The Templar Concordat (44 page)

“Small hills. Hills soft sand.” He waved his hand from left to right indicating a wavy terrain. “Between hill hard sand.”  He knocked his knuckles on the table.

“And here.” He drew a line from north to south on the east side of the house. “Here wadi. One meter… two meter deep. Maybe three meter across.”

“Windows?” Callahan asked.

The man sat back and studied the drawings for each floor. He darkened sections of the walls where he remembered windows, then cross-hatched some of them. “These.” He pointed to the hatched areas. “Big window door. Move to side.”

“Sliding glass doors,” Callahan mumbled.

“Anything else?” Berrera looked at Callahan.

“No.” Callahan moved the three pages next to each other. “No. This is very good.” He extended his hand to the man who had risen from the table. “Thank you very much, Sir. This is a great help.”

Berrera walked the man to the door speaking quietly in Filipino. Berrera laid his hand on his shoulder and the man crossed himself quickly before sliding out the door.

“Nervous?” Callahan nodded to the door.

“Sure he’s nervous. He could lose his job, go to jail, or worse. Asians don’t have the privileges Americans have in the Kingdom. You guys get a slap on the wrist, letter to the file. At worst, you get deported. But us? We get our asses kicked in the basement of the police station, a year in jail, and then we get deported.”

“Can he keep quiet?”

“Oh, he’ll keep quiet. Don’t worry.”

Callahan decided not to pursue it. He stared at the drawings. If I had the treaty, he thought, where would I keep it? Where would Hammid keep it?

“Trying to figure out where the treaty is?” asked Berrera.

“Yeah, but it’s just a guessing game. We need better intel. We need to go down there and do a recon.”

Berrera sat down at the table with Callahan. “I’m trying to find who does the gardening, maintenance, cooking… all that stuff. It’s either Filipinos or Indians. Maids or cooks would probably live there and be harder to get to, but the outside people would be driven in every day.  I’ve called another priest who works in Abqaiq. He said he’d ask around quietly.”

“Think you can find someone?”

“Oh, yeah. We’ll find them. That’s how we survive. Sticking together.”

Callahan kept looking at the drawings and the Google Earth printout he had brought with him. “You know, I think we’ll need three people. Two to go in and one on the outside for cover and recon.”

Berrera drummed his fingers on the table. “Yeah.” Callahan thought he seemed uneasy. “I have a man. Take my word that he’s good, very, very good. And he’d be perfect for this.”

Tread softly on this, thought Callahan. A priest had all kinds of confidences he couldn’t reveal. Confession? Counseling? Third party? “I’ll respect your judgment, Berrera. Perhaps he and I could have a private talk? He could tell me what he chooses?”

Berrera nodded. “That’s reasonable. Like I said, he’s very good, but I doubt he’d do it unless he knows what I know. He’s not only good, but he’s very smart. He won’t go as a hired gun.” He looked up at Callahan. “That’s a decision you have to make.”

“And one I couldn’t make until we met.”

“Agreed. Do I set it up?”

“Set it up.”

Dhahran - Monday, May 4

Callahan flipped through the English language mystery paperback, then replaced it on the shelf, scanned the rack, glanced at his watch, and picked another book off the shelf. Muslim evening prayer time was 5:42 pm, and it was now 5:30 pm. He had to get inside the restaurant before it locked its doors for the twenty minute prayer time.

He was in the basement bookstore of the Al Raashid Mall on the outskirts of Khobar, and Fuddruckers was on the second floor. When prayer time hit, the non-Muslim expatriates would flood into Fuddruckers, and the fast-food place would follow the letter of the law by locking its doors, but they would be locked with a full house of hungry people on the inside.  The alternative for the expatriates was to wander the mall while all the stores were locked for twenty minutes. Devout Muslims said the fourth of their obligatory five daily prayers, expatriates ate hamburgers, and the religious authorities were satisfied the infidels’ blasphemy was hidden from the faithful.

