied them on the jet escorted Holliday into the building and across the Main Hall. The elaborate entranceway with its marble floor and soaring ceiling with the inlaid coat of arms made Holliday acutely aware that he was still dressed in the jeans, rough shirt and work boots he'd been wearing on Sable Island. Looking at his watch, he realized that it had barely been four hours since he'd been staring down the throat of a hurricane.

He wondered if Gallant had made it through the storm and silently vowed to find out about the lobsterman's fate if he got out of his present situation alive, something he was beginning to doubt. If he authenticated the bogus ark for the Sinclairs his continued existence would only be a liability. While driving into the estate he'd seen hundreds of acres of field and forest, all far from any public road; plenty of places to discreetly dispose of a body.

They turned left off the entrance hall and went down a passage that looked like something out of Bucking-ham Palace, complete with dusty Persian carpets on the teak wood floor and heavily framed and individually lit oil paintings on the green, moire silk walls. The paintings were all European, mostly of horses in battle, their nostrils flared with the scent of fresh blood, their eyes crazed as their riders sliced each other to ribbons with their curved sabers.

They passed what appeared to be the doors of an elevator and a little farther on turned into a relatively small and comfortable-looking sitting room fitted out with couches and easy chairs centered around a reasonably scaled fireplace. Above the mantel was a simply framed painting of a small terrier-like dog in full flight.

"It's a Galla Creek Feist," said an elderly, elegant woman seated in one of the armchairs and noticing Holliday's interest. She had the rasping voice of a heavy smoker. "It's the kind of dog that Daniel Boone used when he was hunting squirrel. His name was Langford's Rowdy. He was my favorite."

Holliday noticed that the ark, uncrated, stood on the coffee table in front of her.

"You must be the mother," he said.

"My name is Katherine Pierce Sinclair." She lifted a hand and gestured toward the armchair facing her across the table. "Sit down, Colonel Holliday, you must be very tired after your journey." She gave the babysitter a look and he withdrew, closing the door behind him. Holliday had the feeling that he wasn't going far.

"You told Meg your little ruse with the box wouldn't fool me."

"It never really had to. We had people watching Miss Blackstock from the beginning. I'm a great believer in leverage, Colonel."

"I told Meg what I'd do if either Peggy or Rafi were harmed in any way."

"There's no need for threats, Colonel Holliday," said the elderly woman. She lit a cigarette and blew a curling stream of smoke into the air. She held the cigarette like a man, between the lowest knuckles of the first two fingers. "No harm will come to them as long as you authenticate the True Ark."

"When did you plant it there?"

"More than a year ago. Among other things, Margaret is a trained archaeologist. She was quite capable of following the clues to the whereabouts of the ark herself. Sadly, those clues ran out on Iona. From there they could have traveled anywhere. There were a number of possible answers, including Sable Island, so we manufactured evidence to lead you there. Sable was the most attractive of the possibilities because it would prove the viability of Rex Deus's assertion that the ark came to the New World. We had the box created using authentic medieval tools and techniques and placed it in the ground on the edge of Lake Wallace. Margaret had the exact GPS coordinates so she knew exactly where to dig."

"The inscription in Greek was a nice touch."

"We thought so. Margaret studied ancient languages at Columbia."

"A real Renaissance woman."

"A daughter a mother can be proud of."

"Handy with a gun, too," said Holliday dryly.

"She's been hunting at Poplar Hill since she was a child. She's a better shot than her big brother."

"The next president of the United States?"

"Quite so," she replied.

"Why me?" Holliday asked. "There are plenty of better-known medievalists around."

"I've been interested in you ever since your trip to the Azores a while back," she said. Her thin smile reminded Holliday of a snake swallowing a small animal. "As much as we need you to authenticate your little find on the table, I'd very much like to leaf through that little notebook that Brother Rodrigues gave to you with his dying breath on Corvo. I presume you have it safely hidden away."

In a safe-deposit box in a bank in Geneva, but he wasn't going to tell her that. "You presume correctly."

"Excellent. You can fetch it for us after the authentication at the conclave tomorrow. We'll take the G5 and make it a little celebration."

"What makes you think I'll do that?" Holliday said, even though he already knew. Katherine Sinclair smiled and took a heavy drag on her cigarette, taking it deeply into her lungs. When she spoke smoke burst out of her mouth like a dragon exhaling. An emaciated dragon at the end of its withered, leathery life.

"You'll do it because your life depends on it and the lives of Miss Blackstock and her new husband."

After Holliday's brief conversation with Katherine Sinclair he was escorted to one of the third- and top-floor tower rooms that overlooked the porte cochere and the lavish, formal terraced gardens at the front of the castle. The view was as grandiose as the castle itself. From the love seat beneath the curved glass windows Holliday was able to see the entire town of Frankfort nestled in the valley below the estate, surrounded on all sides by low hills, their flanks covered by lush green forests. From the high round room he could see the dome on the state capitol and the winding course of the Kentucky River, making its slow way north to join the broader reaches of the Ohio.