The Templar Concordat (17 page)

One by one they entered a ground floor garage where four men with FN P90s stood back from the doors. Two more with sniper rifles sat on the roof across the street. The arrivals took little notice of the armed guards and quietly followed instructions. None spoke or showed any signs of recognizing each other.

Inside the garage, each sat in a metal chair, placed a thumb on a glowing pad connected to a computer, and looked into an eyepiece jutting from a small box connected to the computer. A silent man pointed a sawed-off shotgun under the table, watched the computer monitor, and nodded toward Callahan as each thumbprint and retina scan was identified. Callahan pointed them toward the stairs to the second floor.

Upstairs, they first checked out small and large caliber pistols, with silencers where needed. Most slipped a knife in a pocket or purse, and each picked up a packet of one thousand Euros for emergencies. Then they went to their strike teams.

A Templar strike team had at least one controller with a computer in the control center, a Watcher, driver, and shooter. Some had more, depending on the target and location of the strike. Each had a single mission, a single target.

The last to enter was a tall white-haired man and a much younger and very attractive dark-haired woman. The woman sat down and passed the identity check. Marie Curtis, Callahan noticed. She smiled at Callahan and said, “Good to see you again, Callahan. They said you were all beat to hell.” She laughed. “They were right. Is it contagious?”

“No, your beauty is safe. It’s not contagious.” He thought about his problem with Santini in the library. Marie was just what he needed, an expert in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. “Say, will you be around after this?”

“I’m driving back with the Marshall. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Ok. I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning. We better get moving here.” He pointed upstairs.

“Ok,” she said, then paused at the stairs. “What’s with you, Callahan? In Costa Rica you smash up your face, and now you do it again in Rome. Lookin’ good.”

Before he could answer, she had taken the stairs to the second floor two at a time.

“Hey,” he called after her, “I thought you were a blond.”

“I see you still have a way with women, Callahan.” The Templar Marshall approached and looked him up and down. “Hmmph. You couldn’t get laid with fifty pieces of gold in a whorehouse.”

“She’s weird, Sir.”

The Marshall lowered his voice and moved closer. “Your face looks like something chewed on it. But, you know, when you run toward the bomb, you’re running into the battle, Callahan. I like that.”

He slapped him on the back, sat in the metal folding chair for his ID check, then went upstairs.

The teams were all assembled and were going over photos, maps, and GPS equipment. Each team member wore a GPS unit that allowed the controller to track the shooter, driver, and Watcher on a detailed computer map of the city.

“Alright. Pay attention.”

All eyes snapped to the Marshall in the middle of the room.

“Tomorrow we will kill thirteen Hashashin and Al Qaeda in Rome. That’s our mission. Each team here has its own target.  When the mission is complete, most of us are going back where we came from. Most will not come back to this building. You all have safe house addresses and numbers. If you get in trouble, that’s where you go. Talk to your controllers. If you have a problem, let them know. If you get in trouble, we’re going to come in after you. We’re not going to leave you out there. But communicate. The more we know, the better we can respond.”

He walked by each station and looked at each Templar individually. “You young people. You’re shooters. You have the gun, but you are not in command. Listen to your controller, look at your Watcher, know where your driver is.”

He silently looked from one face to another, then continued. “Each Watcher has put these operations together. They know where the target goes, when he gets up in the morning, what kind of coffee he likes, where his girlfriend lives, and they know the target area. They know where to take him. So, when the Watcher signals ‘Go,’ you take the target. When he signals ‘Wait,’ you wait. And when he signals ‘Abort,’ you abort. Let me say that again. When the Watcher signals ‘Abort,’ you abort. No questions. Think of it this way. You are the Watcher’s weapon.

“You don’t appreciate it now, but these Watchers once were shooters just like you. They are the best because they are still alive. Karl over there,” he pointed to a smiling man of about eighty. “He first went to battle as a Templar sixty years ago, and he’s been in it ever since. And he’s still with us. Pay attention. They have the experience, and they have the judgment. Do what they say. Do what the controller says. These are team operations, not solo performances.

“When you complete your mission or abort, leave your weapons with your driver, or ditch them in pieces if you have to.”

He looked around the room. In fifty years, the young ones would be the Watchers, or perhaps one would be the Marshall giving this same speech to a new generation of Templars. That’s how it had worked in an unbroken chain for nine hundred years.

“It’s unusual for us to move on so many at once, but these guys just delivered a bomb to the Vatican that killed a thousand people, and they’re still sitting in the sidewalk cafes sipping nutmeg lattes and watching the girls go by. They’re safe because the police don’t have ‘probable cause’ to arrest them. They have human rights. They’re laughing at us.

“Laughing at us,” he said very slowly. “Well, they’re right. The police don’t have probable cause to arrest them, but the Knights Templars know who they are, know what they did, know what they plan to do, and have probable cause to kill them.”

Rome - Thursday, March 26

Ahmed Al Mishari paused on the steps of his girlfriend’s flat on the Via Monserrato in Rome and took a deep breath. He remembered some old American movie. Springtime in Rome? Paris? Roman Holiday?  He actually felt like dancing up the street. What would his family and friends back in Saudi Arabia say if they saw him swinging around a Roman lamp post on a beautiful spring morning? But he resisted the urge and skipped lightly down the steps to the street level.

Callahan saw him come down the stairs from half a block away, and he could see the Watcher was fiddling with a bicycle chain across the street from Ahmed. Patience. Let it unfold as planned.

Ahmed was a man at peace with himself. He worked for his uncle’s shipping company a few hours a day, slept many afternoons, shopped for whatever he wanted, and made the nightly circuit of the latest and trendiest clubs. And the women? Oh, so many, and so very, very willing. How different from back home in Riyadh. Life in Rome was good. And life in Riyadh?

