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

Banks read the first page of the material he’d downloaded. He smiled. The boss was going to be very pleased.
    *   *   *
    Eddie and Carrie found themselves a safe house in Rome while Holliday and Lazarus met with Antonio Nardi in a café beneath his rooms on the Strada Statale in the Tuscan town of Albinia. A salt breeze blew in from the Tyrrhenian Sea, which was only a few kilometers to the west. Eddie and Carrie had stayed behind in Rome to buy equipment and to do whatever reconnaissance they could.
    Nardi was in his late eighties, his face seamed and brown. What little gray hair he had grew over a spotted scalp. He was wearing a zippered hoodie even though it was hot at the table of the streetside café. When he spoke his voice trembled a little, but his English was surprisingly good.
    â€œSo tell us about your friendship with Rheinhard Huff,” said Lazarus.
    â€œAh, yes,” said the old man, a half smile twitching onto his face briefly. “My good friend Rheinhard Huff.” He lit a De Nobili cigarette and sighed. “I sang in the Sistine choir. I was pretty and I was fourteen. I was also an orphan, so I had no one to turn to even if anyone would have believed me. It wasn’t the first time I had been used that way. I was almost used to it.”
    â€œHuff was gay?” Carrie said.
    â€œHuff was a sodomist. ‘Gay’ is much too pleasant a word to use for such a creature.”
    â€œWhen was the first time you met him?” Lazarus asked.
    â€œMay 11, 1944.”
    â€œA month before Rome was occupied. Just in time,” Holliday said.
    â€œThey brought the train in late that night,” said Nardi. “No one was supposed to see except the SS squad and a few of the Holy Father’s people. That night I drove Huff and the Holy Father to the train station to watch the unloading.”
    â€œThe train?” Lazarus asked, stunned.
    â€œYes. A goods train. Nine wagons, each with its own guard on the roof.”
    â€œHow did it get into the Vatican?” Holliday asked.
    â€œThe way any other train did.” Nardi shrugged. “Over the viaduct and then through the big iron doors where the tracks entered at Viale Vaticano.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œSome lorries came and took dozens of crates away to the Vatican Administration Building. I never saw them after that.”
    â€œDear God,” said Lazarus. “It wasn’t just the Bible—it was everything!”

6
    May 11, 1944
    Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, sat in the rear seat of the 1939 Fiat Berlina and watched as the goods train was unloaded. Rheinhard Huff was seated beside him and Nardi, his “special” young priest, sat behind the wheel. The thin-faced Pope noted that there were two kinds of wagons making up the train, dark green French SNCF wagons and the curved-roof German freight cars carrying the spread-winged Deutsche Adler eagle above its routing numbers. The men unloading were all SS.
    â€œWhat exactly are we looking at here?” Pius asked.
    â€œThe best of the best from four years of plunder and the Swiss ‘auctions’ before that. And I also have a special gift for you, Your Holiness.”
    â€œYou found one?” asked Pacelli.
    â€œI did indeed. It was lying unnoticed and unappreciated in a French village library where nobody saw it or cared.” Huff smiled.
    â€œWonderful,” said Pacelli.
    â€œI have brought you anything of value to be had from any museum or gallery, Jewish or otherwise,” said Huff. The soldier and the Pope spoke in German, which Pius had become fluent in as papal nuncio in Berlin, and they assumed Nardi didn’t understand a word of it.
    â€œOf which we retain fifty percent of everything sold. A fixed amount will be made available to you and your Kameraden network, ODESSA, whenever you require it,” Pacelli said.
    â€œPrecisely,” said Huff, watching