"Okay," he said. He put down his fork, his appet.i.te gone.

"What will you need to open up the box when the time comes?"

Holliday thought for a long moment then spoke. "A pencil butane torch and a utility knife or a heavy-duty box cutter."

"Why the box cutter?" she asked, her tone lightly suspicious.

"I'm going to hijack your mother and fly her to Cuba, of course."

"Please," said Meg. "I need you to be serious."

"The butane torch is to soften the lead seal; the box cutter is to slice through the softened lead."

"I see," said Meg. She stared at Holliday across the table, a strange expression on her face. "It could have been different between us, you know, Doc," she continued.

"No, it couldn't," he answered, and that was the end of dinner. Without another word the red-haired woman got to her feet and went to the door. She tapped out a three-two knock code and the door was instantly opened by one of the goons who'd brought in the tray of food. She left without turning around or saying good night and the door was closed again.

Thinking about what Meg Sinclair had said, Holliday finished his dinner. The first axiom of a soldier: eat when you've got the chance; it may not come again for a while. He ate both desserts and drank almost the entire carafe of coffee. Even so he had no trouble falling asleep, fully dressed, in the big bed as the first raindrops tapped against the room's tall windows like a faint memory of the approaching hurricane on Sable Island.

It was just past seven when he awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep. It was still raining, a constant downpour spilling out of a sky the color of slate. It rippled down the tower room windows in long erratic tear streaks and dripped from the eaves. The view was gone and Holliday could see no farther than the bright splashes of color in the formal gardens. Beyond that everything was a universal gray.

Holliday turned away from the windows, stripped off his clothes and padded across the room to the bathroom. Everything was there just like a good hotel: shampoo, soap, towels, shaving equipment, deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste and even a big fluffy white bathrobe. He ran the shower hot, shampooed the sand from his hair and then did it again.

He lathered his entire body, rinsed, then did it again. Squeaky clean at last, he got into the robe and spent another fifteen minutes carefully shaving. He wondered if the Sinclairs were going to provide him with new clothes. Presumably they didn't want him showing up at their so-called conclave looking like a b.u.m. He also found himself feeling hungry again and wondered if the condemned man would get a last meal.

He finished up in the bathroom feeling refreshed and wide-awake. Stepping back into the tower room he saw that the Sinclairs were one step ahead of him. While he'd been in the shower the dinner things had been removed and a single place setting laid out. The bed had been neatly made and across the fluffy duvet there was a suit, shirt, tie, shoes, socks and even underwear laid out.

The white shirt was silk, the suit was a conservative dark pinstripe with a Zegna label and the shoes were black Crockett & Jones oxfords. The tie was handmade dark blue silk with a pattern of tiny Saint-Clair engrailed crosses in muted gold. The socks were black and silk as well.

Staying in the bathrobe, he sat down at the table and lifted the silver top of one of the salvers. Scrambled eggs, not too wet and not too dry. He opened up the rest of the covered dishes. Crisp bacon, sausages, home fries, fried green tomatoes and hush puppies instead of toast. He loaded up his plate, poured himself some coffee and dug in.

Breakfast turned out to be an anticlimax. He dressed carefully, enjoying the feel of the new clothes and even the slight pinch of the expensive British shoes. Everything fit perfectly. Nine o'clock came and went and still no one had come to fetch him. At nine thirty the first of a dozen vehicles came out of the misting rain and pulled up under the porte cochere below the tower window. The first car was a black, six- pa.s.senger Lincoln limousine.

The vehicles that followed over the next two hours were a lavish a.s.sortment of Town Cars, Escalades, Mercedeses and Jaguar sedans. There was even a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce. The color of choice appeared to be a discreet black. Watching them appear from his vantage point in the tower room, Holliday wondered if that many high-end cars would draw unwanted attention and then dismissed the thought.

This was the Kentucky of multimillion-dollar stud fees and Triple Crown winners. There were probably more Saudi oil princes driving around in cars like the ones he'd just seen than Americans. The world had changed over the last decades. Was Meg Sinclair right? Had the United States lost its way, or was it just adapting to new realities? Was there really anyplace left for the concept of a world power? It didn't matter; he was going to give her what she wanted if there was the faintest possibility that it would keep Peggy and Rafi from coming to any harm. He'd lasted this long and somehow he always seemed to survive. Go figure.

