Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (4 page)

“Open the garage doors,” he whispered. Once it was done, he switched on the ignition, scratched the unfamiliar shift into reverse and backed out onto the narrow street. Eddie and Carrie closed the doors and then squeezed into the forward passenger compartment.

“Now what?” Carrie said as they puttered out of town at an appropriately somber rate.

“Now we go and visit my old friend Professor Spencer
Boatman.”

Professor Spencer Maxwell Boatman sat at the tiny table set outside the Cour de la Huchette drinking café au lait, occasionally dunking his pain au chocolat into the milky coffee. In most cities, the Rue de la Huchette would have been called an alley, but this was Paris and nothing here was done as other cities. Directly across from where he sat was an even narrower thoroughfare leading down to the Seine called Rue du Chat-Qui-Pêche—Street of the Fishing Cat—which was named hundreds of years ago for the cats who went there to fish for carp when the river regularly flooded in the spring.

Boatman was in his mid-forties but he still had the air of a tall, slim figure from a Renaissance painting by Raphael. His face was long, the features as smooth and sculptured as a statue by Cellini, his hair black but tinged with streaks of silver, his large
eyes suffering from heterochromia—one eye a bright blue, the other startling green.

Today he was wearing a pale linen suit, a small blue-checkered handmade Egyptian cotton shirt and Russian calf loafers. He was the kind of middle-aged man who young girls fell in love with as easily as taking in a deep breath. The kind of man people his own age knew to keep away from their daughters. On top of that, he had an IQ of 224, an eidetic memory, doctorates in everything from chemistry and physics to archaeology and psychology as well as a background that included more wealth than several medium-sized countries. To make matters worse, Spencer Boatman had never changed his personality from the friendly unassuming kid he'd been when Holliday had met him at school during his first year at Georgetown when Boatman was graduating with a master's degree in chemistry at sixteen. The scholar was reading C. S. Lewis's
The Abolition of Man
when Holliday sat down across from him.

“Doc. Strange place to meet.”

“I keep the apartment above the bar as a safe house when I'm here in Paris. My two friends are getting some well-earned sleep.” Holliday paused. “You weren't followed, were you?”

“I should think not. I've had the bloody CIA,
MI6 and the idiots at GCHQ Cheltenham following me around and wooing me for years. I've even had the froggies and the Russian FSB sniffing around me just to make sure I'm not working for someone else. I know how to give them the slip.”

“I need to ask you a question.”

“So you said when you called me in the middle of the night.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East'?”

It was the Aramaic phrase carved into the wall of the cave at Qumran, where Peggy and Rafi had been murdered.

Holliday could see Boatman's mind at work, the sounds of Quai Saint-Michel fading away in his ears until there was nothing except that memory working in the deepest part of his brain. Suddenly Boatman's eyes lit up. Holliday could almost see a lightbulb coming on above his handsome head.

“The traitor at the feast is given the robe, the feast is eaten and the greatest is least,” said Boatman. “It's a quotation from Scroll 59 of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the one that was stolen in 1949 by a professor from the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. It suggests that Judas wore
the kittel, the robe that marked him as Christ during the Last Supper, and that it was Christ who took Judas's place. Since there was no way of identifying people during that period, it's more than likely that the story is true: Judas took the place of Christ, thus allowing the prophecy of the Resurrection to occur and for Christ to continue his teachings and his travels to the East. As I said, the scroll containing the facts of this story was taken by an archaeologist from the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem.”

Holliday nodded. The Judas-Christ switch was a theory he'd heard more than once before. “Does anyone know where Scroll 59 is now?”

“There are lots of stories, but there's one man who might tell you for sure. He's here in Paris. His name is Peter Lazarus. He knows a great deal about stolen and looted art and artifacts. In fact, that's his job.”

*   *   *

Elliot Foster stared down into the bull pen and scowled. He'd sent out one of his best teams of field men on the tip they'd received from their mole in the French Police Judiciaire and the two men had missed several of their scheduled call-ins.

