"Aren't you afraid of getting stuck?" Meg asked cautiously.

"This time of day the tide's coming in, not going out," said Gallant, grinning.

There was a rough grating sound as the Deryldene D pushed up on the sand. Gallant pushed the throttle forward, beaching them even more firmly, then switched off the engine.

They had arrived.

27.

Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican secretary of state, sat beside the large pool at his villa just beyond the north end of the Rome Ring Road. He was wrapped in a thick white terry-cloth robe with the crossed keys and double-headed phoenix of his family coat of arms. It was one of the odd twists of fate that fascinated Spada.

The present Pope was the son of a Bavarian village policeman, while Spada was descended directly from the Borgias. Yet the policeman's son and onetime member of the Hitler Youth was the Pope, and Spada was only the Pontiff's second in command. Oh, well; true power often rested behind the throne, even if it was the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of St. Peter.

Spada wrapped the robe more tightly around his shrunken chest. He still loved to swim each day, but even though the afternoon was warm he felt a chill. Another sign that he was getting on in years, the first being that his oldest friends were beginning to die around him.

He wondered if he would go to h.e.l.l for his transgressions when he died. Established Catholic doctrine said that if he made a final confession and was given extreme unction he would go to heaven but he wasn't sure he believed in either heaven or h.e.l.l. Sometimes the old man hoped that death would be more straightforward, a simple end to consciousness and then the everlasting dark.

For Cardinal Spada, Catholicism was far more political than it was spiritual. A true Catholic of the Holy Cross should, almost by definition, have no more personal ambition than to be a humble parish priest. Spada smiled at that.

As a trained lawyer his first appointment to the Holy See had been as an a.s.sistant to Cardinal Pietro Ciriaci, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the interpretive body for canon law. That had been the beginning, and he'd never looked back and never once regretted his long, sometimes vicious rise to the Red Hat and a seat in the College of Cardinals.

Father Thomas Brennan, head of Sodalitium Pianum, the Vatican Secret Service, came out through the open French doors of the villa and walked across the patio to where Spada was resting after his brief swim. It was early afternoon and the bright sun had turned the breeze-ruffled surface of the azure pool into a field of sparkling diamonds.

The pool area was absolutely secure, swept for electronic devices every day by Brennan's people and surrounded by a tall hedge on three sides; the villa itself was protected by a high, spiked stone wall, security cameras, and armed members of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican police.

As usual the pallbearer figure of the Irish priest was slightly hunched, as though the burdens of the world rested on his sloping shoulders like some cosmic coffin, and as usual he was smoking, a trail of cigarette ash sprinkled over the lapels of his cheap black suit. He sat down at Spada's gla.s.s-topped, wrought iron patio table.

A servant appeared with a tray, a heavy ceramic ashtray and two tall gla.s.ses. One was a raspberry-colored negroni and the other was a rusty- looking Long Island iced tea. The servant placed the Long Island iced tea and the ashtray in front of Brennan and the negroni in front of the cardinal. The servant bowed slightly to the cardinal and then withdrew. The two men at the table sat silently for a moment, watching the chips of light dancing randomly across the swimming pool. Finally, with a certain regret in his voice, the cardinal spoke.

"Have you discovered anything new?"

"After escaping from the lake property they took a train to Halifax, Nova Scotia."

"A train?" Spada asked, surprised.

"Quite smart, really," replied Brennan. The priest took a long swallow of his drink. "No airport security, no identification required to purchase tickets, no railway police to speak of, not on the trains at any rate."

"Are they still there?"

"They met with a man named Gallant."

"Who is he?" Spada asked.

"A fisherman. A lobster catcher, to be specific."

"A fisherman?"

"This man Gallant has a somewhat dubious reputation," said Brennan. He b.u.t.ted his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. "He is rumored to smuggle things between Maine and Nova Scotia: cigarettes, cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals and the like. Now he's vanished along with his boat. So have Holliday and the woman."

"Could he be smuggling them into the United States?"

"It's a possibility. The normal crossings have become much more difficult to breach with everyone needing pa.s.sports on both sides of the border."