32.

They fed him a Cobb salad lunch at noon and came for him at five to one. A pair of Katherine Sinclair's goons escorted him down to the Dining Hall on the main floor, an immense, high-ceilinged and narrow room that looked more like the nave of a cathedral than a place to enjoy a meal.

There were three tall, arched stained-gla.s.s windows at the curving far end of the chamber and a long refectory table capable of seating at least twenty but only set for sixteen.

The triptych of stained-gla.s.s windows had a sword-bearing St. Michael in the center flanked on either side with knights in thirteenth-century armor, their shields emblazoned with the engrailed Saint-Clair cross. Today the Dining Hall was being used as a conference room, place settings replaced with gla.s.ses and water carafes and pads for taking notes.

Holliday was led into the churchlike room, the sudden focus of everyone's attention. Katherine Sinclair was seated in the exact center of the table on the right, flanked by Meg Sinclair on one side and a handsome auburn-haired man on the other. The resemblance to both Katherine and Meg was obvious, so presumably he was Meg's brother, Richard Pierce Sinclair, the presidential hopeful.

He had a suitably somber expression for the job and temples shot with gray, so at least he looked right for the part. To Meg Sinclair's right was an empty chair, the only one at the table. The two goons led him to the vacant seat and then withdrew. Holliday sat and looked around.

Of the twelve other people at the table Holliday recognized some but not all. There was a four-star general he recognized from his years at the Pentagon, now a member of the Joint Chiefs, several congressmen and congresswomen, Miles Bainbridge with Ronald Reagan shoe polish hair and his hatchet- faced Shirley Jones clone wife, Beth, owners of the Gifts from G.o.d Prosperity Church and dispensers of its franchises.

GGPC was a billion-dollar business with churches in twenty-seven countries and with seven hundred and fifty thousand "partners" following the church's simple credo: The best way to get G.o.d to give you money is to give some money to the Bainbridges first. Among other things the message had got them half a dozen houses spread across the nation and a Cessna Citation XLS to get to them in.

Beside the Bainbridges was a well-known real estate tyc.o.o.n who, among other things, owned the biggest casino in Las Vegas, and beside him was the lady CEO of the biggest combined tobacco, agribusiness and soft drink company in the world. There were others at the table whom Holliday didn't recognize, but recognizable or not they all exuded self-confidence, utter a.s.surance of their own worth and immutable power.

And there wasn't a Timex in the room. Every wrist was decorated with Rolex, Omega, Patek Philippe or at the very least Cartier. Miles Bainbridge and his wife took the prize wearing his-and-hers matching Jules Audemars-Piguet Grande Complication platinum-cased watches at seven hundred thousand dollars a pop. If nothing else, G.o.d had answered their prayers at least.

With Holliday finally seated, Katherine Sinclair stilled the muted chatter by rapping her knuckles on the old scarred walnut table.

"Before we start I'd like to express my condolences to all the members of the family of our late leader and brother in the order, William Henry Adams. He will be greatly missed.

"In light of his pa.s.sing, by the rules and Const.i.tution of the Order, we are required to immediately call for conclave to elect a new leader, which is the reason we have all been called together as heads of all the surviving Rex Deus families.

"However, before we begin the voting procedures, I would like to introduce my daughter, Margaret Sinclair, who, as you all know, is a biblical archaeologist of some note. For the last two years and recently with the help of Lieutenant Colonel Dr. John Holliday, well-known medieval historian, Margaret has been on a quest for nothing less than the True Ark, which all of us here are aware of, I'm sure. I'll let Margaret make her announcement."

Meg stood up. She was dressed in a dark, expensive-looking pantsuit, her bright red hair up in a businesslike French twist. She was wearing cat's-eye librarian gla.s.ses around her neck on a velvet cord, an added touch that gave her a serious, no-nonsense look even though Holliday was fairly sure she didn't need them.

