Reilly felt heavy-headed. “So these trunks … ?”
“‘The devil’s handiwork, written in his hand using poison drawn from the pits of hell, its accursed existence a devastating threat to the rock upon which our world is founded,’ ” Tess reminded him. “What’s in these books that frightened the monks so much? Could there be any truth to the accusations against the Templars? Were they really occultists that practiced black magic?”
Reilly looked doubtful. “Come on. It could all be just metaphorical.” His previous meeting with Brugnone, three years earlier, flashed across his mind. “I can think of other writings that would shake up a monk’s world, right?”
“Of course,” Tess nodded. “But keep an open mind. I’ll give you one example that Jed brought up. You know there were a lot of Templars in Spain and Portugal. Big presence there. Well, at some point in the thirteenth century, they got into trouble and they had to pawn off most of their holdings in Castile. Of all the enclaves they had out there, the only one they kept was an insignificant little church in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t in a strategic location. Its land didn’t even produce enough revenue to allow its friars to send funds to their brothers in the Holy Land. But it was the one encomienda, the one enclave, they decided to keep. What wasn’t immediately obvious was that this small church actually did have an interesting feature: its location. They had built it right in the center of Spain, equidistant from its farthest capes. And I mean perfectly equidistant, down to the meter.”
“Come on,” Reilly questioned, “what do you mean, ‘perfectly equidistant’? How could they figure that out, what, seven hundred years ago? Even today, with GPS mapping and—”
“It’s bang in the center, Sean,” Tess insisted. “North-south, east-west, draw those lines, and where they cross, that’s where it is. Jed checked it using GPS coordinates. It’s really there. And that location has a major occult significance: controlling the epicenter of a territory was meant to give you magical dominance over it. And there are other geographic peculiarities to that location that have to do with the pilgrims’ road to Santiago and other Templar holdings. Now, is it all just a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe the Templars really believed in that mumbo jumbo. And maybe it’s more than mumbo jumbo.”
Reilly exhaled heavily. Whatever it was, it was something the man he was after was prepared to kill for. And maybe that really was all he needed to know.
“Bottom line … it could be anything,” Reilly concluded.
“Yup,” Tess nodded as she finished off the last piece of escalope.
Reilly studied her curiously, then shook his head slowly and blew out a small chortle.
Tess eyed him curiously. “What?”
“I know you. You’re just thinking about how this is all going to be great fodder for your next book, aren’t you?”
She set down her fork and stretched lazily, then sank back into the pillows. She turned on her side to face him. “Can we talk about something else?” She grinned, her expression dreamy. “Or even better, how about we don’t talk at all for a while?”
He smiled at her, cleared the plates off the bed and onto the room service table cart in one fell swoop, and sank into her.
THE BUZZ OF A TELEOHONE jolted his senses with the velvet touch of a taser and yanked him out of a dreamless sleep that had eluded him for hours.
He’d tossed and turned forever. It had been an emotionally devastating day, with highs and lows coming at him fast and furious. The night was harder. Images of the devastation and the carnage at the Vatican were suffocating any elation he felt at being with Tess again. He found himself replaying the events over and over in his mind, trying to rationalize what he had done, but he couldn’t escape the haunting feeling that he was responsible for it all and wondered how he was going to live with the burden of guilt that was growing inside him.
He pushed himself to his elbows, feeling dazed. Fine strands of sunlight were streaming in through small openings in the shutters. It took him a couple of seconds to register where he was. He glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table. It showed that it was just after seven o’clock in the morning.
Tess stirred next to him as he answered the phone.
He listened, then said, “Put him through.”
As he grunted one-syllable replies, Tess sat up, all groggy and tousled, and looked him a question.
He cupped the phone’s handset. “It’s Bescondi,” he mouthed. “They’ve got a hit. In the Registry.”
“Already?” Then her eyes lit up. “Conrad?”
“Conrad.”
Chapter 17
PARQUI DI PRETURO AIRFIELD, L’AQUILA, ITALY
As he steered the car down the last of the switchbacks and drove up to the gate that stood at the end of the scenic country lane, Mansoor Zahed once again felt pleased with his choice of pilot. The airfield seemed as somnolent as it had been when they’d landed there two days earlier. The pilot he’d hired, a South African by the name of Bennie Steyl, clearly knew what he was doing.
Huddled in a quiet valley in the Abruzzo region of Italy, the small facility was only an hour and a half’s drive from Rome. As Zahed approached it, he could see that, as before, there was little discernible activity. Recreational flying was far more expensive in Italy than it was in the rest of Europe due to highly taxed aviation fuel and steep charges for everything from the use of airspace to snow removal and de-icing services—a compulsory fee, even in Sicily at the height of summer—and the quiet airfield had gradually fallen into disrepair until an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck the region in the spring of 2009. The narrow, winding roads in and out of the area were clogged by fleeing locals, but the fact that the remote, run-down facility was within a stone’s throw from the devastated towns and villages made a massive rescue and humanitarian effort possible, which in turn inspired the Italian prime minister to relocate that summer’s G8 Summit from Sardinia to the small medieval town of L’Aquila to show solidarity with the earthquake’s victims. The airfield had been hastily spruced up in order to receive the leaders of the developed world, before it reverted to its natural, sleepy state.
A state that suited Zahed perfectly.
He pulled up to the small gatehouse. In the distance, he could already see Steyl’s plane waiting idly on the tarmac, its white fuselage glinting in the morning sun. The twin-engined Cessna Conquest was parked off to one side, away from the dozen or so smaller, single-engined aircraft of the L’Aquila Aero Club that were lined up alongside the short asphalt runway. The beefy gateman set down his pink-paged Gazetta Dello Sport newspaper and greeted him with a lethargic wave. Zahed waited as the unkempt, potbellied man pushed himself out of his cratered woven-cane chair and lumbered over to the car. Zahed explained that he needed to drive in to drop off some luggage and other supplies to the plane. The gateman nodded slowly, padded over to the barrier, and settled his meaty arm on its counterweight. The barrier tilted up just enough for Zahed to be able to drive through, which he did, with a courteous wave of gratitude to the perspicacious guard.