The Templar Concordat (11 page)

But when she finished reading the Latin that was readable, she knew why it had been forgotten, and why it should probably remain forgotten. She also knew why certain people desperately wanted it remembered. What had she gotten herself into? Who was Hammid? Really? But there was no turning back now.

Back to work. It was unusual in another way, too. The page was about twenty-two inches long, and that wasn’t unusual. But what was unusual was that only half of the page had been taken by the script and the seals of the signatories. The other half was blank.

She pulled a small, but very high resolution Nikon from her bag and took several pictures of the treaty in its original condition. Then she went to work. When she was finished, a plastic sleeve with the treaty went into a leather case. Then she securely taped a plastic bag to her thigh, high up under the nun’s habit she wore. 

Hammid came back just as she dropped her dress. “Got it?” he asked.

She held up the leather case. “Right here. Want to take a look?”

“No. You can show it to me back at the hotel.” He took the leather case from her and they headed back the way they had come.

Vatican - Easter Sunday, March 22

Seconds after the blast, the inside of the Basilica was stone silent. No moans. No calls. No falling statuary. No breaking glass. Aside from some surface blemishes, the enormous interior of the Basilica had absorbed the blast, ignored it, and proudly stood as it had for four hundred years. Windows blew out, venting some of the force, and bright shafts of sunlight shot through the sparkling dust hanging above the carnage.

The structure shrugged off the explosion, but the people inside didn’t have that choice. Then the screaming began.

Anyone within one hundred feet of the bomb died instantly. Within two hundred feet, the effect varied. Some died, others were mangled, maimed, blinded, or completely unhurt. Naked and shocked survivors whose clothes had been completely blasted off slipped and fell in the gore. The explosive cared nothing for rank or privilege. Cardinals, visiting dignitaries, guards, pages, babies, and eleven-year-old candle bearers all lay in the same wet, pulpy mess. The Pope was gone, shredded by the blast at the very instant he held Catholicism’s most sacred symbol above his head. The Vatican Security Chief who tried to throw a blast blanket over the Pope was too late, and lay unconscious and bleeding behind the marble altar, saved by that same blanket.

Callahan had just entered the doors of the Basilica when the explosion exited at an expansion rate of 26,500 feet per second. The blast picked him up and hurled him through the portico and down five steps until his face painfully crunched against something hard. Ibrahim’s oxygen bottles had burst into thousands of tiny shrapnels, and jagged metal shards mixed with the explosive ripped along the blast path. One small piece grazed his head.

Mancini and the guards behind Callahan were below the level of the top step and were sheltered from the blast. They drew their weapons, ran in the front doors, and aimed pistols inside the church, scanning for secondary attackers following the bomb with bullets. Nothing. They were ready to engage the enemy, ready to protect the people in the Basilica, but the enemy had left the building. With no targets in sight, they holstered their guns and moved into the destruction.

*     *     *

Callahan tried to stand after the blast, but the ground kept moving. Each time he tried to stand, the ground moved again and he’d fall back. Why are those people running? Is mass over? Is the Pope finished? What about that bomb guy in the wheelchair? They shouldn’t run like that. Someone might get hurt. He tried to stand again and pushed up on both feet. Where did my gun go? Did the Hashashin take my radio? I’m supposed to protect these people. Is that smoke coming out of the church doors? I should call the fire department. They’ll know what to do.

His head felt very large, and everything sounded very far away. The ground moved again and he fell forward. Maybe if I just lay here for a few minutes to clear …

*     *     *

 “Bishop? Bishop? Bishop Santini, can you hear me?”

Santini was dreaming of paper. All the pages of the books were blank. Blank? Where were the words? A library with blank pages?

“Bishop, can you sit up?”

The paramedic from the Carabinieri helped him sit. Then it all snapped back into focus. The fat man, Hammid, the gun, and the nun all rushed back. The medic helped him to a comfortable reading chair in the great hall.

“Can you remember what happened, Bishop? Our strike team found you unconscious and handcuffed to that table.”

Strike team? Why was a strike team in the library? “Why, we were robbed. A man with a gun, and he had a nun hostage, a nun with a tattoo of a frog on her ankle. Have you found her? I was handcuffed to the table and then they stuck me with a needle. Did you catch him?”

“Bishop, you are the only one we have found here.” He shook his head. “No nun. No tattooed frog. You should rest.”

The paramedic was stuffing his kit back together.

“Pardon my haste, Bishop. Please consult your personal physician as soon as possible. But I think you can understand I have to get back out there. The strike teams aren’t finding any injured inside the buildings, and I can be more useful out there.”

The strike team returned to the room, and the commander told him the library was safe and clear. He said they didn’t have time to look into the theft, but he would personally report it to his superiors. They couldn’t stay with all the problems outside.

Santini was puzzled. “What are you all talking about?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t know. Of course, you’ve been in here.”

When the paramedic told him what had happened at St. Peter’s, at the mass where he should have concelebrated with the Pope, where everyone on the altar had died, where he would have died, he felt immediate relief, guilt at feeling relieved, then nausea at the guilt. Was he lucky, or was he damned?

That meant he was responsible for the Vatican Library. Nobody else was going to step up. The Cardinal Librarian was probably dead or severely injured. He could mourn the dead later, but there was urgent work do right now. There had been a theft, but he didn’t know what was taken. That’s where his duty was right now, to the library.

Santini ran up the steps to room H21, surprised his back didn’t scream in pain. The door was still wedged open with the chair he had placed there earlier. He scanned the room and saw the document drawer open on the work table. He checked the drawer number against the computerized catalog and saw ten documents listed for that drawer.

