Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (15 page)

Harrison Blackthorn drove his silver Bentley through the quiet streets of Bedford, New York, eventually turning up his own driveway. He parked in front of the three-car garage doors of the sprawling split-level ranch house that was his home. The house was no ordinary suburban rancher; Frank Lloyd Wright had designed it for Blackthorn's parents in 1956. The attention to detail was extraordinary. The slates on the roof were all slightly angled to suit in various rooflines as they swooped up and down around the house. Instead of drainage pipes, there were chains that dropped to the ground and fed into small channels so that the water could drain toward the street, and one of the windows had been designed in the shape of an open lotus flower.

Blackthorn stared at the house for a moment, once again noting its perfection and the fact that
it was more a work of art than a house. He went up the curved flagstone walk to the front door and opened it. He stepped into the front hall and stopped.

Astrella, their Puerto Rican maid, was sprawled on the floor, a large pool of blood surrounding her from the deep slash in her throat. Feeling vomit rising in the back of his throat, Blackthorn edged around the body and headed deeper into the house.

The next horror was his dog, Prometheus, an elderly golden retriever. Its head was skewered with a butcher knife to the newel post of the stairs. The body lay below the bleeding head.

Staggering now, Blackthorn headed to the second floor. At the head of the stairs he saw that the door to his daughter Danah's room was wide- open. She was lying in bed on her stomach, the covers up around her neck. Her blond hair was marred by spatters of blood and brains from the large-caliber bullet that had ended her life.

Numb now, Blackthorn moved zombielike down the hall to the master bedroom. His wife, Julia, was sitting on the end of the bed, with Enoch Snow sitting beside her. As Blackthorn appeared in the doorway, Snow casually lifted the silenced barrel of his P9 pistol and blew the woman's head off. She flopped down to the floor,
arching sideways, and landed with her ruined face and head at the foot of her dressing table.

“I hired you to kill Holliday and the other two,” said Blackthorn blankly, barely fathoming the horrors he had just seen.

“Somebody paid me more to kill you,” said Enoch Snow. “Said you were a loose end.”

Blackthorn shook his head, still not understanding. “But—”

Snow shot him.

*   *   *

Russell Smart and his Ghost Squad flew from Prague to Istanbul, each traveling separately. They then took a Turkish Airlines flight to Kabul International Airport, arriving close to midnight. Still moving separately, all the men drove to the Kabul Serena Hotel and booked a room using the name on their respective false passports.

At one o'clock in the morning there was a knock on Rusty Smart's door.

“Who is it?” Smart asked through the closed door.

“Harper,” replied a muffled voice.

Smart opened the door and let the man in. Harper was a large man wearing Canadian BDUs and showing the rank of major. In his left hand he carried a large Samsonite suitcase. Without a
word, he brushed past Smart and went into the room. He dropped the suitcase onto the bed, unlocked it and flipped it open. Inside were half a dozen more Canadian camouflage uniforms. Harper took them all out, then reached into the large pocket in the top of the suitcase and pulled out six sets of military IDs and six high-power FN 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols.

“Hand these out to your men. Meet me in the lobby at nine a.m. tomorrow and I'll have transport waiting to take you where you want to go. Any questions?”

“No,” said Smart.

At nine o'clock the following morning Harper was waiting and guided them through the security apparatus out of the hotel. A Ford minivan was waiting in the driveway. Harper got behind the wheel. Smart and his men climbed in through the sliding door, and a few moments later, they were moving out of Kabul heading west.

At six that evening they reached the city of Kandahar and drove straight to the military base there. Harper showed his ID and was immediately let through the gates. They drove along a long dirt road until they reached a parked Blackhawk helicopter, its door already open. Harper, Smart and the rest of them climbed out of the
minivan. A black-bereted man in U.S. Special Forces BDUs jumped down from the helicopter. Harper introduced him.

“This is Ivan Simons, one of the Camp Gecko people.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Simons. He was a rangy man with big-knuckled hands, freckled cheekbones and a big pair of aviator sunglasses.

“He'll be your pilot,” said Harper.

“Good enough,” said Smart.

Harper stood by and watched as Smart and the others climbed into the helicopter. A few seconds later the rotors thundered into life, the big turbines rising to a wailing scream. The Blackhawk slid into the air, heading slightly south.

