Paul Christopher: The Templar Cross

They sat in the rear AB seats on the port side of business class just in front of the galley. There were only two other passengers in their section-an overweight man in an expensive suit who broke wind in his sleep and an icy cold woman in a Chanel outfit and four-inch Prada heels who drank white wine steadily from the moment it was offered. Beside him Rafi dozed, fighting off jet lag that was in the process of reversing itself. For the first two hours of the flight Holliday stared out the window, watching as the Atlantic Ocean unrolled beneath the big wide-body's wings.

"I'm an idiot," he muttered finally.

"What?" Rafi said blearily.

"I'm an idiot," repeated Holliday.

"Why would that be?" Rafi asked, stretching and yawning.

"Motive," answered Holliday. "I should have been thinking about motive."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why was this Brother Brasseur of yours doing research into Templar texts in the Vatican?"

"I have no idea. Probably doing research into the Templar invasion of Egypt. He's an archaeologist."

"A year ago an assassin from the Vatican attacked Peggy and me in Jerusalem. Now a tattooed freak tries to kill me at West Point."

"Your point?"

"Why? What's the motive? I'm a history teacher. Peggy's a photographer. Why us?"

"Your connection to the Templar sword. The treasure trove of scrolls you found in the Azores."

"This isn't some whacko story about religious conspiracies and whether or not Jesus had a sex life. People don't kill each other over bits and pieces of history, no matter how historically valuable."

Rafi shrugged. "Okay. Why?"

"Money," said Holliday firmly. "This whole thing has been about money right from the start."

"Explain that."

"We followed the trail of the sword from my uncle Henry's house all the way to that cave on Corvo in the Azores. Rodrigues showed Peggy and me a hundred thousand gold-cased scrolls from the Library at Alexandria and half a dozen ancient storehouses. A wealth of history, enough to keep scholars happy for a hundred years. Longer. A treasure."

"The treasure of the Templars," agreed Rafi.

"For years now I've taught my students that the Templars, at least initially, were really no more than an organized troop of highwaymen, preying on pilgrims more than protecting them. Carrying the banner of the Templars was an excuse to kill and plunder in the name of Christ. They were thugs; gangsters in shining armor."

"And you were wrong."

"No. I was right. Dead right, and I should have remembered that. The scrolls in that cave on Corvo weren't the treasure at all." Holliday reached into the inside pocket of his sports jacket. He took out the thick notebook given to him by Helder Rodrigues as the old man lay dying in his arms. It was a tan, suede-covered, 240-page moleskin notebook with a tattered strap. It looked very old. There were water stains on the cover and spatters of dried blood: the blood of the dying ex-priest. "This was the real treasure," said Holliday, handing Rafi the notebook. "A thousand names and addresses that Rodrigues copied down sometime back before World War Two and kept updated until he died. Companies, families and individuals all with allegiance to the original Templar fortune dating back to the thirteenth century. Templar Incorporated. This is what the killer in Jerusalem was after. This was what Kellerman and his Nazis were after, and the assassin at West Point as well."

"AstroEur," said Rafi, reading the first name on the list.

"Hotels all over the world, four thousand of them. Catering for every major passenger rail company in Europe. Three billion euros a year."

"Atreal et Cie?"

"Real estate all over Europe and Southeast Asia. Even bigger."

"Breugier Telecom. Cell phones?"

"And cable TV," added Holliday.

"Credit Alliance SA?"

"The second-largest retail bank in France."

"And these are all Templar operations?"

"One way or another. I've barely touched the surface but it's pretty clear how it works. A dozen small companies, companies that no one would ever notice, invest in a larger company, eventually securing a majority control. I took a company called Aretco, a huge multinational, and traced it all the way back to a company called Veritas Rochelle, a shipping insurance underwriter going back to the early nineteenth century. Veritas Rochelle was owned by a single Cistercian monastery in the Dordogne region. According to the head of the monastery, ownership of the company had been willed to the monastery by one Guy d'Isoard de Vauvenargues, a count from Aix-en-Provence. As it turns out the Count de Vauvenargues family on his mother's side goes back to Robert de Everingham, one of the early Norman Templars in England. It's like a huge, endless jigsaw puzzle."

Rafi shrugged. A blond flight attendant in a natty suit and kerchief asked him if he wanted a drink. He shook his head and she shimmered off. "Okay," he said. "So all these companies, or at least their financing, all have their origins with the Templars. That was then. This is now. What does it mean in the present? I mean, so what?"

"I ran through a hundred of the interconnecting companies for the first five names on that list. The majority share holdings of all one hundred companies are held by Pelerin and Cie, Banquiers Prives. Does that name ring a bell?"

"Castle Pelerin in Israel. Where we found the Silver Scroll."

"The very one," said Holliday grimly. "It is, or was, a private bank. Private banks are owned by individuals and they don't have to declare their assets. Pretty good cover if you're trying to hide old Templar money. There are only three people on the board of directors of Pelerin and Cie, none of whom I had ever heard of: Sebastien Armand, Pierre Pouget and George Lorelot. Between them it looked as though they controlled about a hundred billion euros in assets. That's a whole hell of a lot of euros, pal. And that's enough to kill for."

"You used the past tense-'it looked as though' they controlled a hundred billion euros."

"That's because all three people on the board of Pelerin and Cie are dead. Armand in 1926, Pouget in 1867, and Lorelot in 1962. The only thing they have in common is that they're in the same row in a cemetery in the village of Domme in the Aquitaine district of France."

"So Pelerin and Cie is a front?" Rafi asked.

"I don't know yet. The estates of all three men are handled by an avocat-a lawyer in the village named Pierre Ducos. It took almost eight months to track Ducos down after I started trying to decipher the notebook. He's the person we're going to see in France."

"You think he'll be any help?"

"I think he's the only lead we've got."

Driving a rental Peugeot 407, Holliday and Rafi rolled across the Dordogne River on the centuries-old stone bridge at Cenac-et-St.-Julien and found themselves in a landscape that had changed very little since the time it had been the realm of Richard the Lionheart's mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, eight hundred years before. It was early afternoon, a day after their arrival in Paris, and the sun shone down from a perfect blue sky. Summertime in the south of France was a story-book come to life.

With the exception of the odd highway here and there the valley of the Dordogne was the same patchwork of fields that had existed since the Middle Ages, dotted about with walled villages, hillsides dark with forest, the earth itself as black as pitch and capable of growing almost anything.

Ahead of them the steep cliff rose from the banks of the winding river, cloaked in a protective skirt of evergreens. At the top of the cliff on a long angular plateau they could see the walls and the castle keep where more than seventy Knights Templar were imprisoned after the sudden dissolution of the Order in 1307.