He lifted each document from the drawer and laid it on the table. He counted nine, not ten, as the computer said. He checked the data slip with each document. All were there except something called the Treaty of Tuscany. Interesting. What was that? He never heard of it. The entry in the computer said it had been found two months ago between the pages of a Sixteenth Century volume of biblical criticism in another collection. That’s precisely why this recataloging was so important. They had things they didn’t even know about.

So, the treaty had come in here, and the technicians had routinely scanned it into the computer, but the entry showed it had not yet been examined by the curators. That was normal. Work on this section was about fifty percent complete. Technicians would enter unknown manuscripts into the computer, then curators would examine them.

He drilled deeper into the computer. Let’s see what the scan of this manuscript shows. The scan would have a very detailed picture of the document under both normal and infrared light. Once scanned, the software allowed the curators to bring out features that were invisible in normal light. What exactly do we have here?

A large, flat-panel screen showed the document at normal size, and he adjusted a few filters and enlarged it to take up the full screen. He read the old Latin, read it again, looked at the seals of the Popes, and felt sick again. Is this what was stolen? Could his Church have done this? His Church? How could it ever create something like this?

Even worse, had this document been in the Vatican Library all these years? And was his recataloging program responsible for loosing this horrid Treaty of Tuscany into the world? Was he responsible?

This couldn’t be passed off to anyone else. He was stuck with the problem, and the clock was ticking. The strike team officer had promised to alert the proper authorities. Would he? When would they come? What if they found the treaty? That wasn’t an option.

He checked to make sure the computer logging system was turned off, and entered new computer index numbers for the treaty, removing it entirely from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Papal collection, and putting it into his own personal section. It was much like physically taking a book off the shelf on the fourth floor, sliding the other books together so no space was left, and putting it in his secret bookcase in the basement. There would be no trace left on the fourth floor. This was the same, just done with computer files.

He gathered up the data slips that had been attached to the treaty, carefully removed its title from the folder that had held it in the drawer, and slid the folder into the middle of a stack of empties. He surveyed the room. It looked just like any normal sorting room half-way through a recataloging. Good. 

But that was only half the job. Now he had to “steal” something, so the authorities could find evidence of a theft. He went back to the main reading room. Still empty. He called out asking if anyone was there. Quiet.

An archway led off the main reading room into a display area currently occupied with several glass cases exhibiting royal seals from medieval European royalty. Every king had one, and in an era where illiteracy was the rule rather than the exception, the kings made documents official with their royal seals. These were round, gold, between two and three inches in diameter, and usually depicted the king’s likeness on one side and some important event from his reign on the other.

Santini felt sick again at what he had to do, but it had to be done. You’re protecting the Church, he told himself. Just do it and get it done with. He covered his hands with his sleeves to avoid fingerprints, lifted a floor vase and slammed it down in the middle of each glass case. The racket was huge, and glass flew everywhere. But he wasn’t cut, and the vase held together.

Would a thief have replaced the vase where it had been? No. He threw the vase aside and let it roll over to a wall. Now he took off his cassock and spread it on the floor. He grabbed as many of the royal seals as he thought a thief could carry and dumped them on top of the cassock. Gathering up the sides of the cassock, he hurried to his office with the loot.

When the one hundred and three seals were safely stashed in his safe, he put the cassock on and comforted himself with the thought that someday the seals could be returned to the collection. And now, his duty lay outside helping with the injured. He had done his best to protect his Church.

Vatican - Easter Sunday, March 22

Jean sat at the foot of the hotel bed with her arms wrapped around her legs, her knees pulled up under her chin, and couldn’t take her eyes off the TV set on the dresser. The nun’s habit she had worn to the library was thrown on the bed along with the two other outfits she had worn at the Vatican, and she had switched into jeans and an Oxford sweatshirt. She crushed wads of Kleenex in both fists and rocked slightly as the CNN anchor told the world over and over that the Pope, most of the high-ranking members of the Curia, and hundreds of ordinary faithful had been killed by a suicide bomber while attending Easter Mass at St. Peters Basilica in Vatican City. She watched the TV reporter repeat the same thing again.

Yes, Tom, the casualty figures continue to mount here in Vatican City in the aftermath of a huge explosion that shook this ancient edifice… you can see St. Peter’s here behind me… this morning as the Holy Father… Pope Pious XIII celebrated Easter mass. We understand the mass was a con-celebration of sorts with about twenty high-ranking cardinals and archbishops assisting… all assisting the Pope in the same mass… so all of them were gathered together at the huge, canopied altar in the center of the Basilica.  Sources tell us over one thousand people have been taken to hospitals around Rome and in the surrounding suburbs, and the death toll is approaching five hundred. That’s five hundred dead as of this counting… and nobody really has a good handle on it since the situation inside the huge Basilica is still being resolved. And the injured… we don’t have any figures… but as you can see, this entire plaza here… the Plaza of St. Peter’s… the field hospital and triage center… the body bags continue to leave here.

One of the problems we are encountering in bringing you this breaking story is that most… or almost all… not all, but almost all… of the Vatican officials who usually deal with such things have been either killed or seriously injured.

One of her throwaway cell phones rang. She had several of these, purchased off the shelf with a fixed number of included minutes. Use it a few times, throw it away, and start with another.

“I have to see you. Can I come up?” It was Hammid, who she had last seen when they triumphantly left the Vatican Library with the treaty. That was before she knew what had really happened, saw the ambulances and emergency medical people in St. Peter’s Square, saw the bloody people wandering in confusion, and saw the black body bags being laid out in rows in the square. They had quickly split up and Hammid said he would contact her at the hotel. He gave the treaty to her in case either of them was stopped, since a medieval historian would have a natural reason for having such a document. She took the document, put on her floppy hat and large sunglasses, blocked out everything around her, and nearly ran back to the hotel.