Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

They walked across the virtually deserted campus and through the new developments around Le Lac de la Sole to a restaurant-bar overlooking the Minimes marina called Les Soeurs Dogan. They found a table on the patio and sat down. Duroc lit another cigarette. She ordered a licorice-flavored pastis. Not a coffee break at all. Holliday and Peggy ordered beer.

They sat in the bright afternoon sun and looked out over the forest of masts in the marina to the ancient stone breakwaters of the vieux port and beyond to the Bay of Biscay and the open sea. Gulls whirled and screeched. A breeze made the taut lines on the sailboats hum, and under it all was the steady heartbeat of the breaking sea.

It wasn’t hard to imagine this place a thousand years ago, the sailboats gone, the port filled with lateen caravels, multi-oared galleys and tough, stumpy looking little cogs making ready for sea. Some ships bound for England, some to Lisbon, and some to Gibraltar and finally the Holy Land. The man who owned such a fleet would have had a great deal of power. A Duke of Aquitaine who was also a Templar in partnership with such a man would have represented a serious threat to the Catholic Church. Things were beginning to come together.

“What happened to de Flor?”

“He was assassinated in Turkey in 1305,” said Duroc, sipping her milky, banana-colored drink.

“On whose order?”

“Some say Michael IX Palaiologos, the young emperor of Anatolia. Others credit Pope Clement V.”

Clement was Bishop of Poitiers, which included La Rochelle, and the man who ordered the arrest and execution of the Templars two years later in 1307-a new broom sweeping clean, and also managing to absolve the almost bankrupt Philip IV, king of France, from his enormous debt to the Templar banks. A circle closed.

“It sounds like this Pope Clement really didn’t like de Flor,” commented Peggy.

“By then the Templars had too much power and too much wealth for their own good,” replied Valerie Duroc. “It was the Holy Office of the Inquisition that saw fit to disband them.”

“As in the Spanish Inquisition?” Peggy asked. “Burning people at the stake, that kind of thing?”

“Only in part,” answered Duroc. “The Inquisition was much more than that. In effect it was the CIA of the Catholic Church, seeking out not just heretics among the general public but dissenters within the Church itself.” She shook her head. “If there is one thing the Catholic Church abhors it is change.”

“CIA?” Holliday said. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“Not at all,” said Duroc. “The Dominicans, the so-called Hounds of God, actually sent spies to infiltrate other orders. Groups of papal assassins have been known since the time of the Borgias; during the Renaissance religious murder became a fine art. In more modern times there was the institution known as Sodalitium Pianum, the Fellowship of Pius, an organization within the Vatican that sought out officials within the Church teaching the so-called condemned doctrines.

“In France the group was obscurely called La Sapiniиre, the Tree Farm-much like the CIA’s training school in Maryland called ‘The Farm.’ It was such an organization that masterminded the flight of SS officers through the ratlines of Rome and funneled black operation funds out of the Vatican Bank during the 1970s.” Duroc paused. “Oh, no, Monsieur Holliday, the intelligence networks of the Holy See are very much alive.”

Which explained the murderous priest in Jerusalem, but not why he was there in the first place. What possible secret could the Templar sword contain that would interest the Vatican a thousand years later? Axel Kellerman might be searching for war booty and his father’s legacy, but the Roman Catholic Church had more money than it knew what to do with.

Not money-power.

“What about Professor Bernheim’s idea about Saint-Emilion and the cave?” Peggy asked. “Is it worth a look?”

“Rubbish,” said Valerie Duroc, stubbing out her cigarette. “Saint-Emilion is almost two hundred kilometers from here-a hundred and twenty-five miles. During the Middle Ages that would represent at least a week’s travel. The caves of the hermit St. Emilion have been receiving pilgrims since the eighth century, and the underground galleries have been used to store wine for at least as long. It’s hard to imagine a worse place to hide a treasure.” She laughed.

“Maurice has a fanciful imagination; he would have made a wonderful lawyer but a very bad scientist. He tends to bend facts to his hypothesis rather than the other way around.” She shook her head again. “No, Monsieur Holliday, I am afraid your search for the mythical treasure of Roger de Flor ends here in La Rochelle.”

Holliday looked out over the marina and sipped his beer. Valerie Duroc lit another cigarette and leaned back in her chair. Peggy looked depressed. A huge yacht lumbered past them, big diesels throbbing. Two unbelievably beautiful women lounged on the after-deck in their bikinis. The name on the ship’s transom was picked out in black and gold:

“La Rocha,” he murmured to himself.

“Pardon?” Duroc said.

“The name La Rocha.”

“Portuguese,” replied the French professor. “The same as mine actually. It means ‘The Rock.’ ”

“Where’s Ponta Delgada?” Holliday asked, watching as the yacht motored out through the breakwater entrance.

“The island of Sгo Miguel in the Azores,” said Duroc. “It’s the main way station for sailboats crossing the Atlantic.”

“Didn’t the Templars settle in the Azores after they were disbanded?” Holliday asked, vaguely recalling something about it from his reading on the subject.

“They exiled themselves to Portugal and called themselves the Knights of Christ. The ships Columbus used to cross the Atlantic carried the Catalan Cross on their sails.”

“Could de Flor have reached the Azores with his fleet, or at least a single ship?”

“Certainly,” said Duroc. “With ease.”

They drove the big Mercedes south, following the long azure curve of the Bay of Biscay. They flinched a little every time they saw one of the Gendarmerie Nationale’s blue Subaru chase cars speeding by but traveled without incident into the Basque Country and the rugged coastal mountains of the Pyrйnйes Atlantiques, crossing the border at Hendaye with barely a ripple. The only visible sign that they had left one country for another was the change in highway signs from blue to black on white.

Gone were the days of barbed wire and Franco’s bully boys armed with machine guns poking through your luggage; now there were only blue and gold Eurostar welcome signs and the occasional multilingual tourist information kiosk.

They drove through the wine country of Navarre and west across the plains of old Castile and finally to Salamanca and the old battlefields Holliday had only read about in Bernard Cornwell’s almost addictive Sharpe novels. They crossed the border into Portugal with even less fanfare than there had been crossing into Spain and continued south through the old capital of Coimbra then took the toll route down to Lisbon. The entire trip took two full days, and during that time there wasn’t the slightest indication that they were being pursued by the police or anyone else.

In Lisbon they booked a flight to the Azores on SATA and flew out of Portela Airport the following day. Holliday had picked up a Bradt guide to the Azores at their hotel the previous afternoon and had been reading it ever since.

“Of course this whole thing could be a wild-goose chase you know,” said Peggy. The Airbus A310 had reached cruising altitude, and they were heading out over the Atlantic, the European Continent falling away behind them. “Grandpa could have been chasing fireflies.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe the Duroc woman is right; the search ended in La Rochelle.”