Paul Christopher: The Templar Cross

"You know about that?" Holliday said, startled. "It's barely been forty-eight hours."

Ducos took the pipe out of his mouth and smiled, the thin lips opening to reveal a neat row of large, pure white and obviously false teeth, made in some long-ago era.

"One of the advantages of belonging to an order that has been in existence for close to a thousand years is the number and the extent of the ears to the ground which are available," said the old man.

"The man who tried to kill me isn't important now; we have to find Peggy. Quickly," replied Holliday.

"Tell me everything you know," said Ducos.

In the end it wasn't very much. The Frenchman listened to what there was, leaning back in his chair and puffing on his pipe. When Rafi was finished, Ducos asked Holliday a few questions about the attack at West Point, then fell silent, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Finally he spoke, the words measured and precise.

"The man who attempted to kill you was almost certainly a member of La Sapiniere, the French arm of Sodalitium Pianum, the Vatican Secret Service. They were first written about in fiction by the late Thomas Gifford and more recently by your Mr. Dan Brown in his Da Vinci Code. The tattoo is sure evidence of this-it is the sigil, or crest of Pope Pius X, who instituted the original group in the early nineteen hundreds. They are also known as the Assassini and sometimes as the Instrument of God. They are willing to sacrifice their very souls as martyrs to a higher cause."

"But why try and kill me?" Holliday asked. "What's their motive?"

"And what does it have to do with Peggy's disappearance?" Rafi asked angrily. "We're sitting here talking about theological voodoo and she's in danger. What possible connection is there?"

"I suggest that the shared motive is a sense of imminent danger. The Vatican obviously sees Colonel Holliday as a threat. I would say the same holds true for Miss Blackstock. Either she alone or the expedition as a whole discovered something that the Brotherhood of Isis perceives to be a threat as well. The connection is quite clear. Brasseur must have triggered La Sapiniere's interest while he was doing his research at the Vatican and whatever he found in the Templar documents in the Secret Archives led to the kidnapping of the group in the desert."

"That's insane," argued Rafi. "It's oil and water. Islamic terrorists and the Vatican?"

"Oil and water indeed," said Ducos calmly. He paused for a moment, took a kitchen match from the pocket of his ancient suit jacket and scratched it alight on one yellowed thumbnail. He relit his pipe, sucking noisily and blowing clouds of smoke into the air, swirling into the broad sunbeams coming through the shutters. "Oil and water indeed," he repeated. "And since oil and water do not usually mix, Doctor, as a scientist I would suggest that you search for an emulsifier, some common cause."

"Could it be something as simple as territory?" Holliday asked. "The expedition crossed into the Brotherhood's turf?" He shrugged. "Maybe they were affronted by a bunch of Catholic priests defiling their sacred land or something."

"Possible but unlikely, Colonel. I was born much closer to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first but I have kept up with events, I think. There are few true believers anymore. Terrorist organizations are like political campaigns-they're always in need of money and volunteers. There are the cynical among us who believe, with good reason, that 9/11 was nothing more than a publicity stunt by bin Laden to raise his stature among his peers. In the nineties all he could be blamed for was a failed assassination attempt and some complicity in the Dar es Salaam and Nairobi embassy bombings. Instead of being the rich, favored son of an Arab sheik he was a nobody and a poor one at that. Just prior to 9/11 his family had cut off his seven-million-dollar-a-year allowance. He needed a fund-raiser. The Brotherhood are no different."

"Then Doc is right-it's really all about money," Rafi said.

"The Brotherhood is a small group and it has no real backer," Ducos said. "With Qaddafi in America's bed once more they have been cast adrift. The Brotherhood's territory ranges from Qare on the edge of the Qattara Depression to Jaghbub on the far side of the border."

The old man levered himself upright, wincing as he did so, palms flat on the desk. He lumbered over to the filing cabinets, opened one of the drawers and withdrew a buff-colored file. He brought the file to his desk, sat down again with a little sigh and pulled an eight- by-ten photograph out of the folder. He slid it across the desk to Holliday.

The photograph showed a young man in sunglasses wearing shorts and a black T- shirt that read I Was There: Solar Eclipse 2006-03-29. Directly behind him two turbaned men were talking beside a battered Toyota Land Cruiser. On the right edge of the picture Holliday could see some pale-colored ruins of what might have once been stone huts.

"This photograph was taken by a Canadian tourist chasing the 2006 eclipse. It was taken at the ruins at the small oasis of Tazirbu in the central Sahara. The two men talking in the background are Sulaiman al-Barouni on the left and Mahmoud Tekbali on the right." Holliday looked closely. Al-Barouni looked much older than his companion. His face was drawn and deeply lined, skin drawn tightly over his bladelike cheekbones. Tekbali was younger, his face darker, his eyes covered by expensive Serengeti Driver sunglasses.

"Exactly who are they?" Rafi asked, looking over Holliday's shoulder.

"Tekbali is a senior officer in the Brotherhood, second in command to Mustafa Ahmed Ben Halim, the founder and leader of the group."

"So what's the significance of the photograph?" Holliday asked.

"It is significant because Sulaiman al-Barouni is the chief go-between for a man named Antonio Neri. Neri is the boss of an Italian criminal organization known as La Santa. Neri's specialty is smuggling women, drugs and valuable artifacts. Contrary to the Great Leader's press releases concerning the satanic evil of the American drug culture, Libya has long been an alternative location for the Marseilles morphine labs. As well there is always a supply of village women looking for broader horizons, and Libya and Egypt have been doing a thriving business in tomb raiding and artifact smuggling for thousands of years." The old man lifted his sagging shoulders in a Gallic shrug. "The Vatican. La Santa. The Brotherhood."

"Oil and water," said Rafi.

"A common cause," said Holliday.

"Indeed," said Ducos, and smiled.

It was like stepping into a Humphrey Bogart movie; any minute now you expected a sloe-eyed Lauren Bacall to appear with a cigarette in her hand, looking for someone to light her up. The interior of the Bar Maritime in the Vieux Port of Marseilles was all brown wood and thirties- style, down-at-the-heels and I-don't-give-a-damn decor complete with a sleepy bartender and just as sleepy patrons nodding on their high stools over their pastis and Stella Artois, with hungrier patrons chowing down on escargots or petit quiche or a big bowl of local steamed mussels, the coquillage that formed the mainstay of the bouillabaisse that was the foundation of every menu on the Azure Coast.

Holliday and Rafi Wanounou were sitting at a small round table at the front window, soaking up the atmosphere. The remains of lunch were still on the table as well as their coffee cups. Seated with them was Louis Japrisot, a captain in the Police Nationale de France, formerly known as the Surete. Japrisot was short and stocky with a broad, jowled face, a lot of gray-stubbled five o'clock shadow and a bristling salt-and-pepper Stalin mustache, of the soup strainer variety. He appeared to be in his late fifties.

He had fierce black eyes, eyebrows like his mustache and a military-style short back and sides crew cut. Somewhere along the line he'd had his nose broken and he had a bull neck. Underneath the wrinkled brown suit the muscles of his arms and shoulders flexed like a boxer's. Sitting still was something he didn't do very well. He smoked Gitanes continuously, the harsh cigarettes disappearing into his big butcher's hands.