Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (6 page)

May 11, 1944

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, sat in the rear seat of the 1939 Fiat Berlina and watched as the goods train was unloaded. Rheinhard Huff was seated beside him and Nardi, his “special” young priest, sat behind the wheel. The thin-faced Pope noted that there were two kinds of wagons making up the train, dark green French SNCF wagons and the curved-roof German freight cars carrying the spread-winged Deutsche Adler eagle above its routing numbers. The men unloading were all SS.

“What exactly are we looking at here?” Pius asked.

“The best of the best from four years of plunder and the Swiss ‘auctions' before that. And I also have a special gift for you, Your Holiness.”

“You found one?” asked Pacelli.

“I did indeed. It was lying unnoticed and unappreciated in a French village library where nobody saw it or cared.” Huff smiled.

“Wonderful,” said Pacelli.

“I have brought you anything of value to be had from any museum or gallery, Jewish or otherwise,” said Huff. The soldier and the Pope spoke in German, which Pius had become fluent in as papal nuncio in Berlin, and they assumed Nardi didn't understand a word of it.

“Of which we retain fifty percent of everything sold. A fixed amount will be made available to you and your Kameraden network, ODESSA, whenever you require it,” Pacelli said.

“Precisely,” said Huff, watching as another crate rolled down the ramp of one of the wagons. “There is also an amount of gold specie in the shipment—an amount we didn't manage to get into Switzerland before Allied intelligence set up shop there.”

“Things are that bad for the Reich?” Pius asked.

“There is no Reich, Holy Father. There is only panic. The Führer thinks he can win the war by moving imaginary tanks and men across his maps, and those in high command are rats looking for holes to hide in.”

“So the Vatican is a rathole to you, Colonel Huff?”

“This has been planned since the Führer opened the Western Front. The war was lost on that day and most of the SS command were aware of it. The authority comes from Reichsführer Himmler himself.”

“And if our gentle Heinrich was told the Vatican did not wish to take part in his plan?”

Huff shrugged. “Do whatever you wish, but the
Obersturmbannführer
Roedel and his SS Tenth Army will be leaving Rome in two weeks. They can either do it by driving the panzers through Saint Paul's and the Sistine Chapel on their way north, or down the Appian Way. The choice is entirely yours.”

“You threaten the Holy See?”

“For ODESSA and its Kameraden—certainly.”

*   *   *

“He actually threatened the Pope?” Lazarus asked. “You heard him?”

“It was common knowledge and he left enough armed men to make good on the threat. There were soldiers dressed as priests everywhere. Huff would have shot the Holy Father in the blink of an eye.” Nardi smiled and puffed on his cigarette. “Although I think it was a ruse, a way for the
Pope to give himself an excuse if the story ever was made public—which it eventually was, of course.”

“Blackmail,” said Lazarus.

“It was mutual, I can assure you.” Nardi smiled. “In the end both of them benefited. After Ber Ruffinono Nogara, director of the Special Administration of the Holy See, closed the doors of the administration building cellars all the gold and paintings and sculptures and priceless manuscripts no longer existed.”

“I'm surprised with all that information you weren't killed years ago.”

“It's because I never made a fuss about things. What I didn't see that night I picked up from conversations Huff had with various people. Huff never knew it, but I spoke quite a bit of German and understood pretty much everything he and the Pope talked about that night. If you did not have any power, the Vatican and the Nazis chose to believe you were simply invisible. I made sure I was one of those people. I had my uses, but I had no power. Huff would say things with me in the room simply because he assumed I had no idea of what was being said.” The old man paused and crushed another cigarette into the stained old Cinzano metal ashtray on his bedside table. “And I've probably said too much
now. And it's also my bedtime, so if you gentlemen would be kind enough to leave the money you promised me on the table behind you, I can take to my bed.”

They did as Nardi asked and left the little rooms over the café. They drove out of Tuscany and back to Rome the following morning.

*   *   *

The apartment Eddie and Carrie had rented was close to the Vatican and located on the top floor of a large block of flats on Via Rusticucci. It had four small bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen. Holliday took the key down from its hiding place above the door. The moment he stepped into the hallway he knew something was wrong. There was a familiar stench in the air. The metallic throat-catching odor of blood and the dark smell of human feces.

“Oh, shit,” Holliday whispered, glancing toward Lazarus. He'd smelled that smell from the jungles of Vietnam to the hot desert sand of Iraq and the harsh mountains of Afghanistan. Somebody had died here and not too long ago.

They found Eddie in the kitchen. He was slumped with his back against one of the cupboard doors beneath the sink. His shirt was bloody from the right side of his chest to his
waistband. The wound bubbled slightly as Eddie breathed in and out. He was alive, but not by much. Holliday knelt down beside his dying friend.

