Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (9 page)

At precisely nine thirty the next morning Rupert Sheridan, Eric Bingham and his partner William Scott, who operated the Miami branch of the Bingham Gallery, sat in Harrison Blackthorn's office on Madison Avenue.

“I have been in touch with Leonardo and they are not pleased with the situation. On the other hand, we have a little more information to work with now. Lazarus is in fact an Interpol investigator. He was recently in Paris and is connected to Colonel John Holliday. There is a further connection in Rome that leads to Hannah Kruger. The result is that the whole arrangement—the entire existence of Leonardo as well as our own—is now in jeopardy.”

“Do we have any options?” Bingham asked.

“In the first place, all movement of our ‘special' inventory is to cease immediately. In the second
place, records of the inventory must be either destroyed or removed from your premises. So far only the East Coast seems to be involved. The rest of the country is still in operation. However, in the interim, that will be closed down as well. Paul Roth's operation in Chicago was the only one in the Midwest who actually used the Kruger woman. If we can contain it, we may be able to save ourselves.”

Eric Bingham coughed into a small pink fist, then cleared his throat. “And precisely how is our salvation going to come about?”

“Agent Lazarus and Colonel Holliday must be removed from the playing field.”

“And just who is going to do that?” William Scott said.

“I thought that would be obvious,” said Harrison Blackthorn. “We hire someone to kill them both.”

*   *   *

Later that afternoon, Harrison Blackthorn sat on a bench overlooking the reservoir. Beside him was a large manila envelope. He was smoking an illicit Montecristo Cuban cigar, inhaling the soft aromatic smoke and then exhaling. He waited patiently, staring out at the water. There was a slight breeze, and the leaves on the trees sighed
pleasantly. Blackthorn rarely had time for such quiet moments and he was thoroughly enjoying this one. A few joggers thumped past, their feet crunching on the gravel pathway. No one paid him the slightest attention. Five minutes later another man sat down on the bench. He looked like an accountant—medium height, a little potbelly, dressed in an off-the-rack suit from Barneys. The shoes were Florsheim brogues.

Without turning from his view of the reservoir, Blackthorn spoke.

“You're Mr. Snow?”

“That's right,” the man replied in a faintly Irish accent.

“You come highly recommended,” said Blackthorn.

“Our mutual friend said you were a discreet sort of person. If you have me under any sort of surveillance or if you're wearing a wire, I'd advise you to get up and leave this place immediately. Do we have an understanding?” Snow's voice never rose above a calm conversational level.

“We have an understanding,” said Blackthorn equally calmly.

“So, now, what would you have me do for you?”

“I need several people eradicated.”

“Let's not be coy. You want me to kill someone, yes?”

“Actually several people,” said Blackthorn. “A woman in particular. She has information that could have disastrous consequences if it were made public.”

“By several, exactly how many do you mean?”

“Three,” answered Blackthorn.

“Do you have any idea where these people are at the moment?”

“Most likely at a hotel in Manhattan, registered under the name John Holliday.”

“One
l
in Holliday or two?” Snow asked.

“Two,” Blackthorn answered. “All the information you need is in the envelope.”

“All right,” said Snow. “The price will be five million dollars. Half now and half on completion. Our mutual friend will handle the details.”

“How do I get in touch with you?” said Blackthorn.

“You don't,” said Snow.

“I'll have to know what sort of progress you are making,” said Blackthorn. “A great many people are dependent upon your success or failure.

Standing up, Snow picked up the envelope, tucked it under his arm and looked down at Blackthorn. “If I discover that you have discussed
anything we have said in this conversation,” said Snow with a cold, sinister tone in his voice, the Irish accent very pronounced now, “I'll kill everyone you've ever talked to. I'll kill your family, your family's family—I'll kill your dog. Do we have an understanding?”

There was a long pause. “I understand.”

“See that you do.” The assassin turned on his heel and walked away from the bench. The breeze had fallen and the trees were silent.

*   *   *

Holliday and Alexander “Zits” Mitchell walked across the Plain to Thayer Hall. As Holliday had predicted long before, the zits were all gone but his widow's peak had turned into complete baldness. He was still bony, but he had thickened up some. Holliday had come to West Point on his own, leaving Lazarus and Kruger back at the hotel.

“If it wasn't you, Colonel Holliday,” said Zits Mitchell, “I'd put you under arrest and throw you into the stockade.”

“But it is me and I wouldn't ask if it wasn't very important,” Holliday said.

“What kind of important?” asked Mitchell. “You're asking me to break every rule in the book.”

“People are trying to kill me and my friends.”

“Why are they trying to kill you?” Mitchell asked.

