The Templar Salvation (2010) (27 page)

“Exactly,” Zahed continued. “The bishop then visited the fortress of Baberon before crossing into Seljuk territory through the Cilician Gates.”

“That’s the Gulek Pass, over here.” Sully pointed it out. “It’s the only easy way to get across the Taurus Mountains.”

“Then he says he headed northeast, toward Mount Argaeus, and, I quote, ‘ventured into the mountain, past orchards resplendent with apple, quince, and walnut, across pastures strewn with sheep and goats, then across a steep incline and a small forest of poplar trees. We then climbed past a glorious waterfall before reaching the most pious of monasteries, dedicated to St. Basil.”

The guide’s face clouded. He studied the map, his mind visibly scrolling through all the visuals he had experienced over the years. After a moment, he said, “Well, if he was traveling from Baberon, he probably followed this road, it’s been a trading route for centuries.” He pointed out the area he was referring to on the map. “And on this side of the mountain, I can think of three, even four spectacular waterfalls that he might have been talking about. Same for the trees; there are several pockets of them in this area.” His tone lost its bounce. “You don’t have anything more?”

“Well, he describes the sunset over the distant horizon, which tells us that he was somewhere here, on the west-facing ridges of the mountain. But there is something else, an intriguing reference to something he saw along the way,” Zahed told him. “Something he describes with highly reverent terms as being a stone from the vessel of the Lord inscribed with crosses and the sign of Nimrod.”

“The sign of Nimrod?”

“A diamond,” Zahed explained. “Nimrod. From the Hebrew Bible. Noah’s great-grandson, the first king after the great flood.”

The guide’s face lit up. “A big stone with crosses carved into it. From the Ark.”

“You know it?” Zahed asked.

Sully nodded to himself as the cogs in his mind fell into place, then his face widened with a smug grin. “Let’s go find this monastery of yours.” He folded up the map and trotted off to his car. “Follow me, okay?” he shouted back. “We can drive up the first bit.”

“Lead the way,” Zahed replied. He watched the guide fire up the Toyota’s engine, then glanced at Simmons and gave him a satisfied nod. “Let’s go find that monastery, ‘Ted.’ “

Within minutes, the two 4x4s were trundling up the mountain.

Chapter 27

T
he waters of the Bosphorus shimmered a mesmeric gold under the morning sun as the small jet banked over Istanbul and whisked Reilly, Tess, and Ertugrul out of Europe and into Asia. The aircraft, a sleek, white Turkish Air Force Cessna Citation VII, was ferrying them to the city of Kayceri, bang in the middle of the country, where a unit of Turkish Special Forces would be waiting to take them up into the mountain.

As the aircraft streaked up to its cruising altitude, Reilly took in the receding panorama of domes and minarets with weary eyes that he could barely keep open. He’d lost count of how many cups of coffee he’d drunk in the last twenty-four hours or so, a number that would have to be multiplied by a factor of two or three to take into account the high potency of Turkish coffee. Still, he needed to get some sleep if he was going to be effective in the field op that was coming up.

All three of them had worked late into the night at the consulate, and they’d ended up not bothering with hotel rooms and crashing there instead. Tess had spent her time trying to get a clearer handle on where Conrad and his gang could have been heading, while Reilly and Ertugrul had spent long hours poring over all the local surveillance intel that had come in from both CIA and Turkish sources, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might suggest complicity with the Vatican bomber. Additionally, calls had had to be made to their superiors in New York City as well as to Langley and to Fort Meade, home of the NSA, where chatter was being analyzed and voice intercepts combed for anything that could help answer the one pressing question: how the bomber was getting from Istanbul to his intended destination.

By the time the sun came up, none of it had borne fruit. All they had to go on was the most recent update from the local
polis
telling them what cars had been stolen in and around Istanbul in the last forty-eight hours. Unsurprisingly, there hadn’t been that many, given the short time frame. Fifty-seven vehicles were on the list. Reilly and Ertugrul had been able to eliminate more than half of them on the grounds that they wouldn’t be suitable for a ten- to twelve-hour drive. They’d then waited while the data was fed into the police’s MOBESE information and security network, linking over a thousand surveillance cameras across the city to a license plate recognition and vehicle tracking center. Several of the cars on the hot list had been picked up on video at various locations, and given that Reilly and Ertugrul knew which direction the bomber was headed, they were able to narrow it down even further, to fourteen vehicles of interest. Then shortly after dawn, word had come in from Air Combat Command that they’d agreed to let them have one of the Global Hawks. It was on the ground at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, being readied for its sortie, and was expected to be in position over the target area by mid-morning. The list of hot cars had been relayed to the drone’s controllers in the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California, where computers would analyze the drone’s video feed for any matching vehicles.

There was nothing more they could do except wait. And hope. And try not to dwell too much on what had happened so far and what mistakes they thought they might have made.

Reilly swung his gaze to the seat facing him. Tess felt it and looked up from her laptop. Even after a virtually sleepless night in the discomfort of a consulate meeting room, the sparkle in her look and the mischievous curl at the edge of her lips was still there. He had to smile, but it was a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Tess caught it. “What is it?”

He was too tired to go into it. Instead, he deflected the question and asked, “Any verdict yet?”