In the Blackhawk, Smart looked out the window from his jump seat position. He'd always enjoyed flying in helicopters; they gave him an almost erotic sense of power. Below him the ground looked like the craters on the moon. People had been fighting for possession of this destitute landscape since the time of Alexander. The British had fought two wars here, the Russians had fought for it too, and finally the Americans were giving it a try.

But none of them had been able to tame the warlord mentality of the scattered tribes and families in the barren country. There was talk of oil and
precious minerals, but it had never really been about that at all. Ever since Kabul had been one of the major trading stops on the Silk Road, it had always been about opium.

They reached Camp Gecko an hour later. There were four other Blackhawks lined up outside a fenced-in area that held several Quonset huts and a few smaller prefab buildings. Beyond the wired area, they could see what appeared to be the remains of some sort of ancient walled compound. The helicopter landed and the men stepped out into the terrible heat. An American sergeant led them to one of the prefab buildings and ushered them inside. There was a desk, an air-conditioning unit, a Coca-Cola machine and various pieces of communication equipment along one wall. The man sitting behind the desk was a full-bird colonel with iron gray hair clipped very short. His face was thick and ruddy, and he had the look of a man who had spent too much time in the desert.

“My name is Marshall,” the colonel said. “I'll be your watchdog for this operation and I'll be the one cleaning up all the messes. Which one of you is Smart?”

“I am.” Smart stepped forward.

“We've had a directive about you and your
boys here. It says you're a unit gone rogue. What do you have to say about that?”

“Deniability, sir,” said Smart. “If the shit hits the fan, they'll have somebody to throw under the bus.”

“And your objective?” Marshall asked.

“We're here to take out the Mullah Omar and bring him back here for rendition. If he doesn't come peacefully, we kill him.”

“All right,” said Marshall. “Let's come up with a proper plan, even though you don't really exist. Any of you guys want a Coke before we begin?”

*   *   *

It had taken Holliday and Lazarus the better part of three days to reach Mullah Omar's compound. They lay at the summit of a small ridge a quarter of a mile away from the compound. They had been there for an hour and had seen nothing. Dusk was falling and soon it would be night.

Using the binoculars, Holliday surveyed the compound once again. As he watched, the garage doors opened and a pickup truck with a mounted .50 caliber machine gun appeared. Holliday followed it with his binoculars. It went to the end of
an almost invisible airstrip and waited. Suddenly there was the droning of a single-engine airplane.

“Keep down flat,” whispered Holliday. He and Lazarus flattened themselves just below the ridgeline, making sure their silhouettes did not break the normal line of the ridge.

The plane came in for its approach, touched down in a cloud of dust and rolled forward, spinning fifty feet to a stop before it reached the armed pickup truck. Two men climbed out of the airplane.

“It's Dhaliwal,” said Holliday quietly. “The other one must be Bapat. He's carrying an attaché case.”

As the two men reached the truck, a man climbed out of the passenger seat and greeted them.

“It's Mullah Omar himself,” said Holliday.

As he spoke the mullah took what appeared to be an old-fashioned revolver and fired point-blank at Bapat and Dhaliwal. Both men dropped to the dusty ground.

The mullah called out an order and the man behind the wheel climbed out from the truck while the figure operating the machine gun dropped to the ground. The two men dragged Bapat and Dhaliwal back to the airplane and loaded both of them through the passenger door. The man
behind the wheel had a hurried conversation with the pilot. The pilot nodded. The figure that had been standing at the machine gun slammed the door and the two men then headed back to the truck. The pilot proceeded to turn the plane around, pausing for a moment as the engine worked up to full throttle. He then released the brakes and the small turboprop hurtled down the runway and into the air.

The mullah picked up the attaché case and climbed back into the truck. A few seconds later the truck turned back through the gates of the compound and dropped the mullah in front of the large fortified building that occupied the center of the compound. The mullah disappeared inside and the truck returned to the garage.

“Cutting down on the competition,” said Holliday.

“You, English, stand up.”

The voice came from directly behind them. Holliday and Lazarus rolled over and found themselves facing the muzzles of two AK-47s. They had been captured.

*   *   *

Geronimo Caserio stood in the small living room of the twentieth-floor apartment he had chosen. The owner of the apartment, a man named Jamal
Qudri, had taught geography at a nearby high school. He now lay dead, seated on the toilet in his bathroom. He no longer had a left eye. The back of the toilet was sprayed with blood and brains.