“It's complicated,” said Holliday. “The less you know, the better. I don't really want you involved in this.”

“You want me involved enough to risk my career,” said Mitchell. “You were the one who wanted me to teach, so I think I deserve to know why I would throw away the job I love.”

“You're right,” said Holliday. “I can tell you this much: it involves organized crime, art the Nazis looted and the Vatican. That enough for you?”

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital instead of the stockade,” said Mitchell. “You sound crazier than shit, Colonel.”

“Maybe I am, but it's the truth. You'll just have to trust me. Maybe we can sit down and talk about it over a Scotch when the whole damn thing is over.”

The young major sighed. “All right. What exactly do you need?”

“Three automatics—hopefully nothing as bulky as a Colt—and maybe a small automatic weapon or two.”

“Jesus,” said Mitchell. “Why don't you ask me for the moon as well?”

“Can you do it?” Holliday said urgently.

“Yeah, I can do it,” said Mitchell, sighing again. “Where are you staying?”

“Hotel Thayer. Room 406. North wing.”

“I'll try to be there by ten o'clock, unless you hear from me. By midnight, it will be me in the stockade,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell met him in the hotel well before ten. He brought three hammerless Smith & Wesson Chief Specials and two boxy Heckler and Koch UMP45s.

“Good enough for you?” Holliday's old student asked.

“Couldn't ask for better,” said Holliday. “You were a good student, Mitchell, and I'll bet you're an even better teacher. Thanks a lot. You make an old man proud.”

“Not so old, sir.” Mitchell grinned.

*   *   *

Cardinal Arturo Ruffino sat behind his desk in his office, staring at his computer screen. Mario Tosca, his friend and head of Vatican secret police, entered the room without knocking and sat down opposite him.

“We have a serious problem,” said Tosca.

“You're going to tell me that Holliday knows about the Huff train? I already know.”

“It's not that,” said Tosca. “What he knows goes far beyond that. As you are aware, he was searching for the lost scroll when our people tried to kill him a year ago. He now knows that it was retrieved by us and that we once had it in the Vatican. And he knows it's for sale to the highest bidder. If he manages to find out who that highest bidder is, it could destroy the Church.”

“How did he find all that out?” Ruffino asked.

“Apparently he and his friend were recently in Rome. Somehow Holliday also enlisted the aid of an Interpol agent. Believe it or not, he and the agent were in the storage area here and almost reached the vault. His friend, the Cuban, was killed by some unknown faction, but Holliday and Lazarus managed to get out of Rome unharmed. And somehow in all this mess they managed to find out about Bingham, the Caravaggio and the Courbet. They also found out about someone named Hannah Kruger. They're back in the United States and now they're after the whole Leonardo operation.”

“Useful information, but not particularly drastic,” said Ruffino. Although he was angry that Holliday and this Lazarus man had been able to breach the Vatican itself.

“I was just getting to the real problem,” said
Tosca. “My men found out who killed the Cuban. It wasn't your friends and it wasn't us. As far as we can tell, it was somebody on the inside. It looks like there's a mole in Leonardo and whoever that mole is wants to take
everything.”

Vijay Sen ran through the dark empty streets to the shipyards. He was short and very thin, dressed in ragged sweatpants, a David Bowie T-shirt and a knockoff New York Yankees baseball cap. His feet were bare. He was fourteen years old. His only weapon was an eight-inch ceremonial kirpan he'd stolen the previous year from a wealthy Sikh's house, which was enclosed by a makeshift cardboard sheath threaded through the drawstring of his sweatpants.

He had been a thief for as long as he could remember. He had been born in the Dharavi slums, which was where he had first begun his criminal career. He had stolen pots from pot makers, embroidery from the embroiderers and cookware from anyone who was foolish enough to leave it unguarded. His mother had died when he was five, his father was completely unknown
to him and he was the youngest of ten. He had been raised alone, his nine other siblings having either died of various diseases or escaped long ago to some other fate. For two years he had lived with his grandmother, also a resident of the slum, but then she too had died. From the age of seven he had lived on his own, adding the theft of food to his list of crimes.

For a few years he had survived as a beggar on the richer streets of the city's center. Eventually he had joined a gang of pickpockets. But he had been discovered shortchanging the man he worked for and once again was on his own. His next criminal escalation was stealing a tea boy's uniform from the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Wearing the white-turbaned uniform, he would wander the long hallways of the hotel checking doors. There would inevitably be one or two doors left unlocked. Often he came up with nothing, but sometimes there would be valuables left behind: a watch, a pair of expensive earrings, once an American tourist's wallet stuffed with American money and credit cards. As young as he was, he knew who to sell the credit cards to and kept the money for himself. But just as inevitably as the occasional open door, Vijay had been caught red-handed once. He'd been arrested, tried and convicted,
then sent to Arthur Road Jail. He did not fare well in the notorious prison and it was only by sheer luck that he did not contract tuberculosis or become forcibly infected with HIV. On release, any trace of Vijay's childhood had vanished. At fourteen he would do anything to survive.

