It was a scary thing to contemplate, the power of electronic surveillance at her fingertips. The government's fingertips. With that kind of power, it should be no problem to learn everything necessary about the members of Cask and Swords. She began searching, using a program Stephanie had written that made Google and the other search engines look like something out of the Stone Age.
It didn't take long for a pattern to emerge. It should have been easy to find what she wanted, but it wasn't turning out that way. She kept running into conflicting data and broken links. She entered a new search focused on a prominent Cask and Swords member.
Several hundred miles north of Virginia, a string of characters appeared on a monitor screen with the location of the Project computer. The server was programmed to respond with code designed to worm its way into the computer of any curious person looking for a particular kind of information.
In Virginia, Stephanie hurried into Harker's office.
"Director, shut your computer down."
Elizabeth turned it off. "What is it, Steph?"
"Someone just tried to break through our firewall while you were on the system," she said. "I blocked it and sent a trace back. What were you looking at?"
"One of the Cask and Swords members. He hosts an annual retreat for them at his summer home in Maine."
"You were using the program I wrote? Not Google?"
"Yes. I wanted a deeper layer."
"Whoever he is, someone with serious computer savvy is working for him. My program triggered an auto response that tried to send a virus back to you. I quarantined it."
"It's not a standard security response?"
"No way. My program is transparent. I designed it to get through the firewalls at the Pentagon. A normal security program wouldn't respond to it."
"Will they know it was us looking?"
"Yes. To send something back they had to isolate our location, which is almost impossible. I'd like to meet whoever wrote the program."
There was grudging admiration in her voice. Stephanie was a legend in the small world of extreme hackers, where she was known only by her screen name, Wonder Woman. She'd worked for NSA before Elizabeth recruited her.
"This man heads up the richest private investment bank in America," Elizabeth said. "Maybe that explains the security."
"Maybe."
On the list of Cask and Swords members, Elizabeth put an asterisk by the name of Phillip Harrison III.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Selena came into Nick's hotel room with her laptop under her arm. They were sleeping in separate rooms and separate beds. It had nothing to do with being in a Muslim country. Until Nick got a handle on his nightmares, it seemed like a smart move. Neither one of them was happy about it.
"What did you find out?" Nick said.
"What do you know about the Templars?"
"Not a lot. I know they conquered Jerusalem and that they were knights that fought in the crusades."
"The Templars protected the routes to the Holy Land. They invented a banking system as a way to keep pilgrims from being robbed along the way. You gave your money to them and they gave you a piece of paper that was like a credit card. You could use that at Templar stations during your pilgrimage to pay for things. If you were robbed, it was worthless to the robbers. The Order charged interest. It made them wealthy, along with donations of land and money from the nobles and the Church."
"Pretty slick. And here I thought credit cards were a modern development."
"The King of France owed the Templars a lot of money he'd borrowed for his wars. He made a deal with the Pope and accused them of heresy so he could get out of paying."
"I hate to say this, but that sounds pretty modern, too. Like the banks making a deal with the government and blaming the little guy for going in debt."
"Anyway. The Order was disbanded. The leaders were tortured and burned at the stake. They had a large treasure but the King never found it. The Ark may have been part of that."
"Who was the king?"
"Phillip. He was called Phillip the Fair."
They both thought of it at the same time.
"The Fair King in the quatrain," Nick said. "Remember?"
"Yes." She pulled up the quatrain on her laptop.
"It makes sense," Nick said. "Nostradamus is talking about what happened to the leaders and the Templar treasure. Nobody told the king where it was, even when they were tortured."
''The pope and the king died not long after the heresy trials," she said. "Jacques de Molay predicted their deaths as they lit the flames under him."
"The Pale Rider reigns Supreme," Nick said.
"That manuscript is like a sentence of death for anyone who has it. There are a lot of people who want that treasure. Not to mention the Ark."
"We're the ones who have it now."
"You had to say that." She pushed hair away with the back of her hand.
"People will keep after us until we find the Ark or prove it doesn't exist. You said you found something. What is it?"
"The Templars had branches all over Europe, especially in England and France. I came across a medieval reference to a place called the House of Five Trees. It's a chapel in Normandy."
"Another tourist attraction?"
"No. I had some trouble locating it. It's off the beaten track and it was never an important site, not like some of the Templar buildings. It's just a small chapel in ruins, not much to see."
"Another stamp for the passport. I'll call Harker."
On the second ring she picked up.
"Yes, Nick."
"We need to go to France." He told her what Selena had discovered. "The chapel is in the countryside near Cherbourg."
"All right. Do it as soon as you can."
"There's an Air France flight to Paris tomorrow."
"Try to stay out of trouble."
"Roger that." He hung up.
"How about a glass of wine?" Selena said. She held up a bottle. "Chardonnay."
"I'll get some ice. There's a machine in the hall. It'll just take a minute."
Nick picked up the ice bucket and went into the hall. The machine was at the end of the corridor, set back in an alcove. The hall was carpeted in a floral pattern. It was a big hotel. Rows of doors marched down both sides of the corridor.
He got to the machine and slid the lid open and reached for the scoop. As he scraped the ice into the scoop, he heard a soft sound.
Something hit him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nick opened his eyes. He was dizzy. The room moved, his vision blurred. He was lying on his side on carpet. His hands were bound with duct tape. Something sticky had trickled down over his ear. Pain pounded behind his eyes. He was in one of the hotel rooms. It was dimly lit. He could see four legs in long pants and two pairs of feet, two sets of brown shoes with thick, quiet rubber soles.
Suckered. His hands felt numb. The tape was cutting off circulation. Why didn't I sense them?
"He's awake."
"Get him in the chair."
American accents. How long has it been? The others will be looking for me.
The chances they would find him weren't good.
Someone grabbed him under his armpits and lifted him onto a straight back wooden chair. Duct tape went around his body, pinning him to the chair. His vision cleared. The headache got worse, like nails being pounded into his skull.