Caserio opened the long Hardcase container and laid it out on the dining room table, which had been pulled up to the window to overlook Shivaji Park. He withdrew the various components from the case, which fit together to become a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. It had a tripod instead of the usual bipod front rest. The stock rested on a heavy sand-filled leather bag. The weapon had a twenty-power Unertl telescopic sight.

Using a range-finder monocular, he stared down into the park. The range was twenty-two hundred yards, or about a mile and a quarter. The cricketers were already at play, but his target had yet to arrive. He took a small leather case from his jacket pocket, which contained an ordinary glass cutter and a large wad of putty. He laid the putty on the glass, then scored a rough circle around it. He tapped the scored area with two knuckles and the glass snapped. He pulled it back into the apartment, using the knob of putty in the center.

With that done, he began the arduous task of
lowering the weapon on his tripod rest until he had the angle absolutely perfect. He adjusted for wind, basing his calculations on the movement of the trees near the entrance to the park, and adjusted a second time for the distance. It was roughly the same setup he'd used to kill the Israeli and his wife, except that he was now in an air-conditioned apartment and not a windblown desert.

Geronimo had worked for P2 for more than twenty years and always followed his orders without question. He had killed policemen, ministers of parliament, housewives, doctors, several priests and even an archbishop. He was a religious man and believed with absolute certainty that his soul would burn in hell. On the other hand, there had been a reason for every person he had killed.

He checked through the telescopic sight and saw that his target had reached the cricket pitch. He slid a single round into the breech of the weapon, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The target was a little more than a mile away and wouldn't hear the sharp crack of the approaching bullet. Caserio kept his eyes to the telescopic sight and watched as the man's head completely disappeared. His job done, he methodically packed up everything and left the apartment.

Down in the park Kota Raman's bodyguards
were looking in all directions, stunned by their boss's death. Within a few seconds people began to gather around the dead man and it was all his bodyguards could do to pick up their dead master and carry him back to his expensive car. They drove off as police sirens began to wail.

Kate Rogers interviewed Professor Spencer Maxwell Boatman in his apartment on Boulevard Saint-Michel. The man's study was filled with books and piles of paper. The furniture was old and the Persian carpet on the floor was so thin in some places you could see the floorboards beneath it. Boatman sat behind the large plain table that acted as a desk and it was as littered with books and stacks of paper as anywhere else in the room.

“I'm not exactly sure what you want me to tell you,” said Boatman. “Or what authority you have asking me your questions in the first place. You are with the CIA and I'm British.”

Kate Rogers smiled at the handsome man across from her. “I'm CIA, you're British, and you're living in Paris. I can make things very difficult for you.”

“Why on earth are you threatening me?” Boatman asked. “I teach mathematics at the Sorbonne. I'm not a spy nor do I know any spies.”

“You know Colonel John Holliday.”

“I met him for coffee on one occasion.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Very little,” said Boatman. “We barely had time to talk about anything until he fled.”

“Why did he flee?”

“He got a phone call.”

“You're full of shit, Professor. You talked to him about the so-called Jesus Scroll, the one that describes Christ's travels in the East after his crucifixion. On the open market it's invaluable. The Israelis are furious that they don't have it and the Vatican is terrified about the revelations it might contain. We think Holliday either has it or knows where it is.”

“What can I say?” Boatman shrugged. “I spent five minutes with him and you sent him somewhere, didn't you?”

Kate Rogers didn't answer his question. “Since your conversation with him, we know that he's partnered up with a man named Peter Lazarus, an art cop who works for Interpol.”

“I know Peter. He's an old friend. We went to university together. I have no idea what
relationship he might have with this Holliday fellow you seem so interested in.”

“The local police and French counterintelligence have you on tape leaving here five minutes after a full-blown order went out to capture Holliday. The waiter at the café where you and Holliday met each other recognizes both of you. They wanted to bring you in for questioning, but I got to you before they could act. I assure you, Mr. Boatman, your job at the Sorbonne no longer exists, and if I were you, I'd leave France at the next available opportunity.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” said Boatman. “Now perhaps you could leave. I have papers to mark.”

Kate stood up. She rapped a single knuckle against the wooden table as she looked down at Boatman. “I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again quite soon.” She turned on her heel and left the apartment.

