The Templar Concordat (18 page)

He flipped the arming switch, confirmed the red light blinked twice, then sealed the headrest and zipped the cover back in place. The device would stay armed for ten hours. After that it would turn its radio receiver off, short circuit and drain the battery, and might stay peacefully in the headrest for the life of the car.

Police cars and an ambulance raced past him, and he exhibited the proper amount of gawking for Rome. He continued walking, and when he turned a corner, a black taxi pulled to the curb and Callahan jumped in the back seat.

“Everything Ok?” asked the driver.

“Just fine,” said Callahan. “It was quite a show. The information you and the Watcher provided couldn’t have been better. And my compliments to the techs. Quite a useful little package.” 

“Damn glad we got that bastard. We’ve been watching him live the high life for a while, now. Sometimes I’m tempted to just walk up to them and give ‘em a little present behind the ear.” He gave a loud laugh. “Hard to teach an old dog new tricks, eh?” He laughed again.

Callahan dropped both cell phones over the back of the front seat. “You should take these.” Then he pulled out the gloves he had worn when he planted the bomb. “These, too.”

“No problem. Might use the fancy one again. Hope so. This almost feels like I was back in the field again.” He stuffed them in the large pocket of his jacket.

“How long have you guys been watching that moron back there?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“We picked up on him about eighteen months ago. He came in from Saudi. Acted like the crown prince. Nothing too good for him. Only the good life. But he was just too regular in his habits. We knew the time to take him out would be when he left the girl’s house in the morning. We just hoped he didn’t lose interest in her. She moved once. I think he must be paying for this place.” He nodded backward. “Always the same pattern. No finesse. No brains. Didn’t really understand how this business works.”

“Did you see Gus back there?” asked the driver about the Watcher.

“Yeah, he was right up there in the crowd of ghouls trying to get a good look.”

A Templar never really retires, Callahan thought, just moves to a new phase. The older people simply moved to surveillance and intelligence. They were smart and experienced, and also invisible. Nobody pays much attention to a grey-haired old man with a cane and a slight limp who takes a daily walk through the neighborhood and stops at a bench to feed the pigeons. He can also take pictures of people entering the restaurant across the street. He was just like any old man, except he had probably been fighting the Hashashin for forty years.

When the taxi stopped around the corner from Mancini’s warehouse, the driver turned and said, “Give the Marshall my best. I don’t go any further here. I go over to the Coliseum and park there now. They’ll call me if one of the other teams needs any help.” He pointed a finger at Callahan. “And if you have a chance, tell that skinny old French bastard back in Zurich we’re ready for whatever happens. Tell him Joe Petrelli says to get off his ass. We’re ready.”

Callahan walked toward the warehouse entrance and couldn’t see the outside guards. Good. He rubbed the bandage on his head and saw blood on his hand. It was leaking. How did that happen?

Rome - Thursday, March 26

“Like they say, the waiting is the worst part.” The Templar Marshall paced between the tables of controllers at their computer screens. “Rather be out there in the thick of it.”

“We should start hearing pretty soon, Sir,” said Mancini.

The Marshall looked at the controllers. “You guys have anything interesting?” He waved a hand. “Forget it. Do your job.”

All the teams were deployed and the controllers were in voice contact with the Watchers. They could also see the locations of each member of their team on the GPS maps on their screens.

“How many do you think we will get?” asked Mancini.

“Ten would be great,” said the Marshall. “We have thirteen targets, and if we can get half of them, I’ll consider that a huge success. We can’t keep this up forever. I’d even call it a success if we only got the three Hashashin. I’m still surprised they are in the open after the bomb.”

“Yeah, but I guess our luck can’t hold up forever, and we might as well clear the board of as many as we can while they are still being stupid.”

The Marshall walked up to the thirteen pictures taped to the wall. Each had a number above it.  “Stupid isn’t what we face here, gentlemen. If they were stupid, they wouldn’t have lasted this long. The Hashashin have been around for a thousand years. Longer than us. They’ve survived it all, and are anything but stupid. Actually, I think we may be pushing it a bit here, but they hit us in Rome on our own turf, so we may as well chase as many of them out of town as we can.”

“Oh, I know they aren’t stupid,” said Mancini, “but everyone does some stupid things, no matter how smart they are. I think these guys have been lulled into a sense of false security because they have been operating in Western nations so long. They think they can kill by night, then sit around basking in the protection of all the human rights groups.”

 “Amen to that, but times are about to change.” The Marshall agreed with Mancini. The Hashashin had been establishing cells under front names all over Europe for the past twenty years, and limousine liberals had been cheering them on in the name of diversity and world peace. Most of the cells didn’t even know the Hashashin existed, and had no idea they were just pawns in a larger game. They demonstrated, preached murder and hate, killed people who spoke against them, raised money for more killing, and justified it all under the banner of religious freedom. But the Hashashin were the invisible hand behind it all.

One of the controllers at the table shouted, “Confirmed kill on number six. Parking garage in the Navona district. Headrest bomb. No collateral damage.” He pressed his headset to his ear. “Watcher says Callahan is walking around the corner now.” He sat watching his screen. “I see him on the GPS approaching the pickup point. Driver moving in. Driver reports Callahan in the car and they’re away.”

The Marshall took a yellow sticky from the desk, drew an “X” across it with a marker pen, and handed it to Mancini, who stuck the “X” on the face of Ahmed Al Mishari, a Saudi whose picture was labeled “6.”

“Confirmed kill on number four. Strangled in bed.”

“Probable kill on the Via Appia Nuova. No collateral damage. Successful exfiltration," said another of the men. “Abdul Rizak Al Ghamdi, Saudi. Bomb planted last night in a planter outside the girlfriend’s ground floor apartment. Got him on the way out. Nobody else hurt.”