He didn’t actually work for his uncle. In fact, he wasn’t really his uncle. The Lebanese owner of the firm was surprised to learn one day that he had a nephew who would soon start working for him. If he didn’t like that arrangement, the uncle’s real family would begin to die off until the new nephew was accepted into the family and business. Everybody wins.

Ahmed had to admit his lifestyle lacked serious attention to Islamic teaching and principles. He truly regretted that, and hoped one day to have an opportunity to return to a proper Muslim society, but not too soon. Not yet. He would suffer for the cause.  And perhaps, he thought, he would be obliged to suffer the indignities of the decadent West for many years.  A warrior must be strong. A warrior must sacrifice. Ahmed considered himself a warrior.

The great success the movement had achieved in the destroying of the core of Christianity was a strike for all Muslims. In fact, he was ecstatic. For hundreds of years infidel Popes had trained their followers to kill and enslave Muslims, plunder their lands, and steal their learning. Remember the Crusades? But now they had replied. They had spoken, they had roared, the West would listen, and the West would tremble with the terrible echoes of that blast in the Vatican. 

Al Mishari regretted he had no direct role in the bombing, but he valued himself too much to think of sacrificing himself as a suicide bomber. He was a thinker, a planner. Others carried out the directives that came from people like him. They all had a place according to their talents. He really hadn’t planned the bombing, but he could have.

He was the banker for the various fanatical groups in Europe that were one day going to destroy that arrogant continent. It wasn’t a particularly difficult job, but he told himself that its importance justified his own.  He simply made overpayments to certain shipping forwarders in major cities, and, after taking their cut, they passed the excess to a specific employee. Ahmed even got his special cut.

Perhaps one day all of St. Peter’s could explode in a fireball? Maybe all the Vatican? Or that London Ferris wheel by the River Thames? The Eiffel Tower? Big Ben’s head exploding? The Chunnel? Maybe the Acropolis? Europe was what one could call a target-rich environment. Yes, his day would come, hopefully many days. But he wanted to push the button and watch from safety. And when the history of these times was written, his name would be among the heroes who would be honored for a thousand years.

The fact that he wasn’t the only Hashashin source of cash for these groups in Europe was disappointing, and it might diminish his status a bit, but he appreciated the need for compartmentalization and secrecy. Too many operations had failed in the past because too many people knew too much.

He walked a block past apartments and shops, and turned in to a small parking garage where he always left his car when he visited Francesca. When the attendant saw him, he dropped his newspaper and raced up the stairs to an upper level. A minute later the attendant stood at attention, holding open the door of Ahmed’s black Mercedes SL. At over one hundred thousand Euros, it was the best combination of performance and comfort available. The car reflected the man, he thought, and this car reflected Ahmed Al Mishari, sleek, powerful, fast, and admired. It turned heads.

He strutted slowly around the car looking for any damage, frowned, wiped a finger at a speck on a fender, leaned in to check the back seat, and casually looked back at the attendant. “Thank you, boy,” said Al Dosari as he handed the thirty-year-old attendant a twenty Euro tip. He wanted people to know he was a big tipper. He wanted them to remember him. He liked the way they looked at him. And he wanted the attendant to appreciate him and his generosity.

“Thank you, Sir,” replied the man. “And have a fine day, Sir.” The attendant considered smashing that smug face to a pulp, grabbing the head and slamming it in the door, thought about police and jail, then fingered the twenty Euros in his pocket and shrugged. Twenty Euros three or four times a week added up. “Jerk,” he mumbled to himself while standing back and smiling at his benefactor.

Al Mishari revved the engine unnecessarily, adjusted the mirror that needed no adjustment, and pulled on his Le Mans driving gloves. He lurched out of the garage, and when he stopped to let cross traffic pass, Callahan took the opportunity to glance at the Watcher, and push a four key combination on his cell phone.

The small package in the headrest received a coded signal from the cell phone and sent a pulse to an electric fuse which ignited a primer. The primer charge heated the main charge to a temperature where the shaped solid explosive transformed to a gas. And due to the shape of the charge, the gas expanded mainly in a single direction, straight forward into the back of Al Mishari’s head. The force of the gas slammed his head forward and, since his head didn’t move fast enough for the racing gas, bored a large crater in the back of his skull. It was all finished in a few milliseconds.

Callahan sent a text message from his cell phone and watched from the window of the crowded café across from the garage. He looked up from his newspaper, saw there was no injury to anyone other than Al Mishari, and no damage to any other vehicle. Textbook case, he thought. Just enough to do the job.  Too bad about the car. He put the specially modified cell phone back in his pocket.

The garage attendant just gaped at the car. The jerks’s head blew up. Twenty Euros three times a week. Gone!

*     *     *

Callahan pushed out of the café with the other patrons who rushed the door, all jostling for position to see what had happened.  He shook his head in dismay and disgust, then walked past the car rather than away from it. Walking away would seem odd to most people, and possibly draw attention. He stopped for a moment to watch with the crowd, and then kept on walking down the street at a normal pace. He passed the Watcher, who made eye contact, but nothing further. Mission accomplished. Al Mishari would never be a problem again. The small, shaped charge had obliterated the man’s head, but left everything except the driver’s window intact. It was messy, but a good cleaning job and a new window would put the car back on the road.

Six hours earlier the Watcher had parked, blocking part of the garage driveway. When the attendant went out to deal with him, Callahan slipped in to the garage and up the stairs to Ahmed’s car. He had a master key for the Mercedes, and it slipped into the well-oiled lock without a sound. He removed the zippered headrest cover on the driver’s seat. The package he left behind the first layer of padding in the headrest, red side forward, was no larger than a pack of cigarettes, and designed to do just one job. He had been told by the technicians who designed the device that it could kill the driver while leaving passengers unharmed. Perfect.