With the Temple paying my way, cost wasn't a worry. I had enough other things to think about. The masters weren't bringing me across the Atlantic just to chew the fat. We had plenty of secure links. Whatever this was, it required my presence.
Sherlock Holmes said that it was a capital mistake to theorize before one had information. My old sergeant, back when I was learning the trade, told me to catch some sleep whenever I could. I dozed my way over the Atlantic and didn't wake up until we hit JFK.
Customs inspection was smooth and uneventful I had only one piece of carry-on luggage, with nothing in it that the customs people might recognize as a weapon. I took the third cab in the rank outside the terminal and was on my way. First stop was at The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, to pay my respects to the Magdalene Chalice. My arrival would be noted there, and the contact would come soon.
Outside the museum I got another cab to Central Park West. I made my way to the Rambles, that part of the park where the city can't be seen and you can almost imagine yourself in the wilderness.
Sure enough, a man was waiting. He wore the signs, the air, and the majesty. I made a quiet obeisance, just to go by the book, and he responded. But I didn't need any of the signals in order to recognize one of the two masters.
There are only three and thirty of us in the inner Temple, plus the masters. We're the part of the Temple that's hidden from all the other Knights Templar: the secret from the holders of the secrets, the ace up the sleeve. All of us warriors, all of us priests. We serve, we obey. When needed, we kick ass.
"Hello," he said. "It's been years."
"Sure has, John," I replied. "What's up?"
We spoke in Latin, for the same reason the Church does. No matter where you are or where you're from, you can communicate.
"There's a problem," he said. "Over on the East Side."
The Grail. It had to be. "Instructions?"
"Go in, check it out, report back"
"Anything special I'm looking for?"
"No," he said. "Just be aware that the last three people who got those same orders haven't reported in yet."
We nodded to each other and parted. I walked south. There are a bunch of hotels along Central Park South, and I wanted to hit the bar in one of them and do some thinking. For Prester John to be away from Chatillon meant that things were more serious than I'd suspected.
I sat in the bar at the Saint Moritz, drinking Laphroaig neat the way God and Scotland made it, while I wondered what in the name of King Anfortas could be going on over at the UN, and how I was going to check. Halfway down the bar another man sat playing with the little puddle of water that had collected around the base of his frosty mug of beer. He was drinking one of those watery American brews with no flavor, no body, and no strength to recommend it, though it had apparently gotten him half plowed regardless. After a minute or two I realized what had drawn my attention: He was tracing designs in the water on the bar.
Designs I recognized. Runes.
Did they think I was blind, I wondered, or so ignorant that I wouldn't notice? But I didn't perceive any immediate danger, and a sudden departure would tip my hand to whoever was watching. Maybe this guy was just a random drunk who happened to know his mystic symbols.
Sure, and maybe random drunks had nailed three other knights.
No, more likely he was a Golden Dawner or a Luciferian. Probably a Luciferian. Lucies have a special relationship with the Grail, or they think they do. I tipped up the last drops of Laphroaig, harsh on my tongue like a slurry of ground glass and peat moss, called for another shot, and drank half of it. The money lying by the shot glass would pay for my drink. I left the bar, left the hotel, turned east, and started walking. Leaving good booze unfinished is a venial sin, but that way it'd look like I'd just stepped over to the men's room and was coming back soon good for a head start.
Halfway down the block I spotted a convenient bunch of construction barriers. I ducked behind them, and as soon as I was out of sight from the street, my left hand darted into my bag. A couple of seconds to work the charm and I stepped out onto the sidewalk, Tarnkappe fully charged and ready in my hand. My bag remained behind, looking for anyone without True Sight like a rotting sack of garbage.
There are only three Tarnkappen in the world, and I had one of them. Something like that can come in handy in my line of work, and it was about to come in handy again. I walked slowly until I was sure that anyone following me from the Saint Moritz was on my tail. Then I cruised eastward, window-shopping. Windows make great mirrors to show what's behind you and sure enough, here came my runic friend, Mr. Beer.
I turned a few random corners to make certain he was following, then got into a crowd and slipped on the Kappe. A few seconds later, after a bit of fancy footwork to make sure that my location and method weren't revealed by a trail of people tripping over nothing, I leaned against the side of a building and watched to see what would happen next.
Mr. Beer was confused, all right. He cast up and down the street a bit, but pretty soon he figured out that he'd botched the job. He stepped into a phone booth, then punched in a string and spoke a couple of words. His face was at the wrong angle for lipreading, but I could guess what he was saying: "I lost him."
Maybe I couldn't see what he was saying, but I'd managed to get the number he'd dialed. The whole time he was on the phone, I was on the other side of the street with a small pair of binoculars. He hadn't shielded the button pad with his hand. Half trained a Lucie, for sure.
I trailed him until he went into a hotel and up to a room. Then I slipped the Kappe into my back pocket and followed that up by slipping a few quick questions to people who didn't even know afterward that they'd been questioned. Before long I knew that Beer's name was Max Lang, that he spoke with a foreign accent, that he'd been there for one week and planned to stay for another, and that he tipped well.
I left him in the hotel. The trail had taken me to the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown. Might as well head over to the United Nations building. It was still early, with lots of light in the sky and lots of people on the sidewalk. I kept my eyes open, but I didn't pick up a tail.
I turned the problem over in my mind. Max Lang couldn't have found his way out of a paper bag if you gave him a map and printed instructions. So how did he find me in the bar? And how did he come to know the Therion rune sequence?
The UN building stands towering over FDR Drive, along the East River. Security there is tight by American standards, which means laughable for any place else in the world. Inside the building I knew which way to go, and I had passes that were as good as genuine to get me anywhere I needed.
I stood for a moment just inside the metal detectors at the front doors, feeling with my senses. Was there something wrong in the building? Nothing big enough to show up without a divination, and I doubted that the guards would let me get away with performing one here, even if they weren't bent to the left and with three knights missing already, only a fool wouldn't assume that the guards were bent. Prester John doesn't use fools. I headed for the Meditation Room.
The Meditation Room was right where I'd left it last time I'd been in town. No obvious problems. I went in. Everything was still in place. There was the mural in the front of the room, with its abstract picture of the sun, half dark, and half light. Cathar symbolism, and Manichean before that. We kept the picture up there to remind the Cathars how wrong they'd been. And there was the Grail a natural lodestone, cut and polished into a gleaming rectangular block.
Wolfram von Eschenbach let the cat out of the bag when he wrote Parzival, back in the twelve hundreds. Somehow he'd gotten the straight word on what the grail looked like. According to the Luciferians, who claim to know the inside story, the Grail had been the central stone in Lucifer's crown, back before he had a couple of really bad days and got his dumb ass tossed out of Heaven. When Lucifer landed in Hell, they say, the Grail landed on Earth.