The Coptic Secret (38 page)

Francis used his knife to probe his broiled snapper for bones. "Seem to be important ones. Word was they were being recalled to Rome as soon as the diplomatic office can get the feds to release them."

"Recalled? I thought they'd be in custody until a trial was held. I mean, kidnapping isn't exactly a misdemeanor."

"They claimed they had held Vatican passports and as such were on a diplomatic mission at the time. The Vatican's foreign office confirmed it."

Lang put his fork down, egg untouched. "Diplomatic immunity?"

Satisfied the fish was safe for consumption, Francis took a tentative bite. "Apparently."

"You telling me the pope condones kidnapping, not to mention attempted murder?"

"Not at all. I'm sure the foreign office has apprised him of what's happened. I'd guess he has his own discipline in mind."

"Like what? I haven't heard of any renegade priests being burned at the stake lately."

Francis shrugged before taking a larger forkful of fish. "I'm afraid the Holy Father doesn't always confide in me."

Lang put his fork down, salad forgotten. "Is it possible the pope
doesn't
know what's going on here? I mean, maybe these guys, these priests, have friends in the Vatican foreign office, pals who could act in the pope's name without him ever knowing about it."

The prospect troubled Francis enough that he stopped chewing long enough to think that over. "Possible, I suppose."

"Possible but not likely, you mean."

The priest shook his head and swallowed. "The Vatican, like any country, could have bad people in its bureaucracy."

This, coming from Francis, was a big admission. "Careful, there, padre. I wouldn't want to see you cast out as a heretic."

Lang returned his attention to his salad, surprised to see the half egg still on his fork. "OK, what else did you find out?"

"Not much." Francis used the edge of his fork to sever another piece of snapper. "Both work with the Knights of Malta."

The name had a familiar ring. Lang searched his memory during two bites of salad including the half egg. "Isn't that an honorary society for the really big hitters, men who donate really
big
bucks to the church? They dress up in funny costumes with big hats with feathers?"

Francis smiled. "I take it your information comes from
Godfather
III
?"

"Yeah, that's it. The movie starts by showing this guy, Michael Corleone, being initiated into this high order of the church and keeps flashing over to where across town his hit men are simultaneously taking out members of a rival gang."

"Hardly an evenhanded depiction of a very old order of the church."

"It's Hollywood. They don't have to be evenhanded, just sell tickets. But what would an honorary association ..."

Francis held up the hand that didn't have the fork in it. "Whoa there! The Knights of Malta is not just an honorary association."

"I suppose you're going to tell me about it,
homo multerum litterum."

"Only if you're interested. But remember,
Davus sum
, non
Oedipus."

"I'm not asking you to solve the riddle of the Sphinx like Oedipus; just tell me about the Knights of Malta."

Francis was staring at someplace above Lang's head, his forehead wrinkled in thought. "Best I can recall, they were founded in the late eleventh century as a monastic order, Order of St. John, to minister to the sick of Jerusalem, then held by the crusaders. Their order was answerable only to the pope himself. The first religious order of chivalry. Only the sons of titled nobility need apply. As the Holy Land came under attack from the Saracens, the order morphed into a military organization. When the Muslims ejected them from the Holy Land, they occupied the island of Rhodes from the early fourteenth century until the sixteenth when the Turks successfully besieged it. The order wound up on Malta, which they made into an island fortress. That's how they came to be called Knights of Malta. Their real name is still Order of St. John."

Lang paused in his unsuccessful effort to cut a tomato wedge with his fork. A chime went off in his head as he recalled the stub of the boarding pass. "Rhodes? Do they still have any connection to the island?"

Francis shrugged, intent on renewing his assault on the snapper. "Quite possibly. When the Italian Fascists took the island from the Ottomans in the first part of the last century, they encouraged European powers to establish a presence there. With the order's political connections, I wouldn't be surprised if they were included."

Lang picked up his knife. "Very historically informative but what about today's version? I mean, you haven't told me why the order or whatever is anything but ceremonial, right?"

Francis shook his head. "Not necessarily. There are three types of Knights of Malta. First is the one you mentioned, the ones who are knighted because of some outstanding deed..."

"Like a major contribution to the church."

"That frequently is the case, yes. The other two types are described as 'chaplains' and 'hospitaliers.' The chaplains are priests and the hospitaliers still tend to the sick and are likely but not necessarily priests, too. The order is governed by the sovereign council, which meets every five years at the Rome priory to elect the grand master. In fact, I believe they'll be convening next week."

"You said something about political connections."

"Interestingly enough, some eighty nations, excluding the US and Great Britain, accord the knights diplomatic status. They even have observer status at the UN."

Lang was chewing slowly, thinking about medieval religious military orders. He had encountered the deadly Pegasus organization and was not eager to face another. But a religious group made sense: the murders that paralleled the martyrdom of saints, an effort to suppress a heretical gospel, the feet they clearly had access to the Vatican's guest quarters.

"That still doesn't explain why they are willing to kill to keep the James Gospel a secret."

Francis held up a cautionary finger. "
If
they are the guilty party. Just because two who might be of their number tried to kidnap Gurt and Manfred doesn't mean the entire order is behind it. "I'm not sure, but they number somewhere in excess of fifteen thousand scattered worldwide. For that matter, the two culprits who got arrested might well belong to any number of other organizations."

"You're right. But staging three murders to reflect martyrdom of three saints, trying to suppress the Book of James. Vere
scire est causas scire."

