The Templar Cross Read Free

archaeologist said. “They’ve taken Peggy.”

2
    “Talk,” said Holliday, busying himself by making a fresh pot of coffee. Rafi sat slumped at the kitchen table. His face looked pale and exhausted. He made a little groaning sound and sat a little straighter in his chair.
    “You knew how it was between us,” Rafi started tentatively. It was almost a question.
    Holliday shrugged. “You were a couple,” he said. “She went back to Jerusalem after we were in the Azores and she stayed there.”
    “That’s right,” Rafi said and nodded. “At first it was so she could take care of me after I got out of the hospital, but later . . .” He let it dangle.
    “Later it turned into something else,” said Holliday.
    “Something like that,” said Rafi.
    Holliday found two mugs in the cupboard above the counter, then went to the refrigerator and brought out a container of cream. He kept his hands working, fetching spoons. He’d never felt comfortable talking about his own relationships, let alone anyone else’s, particularly Peggy’s. With Uncle Henry gone, he and his much younger cousin were orphans together. It was a special bond. Now this young archaeologist was in the mix.
    “Did you have a fight or something?” Holliday asked, taking a stab in the dark. He took a handful of coffee beans and poured them into the little grinder on the counter. The machine whirred for a few seconds and the dark, rich aroma of the freshly ground beans filled the air.
    “No,” said Rafi, shaking his head. “No fight. Nothing like that. In fact we were talking about making things a little more . . . permanent.”
    “Marriage?” Holliday asked, surprised. Peggy was a self-described serial monogamist, a committed bachelorette, or spinster, or whatever the hell the politically correct term for it was these days. It seemed out of character.
    “We were getting there,” said Rafi bleakly.
    “So what happened?”
    “She got a call. Smithsonian magazine. They had an assignment for her. They knew she was in Jerusalem, so she seemed like the obvious choice.”
    “They wanted a photo story?” Holliday asked. He dumped the coarse ground coffee into the Bodum French press on the counter and poured in boiling water from the kettle. The cowboy coffee on the stove was for himself; the Bodum was for guests.
    “A photo story and a written one as well. A journal of the dig. She liked the idea of writing; she’d been thinking about it for a while. This was a break for her, or that’s what she thought,” added Rafi bitterly.
    “What dig?” Holliday asked.
    “The Biblical Archaeology School of France in Jerusalem had underwritten an expedition into Egypt and Libya. One of their senior people, a man named Brother Charles-Étienne Brasseur, had stumbled onto a cache of old Templar texts while he was doing research in the Vatican Archives.”
    “The Vatican? The Roman Catholics had the order disbanded and the last grand master burned at the stake,” said Holliday.
    “The texts Brasseur discovered had been confiscated by King Philip’s marshals during the dissolution,” replied Rafi. “They came from an obscure abbey called La Couvertoirade in the Dordogne region of France.”
    Holliday pressed down the plunger in the Bodum and poured out two mugs. He brought them to the table and set one down on the table in front of his friend, then took a seat himself.
    “What was in the texts that set this Dominican Brasseur off?” Holliday asked.
    Rafi took a grateful sip from the mug. He was visibly unwinding, sitting straighter in his chair and looking more alert as the strong brew seeped into his system.
    “The texts were written by a Cistercian monk named Roland de Hainaut. Hainaut was secretary to Guillaume de Sonnac, the grand master who led the Templars at the Siege of Damietta in 1249.”
    “Where’s Damietta?” Holliday asked.
    “The Nile Delta, east of Alexandria.”
    “Okay, I’m with you.” Holliday nodded, visualizing a map of