Twist of Time, page 23
Watching the laying-out were a haggard Lady Gwynn, brother Duncan pale as a woman in grief, and Vivyan with her son Master Andrew, who stood silently watching. Lady Gwynn with steely grace looked down at the butchered wreckage of her son. Rothgar had warned that he was “fearsome mauled.”
He was still dressed as he had fallen—battered helmet and chainmail hauberk coat with gloved hands folded across the sword lying on his body. According to Templar tradition, he would be buried clothed in his armor. His Templar cloak was ripped, bloody, and mud-caked. In a final English outrage for being a Templar, his chest was crushed, his heart torn out, and his face destroyed with a war hammer. Lady Gwynn removed his gloves and kissed the fingers that she once taught letters. Vivyan, choking sobs, had to be supported by two servants when her legs gave way.
That night, Lady Gwynn sat lone vigil in the chapel reading her breviary by candlelight.
She had placed sprigs of oak, hawthorn, and holly bobbe along his body, following the Celtic church’s tradition.
She looked up from the breviary page.
“I’ve been waiting,” she said.
Brychan stepped from the shadows. “How did you know?”
“When I kissed the fingers there was no ink stain. Yours always were stained, even as a child. That brutish hand never held anything but a weapon. Who was he?”
“An English knight. When Brother James revived me, I could not believe I was alive. It was well into the night. Tens of hundreds of English lay dead. To trick the Inquisition, we searched for a knight my size. We dressed him in my clothes and armor and mauled him in the English manner, especially the face. A Gypsy had given me a bag of medicine for the horses. Brother James covered me with a balm and the expected fever did not come. My heroic demise was nulled by Gypsy medicine for a horse. So much for the glorious prophecy of my death.”
“Then it was the right time to prophesy wrong.” She spread her hands over the body. “Why have you done this?”
“The Grand Master gave me a charge: to hide a sacred chest.”
“After that, will you return to the Church?”
His answer would hurt but there was no way to soften it. “No. Both Pope and Church betrayed us.”
“Then the Templars are saints?”
“The Pope sanctioned murder! No guilt proven, yet not one acquittal. One hundred twenty-four burned alive in Paris alone. Even Grand Master de Molay; never a nobler soul.”
He moved closer and was startled; her hair beneath the mourning veil had turned white in the seven years since he saw her last. He continued.
“God gives us the sight. Yet, if we use it, we are burned by the Holy Office. I will serve God, not a murdering Pope.”
In the candlelight, she now could see that his left arm was in a sling and bound to his body. “And your wound?”
“I am told it will mend, somewhat.”
“What do you want here?”
He moved opposite her from across the table. A faint sweetish aroma rose from the body mixed with the canker of death.
“You once ordered me to give you an heir,” he said. “I did. Now, I beg a favor. Bury this knight in my grave.”
“No English may rot in a Houston grave! How many Houstons have they slaughtered over the years? And my own, the Campbells?” She commanded. “Say the count!”
Since childhood, Brychan knew it by rote, as did all Scots children, even as years added to the toll. “Twelve Houstons, nine Campbells.”
“Tomorrow is your requiem Mass. After that you must remove this carrion.”
“No, my Lady. In my grave this carrion will keep me alive.”
In a hard-blowing, freezing wind, Father Pierre knocked at the gate of the Sacred Heart Capuchin monastery all but hidden in a desolate valley in the Harz Mountains. The Church’s most severe order, the monks spent their days in solitary cells in prayer and meditation, leaving only for two meager meals and the five canon hours.
When Pierre had returned from Scotland to report to the Pope’s Cardinal at Avignon, he swore that the Templar Brychan was killed in battle. Pierre had gone to Houston Castle where, invoking Inquisition authority, he ordered the grave opened. He personally viewed the knight’s battered remains but failed to recover diary or chest.
Though Pope Clement was dead, the ever-meticulous pontiff had left confidential instructions regarding Pierre’s mission. The priest, if successful, would be made a bishop; if not, another course was determined.
Father Pierre arrived at the monastery with orders to bide there “for the good of his soul until receiving further Papal orders.”
However, the succeeding pope was not briefed, either through oversight or embarrassment over the mission’s existence and failure. Years passed.
The order never came.
Kate was speeding at night on a rough country road, the headlights bouncing with each rolling bump.
“We did it!” she cried.
“Yesss!” he yelled, and they bumped fists.
Kate checked her mirror again. A hundred yards or so behind, car lights appeared then disappeared behind each curve. Each time it was out of sight, it gained on them.
“We’ve got a tail,” she said.
“You sure or just paranoid?”
“Both.” She accelerated. “Let’s see what he’s got.”
Burns was driving. Sawyer sat with a .44 Magnum long-barrel in his lap.
“She’s spotted us,” Burns said.
“Better get them now before we reach another town.”
The two cars followed a road that meandered along a ridge edging the hills. Occasional dirt roads cut in from farms and rolling pastures.
Kate watched the mirror and said, “They’re closing.”
“Can you outrun them?”
“We’re about to find out. You can bet your fat glutes they know we’ve got the chest. Look where we are—no witnesses.”