"But why now?" Spada asked. "To give up their quest at this stage doesn't seem logical."

"Perhaps they were frightened off by the attack at the lake property," suggested Brennan.

Spada sipped his mouth-puckering drink and shook his head. "There is the fundamental problem of why they went to Canada in the first place," said the cardinal. "And why this Braintree?"

"Braintree was a colleague of Holliday's uncle. He's helped Holliday before."

"Ah, yes," Spada said and nodded. "The infamous Henry Granger, spy, n.a.z.i killer, academician and the last of the Templars all in one."

Brennan's thin lips twisted into a grimace. He spoke darkly. "Not the last Templar, we know that much at least, thanks to the efforts of his nephew, Lieutenant Colonel Holliday."

The expression on Brennan's face was enough to draw a smile from Cardinal Spada, something that rarely occurred these days.

"Stare calme, Toma.s.so, stare calme. Holliday bested you, so accept it. You'll have your chance at retribution, I a.s.sure you." The cardinal thought for a moment, then spoke again. "Do you think Holliday has the slightest idea of what he's involved with, its scope?"

"I doubt it," replied Brennan. "He may well believe that he's dragged the woman into his troubles rather than the other way around."

"They have come under fire on six separate occasions since joining forces. The man who followed them in Prague, the Peseks in Venice, St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, the attempted kidnapping on Iona, and finally the attack in Canada. Surely he's not so naive that he'd think we were responsible for all of that?"

"He's run into the Peseks before, that unfortunate series of events in Libya last year, if you'll recall."

"Vividly."

Brennan lit another cigarette. "So he puts the Peseks at our doorstep and perhaps that CIA hireling in Prague. He'd almost certainly a.s.sume that the police intervention in Cornwall was concocted by the Company as well; they're the only people who could orchestrate a thing like that so quickly."

"And the rest?"

"He knows the failed kidnapping was by the Blackhawk people. Like an idiot the man he disposed of was carrying identification. The police questioned the man he wounded, so undoubtedly MI- 5 and hence the CIA know of their involvement."

"Would he know about Rex Deus's involvement with them?"

Brennan shook his head. "Blackhawk is small, nothing near the size and profile of groups like Halliburton or Blackwater."

"Sadly, of course, we do know of them," murmured the cardinal. "All too well, in fact."

"You shouldn't have allowed the bank to do it," said Brennan. "If you'll recall, I advised you of that at the time, Your Eminence."

"There was nothing that I could do about it," explained Spada. "RhineHydraulik and Aquadyn were both European companies and heavily invested in us. There was no way that the IOR could know that there would be a hostile takeover and consolidation of both of them by Sinclair's company."

"The Vatican Bank should know," replied Brennan harshly.

"Did you?" Spada snapped. "The Ist.i.tuto relies on you for such intelligence."

"No," said Brennan. "But I knew that RhineHydraulik was weak and Aquadyn was vulnerable. Again, I told you that at the time, just as I told Bertone at the bank." The Irishman shook his head sadly.

"Now a fundamentalist Christian organization that has a private army of its own is a business partner of the Holy See. If we withdrew our interest in Rhine-Aqua in this market we'd lose billions. If Rex Deus sold their interest there would be a run on the stock and we'd lose billions again. If they want to, Rex Deus can put the entire Catholic Church into a vise."

"I am aware of all of this," answered Spada. "Which is precisely why we need some leverage with them. They must be controlled or dealt with some other way."

Brennan looked mildly amused at the cardinal using such strong language.

"You'll have to be clearer than that," said the priest. "It's not as though I've got too many Antonin Peseks out there. I can't order up a.s.sa.s.sinations like a meal in a restaurant."

"Forget that for the moment," said the cardinal, abruptly changing the subject. "We were talking about Holliday. What about the Canadian incident?"

Brennan shrugged. "At this point it is still unclear. The group that abducted Holliday and the woman has not been identified, although it is likely that their attackers at the lakefront property were Blackhawk." Brennan drained the last of his drink and began crunching ice cubes between his teeth.

