The Templar Conspiracy by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online Page B

compromised. No packing, no nothing—just go.” He paused for a second. “On second thought, bring my laptop. It’s in a case in the study. Make it fast. You probably don’t have more than a few minutes. Don’t wear your collar, nothing that identifies you as a priest. Walk down to M Street and get a cab. Tell the driver to get to the Capital Hilton on Sixteenth. It’s a couple of blocks from the White House. We’ll be registered under the name of Dr. Henry Granger.”
    “I don’t understand ...” began Brennan.
    “I’ll explain later. Go. Now.” He snapped the phone closed. For the rest of the drive into the city they traveled in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

6
    “Why here?” Peggy asked as they crossed the discreet and dignified lobby of the Capital Hilton. The lobby was all low lighting and mahogany. It looked like the reception area of a high-priced law firm. Quiet was the order of the day.
    “The valet parks the Aston Martin in a garage somewhere nearby, which gets it off the street for the moment, and we have a place where we can lay our weary heads while we figure out what to do next.”
    “Why did you tell Brennan the Prospect Street house had been compromised?”
    “Because it almost certainly has been,” said Holliday. “We know it wasn’t Potsy’s people who came after us, ergo it has to be someone who knows what he knows, and which also means they almost surely know where we live. It’s got to be Sinclair’s people.”
    “Why couldn’t it have been this Potsy friend of yours?”
    “Why go to all the trouble?” Holliday said. “Why put a memory stick in the pipe if the dead drop was just bait? Why go through the charade at McDonald’s?” He shook his head. “It wasn’t Potsy’s people, so it probably wasn’t one of the other alphabet agencies either: CIA, NSA, DIA. Someone who wants to put us down because we know too much about the assassination that they want to keep to themselves. If the killer really was this William Tritt guy and he’s on Sinclair’s payroll, then she’d go to any lengths to keep it quiet. Rex Deus would be haunted by it for decades. They have to keep up this terrorist front.”
    They reached the long reservation counter and a pleasant lady with a brass-colored plastic name tag that read ANNE V. booked them into a suite on the sixth floor and then handed Holliday a note. It was from Brennan: In the lounge. It was signed with the scrawled letter B. Anne pointed out a curtained area at the far end of the lobby, and they found Brennan in one of the orange-curtained alcoves across from the bar. He was sipping from a fat glass filled with a rust-colored drink that was too dark for Irish whiskey and too light to be Bourbon.
    “I must admit a certain fondness for Canadian rye,” said the priest as Holliday and Peggy sat down. “It’s somehow a little bit uncivilized, like something you’d make in a bathtub.” Brennan looked forlorn without the white-notched collar of his profession. His usual ash-flecked black shirt was covered with a ratty green, ash-flecked sweater that had seen better days. “I always imagine grizzled farmers in Saskatchewan wearing bib overalls and sweating over a hot poteen still hidden in their barns.”
    A waitress appeared and took their orders. Holliday asked for a Beck’s beer and Peggy settled on a Jäger Bomb—an Australian monstrosity that consisted of a shot glass of Jägermeister German “digestif” tipped into a larger glass of Red Bull energy drink. The waitress went away to fetch their orders, and they got down to business.
    Holliday filled Brennan in about the snowplow attack as the priest worked his way through a second Crown Royal on the rocks.
    “I didn’t know you were such a driver,” commented Brennan.
    “Me neither.” Holliday laughed. “I was hanging on for dear life.”
    “I took the photos for an executive protection article for the New York Times Magazine a few years back, so while I was