Foster heard a clattering of heels behind him
and turned. It was Maggie Teal, the hard-faced sixtysomething head of station for Paris. She was wearing expensive heels, a Prada suit and a remote headphone. Like Foster, Teal had risen to power the hard way with years of hard work, dedication and an ability to sidestep any political shitstorms that came in her direction. Her hair was a steely gray, and there was never even a wisp of a rumor of her involvement with a man. She was as sexless as a hammer but, oddly, had a husky, almost erotic voice, like an echo of Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
. The only problem was she was still one of the good guys and Foster knew that there was no armor more impervious than that worn by the true believer.

“What is it?” Foster asked.

“We've got a hit. I put out a surveillance tag on all our video links and put in all of Holliday's known acquaintances in Paris. His name is Spencer Boatman.”

“Where?”

“Rive Gauche.” Teal paused and spoke into her headphone. “Put it on the grid. I want video and audio and boots on the ground ASAP. Boundary is Quai de Gesvres on the north, Saint-Germain on the south, Pont Neuf on the west and Pont d'Arcole to the east. Cover all the Métro entrances and report every five minutes into Central.” Teal
turned her attention back to Foster. “Ten minutes and we'll have him in the bag.” The woman frowned. “Although I'm still not sure why we want him so bad.”

“Above your pay grade, Maggie. Just get him.”

“Consider it done.”

*   *   *

The disposable in Holliday's pocket buzzed. It was Carrie, her voice urgent. “Get out of there—they had a tag on your friend. You've got about six minutes before the net starts to close.”

“What about you and Eddie?”

“Already moving. Get to the Saint-Michel Métro entrance and then get a train at Châtelet to Nation. Walk to the open-air farmers' market at Saint-Mandé. We'll meet there. Go. Right now.”

Holliday stuffed the phone back in his pocket. “We've been rumbled. You go any way except the direction you see me going in.”

Boatman looked stunned and began to speak but Holliday wasn't listening. He picked up an empty wineglass, wrapped it in a linen napkin, then stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. He crossed Rue de la Huchette and slipped into the narrow alley across from the bistro. Lost in the shadows, he could see all the way down to the Seine.

Over its thousand-year history, the
eight-foot-wide space had gone from being a drainage ditch for human waste to an alley and eventually achieved its final nomenclature as a bona fide
rue
. It had been a home to slit purses and petty thieves, a shortcut for Picasso from his studio on the quai and a way for resistance fighters to disappear during World War II.

Suddenly Holliday's view of the Seine was blocked. There was someone else in the alley coming toward him from the north. A coincidence? Highly unlikely. He took out his linen package and smashed the goblet against the old stone wall beside him. There was a muffled shattering sound as the goblet broke, but Holliday felt the stem firm in his grip. He dropped the linen, and any pretense of being a passerby vanished. An ordinary person walking up the alley, seeing a man approaching him with a broken glass in his hand, would have fled, but this man continued toward him. So much for coincidence.

When he was twenty feet away, the approaching man reached threateningly into the inside pocket of his jacket. A normal reaction would have been to pause, but instead Holliday sprinted forward, the broken stem of the glass raised to the level of the man's crotch. The man's eyes flickered and suddenly Holliday lunged forward, stabbing at the man's exposed throat. The
splintered stem dug into the stretched skin and then swept over the right carotid, gouging through the thick, rubbery artery.

Holliday pushed harder, setting the stem in the man's windpipe. With his free hand Holliday gathered up the cloth of the man's jacket and turned him against the left side of the alley, flattening him against the wall, keeping him standing with the force of his hip as the man bled out against the ancient stone. He let go of the broken glass, pushed his hand under the man's jacket and pulled a pistol out of the hidden shoulder holster.

He stepped back and looked down at the weapon before stuffing it into his pocket. It was a SIG Pro, standard issue for the French secret police. He found the man's wallet in the left inside pocket of his suit jacket, and an ID folder in one of the sleeves identified the man as Paul Richard, a detective in the DST—Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. So now the French were after him as well as the Company. He felt as if there was a target painted on his back. He hurried down the alley to the end. He was running out of time.

With the inclusion of the French cops, everything had been thrown for a loop. It was a whole new ball game.