"We're missing something," said the cardinal. "This is too great a concentration of force from too many directions to be about a semi- mythical religious relic." The old man frowned, his thin lips drawn down, his eyes cold and thoughtful.

A sudden gust of wind shook the branches of the hedge around the pool. As a child Spada was sure that sound was the voices of the dead whispering and heralding disaster. He shivered, shrinking into the heavy robe. Maybe he still believed it. "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten."

"Begging your pardon, Eminence?" Brennan said, confused.

"A verse from the Holy Scripture, Father Brennan. James, chapter five to be precise."

"I'm not sure I take your meaning."

"This whole thing is about money. I can smell it." The cardinal thought for a moment, his head bowed, almost as though he was at prayer, something he hadn't done in a very long time. "A year or so ago you heard a rumor making the rounds in Washington about something called Ironstone. Sinclair's name was involved. Did you ever discover anything else about it?"

"A little, and it wasn't about money. As far as I know it was the code name for some kind of military response to the threat of a major act of terrorism on American soil."

"Nothing that would affect us, though."

"Not directly, no," said Brennan.

A young priest appeared in the doorway into the villa. He stood hesitantly for a moment and then came forward to where Spada and Brennan were sitting. One of Brennan's boys, certainly, if his dark good looks were anything to go by. He stopped and bowed to Spada and then turned to Brennan.

"Is ea anois, an bhfeadaim cunamh leat, Michael?" Brennan asked. Spada smiled for the second time since Brennan had arrived. The Irishman was speaking Gaelic, a requirement for all his couriers. A nice touch for keeping secrets, even from a cardinal, like the Navaho Windtalkers used by the U.S. Marines during World War Two. The young man responded, speaking rapidly. Spada couldn't understand a word. The message was brief. When the young man was done he bowed respectfully to Spada and then departed.

"What was that all about?" Cardinal Spada said as the young man disappeared into the darkness of the villa beyond the French doors. "Or am I allowed to ask?"

"The situation regarding Holliday has changed direction. His cousin Peggy and her husband have vanished into thin air."

28.

Holliday turned the elapsed time bezel on his old Luminox wrist.w.a.tch for two hours and then he and Sister Meg inputted their position into the two GPS handhelds, using the larger unit on the Deryldene D as a base guide. According to the big unit, Lake Wallace was located a mile and a half down the beach and six hundred yards inland across the low scruffy dunes.

The weather station, which employed five of the six permanent residents of Sable Island, was a mile farther down the curving arm of the crescent. There were a small handful of offsh.o.r.e oil rigs in the ocean several miles away from the island, but with the sandbar already evacuated in the face of the coming hurricane it was unlikely they would be interrupted.

It took them almost half an hour to reach the turn point indicated by the GPS. The fine dark sand was more difficult to walk in than either one of them had expected. It would take another ten minutes to reach the lake. That in turn meant it would take the same amount of time, if not longer, to make the return journey, and they still hadn't reached the lake.

That left them with an hour at most to discover an artifact that probably didn't exist and maybe wasn't even there--and even if it was there, it had been buried in the sand for seven hundred years. The odds of finding it were infinitesimal. They found a narrow windswept pathway leading up between the dunes. Finally they reached the summit and paused to take a breath.

Ahead of them now the sky on the horizon was a roiling vision of chaos, as though the sky itself was being torn and bruised. On the island they could now see the narrow oblong lake and the broad stretch of the southern beach, ten times as wide as the northern beach where the Deryldene D had grounded.

The sea between the beach and the horizon was a frothing horror, huge waves rising on the outer banks then roaring like freight trains across the inner sandbars to finally crash and break along the sand.

No wonder there had been so many wrecks here over the centuries; any ship foundering on the outer banks would be pounded into kindling, and anyone who survived the wreck itself would almost certainly be drowned before he reached the sh.o.r.e.

"This is madness," said Holliday. "We'll never find the d.a.m.ned thing. We should go back to Halifax and wait out the storm, then come back."