Callahan counted out the Riyals and paid for his book, then set a leisurely pace through the crowd to Fuddruckers. Half the Saudi men wore the ankle length white thobe and either white or red checked gutras on their heads. The other half wore normal Western clothes. All the Saudi women wore the head to toe black abaya, some with the black veil or mask with eyeholes. The mall was a modern masterpiece of concrete, marble and stainless steel, but he found the stores strangely similar and lacking in stock. The Saudis had copied the form, but were still working on the substance of a consumer society.

He waited until the last minute to enter Fuddruckers, just before the smiling Indian manager closed and locked the doors. The place was packed with Westerners, the men who were employed, and their dependent wives and children. Good. He waited in line at the counter and ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and Coke, all prepared to the exact same standards as in Atlanta or Cleveland.  Is this what they meant by cultural imperialism?

He took his tray into the larger room with the tables full of laughing kids and scanned the area. As expected, there were no vacant tables, so he moved down the left side of the room toward the back where a bald Westerner sat reading a Newsweek and munching an onion ring.

Callahan looked around for a table, and the man said, “It’s really packed today, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Callahan, “would you believe standing room only for hamburgers?”

With the correct password phrases exchanged, the man gestured for him to take the seat opposite him at the two-person table. The bald man looked at his watch. “About fifteen minutes until prayer time is over.”

Callahan saw two shopping bags at the man’s feet. One contained an assortment of clothes, books, and specialty chocolate cookies. The other contained a croquet set in a molded plastic box about three feet long. The label on the box showed a smiling Indian family playing the game on a perfect lawn.

They made small talk about travel deals in the Orient until Fuddruckers’ reopened at the end of prayer time. Like the tide going out, the chattering Western crowd picked up their packages and headed back into the mall where the stores were all opening their doors again.

“Well, it’s been good meeting you,” said the man. “Good luck.” He picked up one shopping bag, nodded, and left. Callahan lingered over his Coke, then picked up the bag with the croquet set, misjudged its weight, and nearly dropped it. If it opened, that would really have been interesting. He bought a large chocolate chip cookie on the way out, then took the stairs to the lower level parking lot where he had left his car.

He didn’t know anything about the bald man. The Marshall had simply sent a coded response in an Internet chat room giving the location of the meeting, a general description of his contact, and the password phrases. That’s all he needed to know.  If captured, he couldn’t do any damage.

In fifteen minutes he was back in his apartment in the Aramco compound unpacking his croquet set, and examining three silenced 9mm Beretta pistols, one Heckler & Koch MSG90 A1 sniper rifle with a night scope, and ammunition for all four. He also had three pairs of night vision goggles, several explosive changes with timers and fuses, three handheld GPS units, and three military headset transceivers.

All of this was enough to ensure he would never leave the basement of Saudi Intelligence if he was caught. He thumbed the small capsule stuck under his collar that ensured he would never make it into the basement alive. They had their tools. If they needed the guns, they had already failed, but might still save their own lives.

Dhahran - Tuesday, May 5

Eguardo was all lean muscle, with two percent body fat, scars that spoke of serious fights, and Asian tattoos holding some secret code. Berrera had brought him to a McDonald’s on the Khobar Corniche and introduced him to Callahan.

They left Berrera in the McDonald’s and walked up to the nearby Burger King parking lot. “What did Berrera tell you?” Callahan asked.

Eguardo looked sideways at him, and scanned the Burger King parking lot. “He told me you needed of a good man with special operations experience, and he said the mission was of vital importance to the Church.”

“Do you care about the Church?”

“Berrera and the Church saved my life. I owe them everything. Let’s not waste our time. I spent ten years with the Philippine Marine Corps special operations units. That’s where I met Berrera. We hunted people in the south. Brought the war to them in ways they never imagined. Then government security services recruited me and I did the same things, just without a uniform, and without a good reason. Then I started working for myself, doing the same things with even less reason.”