He stopped and turned back the way he'd
come. Whatever net had been thrown over the area had effectively been doubled now. He went back thirty feet into the shadowy alley. There was a small lane servicing the buildings that faced the Quai Saint-Michel. He squeezed down the narrow crevasse. It smelled like the garbage that was spilling out of the bins at the rear entrances of the buildings. A rat scurried. Holliday reached a bin marked “Hôtel du Quai.” The same name was stenciled on a gray steel door that was propped open with a brick. Holliday pulled it open and stepped into a short hall that led him to a kitchen area filled with steam, turmoil and the odors of half a dozen dishes being cooked. Men in paper hats and aprons were moving from station to station fetching, chopping, tasting and flambéing, while a fat man with sweat streaming down his face wearing a tall chef's hat bellowed orders. A skinny man looked up, a bloody cleaver raised in his hand above a butcher block with a slaughtered suckling pig spread-eagle across it. He scowled. Holliday flashed the ID folder and the man dropped his eyes and his scowl.

Holliday pushed out through the swinging doors into a dowdy restaurant that was barely larger than an average living room. The walls were yellowing and decorated with cheap prints
of Parisian scenes. The floor was covered in carpeting that had probably been a rich red but had aged to an ugly dark brown after decades of use. There were three diners all eating soup and none of them looked very happy about it.

Holliday threaded his way between the tables and left the room walking between two faux marble pillars and into the lobby. The lobby was small, dark, decorated in much the same manner as the restaurant. A dark-complexioned man was reading a magazine and sitting behind the counter. The man was reading
Der Spiegel
and smoking a foul-smelling cigarette. Holliday recognized the stink of the cigarette—it was an F6 brand. The man behind the desk was German.

“Ein Zimmer. Keine Fragen gestellt,”
Holliday said and flashed the ID folder again. The man behind the counter put down the magazine and slapped down a key with a tag on it. Holliday fished three fifty-euro bills out of the dead policeman's wallet, put them down and picked up the key.

“Danke,”
he said.

“Bitte,”
replied the man behind the counter, and he picked up his magazine again. Holliday went up two flights and found his room, which faced out over the Quai Saint-Michel. It was small and narrow. The gray wall-to-wall
carpeting was thin and burnt here and there by errant cigarette butts. The bed was a single and the art on the wall was surprising: a famous Ronald Searle cartoon showing café life in Montmartre. Searle, the creator of the infamous Girls of Saint Trinians, had lived in Paris for many years to escape onerous British taxation and wound up falling in love with the city. And despite his fame and wealth he lived out his life above a café on the Left Bank.

Holliday went to the window and glanced down. The Quai Saint-Michel was a one-way street that headed west. The broad avenue as well as the parking lane directly below him were choked with traffic. He turned away and went to the house phone on a small beside table. He sat down on the bed and picked up the phone.

“Desk.”

“Do you have porters here?”

“Sure.”

“Send one up to 346.”

“Sure.”

Five minutes later there was a knock at the door. The bellhop was in his forties, balding and wearing a cardigan. His fingers and mustache were nicotine stained and he smelled faintly of wine.

“You speak English?”

“Yes, a little.”

Holliday peeled off three hundred-euro bills from his own wallet. “You know where to buy cell phones around here?”

“Oui.”

“Get me two, bring them back here. Be back in less than half an hour and there'll be an extra hundred in it for you. Understand?”

“Oui, m'sieur.”

“Get going.”

The man hustled out the door and Holliday settled down to wait. Twenty minutes later the bellhop handed Holliday the two cell phones still in their boxes, collected his bonus and left. Holliday called down to the desk again.

“Find me the number for Peter Lazarus and connect me.” Holliday spelled out the name and hung up the phone. The Company might have the cell towers covered, but not the landlines. A moment later the house phone rang. Holliday picked it up. “Dr. Lazarus?”

“Yes.”

“I'm a friend of Spencer Boatman. My name is John Holliday.”

“He mentioned you. What can I do for you?”

“I have to see you. Now. Spencer is in harm's way and I put him there.”

“Eighty-eight Avenue Foch,” Lazarus said, a
note of dark humor in his deep voice. “You can recognize it easily enough. There's a plaque on the entrance commemorating it as the Gestapo headquarters during the war.” Lazarus gave Holliday detailed information on how to find him.