"Unlikely Saint-Clair would mention it on his grave."

"Then what?" Sister Meg said.

"It was the original name for the maritime provinces of Canada," said Holliday. "The first French settlers there--from around here actually--were referred to as Acadians. When they were thrown out by the English in 1775 a lot of them went to Louisiana. It's the origin of the name Cajun--Acadian with the A knocked off."

"Making history fit into your theory," said Sister Meg, the expression on her face not quite a sneer.

"If the shoe fits," Holliday said with a shrug.

"I'm not sure that it does."

"And I'm not sure that it doesn't," snapped Holliday. "Have you got a better idea?"

"Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all," said Sister Meg. "I'm certainly not going to Canada on a silly whim and a story about Cajuns."

"How about Prague?" Holliday responded.

"Excuse me?" Sister Meg said.

"You said your convent had archives," replied Holliday.

"Very complete ones, as a matter of fact. Although the old convent itself is now part of the National Gallery."

"Can you get us into the archives?"

"Us?"

"Why not? We both want to know what happened. I want to know where Saint-Clair went and you obviously want to know what happened to the ark, right?"

"I'm not sure it would be proper," said Sister Meg. She flushed again. Holliday couldn't help smiling. Innocent women didn't blush that easily. Either Sister Margaret Emily had a very fertile imagination for a nun or she had a past. She saw the smile and the blush became even darker. She scowled again angrily. "What are you smiling about?"

"You're blushing," said Holliday.

"I most certainly am not!"

"Could have fooled me, Sister."

"You're a boor," answered the nun.

"But you're still blushing."

"Go away!"

"France is still a relatively free country," said Holliday. "Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood . . . or in this case sisterhood. You go away first. I'll follow you all the way back to Prague. The Czech Republic is a free country now, too."

"You're insufferable!"

"Maybe, but that doesn't change the situation." Holliday held up a placating hand. "Listen, Sister, let's call a truce here. We both want the same thing. We're both historians. I know why Saint-Clair was considered to be the greatest navigator of his time and you're determined to find the True Ark. Why not share our knowledge, join forces?"

"I'm not sure I want to join forces with a man like you. I don't even like you."

"I'm hurt," Holliday said and grinned. "But we don't have to like each other to reach a common goal. We didn't much like the Russians during World War Two, either, but they were still our allies."

"I barely know you."

"It's a long drive to Prague," answered Holliday. "Your rental car or mine?"

4.

Most movies, books and television shows refer to Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters as being located in Langley, Virginia. Appropriately enough, however, there is no such place; Langley was simply the name given to the old woodlot estate purchased by the federal government for the CIA's new offices back in the 1950s. The actual location is in the suburban district of McLean, Virginia.

The original CIA campus is now half a century old and looks it. Even the "new" addition is heading into its fourth decade of use. The huge computers, once state-of-the-art and requiring their own power lines, could now be replaced by a no-name knockoff PC from Wal-Mart. The most common physical ailment at the CIA is food poisoning and the cafeteria has been cited for more food and hygiene violations than any other government food service operation in the Washington area. The workers there simply cannot learn to wash their hands after using the toilet facilities.

The director of operations was in his seventh-floor office and regretting his choice of the hamburger platter at lunch. Joseph Patchin was a career CIA man and had been in the clandestine services for the better part of thirty years, serving in stations from Berlin to Kuwait. He spoke half a dozen languages fluently and could get by in half a dozen more. He was married and had three grown children he had barely spent any time at all with while they were growing up. His wife put up with him for the security of his large salary, his pension and the mortgage-free, equity-heavy house they owned in Chevy Chase. He knew that when a heart attack finally killed him, she was going to move to Florida. She'd had a regular string of lovers for the past twenty years and he hadn't really cared for the last fifteen.

There was a sharp double tap on his office door, like the sound of a professional killer giving his victim two to the back of the head. The fact that he thought in terms like that sometimes bothered him, but not too often. It came with the territory. He kept a bottle of expensive Johnny Walker Blue Label in one desk drawer and an old Ruger Single Six .22-caliber revolver in another desk drawer specifically for killing himself if it ever became necessary. He kept it loaded with long rifle mushroom bullets, which would turn his brains into frappuchino but which didn't have the velocity to exit the skull and wouldn't make a mess. That was the kind of person he was: always thinking about the other guy.

"Come," he said to the tap at the door.

His DDO stepped into the room. Deputy Director of Operations Mike Harris had the seamed, squintyeyed face of a Charles Bronson and the lanky, shuffling body of a professional boxer. He looked like everybody's idea of a bad guy and he played up to his looks, wearing rumpled suits and Peter Falk trench coats. He had a surprisingly smooth baritone voice that made him sound like Al Martino, the Johnny Fontane character in The G.o.dfather.

"You called?" Harris said, sitting down in the comfortable chair on the visitor's side of his boss's desk.

"I did," said Patchin. "What do you know about Rex Deus?"

"They're the ones who think they're the direct descendants of Christ. Most of them are supposedly descended from the ancient kings of Europe or something. They're supposed to be allied with those excommunicated anti-Semitic types who think all of those photographs of Auschwitz and Buchenwald were faked. Nut jobs, basically."

"What about domestically?" Patchin asked.

"Here in the States?"

"That's what domestically usually means."

Patchin's second in command shrugged. "I have no idea. Why?"

"I'm hearing murmurs."

"What kind of murmurs?"

"White House murmurs."

"About Catholic fringe groups?"

"About people with a great deal of money and power. In the final a.n.a.lysis their religious affiliation is irrelevant."

"So what does it have to do with the Agency?" Harris asked.

"More murmurs," said Patchin obscurely.

"About what?"

"Little birds are telling me there is a Rex Deus mole in Operations."

