Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (3 page)

“Is it there?” The voice was familiar to the vintner. Clearly Parisian.

“Yes.” Meucci glanced up from his desk. The painting in its special container was resting on top of a row of filing cabinets.

“A man is coming from Geneva. His license plate is GE90619. Give him the painting.”

“The financial matters?”

“Already taken care of.”

“As you
wish.”

Cardinal Pierre Hébert, Archbishop of Paris, sat in the vestry office of Nôtre-Dame Cathedral after saying a requiem Mass for a dead premier who couldn't even remember his own name in the end. With him was a priest from Saint-Sulpice.

“Tell me exactly what was said,” ordered the cardinal.

“Holliday and the Cuban are in France, Your Eminence.”

For a moment the cardinal looked surprised. But surprise quickly changed to anger, his lean, austere features hardening.

“Where did they enter and how?”

“Saint-Malo. The ferry.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Have they been found?”

“Not yet, Your Eminence. But a task force has been organized.”

“Who have they got heading it?”

“René Dubois, assistant director of operations for the DGSE.”

“Find out everything you can. I want reports daily.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

The man bowed out of the vestry, closing the door behind him. Cardinal Hébert dressed in simple black priest's daywear, then stepped out of the side door of the vestry. He walked down the short hall until he reached a second door, this one leading into the alley beside the famous cathedral. He stepped into the black Citroën, which was already waiting for him, and settled back into the soft leather seat.

“Paris–Le Bourget,” said Hébert.

The car moved off. The traffic was heavy and it took them the better part of an hour to reach the airport. He wasn't concerned; his flight wasn't going to leave without him.

When they arrived at the airport, they drove through the private jet entrance, drove across the tarmac and stopped at the lowered stairway of a dark blue Gulfstream G650 with the gold crown insignia of Hébert et Cie. on the tail.

Cardinal Hébert exited the limousine, climbed
the steps up into the plane and settled into his seat. As the engines spooled up, a male steward in a blue uniform fitted his place with a table, laid out cutlery and went to fetch the cardinal's meal, while a second steward opened a bottle of 2010 Domaine de la Côte de l'Ange Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He offered the cardinal a small sip and at Hébert's nod he filled the glass. A moment later the first steward appeared carrying a plate holding a meal of chateaubriand, haricots verts and gratin dauphinois potatoes, Hébert's favorite. He waited for the jet to take off and settled down to eat. He would be in Rome before he finished dessert.

The cardinal was the younger of the two sons of Jean Hébert. Even before World War II, Hébert was a name to conjure within France. The elder Hébert owned Cément Hébert, the largest concrete plant in the country, in addition to several oil refineries and a fleet of transport ships among many other enterprises. The war itself only served to increase the company's wealth. Hitler's supposedly unbreakable Atlantic Wall was built with Hébert concrete and Hitler's panzers were fueled with Hébert's gasoline. Most war profiteers would have been hung after the war for such gross collaboration, but the truth was Hébert was too important and knew too many people in high places to make any charges stick.

As with many younger brothers of wealthy families, the only way to gain power and prestige in the world was through the Church. With his family's money behind him, Hébert had risen quickly, working hard to cultivate relationships with the right people in the right places and proving himself to be an asset to both the Church and to France. He spent six years in the Vatican working as an assistant to important figures while simultaneously refining his own goals and objectives. When he was named cardinal of Paris, most people thought he'd reached the pinnacle of his career. They were wrong. Hébert was just beginning.

Cardinal Hébert was just finishing his coffee when the jet landed at Ciampino Airport. He stepped down and was ushered into a waiting Lancia Thesis limousine bearing Vatican City plates and began the half-hour journey into the center of Rome. Exactly forty-five minutes later he was being ushered into the Vatican secretary of state's office in the Apostolic Palace.

“Cardinal Hébert,” said Ruffino, standing up and coming around his enormous seventeenth-century Spanish desk, hand extended.

“Arturo.” Hébert smiled, taking Ruffino's hand. “It has been too long.” The Frenchman pointed an index finger upward. “How goes it with our new leader?”