He was used to the darkness. His large dark eyes gathered up whatever light there was. The rest of his senses were equally tuned in to his environment. A dog barking could be just that—or perhaps a warning to its master. The sound of footsteps could mean nothing at all or it could mean imminent danger. The air carrying the scent of tobacco could announce that he wasn't alone. Vijay knew, perhaps better than anyone else, that while Mumbai was one of the fastest-growing, richest cities in the world, it was also one of the most dangerous.

He reached his destination, a high wooden wall surrounding a scrapyard of which he knew two things. There was a rotted section of the fence he could easily squeeze through and the interior was guarded by an enormous black Rajapalayam hound. Once he would have been frightened—but not now.

He found the rotted planks in the darkness, pushed in the boards, and squeezed through.
Vijay knew the dog was chained during the day but set loose after the scrapyard closed each evening. Occasionally a night watchman would occupy the small tin hut that served as an office, but Vijay knew the dog was the more dangerous of obstacles he faced tonight. He slipped the dagger out of its cardboard sheath and waited.

He was surrounded by scrap metal of every kind. Piles of indeterminate junk from demolished buildings, including window frames, rebar, broken-down air conditioners and pipes of every kind. Across the yard there were piles of old engine blocks and entire automobiles. All the junk was centered on an enormous shredding machine. Great scoops of metal dropped into it from a crane mounted on a large flatbed trailer at the far end of the scrapyard, where several massive dump trucks would take the shredded metal to local foundries to be melted down into useful ingots for its future incarnation. Vijay listened and sniffed the slight breeze. Nothing.

He moved forward, heading toward the main gate of the scrapyard. He had one job tonight: unlock the gate and leave. The keys to the three enormous padlocks on the gate were in the pocket of his sweatpants and had been given to him by the man he was working for. Halfway to
the gate, Vijay tensed, the hair on his arms and the nape of his neck rising.

He turned. The giant guard dog was pounding toward him like something out of hell itself. Vijay could see the bared fangs and huge muscles as the creature leaped toward him. The young man waited until the creature had committed itself, its rear haunches pushing it into the air. With all four of the dog's powerful legs off the ground, Vijay dropped onto his back, and as the dog descended he thrust the kirpan into the dog's throat, letting the dog's own momentum carry the knife down to the chest and belly. Its guts poured like a warm pile of offal onto Vijay's chest and face. He gagged and rolled out from under the eviscerated corpse, scraping the guts and blood away from his face and eyes and turning to vomit. He stood up, his hands on his knees, and waited for his breath to return.

The dog's attack and his response had taken less than fifteen seconds but would be imprinted in Vijay's mind for eternity. In that split second he had seen Death approaching, but somehow he had managed to elude it.

Still covered in filth from the dog, Vijay walked toward the gate. He turned again at the sound of lumbering footsteps. The night
watchman was approaching, flashlight in hand. He was an obese man wearing a filthy shirt and dhoti. His lime green flip-flops slapped the dirt as he chugged forward. The beam of his flashlight found the ruins of the dog and then turned and found Vijay, the dagger still in his hand.

“What have you done to Raji? You've murdered him.” The fat man charged at Vijay, his arms extended. The young man ducked under the grasping arms and slid the kirpan into the night watchman's belly without hesitation. He fell to his knees, gasping and holding his stomach as blood began to stain his shirt in a wide circle. Vijay stepped toward the helpless man and without any thought of remorse drew the sharp blade of the dagger across the man's throat. The fat night watchman fell forward, still on his knees. Vijay wiped the kirpan on the back of the man's shirt and slid it back into its sheath.

Silently the fourteen-year-old murderer padded toward the gates and used his keys to unlock them. He threw the gates open and then walked silently into the darkness.

*   *   *

Kota Raman sat in the gaudy, lavishly decorated dining room of his equally lavish mansion in South Mumbai. His breakfast was anything but
traditional. The head of the largest gangster family in India had adopted the eating habits of English lords and ladies. He breakfasted on an assortment of dishes including eggs, bacon, toast from a silver toast rack, some sort of fish dish usually with a sweet sauce and an endless supply of stewed fruit. All of this was provided by an executive chef he'd hired away from the Mumbai Palace Hotel.