*   *   *

Alexander Mitchell—Zits—flew to Washington D.C., arriving a little after ten o'clock in the morning. From Ronald Reagan Airport, he took a short cab ride to the Pentagon. Standing in the outer ring, dressed in his best army greens, he inquired after Major General Thomas Beach. Luckily
Beach was in, and they sent an adjutant to fetch him. They made their way through the maze of corridors and hallways to the fifth ring, which overlooked the Pentagon courtyard. Beach was one of those rare people who worked at the Pentagon who actually had a window.

Beach was a year or two older than Mitchell and he'd done tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He wore an “Airborne” patch on his shoulders and had a long angular scar through his right temple over his nose and down to his left jaw.

“You've seen a bit of action since we were at West Point together.”

“No offense, Zits, but it doesn't look like you've seen any at all.”

“I teach history at the Point,” said Mitchell.

“You want some coffee?” Beach offered.

“No, sir.”

“I'm a busy man, Zits, so why don't we get to the point?”

“It's not Zits, sir. It's Lieutenant Alex Mitchell.”

“Sorry about that. That's all I've ever really known you as. But surely you didn't come here to talk about old times?”

“No, sir. I came to talk about Colonel John Holliday.”

“What about him?”

Mitchell told his story and by the time he'd finished Beach was leaning back in his chair with a strange look on his face.

“Do you know what I do here?” Beach asked Mitchell.

“You are a deputy director in the intelligence agency.”

“How the hell did you know that?”

“I keep tabs on everybody I ever knew at West Point,” Mitchell replied. “I figure that one day the information might come in handy. Do you know what Holliday is doing these days?”

“No, sir. He just popped out of nowhere.” Beach leaned forward and made a brief phone call. “There is somebody you've got to talk to now.” Beach stood up.

Mitchell followed suit. “Who?”

“My boss. Follow me.”

They went back through the confusing puzzle of corridors and hallways, finally reaching the south entrance. Two marine MPs stepped out. The two men gripped Mitchell by the arms and led him out into the daylight.

A Blackhawk helicopter, its rotors already whirring, was sitting in the south parking lot. The two MPs marched Zits Mitchell over to the waiting machine and assisted him inside. Beach climbed in and slid the big door shut. Ten
seconds later the helicopter rose and swooped away, heading across the Potomac River.

Fifteen minutes later it landed at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. A Humvee was waiting. Mitchell and Beach climbed into the rear of the vehicle, which drove halfway around the thousand-acre base and dropped them in front of an anonymous building made of black glass and steel. They made their way inside. Beach flashed his ID at a guard, who then handed Mitchell a visitor's pass on a chain. Mitchell hung the chain around his neck and followed Beach to an elevator.

The elevator was key operated. Twisting the key in the lock, Beach opened the doors, and they stepped in. There was no floor indicator in the plain elevator and it was only by the drop that Mitchell knew they were going down rather than up.

When the doors opened again they stepped out into a gigantic dark control room. The huge room reminded Mitchell of every film he'd seen about nuclear attacks.

There were catwalks everywhere with large supercomputers arranged on one side. A single giant screen in the center of one wall and dozens of smaller screens were arranged like something out of NASA launch control. Beach led Mitchell to a giant curved desk with an array of chairs and
telephones on it. He pulled out a chair for him and introduced the man on his right.

“General William Taber, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.” He had wavy white hair, half-glasses and looked faintly like Henry Kissinger in a very expensive suit.

“So you're the history teacher who raided the West Point armory for John Holliday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You could get ten years in Leavenworth for that, you know,” Taber said.

Zits Mitchell's eyes were drawn away from the general to the huge screen dominating the wall in front of them. Apparently a drone somewhere in the Afghan desert or perhaps Pakistan had fired a missile, which was now homing in on a line of vehicles coming through a narrow pass. The missile impacted the middle of the three vehicles, demolishing it in a giant blossom of dust and flame.

“You never saw that,” said the general.

“No, sir,” replied Mitchell.

“We were talking about your ten years in Leavenworth. Pretty serious stuff, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did you do it?” General Taber asked.

“Because I looked up to him,” said Mitchell finally. “He was the man who inspired me to become a teacher at West Point.”

“He was a lot more than that, you know,” said the general. “As far back as Vietnam we kept on running into each other and in stranger places for years after that. I used to think he was black ops for the CIA dressed up as a soldier but I checked up on him and found out he was the real thing. All in all, I'd say he was one hell of a soldier, but something happened along the way and he changed into something else.”