“Our Argentinian Papa wanders around with his big brown eyes wide, wondering how he got here. He speaks good English but poor Italian, despite his name, which means he has no friends in his own court. In the end I think we'll find that he's as much a conservative as his predecessor.”

“It sounds like you're not having an easy time of it,” said Hébert.

“Except for your news about Holliday.”

“Like the cockroach he is, he keeps on popping up everywhere, and no matter how you try to stamp him out, he returns just to spite you.”

“Any idea why he's chosen to reappear in France?”

“Presumably because France is where he settled after meeting with Rodrigues the monk. There are some people in the government who think his massive hoard is still hidden there. They've even created a task force.”

“You have access to it?”

“Intimate access.”

“Excellent. The Church is tearing itself apart, Hébert. These men must be stopped before it is completely destroyed. Sexual depravities with children and gross financial blunders are bad enough, but Holliday is taking aim at the very heart of things—our credibility that trusting the
faith that can be honored and believed in. If the faith is rich, then the Church is rich.”

The French cardinal shook his head. “It's so difficult to believe—that one man and his friend could do such damage to an institution that has lasted for two millennia.”

“It only requires a hole the size of a child's finger to destroy an entire dam, Hébert. And we must remember that it was only one man who began the whole institution that we are a part of.”

*   *   *

Soon they were out of Rennes and heading for Le Mans and then Paris. The rental car hadn't made it any farther than the ferry parking lot in Saint-Malo, where they'd exchanged it for an old Renault 4 provided by Carrie's “people.” It had the name “Pleine Mer” on the side panels and a poor painting of a leaping trout logo.

“We've got cops on our tail—two motorcycles coming up fast,” said Carrie.

“Get off the main road,” said Holliday. The A81 was a broad, modern highway, but this early in the day there was very little traffic. “There,” said Holliday, pointing to an exit. Holliday looked over his shoulder. “Anything we can use back there,
mi compadre
?”

“Nets, fish traps, floats for the nets,
basura en su mayoría
—mostly junk,” replied Eddie.

“That could work.” Holliday crawled between the front seats and scrambled into the cramped back of the van. The truck had long oval windows on the doors. Holliday looked back down the side road. The motorcycle cops were closing in, less than fifty yards now, lights flashing and sirens howling.

“Slow down just a bit,” called Holliday.

Carrie lifted her foot off the gas and simultaneously tapped the brake. The men behind them were caught by surprise and in a split second they were less than fifteen yards behind the rear of the van. Then Holliday kicked open the rear doors while he and Eddie tossed everything they could into the path of the oncoming motorcycles.

Both drivers were instantly tangled in net and other debris. The bikes, which were traveling at speed, smashed into each other, bounced and finally tipped over in a screeching spray of plastic parts and a dazzling fury of sparks, tossing the leather-dressed and helmeted drivers head over heels into a ditch at the side of the road.

Carrie slammed on the brakes as Holliday and Eddie jumped out of the back of the van and ran back along the road. The bikes were ticking and
rattling in their death throes, the smell of gasoline heavy in the air. They checked the two drivers. Both were dead, their necks broken.

Carrie joined Holliday and Eddie.

“These guys aren't cops,” said Holliday. “The bikes are BMWs and the riders are carrying Glocks. Police Nationale drive big Yamahas and carry SIG Pros. The bikes, the uniforms—they're phony.”

“They were looking for us specifically,” Carrie said.

“Who was?” Eddie asked.

“The CIA. They issue Glocks,” said Carrie.

“There you go.” Holliday nodded grimly.

“Foxes and hounds, and we're the foxes.”

*   *   *

The CIA's Department D was located on two floors of the old Tour Albert in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris, one of the first high-rises in the city. Department D carried out some of the most covert work in Western and Eastern Europe as well as regular surveillance of anyone who was deemed a threat to U.S. national security.

The director of Department D was a fifty-four-year-old named Elliot Foster, a career CIA man who had been recruited right out of Yale. Foster stood on the catwalk outside his second-level office and stared down into the bull pen, a
crossword puzzle of cubicles, glassed-in conference areas and computer arrays all surrounded by large-screen displays and sealed off from outside electronic or visual surveillance. It was Foster's domain.