She studied him for a beat, as if debating whether or not to let it go. Then her eyes flicked down to her screen and she said, “I think so. I’m not sure it’s enough to help us find Conrad’s grave without knowing on what side of the mountain that monastery is, but it might.”

“Show me,” he asked, leaning forward.

Tess spun her laptop around so he could see its screen, and pointed at the map on it. “In his dying missive, the monk says they said that Conrad and his men were going to Corycus, which is down here, on the coast.” She indicated a small town on the south coast of the country. “It’s called Kizkalesi today.”

“He could have been wrong,” Reilly said. “They could have lied to him.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I mean, it makes sense—they didn’t have too many choices. By 1310, the Order had been abolished. They were wanted men in Western Europe, so they couldn’t go there. They couldn’t head east, either, since the Muslims had taken back the whole coast and torn down their fortresses.”

“So where were they going?”

“The only logical place for them to go: back to Cyprus. Conrad probably still had friends on the island. The pope’s men weren’t powerful there. He could lay low there in relative safety and plan their next move. Which means that wherever they were on that mountain, they’d have to head south, to one of these passes through the Taurus Mountains, to make it to the coast. The question is, which one?”

Reilly nodded, not really focused on what she was saying.

She studied him for a beat, then said, “You freaked me out back there, you know that?”

His face wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

“Outside the Patriarchate. The way you charged at the guy, the way you stormed off after him like a one-man army … jumping in the river.” She paused, then added, “It’s not your fault, Sean.”

“What’s not my fault?”

“What happened at the Vatican. The bombs and all that. Hell, I’m more responsible for it than you are.” She leaned in closer, and tightened her hand around his. “I know you want him. And I want you to wipe that bastard off the face of the Earth even more than you do. But you can’t keep going ballistic like that. You need to keep your rage in check or you’re going to get hurt. And that scares the life out of me. I don’t want that to happen.”

He nodded quietly. At some level, he knew she was right. He was letting his anger cloud his judgment. Only problem was, with someone like the bomber, Reilly knew that half measures wouldn’t be enough. He had to be reckless if he was going to have a chance at taking him down. It was part of the job description. But it was also something about which he didn’t necessarily need to keep reminding Tess.

He half-smiled. “It’s no big deal, honest. I have had a bit of training in that kind of thing, you know.”

Her expression didn’t soften. She wasn’t buying it. She pulled her hand back. “I’m serious, Sean. I don’t want you dying on me. Not here. Not now. Not ever. We’ve still got a lot to do together, don’t we?”

Her comment took him by surprise and made his mind wander back, to what they’d been through months earlier. After a moment, he said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

A sadness darkened her face. “But I did. I bailed on you. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about that. But you understand, don’t you? You understand why I had to go, right?”

Sound bites from their parting conversation echoed faintly in his ears. “Has anything changed?”

Tess took in a deep breath and glanced out the window. It wasn’t a question she was keen to think about. “What if it doesn’t happen for us?” she finally said. “Will we ever be able to really move beyond it, or will it be a hole in your life that I’ll never be able to plug?”

Reilly pondered it for a beat, then shrugged. “Given what we do, what’s brought us out here again … It all makes me wonder whether or not we should have even tried.”

Counfusion and surprise flooded her face. “You’re having second thoughts now? About us having a baby?”

“It’s probably a moot point now, isn’t it?”

“What if it wasn’t?”

He thought about it for a moment, and surprised himself by realizing he wasn’t so sure anymore. “I don’t know. You tell me. I mean, this is what we do, isn’t it? You, with your long-lost mysteries that seem to bring all kinds of whackos out of the woodwork. Me, with my job, running down guys who get wet dreams about slamming planes into towers. What kind of parents would we have been?”

Tess waved it off. “What are we gonna do, give it all up and play Scrabble every night while sipping chamomile tea? Like you said, this is who we are. It’s what we do. And regardless of that, we’d be great parents. I don’t doubt that for a second.” She gave him a slight grin and tightened her hand around his again. “Look, don’t worry about it. You’re a guy. You’re not supposed to get these things. Just leave that part of it to me, okay? All I need you to do is tell me we can get past it if it doesn’t work out for us on that front … and make sure you don’t make yourself too big a target for that creep in the meantime. Deal?”

An acute sense of tiredness overcame Reilly. He nodded with a faint smile, his eyelids now feeling like they were made of lead. “Deal.”

Despite her words and despite his exhaustion, images of the carnage at the Vatican kept swooping through the dark recesses of his mind. He shut his eyes and decided that maybe a nap wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, and leaned back against his headrest. But much as he needed to sleep, it just wouldn’t come, and might not for a while, he knew.

Not until the hunt was over.

Chapter 28

A
lpine meadows and vast orchards of vine and fruit gave way to a harsher, rockier terrain as Zahed and Simmons followed the guide’s battered SUV up the mountain.

The paved road, its tired asphalt fissured and patchy from the big seasonal swings in temperature, was barely wider than their cars. After a couple of miles, it turned into an even narrower path that mules would have a hard time climbing, but none of that seemed to faze the guide. He kept on going, the Toyota’s tired diesel engine straining against the bone-rattling incline, its suspension springs stretching and compressing like four big Slinkys, leading them farther up the desolate mountain, until the trail finally came to an end in a small clearing at the foot of a big rock slide.