"To know truly is to know causes; let's get to the bottom of this. First you're going to have to find out if the Knights of Malta are the ones behind your problems. As you can imagine, they are an
extremely
conservative bunch. Their priests, or chaplains, the ones who run the day-to-day operations, probably are somewhere to the right of the most conservative Jesuits. They wouldn't take kindly to having St. Peter, the first pope, depicted as a malcontent and murderer. Such a major change in the church wouldn't sit well at all. Whether they would go as far as murder and kidnapping, who knows?"

"Well, then," Lang said, "all I have to do is find out."

And he had a pretty good idea of how he was going to do just that.

XI.

High Hampton Inn

Cashiers, North Carolina

Two Days Later

Manfred shrieked in glee as the trout twisted on the hook like molten silver. The contagion of the child's joy had Lang laughing. Here with his son and Gurt, the uglier realities of the world had no place.

Manfred held up his wriggling trophy. "Can we keep him?"

Lang managed a serious face. "Are you going to eat him?"

The child's joy evaporated at the memory of bass from the pond in Lamar County. A lot of bass. "Ugh!"

"Then we better put him back."

"But I want to keep him!"

Lang knelt, bringing his face even with his son's. "Think how sad we would be if you were snatched up like that fish, snatched up and never came back. That little trout has a mommy and daddy, too."

The sociological implications of trout fishing had never occurred to Manfred. He shook his head slowly. "Then we better let him go."

Lang turned to where Gurt was smoking a Marlboro under an oak tree and rubbing Grumps's muzzle, to the dog's obvious delight. Lang winked.

"You could have explained he is too small to keep." She nodded toward a discreet sign the hotel had posted specifying anything under ten inches had to be thrown back. "Or told him it is forbidden to keep such a fish."

Verboten,
forbidden, was something the youngest German understood.

Lang would prefer to shield his son against regulations and the arbitrary rules of the law as long as possible. There was already enough unpleasantness in the child's world, what with a kidnapping attempt still fresh in his young mind.

"I like it better my way."

Manfred had watched the exchange. "Does it hurt the fish when we catch him?"

Lang could have explained the difference between warm-and cold-blooded animals or related some arcane argument of the animal rights nuts but decided on another tack. He was ready to give the piscine population a rest for a while. "Would a sharp hook in your mouth hurt?"

Manfred looked at the trout still flopping on the line and then at his father. "Please let him go." He handed the light rod to Lang. "I don't think I want to fish anymore."

Gurt ground out her cigarette. "It is nap time anyway."

Manfred started his usual protest but stopped in midsentence with a look from his mother.

Manfred stopped on the way back to the cottage, hand behind his back. "Daddy?"

Lang leaned down. "Yes?"

With a puff, the little boy sent a cloud of dandelion seeds into his father's face and ran, laughing. In a couple of steps, Lang had him, tickling. Then Lang grabbed a pod of dandelion seeds himself, dusting his son's face with them. Then Manfred found yet another. Grumps knew only that someone was having fun without him. He barked furiously.

"It would perhaps be good for all of you children to take a nap," Gurt observed dryly.

They reached the cottage, Lang holding hands with both Gurt and his son. He could not remember the last time he had been so happy.

He had arrived yesterday. Putting the Porsche through its paces on both interstate and mountain roads had shaken anyone attempting to follow. He had just pulled the car up in front of the cottage when the door exploded open and Manfred ran out, arms outstretched to embrace... Grumps.

Trying not to show his annoyance at playing second fiddle to the dog, Lang said to Gurt, who had arrived in a somewhat more leisurely fashion than her son, "I'm delighted Manfred and Grumps get along so."

Gurt had smiled that slow, sexy smile and given him a kiss so long Manfred and Grumps were vying for attention. "And did Grumps enjoy the mountain roads as much as did you?"

The truth was the Porsche was designed for serpentine highways but the dog was not. Twice Grumps had whined so loudly at Lang's driving that Lang had had to stop to let the distressed animal get out and throw up.

Lang changed the subject. "How long till he takes a nap? We have some catching up to do."

She had rolled her eyes. "You are badly timed. He just got up. I fear we must wait a while longer."

Lang had sighed his disappointment. "I brought a few toys."

Gurt shook her head in mock disapproval. "More important you brought him Grumps. You cannot bring gifts every time you come. It will make him rotten."

"Spoiled."

"That, too."

So his arrival had gone, topped with lovemaking so vigorous that night that, upon reflection, Lang wondered they had not awakened the boy. Today had begun with a large breakfast, a walk along shaded mountain paths and a picnic lunch, which had included a few treats for the dog. The fishing idea had been inspired when Manfred noted the supplies available to hotel and cottage guests.

They entered a good imitation of a genuine log cabin, complete with hooked rugs on rough planked floors, beamed ceilings and bent wood furniture, uniformly uncomfortable.

Gurt pointed. "Manfred, go get undressed for your nap."

Obediently, he trudged into a room off the living room, reappearing with a book in his hand which he held out to Lang. "Will you read to me?"

Paternal instinct versus lust for Gurt.

Oh, well, too few kids had interest in books these days, their parents substituting TV for literature.

Lang looked at the volume in his hand. Brothers Grimm. Aptly named. Evil trolls, child-eating witches. Stuff that would be PG-13 if made into movies. No wonder the German people had a dark side.