For twenty of his thirty years with the Company, Foster had been a true believer, climbing the ladder rung by rung as he headed for the top. Everything could be sacrificed to the job, including two wives and three children. But in his twenty-first year, politics had snuck up on Foster, and once again he had become a sacrificial goat and was sent to Paris to prevent him from interfering with the career of a lesser man with better connections.

After two years moldering in Paris, he was quietly introduced to the Ghost Squad, a CIA within the CIA using the Company's assets, finances and people to increase its own power. It was a hyperintelligence group loyal to no one but its own members. And best of all, its leader was a fellow Bonesman.

Kate Rogers, one of the unit liaisons, climbed up to the catwalk with a folder in her hand. She was in her thirties, seven or eight years on the job, and was being groomed as a field surveillance operative. Foster had made a play for her more than once and had been rebuffed each time. It didn't
seem to affect their working relationship, for which Foster gave her high marks. Give her a few more years, he thought, and he might consider taking a look at her for the Ghost Squad—if the others approved.

“What's up?” Foster asked as she approached him.

“We were stealing eyes from that French Harfang drone they had up and we sent out a couple of bikes to follow a killer unit.”

“This afternoon.” Foster nodded.

“We haven't heard from the bikes for almost three hours. They just missed another check-in.”

“The Harfang?”

“Frogs put it to bed. They were looking for the rental; we had the info on the fish truck.”

“We have any assets in the area?”

“Closest is Lyon.”

“Get him down to Rennes and sniff around. I want some news. Fast.”

*   *   *

Holliday sat on the outside terrace of La Squadra Pizzeria and Café on Rue Jean-Boucher in the town of Hédé-Bazouges, eating the French version of pizza and planning the next move with Eddie and Carrie. The sun was going down now
and heavy shadows were beginning to swallow the old stone buildings around them. The fish truck was hidden a few blocks away on a narrow side street, safely out of sight. Hédé-Bazouges was ten miles up the road from where they'd taken out the fake motorcycle cops, but everyone knew it wasn't far enough. Not by a long shot.

“The motorcycles will have pingers on them. They'll have to know where they are by now,” said Holliday. He turned to Carrie. “How close is the nearest CIA station?”

“They've got a small satellite station in Lyon. Half a dozen people at most.”

“It's been an hour. We don't have much time left. We have to find some way out of here. The fish truck is marked.”

“I have an idea,” said Carrie. She called the waiter over in a perfect Parisian accent.

“Oui, madame?”

“Pourriez-vous m'indiquer une maison funéraire?”

“Madame?”

“Mon oncle est très malade,”
responded Carrie, shaking her head sadly and putting a tearful expression on her face.

“Mes condoléances, madame. Un moment,”
said the waiter. He disappeared into the restaurant and came back a moment later with a name and
address written on a scrap of paper:
Mercier et Fils, 46 Rue de la Barrière
. The waiter then proceeded to give Carrie detailed directions.

Rue de la Barrière turned out to be a narrow side street on the western edge of town, its narrow sidewalks laid out with cut flagstone and its buildings two stories high, stone as well. Mercier et Fils had two curved barn doors with a long building beside it, and chapel-like windows set into the old walls. The barn doors had an old hasp and an immense lock.

“I called the number the owner of the restaurant gave me,” said Carrie. “It sounds like he's having his calls forwarded to his home. The person who answered sounded like a little girl.”

“Eddie,” said Holliday, nodding at the lock.

The Cuban slipped a pry bar from the fish van into the hasp of the lock and pulled. It tore off at the hinges and they eased through the doors.

Holliday pulled the string of a naked bulb that was hanging from the roof of the garage. Stuffed inside the dark, cavelike garage was a 1955 Citroën hearse—which really looked like it was no more than an ambulance painted black and the words “Mercier et Fils” in gold Gothic-style script on the side panels. Holliday eased his way toward the left side of the boxy, high-roofed
vehicle, opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition.