The Templar Salvation (2010) (50 page)

The procession of grim news—confirmations, really—continued. Ertugrul hadn’t survived his head wound. Keskin, the captain of the Ozel Tim unit, was also dead, along with several of his men. The troops scurrying across the canyon were clearly enraged by the bloodbath up the mountain and desperate for payback, but there was none to be found. All they could do was cart off Abdulkerim’s body and seal off the handful of entrances to the underground settlement while awaiting the arrival of a bomb disposal expert who would disarm the detonator in the rigged belt Tess had been wearing—assuming they ever found it.

An urgent alert was sent out to local cops to contact all doctors and medical facilities in the region. From what Reilly had seen, the Iranian’s gunshot wound hadn’t seemed trivial. He wasn’t sure where the bullet had struck, but he knew enough about gunshots to know that a hand injury like that was never an easy wound to fix. Without the proper debridement, fracture stabilization, and antibiotics, the likelihood of the Iranian’s being able to keep all five fingers and not lose significant usage of his hand was far from certain. He’d need a good trauma center and a skilled surgeon to avoid an irreversible disability.

One thing the Turkish authorities wouldn’t be doing was analyzing the codices Tess had found. Tess hadn’t mentioned going into the rock church to them. She insisted on keeping that little segment of her misadventure out of the debrief, and Reilly had agreed.

Once the formalities had been dealt with, they were driven to a nearby hotel, pending further instructions. The hotel, a fifteen-room warren built into a cliff overlooking a small stream, had been fashioned from the remains of a monastery. Stables and dormitories had been turned into guest rooms, and niches in its passageways had been fitted with glass fronts and used to display archaeological curiosities from the monastery’s past. Reilly and Tess were given a room that was a converted chapel. Pale sunlight from a small, solitary window suffused the dark space with a timeless glow and hinted at the remains of thousand-year-old frescoes that adorned its decoratively carved walls. Tess had initially balked at the idea of spending any more time in any cave-like surroundings, but the hotel owner’s soothing demeanor and the smell of his wife’s white bean, lamb and tomato stew soon quelled her unease.

FUELED BY A CONSTANT SUPPLY OF THICK, sweet Turkish coffee, Reilly spent the better part of an hour in the owner’s office, on the phone with Jansson, Aparo, and a handful of other agents who were all huddled into a conference room back at Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan.

The news wasn’t good, but then again, Reilly hadn’t expected much from their end. This was way outside their playground. If the Iranian was going to be found, it was going to happen because of the efforts of the Turkish authorities, not the FBI. They had no significant intel that was relevant to share with Reilly regarding the Vatican bombing or the attack on the Patriarchate in Istanbul, and there was no point in calling in another drone, not until they had some kind of lead on Zahed’s whereabouts.

They had one new piece of info, though. A body had been recovered in Italy, close to a summer resort, in the mountains. It was identified as that of an administrator from a small airfield about an hour and a half east of Rome. The man’s corpse was unlike anything the authorities there had seen. Extreme body trauma didn’t even begin to describe it. Every bone in his body had been pulverized. They’d concluded that the man must have fallen from a great height, either from a helicopter or from a plane. Fallen, or thrown out, more likely. And given the proximity of the airport to Rome, they’d flagged it as potentially linked to the Vatican bombing. Which, Reilly thought, was probably on the money.

He filled them in on what the Iranian had told Tess about Operation Ajax and the airliner. He wasn’t surprised at having to explain what they were to most of the personnel on the call. Jansson told him they’d go through whatever intel they had on the downed flight’s passenger manifest.

“You should get back here now,” Jansson concluded. “It looks like our guy’s gone dark. Who knows where he’ll resurface. In the meantime, there’s nothing more you can do out there. Let the Turks and Interpol take it from here and do their job.”

“Sure,” Reilly grunted. He was too tired to argue, and much as he hated to give up the hunt, he knew Jansson was probably right. Unless something new came up, there was little he could do to justify sticking around.

“Get back to Istanbul,” the assistant director in charge of the New York field office told him. “We’ll get the embassy to sort out some transportation for you.”

“Make sure they factor Tess in,” Reilly said.

“Okay. I’ll see you when you get back. We’ve got a few things to talk about,” Jansson added somewhat stiffly before ending the call.

Reilly didn’t like the sound of that. Jansson obviously wasn’t going to let Reilly’s solo adventure slide. He’d be getting his ass handed to him, no question.

He went back to the room and found Tess coming out of the bathroom, freshly showered, wrapped in a thick white towel. A radiant smile lit up her face when she saw him, the same smile that reached deep into his very core and never failed to ignite him like a blowtorch. Despite everything that was swirling around in his head, he craved her more than ever before and felt like pulling her into his arms and spending a few days in bed with her. He drew her over and gave her a long, deep kiss, enjoying the smooth feel of her shoulders under his fingers, but it didn’t go further. There was too much bouncing around inside him.

Tess must have sensed it. “What’s the scoop?”

Reilly grabbed a can of Coke from the minibar and settled himself on the bed.

“Not much. Our guy’s gone. That’s about it.”

Tess puffed up her cheeks and exhaled slowly. “So what do we do now?”

“We go home.”

Her face sank. “When?”

“I’m waiting to hear back. They’re going to send a plane to fly us back to Istanbul.”

Tess nodded. Then she dropped her towel and, instead of joining him on the bed, reached for her clothes.

“Where are you going?”

Tess picked up Hosius’s letter and held it up. “I want to know what’s in here before we leave.”

Reilly shot her a look. “Tess, come on.”

“Relax. I’m just going to see if they’ve got a computer I can use. Maybe a scanner too. I could use some help translating this.”

Reilly studied her for a beat, then shook his head. “What is it with you and these books?” He sighed with exasperation. “I ever tell you about my friend Cotton Malone?”

“No.”

He leaned back against the pillows. “Great agent. One of the best. A few years back, he decides he’s had enough intrigue for one lifetime. Looking for some peace and quiet. So he leaves the service and moves to Copenhagen and opens an antique bookshop.”

Tess gave him a look that said she knew where this was going. “And … ?”

“His days as a gun-toting government agent? Much more peaceful.”

Tess grinned. “I bet. I should meet him sometime. Sounds like he might have some good stories to tell, starting with where he got that name. In the meantime,” she said as she held up the document and crossed to the door, “I’ve got some translating to do.”

Reilly shrugged and slid down the bed. “Knock yourself out,” he told her as he curled up with a pillow, deciding his mind and body could use a break.

“SEAN, WAKE UO.”

He sprang up at her voice, his eyes stinging in protest. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep.

“What time is it?” he asked groggily.

“Doesn’t matter.” Her voice was alive with excitement as she bounced onto the bed next to him and held up the ancient sheets to his face. “I got this translated. It reads like Hosius wrote it in his own hand. In A.D. 325. In Nicaea. At the end of the council.” Her eyes were dancing left and right, scrutinizing every reaction on Reilly’s groggy face. “He wrote it himself, Sean. Right after the big meeting.”

Reilly’s mind was still booting up. “Okay, so—”

Her enthusiasm blew over his words. “I think I know what Conrad had in those trunks.”

Chapter 50

NICAEA, ROMAN PROVINCE OF BYTHINIA

A.D. 325

T
he imperial palace was quiet. The long, drawn-out council was now over. Weeks and months of heated debate had finally ended with grudging compromise. All present had signed off on what had been agreed and were now heading back to their dioceses, to the east and to the west, all over the emperor’s dominion.

Constantine was pleased.

Resplendent in his imperial purple robes, festooned with a dizzying array of gold and jewels—the same as he wore on the first day of the proceedings, when he’d addressed the assembled clergymen, fully conscious of the awe his glittering outfit would instill in them—he looked out the window at the sleeping city and smiled.

“I’m pleased, Hosius,” he told his guest. “We have accomplished a lot here. And I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Hosius, the bishop of Cordoba, nodded graciously from his seat by the large, roaring fireplace. Mild and conciliatory by nature, the priest was in his seventh decade. It had been a hard few months for him, and they had taken their toll on his mind as well as his body. Like virtually all who held high office in the Church, Hosius had suffered under the persecutions of the Roman emperors. His wrinkled skin still bore the traces of it. Then everything had changed with Constantine. The rising general had embraced the Christian faith, and as he consolidated his hold on the throne, he’d ordered an end to its suppression. Hosius’s reputation had gotten him invited to the emperor’s court, and eventually, he’d become the new emperor’s chief theologian and spiritual advisor.

They’d come a long way since then.

“These disputes,” Constantine said. “Arius, Athanasius, Sabellius, and the rest of them, and all their petty contentions … Was Christ divine, or was he a created being? Are the Son and the Father of one substance, or not? Was Jesus the son of God or not?” He shook his head, angered by the reports—he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes—of mosaics in Arian churches in which Jesus Christ was depicted as a man who aged to a ripe old age, white hair and all. “You know what the real problem is? These men have too much time on their hands,” he said, his tone quietly angry. “They don’t realize that besides being unanswerable, the questions they keep asking are dangerous. Which is why they had to be stopped before they ruined everything.”

Constantine understood power.

He had already done what no emperor had done before him: He had unified the empire. Before his ascendancy, the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western parts, each ruled by its own emperor. Betrayals and territorial wars were commonplace. Constantine changed all that. He took power through cunning political maneuvering and a series of brilliant military campaigns, defeating both emperors and proclaiming himself the sole emperor of east and west in the year 324.