"There's no time for that," answered Meg grimly. "The hurricane will flood into the lake and the True Ark will be under the water again." She trudged forward, hitching her backpack higher on her shoulders, her feet sinking into the soft, fine sand. On the crest of a dune covered with some kind of thistle and rough eelgra.s.s a trio of s.h.a.ggy Sable Island ponies watched them, their long unkempt manes flying raggedly in the rising wind.

How many hurricanes and for how many generations had the wild horses' bloodlines survived? And how could Sister Meg be so sure that the treasure her precious Blessed Juliana had brought here would be submerged? According to the book he'd read on the train, Lake Wallace had steadily been getting smaller over the pa.s.sing centuries. The original high-water mark could be very high by now in relation to the modern lake.

He knew exactly why, of course, and it wasn't the first time he'd seen the incredible streak of stubbornness coming from the red-haired nun. The iron faith of the True Believer. Darwin couldn't be right because the Bible never mentioned evolution, dinosaurs or cave men and strongly suggested that the sun revolved around the earth. Holliday checked his watch again. He estimated that it would be another five minutes of slogging before they reached the midpoint of the lake. He made the simple calculation.

In the final a.n.a.lysis the trek from the Deryldene D would take a total of forty minutes. That would leave them with barely the same amount of time for their search if they wanted to get back to the boat within the two-hour limit. Somehow he doubted that Gallant was a great fan of grace periods.

Holliday looked out over the rolling, deep green monstrosity of the open Atlantic and the hurricane hurtling inexorably down on them. It was close enough now that he could easily see the blinding, jagged spikes of lightning flashing across the jet black base of the clouds like a Goya vision of Apocalypse.

Holliday felt something curl and curdle in his guts. Fear or warning? Maybe both. The fight- or-flight instinct the Neanderthal hunter felt when confronted by his first charging mammoth or saber- toothed Tiger. They slid down the pathway leading to the floodplain of the lake. The wind was rising in gusts, dragging up brief clouds of gritty sand into their faces. He checked his watch one more time. Another few minutes gone. He cursed under his breath. Meg half turned.

"Did you say something?"

"No, nothing," he responded. She continued the slide down to the bottom of the dune and Holliday dutifully followed.

The h.e.l.l brewing on the horizon was almost enough for him to force Meg's hand and abandon her, but he knew he couldn't bring himself to do it. They reached the floodplain and walked across the salt-encrusted hardpan toward the edge of the water. It was summer and the lake's edge was fringed with gra.s.ses and other low plants.

The wind was beginning to blow hard now, building wavelets on the dark water. Meg looked left and right and then behind her. The winter high-water mark was clearly visible. There was a shallow lip and perhaps twenty feet or so of slightly darker sand between the lip and the lakesh.o.r.e. Meg paced back until she had reached the high-water lip in the sand, then went back twenty feet more. She looked left and right again, judging the rough midpoint of the lake. She paced off fifty feet to the left and stopped.

"This is the midpoint," she said firmly. She dropped her pack onto the ground, unstrapped the folding shovel and took the headphones for the metal detector out of her pack and plugged them into the device's console. Holliday followed her across the sand and did the same thing. Finally they were ready. Holliday looked at his watch.

"We've got thirty-seven minutes to locate this thing and dig it up. If we haven't hit pay dirt in half an hour we're leaving. Agreed?"

"Whatever you say." Meg nodded absently, her attention focused on adjusting the metal detector's arm brace.

"I mean it," warned Holliday. "One minute more than that and I'll leave you here." He nodded toward the ma.s.sive storm front rapidly descending on them. "I don't want to be here when that thing hits."

"I heard you the first time," answered Meg. She scooped up her pack with her free hand and hung it over one shoulder. "I'll go right, you go left."

"All right," answered Holliday, but she was already moving, the headphones clamped around her ears. He shook his head, watching her go, then fitted on his own arm brace and put on his headphones. He turned and began walking, moving slowly and methodically, swinging the disc of the detector back and forth in a sweeping motion a few inches above the sand.