Paul Christopher - The Templar throne

"No need," yelled back the man. "We got a heads-up that they were going to be snatched, from the Vatican of all places. A man named Father Thomas Brennan, of all people. Head of the Vatican Secret Service," said the older man. Sodalitium Pianum. Holliday had butted heads with Brennan once before, also about a kidnapping.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We snatched them first," said the man in the copilot's seat. "They're safe and sound. We've got them at Ramat David Air Base up near Haifa in the north, waiting to fly over here and meet you."

Holliday felt his heart swell with relief.

"Thank you," he said gratefully.

"Tsu gezunt," said the older man. "You're welcome."

"I take it you're Mossad," said Holliday. "Misha wouldn't say."

"Misha is a good boy, a good shot, too," said the older man. "We had a man infiltrating Quince's group. Turns out they're an outsourcing operation the CIA uses for black bag operations in so-called friendly countries. Our man GPS-tagged your shoes and the Sinclair woman's cell phone with data-pulling chips. We've been following you ever since."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"Some questions shouldn't be asked," said the older man.

"You don't exist." Holliday smiled.

"You catch on quickly, my boy." The older man smiled back, and they flew on through the falling rain.

Peggy Blackstock, her husband, Rafi, Doc Holliday and Arnie Gallant were fishing with hand lines in the placid waters of Bedford Basin at the inner end of Halifax Harbour. It was a perfect summer day, bright sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. Gallant had provided the dory, obscurely named the Geoffrey G., and an endless stream of local lore, out-and-out fabrications and tall tales and an equally endless monologue on the best method of bait fishing. It was R amp; R for everyone, but especially for Peggy, who'd had a miscarriage, almost certainly brought on by recent events.

"What exactly are we fishing for?" asked Peggy.

"Bull fish and mackerel mostly," said Gallant. "Eels, maybe."

"Gross," said Peggy.

"Can you eat them?" Rafi asked.

"The mackerel, I s'pose," Gallant said and shrugged. "The bull fish if you were desperate. Eels if you like that sort of thing."

"What does bull fish taste like?" Peggy asked.

"Whatever its last meal was," said Gallant.

"What does it eat?" Rafi asked.

"Mostly chaetognatha Sagitta elegans," responded Gallant.

"Elegant spear," said Holliday abstractedly. He was staring thoughtfully at absolutely nothing.

"Pardon?" Peggy said.

"Sagitta elegans. That's what it means when you translate the Latin."

"Arrow worms," said Gallant, jigging his line a little. "They look like hairy horse penises with a big jaw on the end. And they're slimy." He nodded toward the placid water. "There's billions of them down there."

"And we're fishing here?" Peggy said. "Eee- ewe. Gross."

Gallant laughed, then turned to Holliday, who was still staring out across the water. "A penny for them," said the lobsterman.

"Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm, Royal Navy."

"And who might he be?"

"Commander of HMS Royal Oak, the ship that delivered Major General John Ross and his troops to the shores of Maryland. In August of 1814. Ross went on to rout the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg. The Americans lost so badly it allowed Ross and his men to march on Washington and burn it to the ground. He was the first person credited with defeating an entire U.S. Army in the field. A month later he was picked off by a pair of teenage snipers. His body was pickled in a barrel of Jamaican rum and the Royal Oak took him to Halifax. The Royal Oak was probably anchored in Bedford Basin. Somewhere right around here."

"And what would this have to do with the price of lobster then?" asked Gallant. Peggy and Rafi had stopped concentrating on their fishing and were listening closely. Peggy knew Doc well; there was something in the air and it wasn't the smell of fish. Holliday continued the history lesson.

"There was more on board the Royal Oak than Ross's body in a barrel of rum. When he sacked Washington, Ross had three main objectives-the Capitol, the White House and the Treasury. In the treasury they found twenty thousand uncirculated silver dollars and an unknown quantity of ten-dollar gold double eagles."

"So?" Peggy asked.

"While I was doing research in Scotland I accidentally got into a batch of letters from a young midshipman on the Royal Oak named Cameron McLeod. Young Cameron was one of Admiral Malcolm's runners and one of his favorites. In one of the letters home to his mother he mentions that the rear admiral had given him an American gold double eagle as a souvenir of the successful pillaging of Washington. He also mentions the number of gold coins in the hoard on board the Royal Oak. Ten thousand."

"And how much would these little bits of gold be worth on today's market?" Gallant asked shrewdly.

"According to my research," said Holliday, "the silver dollars would go for about four million and the gold for about ten."

"For the lot?" Gallant asked.

"Each," answered Holliday.

"Mary mother of God," muttered Gallant, his eyes filled with an entirely unholy lust.

"Ongeshtopt mit gelt!" Rafi breathed.

"Holy crap!" said Peggy.

"You've got a bite," said Holliday, glancing at Gallant's jerking line.

Katherine Sinclair sat in the damaged study, her life in ruins as well as her house. After the debacle brought down on them by John Holliday and his godless rescuers nothing could be salvaged. The Edwards bitch had launched an all-out attack on Margaret's credibility and the authenticity of her find, and the chances of her son being elected leader faded with each passing day. The position would fall either to Edwards herself or to that idiot preacher Bainbridge.

She picked up the telephone in front of her and dialed Joseph Patchin's private number at the CIA. He answered on the second ring.

"Yes," he said.

"You know who this is?"

"Yes."

"Initiate Ironstone immediately. We have no other choice now."

"I understand," answered Patchin. The line went dead. Katherine Sinclair hung up the phone. There was no turning back now. The United States of America would never be the same again. Read on for a special sneak preview from another thrilling novel by New York Times bestselling author Paul Christopher

Coming from Signet in January 2011 It was Christmas Day in Rome, and it was snowing. Snow was a rare occurrence here, but he was ready for it. He had kept his eyes on the weather reports for the past ten days. It was always best to be prepared.

The name on his American passport was Hannu Hancock, born of a Finnish mother and an American father in Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught at the university and his mother ran a Finnish craft store. Hancock was forty-six, had attended East High School, followed by a bachelor's and then a master's in agronomy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His present job was as a soil-conservation biologist and traveling soil-conservation consultant with the U.S Department of Agriculture. Hancock had been married for three years to a young woman named Janit Ferguson, who had died of lung cancer. He was childless and had not remarried.

Not a word of this was true. Not even the people who hired him knew who he really was. He traveled under a number of passports, each with a different name and fully detailed biography to go along with it. The passports, along with a great deal of money, were kept in a safety-deposit box at Banque Bauer in Geneva. As an alternate he kept several more passports and a secondary nest egg tucked away in a bank in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he also owned a relatively small house in Lyford Cay-Sir Sean Connery was his closest neighbor-as well as a self-storage locker on the Carmichael Road on the way to the airport. The Bahamas house was his usual destination after doing a job. It would be his eventual destination again, but he'd been told to remain available for another assignment in Rome sometime within the next six days.