Today he ate alone. The compound, surrounded by a large stone wall topped with broken glass, contained three other houses—one for his eldest son, one for his mother, his mother-in-law and his grandmother, and one for his security staff. His youngest children—two teenage boys and a teenage girl—had been sent away to expensive boarding schools in England.

His breakfast finished, one of the kitchen boys cleared the serving plates and dishes while another served the bitter coffee that Raman preferred. He continued reading the newspaper for a few minutes more and then got up and went to his large office in the rear of the house. The room was large and modern, a single large window with a perforated wooden screen letting in the cool morning air. A sixty-inch plasma screen was turned on on the wall across from his desk. It was tuned to one of Mumbai's business
channels, a scrolling list of companies and their stock prices reeling across the bottom of the screen. He watched the screen for a moment, waiting. Eventually his second in command, Ali Kapoor, entered the office.

“What is this I hear about the scrapyard last night?” Raman inquired.

“Someone unlocked the gate and let them in. They also killed the guard dog and the night watchman,” Kapoor answered.

“Who is ‘they'?” Raman asked.

“We're thinking it was Vijay Sen,” Kapoor said.

“Any way we can find out for sure?”

“We're rounding up as many of his little slumdogs as we can lay our hands on. Someone will know something about what went on last night.”

“Make it quick,” said Raman. “The fat bastard is making me look bad. You steal from my property, you steal from me. This will not be tolerated.”

*   *   *

Holliday, Lazarus and Kruger reached Palm Beach after driving through the night. They sat in a Denny's on South Congress Avenue waiting for the Bingham Gallery to open.

“Do you two have some sort of plan? It seems
like we're leaping into the lion's den,” Hannah said.

“One of us has to go in there and check the lay of the land. The only way we're going to put these people away is by finding evidence of what they're doing.”

“We've got a problem,” said Lazarus. “They almost certainly know what I look like. I guarantee you Blackthorn and Cole has cameras everywhere.”

“Frankly, that applies to all of us,” said Holliday. “If these people are as powerful as we suspect, they'll have file pictures of all of us. We've got to take the chance that Bingham is still in New York. Hopefully there won't be anybody in the gallery able to identify us.”

“So who goes in?” Lazarus said.

“I do,” said Holliday. “I'm the one who got us into this.” He smiled. “Now, finish your Grand Slams, and we'll get out of here. I want you guys to back me up with a getaway car.”

*   *   *

The Bingham Gallery was located on Worth Avenue, the Rodeo Drive of Palm Beach. It was a square two-story building with a windowless facade. The entry was through a pair of heavy glass doors. To the left of the doors was a simple brass
plate that read “The Bingham Gallery. Established 1972.” Holliday pulled open the glass door and stepped inside. The interior of the gallery was remarkable. The walls, approximately twenty feet high, were done in claret red. Above the walls there was a curved ceiling containing dozens of lighting fixtures running on tracks. In the center of the gallery was a gigantic misshapen desk made from a slice of marble. At the very far end of the gallery was a doorway in the middle of the rear wall most likely leading to an office and perhaps a storage area for paintings. The paintings on view were a variety of canvases from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, each one ornately framed and hanging from a gallery rail high above.

Seated behind the desk was an extraordinarily beautiful woman with long blond hair, high cheekbones and model's figure draped in a black dress. Holliday approached her.

“Is Mr. Bingham here?”

“I'm afraid not, sir. He's out of the city at the moment.”

“How long is he gone for?”

“I'm not sure. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Perhaps I'll just look around,” Holliday replied.

The blond woman handed Holliday a glossy four-color catalog. The cover had a photograph of James McNeill Whistler's
Nocturne
, a peaceful evening riverscape of the Thames looking toward Chelsea.

Holliday tucked the catalog under his arm and wandered through the gallery, pausing briefly in front of each painting. Every one of them had been created by an artist Holliday knew. Everything from Gainsborough to Guérin and Rembrandt to Renoir. It was an amazing collection to be seen in one room, and Holliday smiled quietly to himself wondering how many of them had really been painted by Hannah Kruger or one her colleagues working for the Leonardo group.

As he reached the end wall of the gallery he peaked through the open doorway. There was very little to see except an industrial metal stairway leading up to the second floor. As he continued his survey of the paintings, he was now looking for signs of any kind of security system or surveillance cameras. He saw none, but as he reached the front entrance he spotted a Chubb alarm system panel. He briefly noted that there were settings for pressure alarm, motion sensor and heat. He turned back to the blond woman, returned the catalog, thanked her, then left the
gallery. He crossed the street to where the rental car was waiting, Lazarus behind the wheel. He climbed in on the passenger side and sat down.

“It's wired like a bank vault. We're going to have our work cut out for us.”