Sawyer was changing the bullets in the Magnum.
“What’s that?” Burns asked.
“Armor piercing, my own special load. It can penetrate an engine block.”
Kate was trying to remember the road. She had driven it several times during the day but at night there were no familiar landmarks. She passed a sign indicating an intersection ahead. “Grab that handle above your door.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Fifty yards before the intersection, Kate eased the accelerator, pulled hard on the emergency brake, and cut left. They went into a controlled spin at the crossroad, hung for a nanosecond, and straightened to one-eighty—a bootleg turn. She gunned it straight toward Burns and Sawyer’s oncoming car.
“Shit!” Burns yelled.
Kate assumed the driver was an American and used to driving on the right. With luck, he would try to pass on the right.
Burns turned right to get around her. Kate cut hard and clipped his left rear, sending him into a sharp spin.
She hit the brakes, making another complete turnaround as Burns’ car stalled dead. She floored it, T-boning him broadside. Then she saw the gun.
“Down!” she shouted, and they ducked below the dashboard as Sawyer’s loud shot shattered the windshield.
A second shot slammed into the doorframe. She floored it again.
Kate’s car drove Burns sideways to the very edge of the road. Burns jammed the foot brake to lock everything. Too late.
Kate and Thomas peered over the dashboard; there was no car. They heard it tumbling down the hill and saw its lights flashing skyward with each roll.
They jumped out and ran to the edge of the drop. About thirty yards below, the car was upside down, roof crumpled, a giant smashed toy. Both lights glowed at odd angles; one front wheel was still turning and spitting dirt.
“Bastards!” she yelled.
Thomas clicked on a flashlight and started down the hill.
“Thomas, wait,” she said.
He looked up at her. “What?”
“They’ve got high-velocity ammo. These guys are killers. In case something happens. . . .” She hesitated. “I love you. I mean, I am in love with you.”
It was absurd but there might not be another chance.
“God, Kate—your timing.”
Moans were coming from the car. Kate pulled her Beretta. They scrambled down the rolling slope, around jagged rocks and rough boulders. The car’s collapsed roof had blown out all the side windows like an explosion.
“Toss out your guns or I’ll shoot the gas tank,” Kate ordered.
There were muffled noises from inside the car. Two automatics dropped from the window. “That’s it,” a cramped voice said.
She picked them up, a Magnum and a Ruger, and tossed them downhill.
“Now, your phones,” she said.
“Call an ambulance,” a different voice croaked.
“Who hired you?” Kate asked.
No answer.
“We’re leaving,” she warned.
“Wait.” From the car window two cell phones dropped to the ground. “Fallon.”
She gave Thomas a look. “My favorite perp.”
Thomas stooped down to peer into the car, shining the light inside. The two men were hanging upside down by their seat belts. Both faces were bloody. The driver was trembling with shock.
“My leg is b-broken,” he said.
“Good,” Kate said. “What were Fallon’s orders?”
“Shit! I’m bleeding.” The man in the passenger seat could now see from the flashlight.
“Fallon told us to get the chest,” the driver said.
“Did he also tell you to kill us?”
There was no answer.
While Kate called emergency services at 999, Thomas studied their faces. Incredibly, he had never seen them even though they had been following him for days. Kate asked for an ambulance, gave the location, and hung up.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Climbing back up on the road they checked the car. The front bumper was twisted at an angle and the intact windshield had etched a crystal labyrinth all the way across with a cabbage-sized hole on the passenger side. The car would still drive.
When they arrived at the cottage, they parked but did not get out of the car. Neither spoke, still trying to absorb what had happened.
Thomas looked at her. “Kate, this, this whole mess could ruin you.”
“Merely because I lied to my boss, killed the prime suspect in a foreign country, and I haven’t an atom of proof to solve Hollander’s murder?”
“Think,” he said as he took her hand. “If you don’t report it. Nobody will know.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You said the hitter was a pro. Do you really believe that whoever sent him will report him missing to the police? He’s an assassin. How can they?”
“Thomas, I have no choice. I am a cop.”
“Bury him.”
“What?”
“In Brychan’s grave.”
“Holy Mary, will that work?”
“It worked for Brychan for seven hundred years.”
Once inside the cottage, they set the chest, wrapped in a wool blanket, on the dining room table.
“Coffee coming up,” she said, and headed toward the kitchen.
Thomas went to the bathroom to check the tub. He froze—the body was gone.
“Kate!” he called as he rushed back into the room.
Four of the men had guns; a fifth was taking Kate’s Beretta from her. She looked at Thomas, her face unreadable.
Another man appeared from the hall, a Black man who by his manner was in charge.
“Who are you?” Thomas asked.
“Leo,” he answered and turned to the men. “Carver, you are twenty-three minutes behind schedule. Take the chest to the rendezvous, then dispose of the body.”
Steiner and Wojowitz refolded the blanket over the chest, picked it up between them, and went out the front door. Carver and Grigsby waited; Alonzo moved closer to Thomas and looked at him with a half-smile.
“Remember me?” he asked.