“We should start paying these girls,” said Mancini.

The Marshall circled the room as reports continued to come in. After one hour, reports had come in from nine teams. Eight had been successful, and one had been aborted.

Callahan came up the stairs and spoke briefly to his controller.

“Good work, Callahan,” said the Marshall.

“So, we have four left out there,” said Mancini. He glanced at his watch. “Come on, guys, let’s hear something.”

“Abort on number eleven. Watcher says our man is limping away from the target building with blood on his leg.”
     Callahan moved behind the man who had given the report, but said nothing. The Marshall kept pacing and scanning the entire control center.

The screen showed GPS blips on a detailed neighborhood map. The controller pointed to the blip of the wounded Templar. “We have two cars converging on primary and alternate extraction points… one in position… second car reports our man… is in the first car… and moving away.” Two blips converged, then only one moved off. The man said something into the headset he wore. “Confirm our man is being extracted in one of our cars.”

Mancini flipped through a clipboard. “Sami Ba Isani. Gaza experience. Jordanian. Looks like he got some practice in Iraq, too. Too bad. He doesn’t deserve to live. At least our man got out.”

“Abort on numbers seven and eight. A car pulled up in front of their building and they jumped in. They left their own motor scooters parked in front.”

“Sounds like they got the word from someone,” said Mancini. “Damn. One of them was Hashashin.”

“That’s twelve accounted for. Right?” Callahan looked at one of the men at a computer terminal.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Who’s left?”

“Number two,” said the man. “Only name we have is Saad. Hashashin.”

The Marshall looked at his watch. “Who’s the shooter on that?”

“DeLarossa, Sir” replied the controller.

“Watcher?”

“Karl Koch.”

“Koch and DeLarossa,” repeated the Marshall. “It’s been too long.  Anyone else, we should call them off. But nobody, and I mean nobody, is better than those two. Let them run a while.”

The Marshall pointed to the man at the terminal. “Call the Watcher and see what’s happening.”

The man held his hand to his earpiece as he listened. “The Watcher… says DeLarossa is sitting in a sidewalk café half a block away from the target drinking coffee and eating a Danish. The target is across the street and down a bit at another café, at a table with two others.”

“Anyone we know?” asked Mancini.

“Arab looking guy. Middle-aged. Overweight. And a woman. Brown hair. Thirty to forty.  Says she has a frog tattooed on her ankle. They’re all studying something on the table, some papers.”

“Mancini!” Callahan shouted, “A fat Arab guy, a woman in her thirties, and a frog. Ring a bell?”

The man at the terminal held a hand to his earpiece and waved a hand. “Our man… DeLarossa… is moving toward the target. The Watcher says it’s a ‘Go.’ Looks like he can get a clear shot and get away.”

“Abort. Abort now,” yelled Callahan. “Abort.”

*     *     *

“Show me your Latin transcription,” the man ordered Jean.

She slipped the Latin transcription of the Treaty of Tuscany from her bag and laid it on the café table before him. He produced a page and laid the two side by side. Then he put one finger on the first word of Jean’s Latin, and another on the first word of his paper. Mumbling to himself and moving one word at a time, he put a check above each word on the pages.

He stopped and looked up. “This word.” He pointed at Jean’s transcription. “Look. Is it correct?”

Jean bent over and looked at the Latin. She pulled a copy of the original treaty from her bag and consulted it. “Yes, that’s correct. It’s ‘et.’ That’s Latin for ‘and.’”

“Mine says ‘ut.’” He showed her his page. She quickly scanned it and saw he had brought a Latin transcript of the treaty. Now where did he get that?

“Well, if that’s supposed to be a copy of the treaty, it’s wrong.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t know where you got this, but somebody on your side of this doesn’t know Latin. ‘Ut’ means ‘in order to.’ It makes no sense in that sentence. The phrase is ‘Pope and king.’ It makes no sense to say ‘Pope in order to king.’”

“Don’t tell me what we know or don’t know, woman. We have had this for centuries.” He flicked his page with his fingers.

Woman? Does this guy think he’s back on his camel? “Well, man… then you’ve been wrong for centuries. I don’t give a damn how long you have had it. This is what I do every day, and I can tell you that’s right.” She jammed a finger down on her transcription.

Hammid intervened and the two men had a quick exchange in Arabic. “Let’s just get on with this,” he said to Jean.

The man scowled and continued comparing the two pages. When he finished, he shrugged and said something in Arabic to Hammid.

“My colleague says the transcription you have provided matches what we know about the treaty. We have had the words for hundreds of years, but without the original…” He shrugged.

“Your colleague says so? Why do we even have this guy checking it?” Jean nodded at Saad. “Why couldn’t you check it?”

“What can I say? Our management likes to double-check when we are paying large amounts of money for things. Saad will now call and confirm you have delivered the correct manuscript, and our management will transfer your fee to your account.”

Which means, thought Jean, that someone doesn’t completely trust Hammid, or they are awfully careful with their money.

They waited while Saad made his call. When he finished, he asked Hammid in Arabic, “Why don’t we kill this stupid cow? We have what we want. Why waste good money on her?”

Hammid studied Saad and wondered as he often did why so many people think killing is a solution to any situation. But he had to be patient. “We don’t kill her. First, we made a bargain and she fulfilled her end. Second, we might need her services again. Third, what is she going to do? Will she run to the police and say she was involved in bombing the Vatican? I doubt it.”

Hammid sipped of his coffee and continued in Arabic. “Actually, if one had no regard for her, far better than killing her would be to tip the police to her. Let them put her on trial and have her testify the treaty did, indeed, come straight from the Vatican Library.” The Old Man’s wisdom came easily to him.

Hammid turned to Jean. “Check your account in about five minutes.”

They waited and made small talk. Two minutes…