"Dear G.o.d, not another mole hunt," groaned Harris. "The last one had the whole place tied up in knots for years."

"The last one led us to Aldrich Ames," answered Patchin dryly.

"Except the Cold War is over now."

"This isn't about war, hot or cold. This is about a power grab."

"I don't get it."

"For the moment you don't have to. Just find the mole."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"According to my source our mole is interested in a pair of historians who are snooping in places they shouldn't."

"Snooping for what?"

"We're not sure. Find out. Do we have any a.s.sets in Prague?"

"Sure," said Harris. "Why?"

"Because that's where they're snooping next."

"So these historians are bait?"

"Something like that."

"Who are they?"

"One's an ex-colonel in the Rangers who used to teach at West Point. The other's a nun."

"Anything else I should know?"

"We're not the only ones interested in these two."

"Who else, the FBI?"

"The Vatican," answered Patchin.

"Oh dear," said Harris.

Cardinal Antonio Niccolo Spada, Vatican Secretary of State, and like the Holy Father himself once the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, better known as the Holy Inquisition, sat on the private dining terrace of the Hotel Splendide Royal in Rome and looked out over the twinkling lights of the city. Spada was dressed in the red-b.u.t.toned "ordinary" ca.s.sock of a Catholic cardinal complete with its scarlet c.u.mmerbund, marking him as a Prince of the Church. He was a man in his mid-seventies, lean, dark and hard, betraying his Sicilian peasant heritage. The look was deceptive; Spada had a mind like a steel trap and a temper to match. Priests who crossed him, or caused him any kind of grief, usually found themselves trying to convert obscure Indian tribes somewhere up the Amazon.

Across from him at the table was a dark- haired priest with heavy, gray-specked five o'clock shadow. He was known as Father Thomas Brennan, but Spada doubted that was really his name. Brennan was the head of Sodalitium Pianum, the organization that pa.s.sed for the Vatican Secret Service. It had been initiated by the ultraconservative Pope Pius X before the First World War, and although officially disbanded in the early 1920s it still quietly went about its business, as much a watchdog of the Vatican's own piety as an outside espionage agency. Brennan had been a fixture at the Holy See for years and predated Spada's own climb through the ranks by a decade or more. The pale, cadaverous Irishman was more than happy to play the simple priest while others wore the gaudy robes of state. Brennan's power lay in his vast knowledge of the Vatican's darkest secrets, not in his position within the Church.

The cardinal sliced his bistecca all' erbe with the precision of a surgeon, blood from the rare tenderloin leaking into his patate alla griglia. He tucked neat, small pieces of the expensive meat into his mouth, staring across the starched tablecloth in the five-star private dining room as he chewed, his pale blue eyes watching Brennan, always the Irish peasant plowing through a large serving of "bisna" polenta made with beans, sauerkraut, and onion. His breath would stink when the meal was over, but those sorts of niceties never bothered Brennan.

"I gather you've had dealings with this man Holliday before," said Cardinal Spada, taking a sip of Barolo from the generous tulip gla.s.s by his plate.

"I have indeed, Your Eminence, and a right b.a.s.t.a.r.d he is."

"This involved the problem we were having with the bullion deposits, did it not?"

"Yes. Earlier he was part of the situation regarding the Templars. Apparently his uncle had been part of their inner circle since before the Second World War."

"A longtime member, as I recall."

"Yes."

"Does he present a problem?"

"He is very resourceful and he has the power of the order behind him."

"The order doesn't really exist. It hasn't existed for more than seven hundred years," argued the cardinal with an exasperated sigh. "The Order of the Temple of Jerusalem is a fantasy kept alive by a few old men and conspiracy theorists on the Internet."

Brennan shrugged. "Orders come and orders go, but a.s.sets remain. Money never disappears, it simply changes hands. Holliday has access to a great deal of power if he wishes to use it."

"Is he using it?" Spada asked.

"It has come to our attention that Holliday has become involved with the political machinations of Rex Deus."

Spada laughed. He patted his lips with a starched napkin, his lips curving up in what pa.s.sed for a smile.

"It really is extraordinary how things take hold," said the cardinal. "A man writes a silly novel based on the premise that a h.o.m.os.e.xual Italian artist from the sixteenth century would have the slightest interest in the concept of the divine feminine and would waste his time encoding obscure references to it in an obscure fresco in an even more obscure church in Milan. Da Vinci's drawing of Vitruvian Man is just that--a man, not a woman. The idea is farcical but the book sold tens of millions of copies."

The cardinal shook his head. "Rex Deus and the idea that there is a family tree for Jesus Christ is just as silly as the plot for The Da Vinci Code, but people still believe it, just like Shirley MacLaine and her followers believing they're all descendants of Cleopatra. Have you ever wondered why none of them find out that in a past life they were one of the slaves who built the pyramids? It's always Cleopatra, or Napoleon, or Jesus, never the plumber from down the street. Rex Deus is like the Templars: wishful thinking."

Brennan shoveled another mouthful of food into his mouth, then washed it down with a slug of wine. He dug into the pocket of his jacket and took out a crumpled pack of Macedonia cigarettes, fished one out and lit it with a kitchen match he'd taken from his other pocket. He dropped the dead match into what was left of his polenta.

"You may well be right, but the reality is that this man Holliday is capable of causing us a great deal of trouble."

"So what would you have me do? Sanction his murder?" The cardinal let out a barking laugh. "Unleash the Vatican's secret army of albino monks on him?" The man in the red silk skullcap shook his head. "a.s.sa.s.sination is bad for the Church's image, especially with a German Pope occupying Peter's throne."

"It's not Peter's throne that concerns me," grunted Brennan.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Spada asked irritably.

"Rex Deus is having a convocation of its members sometime later in the summer. Kate Sinclair is involved."