Callahan motioned to the Burger King building. ”Let’s get going before Abdullah over there runs us down.” The parking lot was full of Saudi teenage boys revving powerful engines. Cars but no girls. That was against Saudi religious law.

Eguardo barked a laugh, then walked with Callahan through the door for single men. The other section was for families and single women. The Wahabbis didn’t like singles to mingle. They bought Cokes and sat in a far booth. Callahan waited.

“I went way too far, and one day didn’t like what I had become. Hated myself.  I don’t know why. I just did. That’s a long story, and I’m not going to tell it. What I will tell you is Berrera and the Church turned my life around, and for the last three years I have been making amends for my past.  I can look at myself in the mirror today.”

“I guess that means you are a friend of the Church?” Callahan sipped his drink and smiled. Anywhere else in the world, they would be in the back booth of a dingy bar, but not in a Kingdom where alcohol was strictly prohibited. Even Coke had been prohibited until recently as punishment for the company’s dealings with Israel.

Eguardo spread his fingers and shrugged. “I guess so.”

“You have any problem putting your skills to work for the Church? Infiltration, combat, killing… all of it.”

Eguardo toyed with the wrapper of his straw. “The skills aren’t the problem. It’s the reason. I have no problem fighting for the Church, if that’s what you’re doing. In fact, I would be honored. If that means fighting and killing, then… Ok. If it’s fighting these guys…” He jerked his head to a group of Saudis. “It’s about time.”

“Can you keep your mouth shut?” Would he be insulted at the question, Callahan wondered. Many people were.

He balled up the straw wrapper and flicked it away. “I’ve kept it shut for many years now. It’s a habit.”

“Do you want to work with us?”

“I have to know what you are doing. I’ll follow orders, but I need to know what’s going on, and why. Otherwise, I’ll say goodnight right here… and keep my mouth shut.”

Callahan had to make a decision. Well, the Templar Master told him to do whatever he had to do. “You know about the Treaty of Tuscany, and this guy Al Dossary who’s pushing it?”

When he finished the story of the treaty and plans, Eguardo sat back and shook his head. “You know your plan sucks, don’t you? Really sucks. You’re going to get us all killed.”

“Yeah, but it’s the only chance we have. You know how it goes. We don’t have to like it, we just have to do it. This Pope says we don’t go down without a fight, and when we fight we intend we win. So, I intend to do exactly what I told you, I intend to win, and I don’t care if it sucks.” He didn’t need to know about the Templars.

Eguardo’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward on the table. “The Pope himself ordered this?”

“Yeah. Berrera will back me up.” Not quite true, but close enough.

“One condition… I get killed, I want the Pope himself to say a mass for me. No assistants. The Pope himself in St. Peter’s. I might need some help… you know… with my visa.” He raised his eyes to heaven.

London - Friday, May 6

CNN’s Greg Conrad is in Cairo where Hammid Al Dossary made a personal appeal for calm today in the wake of the startling revelation that the Treaty of Tuscany had been scientifically dated to between 1160 and 1200. The date on the treaty is 1189. We go now to Greg in Cairo.

 Thank you, Peter. As the news spread that the treaty had been dated to the late Twelfth Century by all three of the teams of experts, riots broke out across the Muslim world. Here in Cairo, police battled a crowd estimated to be over ten thousand. Similar riots erupted in Karachi, Beirut, and Tehran. In Paris a pipe bomb detonated inside the famed Notre Dame Cathedral, and Italian security forces have sealed off the Vatican from a crowd of at least one thousand.

All this is sparked by the news that the Treaty of Tuscany… actually the paper… or parchment… the treaty is written on… was produced in the late Twelfth Century. All nine scholars recruited by Mr. Al Dossary and the Vatican have confirmed their analysis yields identical results, and this from independent testing in London, Tokyo, and Geneva.

In his appeal for calm, Mr. Al Dossary stressed this was just the beginning of the testing. Earlier today, Mr. Al Dossary had this to say…