Thomas did not recognize him. Alonzo slammed him hard in the stomach. Thomas doubled over, gasping.
“Alonzo!” Leo warned, “Leave.”
Carver and Grigsby laughed. Alonzo crossed to the door and the three left together.
Thomas pressed against the wall, fighting for breath.
“Alonzo was the one you gave a concussion to the night you escaped,” Leo explained. He waited, listening to the car outside drive away, then looked at Kate. “They’ve gone.”
“Thomas, please, just listen.” She paused while he recovered his breath enough to follow what she was saying. “Leo is a cardinal in the Church.”
Leo took an amethyst ring from his pocket and slipped it on the third finger of his right hand. “Cardinal in pectore,” he said. “It means—”
“A secret cardinal known only to the Pope,” Thomas finished for him.
“Yes.” Leo nodded, impressed.
Thomas looked angrily at Kate. “So, you’re not lapsed.”
“Not entirely.”
“Kate, please get it,” Leo said.
She went to the chimney, removed the clear plastic encased diary from behind the bricks, and handed it to Leo. She glanced at Thomas but said nothing.
He glared at her. “Maybe the Pope will make you a saint for fucking a monk to steal the diary.”
“Actually,” Leo explained, “the diary was stolen from us.”
“Then I presume, your Eminence, those were your goons rescuing me at Oxnard?”
“Yes. To free you and then let you escape.”
“Let me escape?”
“How else could you find the chest? After we got you safely away, we planned to let you go and see that you weren’t abducted again. Alonzo, whom you clobbered with the briefcase, is my operative in the group. That’s why he hit you just now, to maintain his cover.”
“Your operative?” Thomas suddenly connected. “You are . . . Vatican Intelligence?”
“We’ve denied it since Napoleon. But after years of speculation, numerous books, and coverage in the media, what’s the point?”
“And your thugs—all good Catholics?”
“Oh, no. Only Alonzo. The rest of this particular team are hired help—a mix of rogue intelligence operatives, Cold War flotsam, career criminals. They have no idea who they really work for.”
“Your Eminence, isn’t your position too exalted to be out grubbing in the field?”
“In special operations like this one, we are hands-on. Obviously, we work well apart from the Vatican. After years in the Vatican Foreign Service, I was secretly named Cardinal in pectore and made Director of Intelligence. Believe me, I didn’t want it. But the Holy Father was a difficult man to refuse.”
“What was supposed to happen after I found the chest?”
“We’d steal it from you, with Kate’s help.”
Leo went to the table where there was a tan briefcase. The top edge was loaded with tricked-out hardware. Leo opened it, put the diary inside, and locked the case. He touched a button and there was a crisp hiss of air.
“It’s a specially designed case,” he said. “Temp controlled, no moisture. Perfect protection for the diary.” Leo handed the case to Kate and said, “Get Denise Hollander’s killer.”
Thomas was surprised. “I thought the diary was critically important to you.”
“My mission is to get the chest. The diary was simply the means. We’ve removed several key pages before turning it over to the police. Kate still has a murderer to catch—the diary is critical evidence, the motive for a tragic homicide of an innocent Catholic woman. Brother Thomas, I presume you have questions.”
Thomas’ surprise did not soften his anger. “Start with the raid. How did you know where they were hiding me?”
“Surveillance. We were parked outside the monastery keeping a twenty-four-seven watch on you since you were the one most likely to find the diary. When you were abducted, we followed. We made the assault the next night. After you escaped and went back to Kate, she kept us informed of your movements. But I still had to order my men to track you in order to maintain my cover. It becomes very tricky when you have to deceive your own people too.”
Thomas looked at Kate. “Like you deceived me.”
“Please, you must not blame her,” Leo said. “The Church can be very persuasive, even to the so-called lapsed.”
Several weeks earlier, Kate had received a call from her father. He sounded odd and insisted that she meet him at the beach house. She rushed there, fearing a family crisis.
He was waiting with a stranger, a Black man, well-dressed and with a commanding presence. Behind him, a very large man hovered, his function obvious. She had never seen her father, Captain Grady Flynn, Chief of Homicide, so nervous. He introduced the man as Leo, who then presented Vatican credentials as a Cardinal. Kate was astonished—a Prince of the Church wearing a business suit on a Vatican mission in Santa Barbara?
Leo explained that a woman courier had disappeared carrying a rare book, a diary stolen from the Vatican. She had been murdered. They needed a police officer on the inside when the killer was caught. The diary must be given back to the Church before its contents could be made public. Would she help them?
Kate looked in disbelief at her father, the hard-assed Catholic layman. Even the Cardinal in the Los Angeles archdiocese personally knew him. This dedicated policeman was trying to convince her to steal evidence for the Church! She bit her lip, wanting to ask, “Is it any wonder people like me lapse?” Instead, she listened to the Cardinal while straining her patience to its bearable limits.
Leo’s argument was a shrewd mix of candor, logic, and emotional appeal. If she agreed to help, there must be no relationship between them. They had prepared a scenario where Kate would be the lapsed, cynical non-believer with no church connection if she were caught. She must do whatever necessary to be convincing and get the diary.