“Who did this to you?”

“
Una perra
. She was a traitor. She was playing both sides,
mi compañero
. Phone.”

Eddie smiled weakly, blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His breath was coming in harsh little gasps. “I think I gave the
puta
as good as she gave me.” He lifted the blood-covered butcher knife feebly and then dropped it.
“Hasta luego, mi colonel.”
The bubbles stopped frothing from the wound in his chest. Holliday crouched beside his friend for a moment, and then closed Eddie's eyes.

“Too many times, too many times,” he whispered, hard, cold tears forming at the death of his friend, a man he'd loved like a brother. The whole thing had been a setup right from the beginning. Carrie's objective had always been the notebook. She'd led them along like the Pied Piper. He felt like an utter fool.

They found Carrie in the bathroom. There was a Glock 19 on the tile floor beside her. With one motion Eddie had sliced her from waist to heart. Her organs and intestines spilled out on her lap as if on the floor of a slaughterhouse. Holliday
rummaged around her corpse, uncaring of the blood that was getting all over his hands and arms. He eventually found her cell phone and scrolled down to the last call she'd made.

“Seven-oh-three. McLean, Virginia. The Company.”

“Why not the Paris division?” Lazarus asked.

“Because she was working for a black cell inside the CIA. There've been rumors about it for years. The little bitch here even mentioned it to me on her way to Paris.”

“So what do we do now?” Lazarus asked.

“We are on the top floor of a building without elevators. We'll have to clean them up as best we can.”

They dragged Eddie into the bathroom and loaded him into the bathtub, followed by the body of the woman. Going back to the kitchen, Holliday rummaged around in the cupboard under the sink. He found a bottle of ammonia and a box of lye soap. He looked through the drawers and discovered two boxes of cling wrap and took it all back to the bathroom.

“See if you can find me a dry-cleaning bag and a roll of any kind of tape, preferably duct tape.”

Lazarus left the bathroom and Holliday started on the bodies. He filled the tub until the remains of the Pilkington woman and Eddie
were covered, and then stopped the water. He poured in the half gallon of ammonia and sprinkled the box of lye over the interior of the old claw-foot tub. He took the cling wrap and covered the tub from side to side and end to end. Lazarus returned with two dry-cleaning bags and a roll of duct tape.

“Help me with this,” Holliday said.

They spread the bags out over the top of the bathtub as tightly as they could, taping as they went.

“If we're lucky, the lye and the ammonia will keep the stink down for a day or two and the dry-cleaning bags and Saran wrap should keep it down for a day or two more.”

“Then what?” Lazarus asked.

“We find another hidey-hole. And then we see what's in the basement of the Vatican Administration Building.”

Rusty Smart sat in the living room of a safe house on Fort Myer Drive just across the Potomac from D.C. The room was cluttered with plasma-screen computers and printers, and there was a complex communications setup that included satellite phones and stolen image-tracking links with five Keyhole units. There were three other men in the room with him: Tom Harris, James Black and Paul Streeter—all members of a ghost unit running out of Langley headquarters.

“They're in Rome. Carrie shot the Cuban but he managed to kill her anyway. Holliday and his new friend found them and tried to keep the stink away,” Rusty Smart said.

“What about Nardi?” Streeter asked.

“We managed to find him but we were too late. Holliday and his new friend had gotten to him first.”

“So now what do we do?” Harris asked.

“Without the old place, they're going to have to find a new bolt-hole,” Smart said. “First we find the bolt-hole and then we follow them. If they were talking to Nardi, they know about Huff and his train. But if we don't get Holliday's notebook, this whole thing is going to fall apart.”

“I don't get it,” said Harris. “This isn't our kind of thing. You make Holliday sound like some kind of boogeyman. Why is he important anyway? I've gone over the file, and there is nothing strategic about him, or world-shaking. So what goes?”

“This group, or one like it, has existed inside the U.S. intelligence community since Donovan's Office of Strategic Services back in World War II. Holliday's connection is through his uncle, who was a liaison officer between the OSS and British military intelligence. He found a Templar sword at Berchtesgaden, which turned out to be part of a code that led to the collected wealth of the entire Templar system. Holliday's initial investigations into the sword led him to one of the last true Templar monks, who, on his deathbed, gave Holliday the notebook containing every code and account number for Templar funds throughout the world. There are a lot of other people who
have been chasing the notebook, including the Vatican. Our group's thinking is that there is some connection between Huff and the Vatican and between the Vatican and Holliday. The notebook is the key to all of it for some reason. And we have to find out what that reason is before the shit hits the fan.”

