Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online

believe anything else. Especially for someone who works for an oversight group and thinks their own intelligence community is corrupt as a priest in a whorehouse.” Lazarus shrugged.
    Eddie looked up from his omelet. “I grew up under that kind of corruption, Señorita Carrie. Mr. Lazarus is right. It is pervasive. It leaks into every part of your life, from Castro, through the generals and the police who take, right down to the woman on every block who reports your every move to the secret police unless you bribe her with money or food. To live that way eventually corrupts your heart and soul. It eats you alive.”
    â€œBut what the hell does that have to do with me?” Holliday asked wearily.
    â€œThe notebook Brother Rodrigues entrustedto you,” said Carrie, “is not only a massive financial resource—it’s also its own self-contained intelligence system—one that crosses borders, religions and factions like a knife through butter. The CIA has been after it for years. They knew about it even before Rodrigues handed it over, and the Russians were sniffing around it as well. Half the reason the Company put me together with you on your escapade in Cuba was to find out more about it.”
    â€œAnd the Vatican wants you dead for two reasons,” said Lazarus, finally sitting down with his own meal.
    â€œSo on that note let’s get down to brass tacks,” said Holliday. “Just what is it you want us to help you steal from the Vatican and why should we help you steal it?”
    Lazarus paused for a few moments, gathering his thoughts before he finally spoke. “For many years one of the few Gutenberg Bibles left in existence was located in the library in Saint-Omer, France. During the war it was stolen by Göering’s people for the fat man’s collection. It disappeared until it resurfaced in 1945. Remember that film with Burt Lancaster called
The Train
? Well, there really were trains like that, full of plundered art. One in particular was sent out of France under the command of an SS colonelnamed Rheinhard Huff. It was headed for the salt mines at Altaussee in Austria. But it never got there. Three months later Huff appeared at the Vatican. This was back in the days when the Kameraden network ODESSA had its famous ratlines for smuggling Nazis through the Vatican and out of Europe. Huff paid his way with the Gutenberg Bible and somewhere along the way a forgery was returned to Saint-Omer. Huff and the Bible disappeared, never to be heard from again.”
    â€œPresumably that’s not the end of the story,” said Carrie.
    â€œNo. But to find that out we have to go to a small village in Tuscany and interview Huff’s onetime gay lover, an altar boy at the Sistine Chapel in 1945 named Antonio Nardi.”
    â€œAnd just how are we to get out of France and into Tuscany?”
    â€œOn an Interpol jet, of course.” Lazarus smiled.
    *   *   *
    Doug Kitchen, chief of covert operations at the CIA’s National Resources Division, sat behind his big desk in his big office on the fifth floor of the Company’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, reading the report that had been given to him by his assistant, Rusty Smart. Kitchen looked almostexactly like the Prince of Wales, right down to the big ears, big nose and thinning gray hair. Rusty Smart didn’t look like anyone, which was in his favor. It didn’t do to shine too brightly around men like Kitchen.
    After twenty-five years with the Company, Rusty Smart knew that people who shone brightly were often targets. For instance, when the president was elected for a surprise second term in office, a lot of the bright and shining boys and girls had vanished overnight. Rusty himself had seen the handwriting on the wall when the president had given the kudos for capturing and killing Osama bin Laden without a single mention of the CIA.
    Kitchen closed the file. “No