The general leaned over the large semicircular desk and called out to one of the technicians in the pit below him. “Give me the first one, Harry,” he called out.

The screen cleared. It was replaced by a crime scene videotape of a dead body lying in a hallway.

“This is the hallway of a house rented by a woman named Hannah Kruger. She has a Russian background, but we don't think that's the point. The guy on the floor is named Eric Monkman. He
is
a black ops man for the CIA. Apparently Holliday shot him several times. He then fled with Miss Kruger.”

Once again the general called down into the pit. “Let's have number two now.”

The second video clip showed the interior of an artist's studio set up in something that might have once been a greenhouse.

“See the painting on the easel? It's a forged
Caravaggio. There were large-format photographs of the real thing all over the place. There were also files of photographs of other paintings, most of them eighteenth- and nineteenth-century masterpieces. By the looks of it, Miss Kruger was a forger and the CIA wanted her dead. It appears they didn't get their wish. Not then, anyway.”

He called down into the pit again.

“This is Cointrin Airport in Geneva,” said the general as the video image appeared. “You can see Hannah Kruger there on the left, and if you look really carefully you can see Holliday in the lineup at the right. Then you can see this guy with a hat and overcoat appear and brush past Kruger. Just enough time to slide a knife up under her ribs and into her heart.”

Zits Mitchell stared, horrified, as the woman dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings snipped.

“Number four, Harry.”

Number four was a still photograph of a man on a mortuary table. “This is a man named Harrison Blackthorn. He was head of one of the biggest auction houses in New York. He was shot in the chest and head, clearly the work of a professional assassin.”

“Do you think Colonel Holliday had anything to do with this?”

“Not directly. But when the NYPD went through the inventory of paintings that Mr. Blackthorn had on hand, they found four paintings that didn't show up anywhere on the books. One of them was the Caravaggio that Hannah Kruger was forging when the killer showed up. Give me number five.”

This time the image was of a building with its doors blown open and most of the facade destroyed.

“This is the gallery of a man closely connected to Blackthorn. When they checked, Miami Police found half a dozen paintings that weren't anywhere on his inventory. Clearly, it's all connected. The next thing you know, we have both visual and signals intelligence that Holliday and an Interpol cop named Peter Lazarus boarded an Air India flight for Mumbai. A week later we get this from our office in Mumbai.”

Once again a video of a crime scene came on. A man in his sixties or seventies was on the floor of his Paris laboratory. Surrounding him was photographic equipment of several different kinds and on the light table there was a single page of some kind of Aramaic scroll.

“We had the page of the scroll checked out and it would appear that it comes from Qumran—in other words, it's one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It
looks like it was torn off its mounts and the entire scroll except this single page was carried off. We also have evidence that Holliday and his Interpol friend were there either during or shortly after the theft. In the man's apartment there was a great deal of correspondence to both Harrison Blackthorn and an Indian man named Kota Raman, the head of the large and very influential family in Mumbai.”

The general leaned down into the pit. “Give us the last one.”

The final image was the most gruesome of all. Another autopsy table, but this time the man lying on it was completely headless, the remains of the neck and upper spine a gory mess.

“This is Kota Raman. Do you still think your Colonel Holliday is so inspiring?” General Taber queried.

“I still don't think he would have done all of that without having pretty good goddamn reason . . . General.”

“We have Holliday in Hannah Kruger's house killing a man. We have Holliday connected to the auctioneer's murder as well as to Eric Bingham in Miami. We have Holliday within twenty-five feet of the Kruger woman's murder. We have Holliday and Lazarus in the Frenchman's apartment in Paris and we have solid intelligence that
Holliday and Lazarus met with Kota Raman and that both Holliday and Raman were interested in the scroll. You really think he's not involved in all of this?”

“I still stand by him, sir,” Zits Mitchell said. “He may have killed people following orders in the army, but you said it yourself—he was one hell of a soldier and soldiers don't go around murdering people.”

“Loyal to the last,” said the general, shaking his head. He clapped Mitchell on the shoulder. “I agree with you, Lieutenant. John Holliday is too much of a good soldier, but we know he's involved in this, and unless I miss my bet right now, he's somewhere looking for that scroll and he's in a jam. It's going to be our business to get him out of it.”

General Taber grinned. “I can be loyal too, son.”