*   *   *

Holliday and Lazarus found rooms in a cheap flophouse hotel on Via dei Serpenti. They found a local secondhand store, outfitted themselves and headed off to the Via di Monte d'Oro, a side street off Mercato delle Stampe. Holliday followed Lazarus down the narrow street to a four-story granite building with a plain black-and-gold sign above the door that read “Saxon Peck Rare Books, Maps, Charts and Collectibles.”

Lazarus opened the door with the old-fashioned spoon-handle mechanism and they went inside. The interior smelled of exactly what the sign had said. Rich scents of old leather, brass and books in addition to the wonderful smell coming from the espresso machine at the rear of the shop.

The long shop was divided into two parts, with books dominating the floor-to-ceiling oak cases
and rarer objects behind glass and display tables that ran in three aisles. At the rear of the store was a small area of peace and quiet, with three leather chairs arranged around an ornate four-legged circular table, almost certainly seventeenth century and definitely British. To the left, a black cast-iron spiral staircase ran up to the floor above.

On one of the railed wooden ladders sliding down each of the bookcases a short, heavy-set man with snow white hair was rearranging books on the upper shelves. Eventually he ran out of books to rearrange and came down the ladder. He turned and saw Lazarus. His ruddy-bearded face suddenly beamed.

“Peter, my boy! I haven't seen you in years. Still looking for old paintings and such?”

“Quite a number of them, actually, Lord Peck.”

Peck's gaze fell on Holliday. “And you must be Colonel Holliday, the man I've been hearing about for so long.”

“Today is the first day I've ever heard your name,” said Holliday.

“I knew of you through your uncle Henry. He and I were classmates at Oxford and colleagues during the war. I was also a friend of Rodrigues.”

Holliday was stunned. “You knew Rodrigues? How did that come to pass?”

“It's too complicated of a story to go into now. Let's just say we were brothers together and that I know he gave you the notebook.”

The old man looked at his watch. “Just about time to close up,” he said. He bolted up the door, then turned out the lights in the windows. He turned around and smiled. “The two of you look terribly tired. Now, come. I'll make us a cup of my special espresso and we can talk all about it.”

Lazarus had filled Holliday in about Peck on the way to his store. Peck was the second son of the Duke of Rutland, a so-called insurance heir. If his elder brother, Thomas, had died before him, Peck would have inherited everything. As it was, Thomas had lived and inherited everything instead. He had sunk millions into Rutland Abbey for the sake of appearances, and in the end was forced to sell everything. Rutland Abbey was now owned by the National Trust, which ran five-shilling tours on weekends.

Peck, on the other hand, had met a rich Italian countess at one of his brother's lavish summer weekends in the country. They'd fallen in love, decided to marry, and with nothing left to keep him in England, Peck moved to Rome, where he had been ever since. His dearest wife had been
the light of his life for the better part of forty years. When she died, he inherited her entire fortune and opened his store. During those four decades of life with her, he had become the world's leading expert on ecclesiastical documents, especially those regarding the Vatican. He also had what was perhaps the largest collection of Renaissance and eighteenth-century technical books.

Holliday and Lazarus settled into the old leather chairs while the old man brewed them three cups of dark espresso spiked with an exotic plum brandy.

“I know you wouldn't come to visit an old man simply out of friendship. So you must have a question.”

“We both have questions,” said Lazarus.

“You go first,” Peck said.

“What can you tell me about this?” Lazarus said, reaching into his jacket pocket and handing a small image Nardi had given them on their trip to Tuscany.

Saxon Peck stared at the postcard-sized photograph and smiled. “I can tell you just about everything there is to know about it,” said Peck. “The title is
Three Men Talking in Front of a House
, by David Teniers the Younger. The painting is Flemish. It was originally owned by H. L. Larsen, and in 1943 it was auctioned by Van Marle and
Bignell to E. Gopel, Den Haag, who were dealers. That same year it mysteriously was gifted to Herr A. Hitler and turned up in the Führermuseum in Linz. Later, it was taken out of Germany by an SS colonel named Rheinhard Huff. It eventually wound up in the Vatican and was last seen on the wall of the cardinal secretary of state's office. The man's name is Ruffino, I believe.”

“What do you mean, ‘last seen'?” Holliday asked.

“On a visit by the present bishop of Linz to Ruffino's office, the prelate commented that he'd last seen the painting in the Führermuseum during the war. Knowing the powers of such rumors, Ruffino immediately had the painting taken down, and within two or three weeks had replaced it with a second-rate copy. The bishop of Linz took the responsibility of not being able to know the difference between the real thing and a cheap copy.”

“Nardi made it sound as though the train had been a big secret,” said Lazarus.

“For the most part, it was,” said the white-haired old man. “It wasn't until the fall of Rome that our intelligence people got wind of the story. Even then we didn't know the details.” Lord Peck paused. “All we do know is that a
number of paintings and other artworks were used by members of ODESSA to finance their escape through the Vatican ratlines.”

“So nobody really knows how much of the art is still there?” Lazarus asked.

“No,” Peck answered, shaking his head. He fished around his waistcoat pocket and brought out a darkened, gnarled briar pipe and a kitchen match. He lit the match and held it over the bowl of the pipe, sucking until it began producing clouds of aromatic smoke. He turned to Holliday. “Now, you said you had a question?”

“What can you tell me about a Templar Knight named Sir Martin Fitzwilliam?” Holliday asked.

“Sir Martin Fitzwilliam. Fitzwilliam was a monk of the Abbey of Saint Andrew. All we know of him is that he vanished sometime shortly after the taking of Jerusalem in 1199. He is notable for refusing to take part in the massacre that followed the siege and was last seen heading into the desert alone. According to Roland de Vaux, Fitzwilliam's family sigil—a single lion rampant below a Templar Cross—was found scratched onto a staircase in the ruins of the scriptorium at Khirbet Qumran.”

“Who is Roland de Vaux?” Lazarus asked.

“You mean, who
was
he,” said Holliday. “From the early twenties onward he was head of the
Jerusalem Archaeology Institute. He was also the first man to dig for the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

“He had a theory, I believe,” said Peck.

“Yes,” said Holliday. “De Vaux surmised that, instead of heading east, Fitzwilliam returned to France and gave a scroll to Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a student of languages and knew the scroll for what it was. He gifted the scroll to the Vatican and Pope Innocent III, and it hasn't been seen since.”

“What was in the scroll?” Lazarus asked.

“Supposedly it was the Gospel according to Christ himself and described his travels in the East. Apparently the ‘East' included India, Tibet and China.”

“Such a document would be heresy. It would belie the whole story of the Resurrection. It would destroy the very foundation of Christianity,” Peck said, tamping his pipe with a nicotine-stained thumb.

“I don't see what this Fitzwilliam fellow and a train load of looted Nazi art have to do with each other,” said Lazarus.

“I'll tell you,” said Peck. “The actual Vatican Bank wasn't organized until 1942 by Pope Pius XII. Prior to that, all Vatican real wealth—bullion, art, gemstones and monetary offerings of all kinds—were held by the Administration of the
Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which managed the funds remaining at the disposal of the Pope. In other words, the private funds used to run the Vatican itself. All of this was kept in the Vatican Administration Building, which is where the trucks from Huff's train were unloaded.”

“Nardi said the trucks off-loaded through the side entrance of the administration building's southern wing. Why would they have unloaded there?” Holliday asked.

“Come with me and I'll show you,” said Peck.

The old man led them up the circular staircase to the second floor, where instead of bookshelves lining the walls there were old-fashioned wooden print drawers. Peck went to one drawer, withdrew several drawings and took them to the large metal-and-glass light table that dominated the center of the room. He chose two from the sheaf of drawings and laid them out flat. It showed a profile view of the Vatican Administration Building. The center section was five stories tall and topped by a small dome. The south and north wings were four stories tall and plain. There was a park in front of the building and an ornate circular driveway, while at the rear of the building was Saint Anne's Chapel. Peck withdrew the first drawing and put down the second. This showed a main floor plan for the south end of the
building. There was a short hall leading to a rectangular freight elevator.

The old man pointed down at the elevator marked on the diagram. “This is the only way those crates and boxes could be taken to the basement.”

“Where did you find all this stuff?” asked Holliday.

“There was a major renovation done on the building in the late thirties. Years later, the chief contractor of the job asked if I wanted to buy them, so I did.” The old man lit his pipe again and spoke. “I've always had an interest in documents of one kind or another about the Vatican. There seems to be a great number of people in the public who have the same inclination. The Catholic Church and the Vatican have had more exotic theories, countertheories, conspiracies and outright criminal behavior attached to them than any other organization in the world. I have documents here going back to the Borgias. Some of it is of quite a secret nature, but I have had a very hard time finding out whatever happened to Huff's contribution to the papal treasury.”

“How easy would it be to get into the building?” Holliday asked.

“If you simply wished to enter the building, it would probably be quite easy to go in through
the front door. Getting in through the side entrance and onto that freight elevator would be a different kettle of fish altogether.”

“But it is possible?” Holliday said.

“As long as you were willing to take an enormous risk,” said Peck.

Peck looked at the other two men in the room. “You're not planning on robbing the Vatican, are you?”

“We thought we'd give it a try.” Lazarus smiled.