"As all of you know," she began, "the True Ark is a central component of the Rex Deus mythology, a reliquary or box containing the Holy Grail, the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Shroud, and the Ring of Christ. Some of you I'm sure think the ark really is just a myth; others follow the theory that the ark is contained within the much larger golden Reliquary of the Three Kings, now on the high altar of the Cathedral in Cologne in Germany, also thought to contain the bones of the three magi who brought the infant Christ their holy offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

"The more cynical among you may well believe that the True Ark and its journey to the New World is no more than a story, a hoax invented by Jonathan Edwards, the founder of our organization, represented at this very table by our sister in the order Jane Campbell Edwards, his descendant." She nodded toward the Big Tobacco CEO seated beside the florid- faced real estate tyc.o.o.n with the extravagant hairpiece.

"The short answer is that all of you are wrong. I know this to a certainty because after a long and sometimes dangerous journey, I and my good friend and colleague Dr. John Holliday, lately a professor of military history at the National Military Academy at West Point, both located the True Ark and excavated it from its hiding place on Sable Island, buried almost seven hundred years ago by Sir Jean de Saint-Clair and the Blessed Juliana of Navarre, Abbess of the St. Agnes of Bohemia Convent and the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene in Prague. We did this in the face of an oncoming hurricane, I might add, but that's a story for another day." Here Meg paused for the appropriate chuckles and laughter.

Somewhere in the middle distance, m.u.f.fled by the incessant driving rain, Holliday thought he heard the thrumming chug of a helicopter's rotors . . . a serious enough accident in Frankfort to require a medevac? Not really surprising considering the weather. He turned his attention back to Meg's suitably edited set piece about their adventures, combining her research into the Blessed Juliana and Holliday's interest in Jean de Saint-Clair.

At the end of her speech she raised her voice slightly and in a breathless tone announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the True Ark, at last returned to its rightful heirs and owners, the gathered Brothers and Sisters of Rex Deus, last remaining members of the Desposyni in America."

Someone must have had their ear to the door, or more likely the room was bugged, because at almost that instant two of Katherine Sinclair's dark-suited thugs brought in the ark, wrapped in a pale blue moving blanket, followed by a third man carrying the mini-torch and box cutter that Holliday had requested.

The three men set the box down in front of both Meg Sinclair and Holliday, then silently withdrew. Meg Sinclair pulled the quilted blanket off the box and tilted the entire lead-sheathed artifact toward the a.s.sembled people at the table.

Meg put on her scholarly eyegla.s.ses. "As you can see," she said, "the ark is still sealed. The lid bears the ancient engrailed cross crest of the Saint-Clairs and the inscription in Greek that translates as In hoc signo vinces--By this you shall conquer--the motto of the Knights Templar."

She looked around the table. "We kept the lid sealed so all of you here could see the opening firsthand." She nodded in Holliday's direction and he dutifully stood up. With Meg Sinclair still standing at his side he picked up the mini-torch. It was a little BernzOmatic with a burner that looked like a miniature nozzle from a service station gas pump.

There was an automatic spark ignition in the little handle that he fitted between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. With his left hand he turned the tiny valve release k.n.o.b to start the gas and squeezed the ignition trigger. He was rewarded by a hissing sound and an instant burst of bright blue flame.

He picked up the box cutter and got down to work, melting a section of the lead solder around the lid and running the box cutter through the softened metal. It took him ten minutes to work his way around the entire lid. When he was done he put down the torch and the box cutter and silently turned to Meg.

"You open it," she said with a smile that didn't go with the hard, almost dangerous look in her eyes. "You were just as responsible for finding it as I was."

Holliday nodded. The group around the table watched carefully. There was a m.u.f.fled cough from somewhere. The Edwards woman looked coolly skeptical and Miles Bainbridge had one eyebrow lifted in mild, patronizing disbelief. His wife just smiled with her best Dale Evans-Partridge family sidekick look. The sixty-something blonde in the red dress and the Botox face looked suspiciously like her husband had prayed for a lobotomy and got his wish.

Holliday caught a shadowy hint of movement beyond the windows. He ignored it and carefully pulled off the lid and put it aside. The room was utterly silent. There was another muted cough. Holliday peered into the box and almost burst out laughing at what he saw.

The contents were a stroke of genius and a marvel of misdirection. He stepped aside and let Meg Sinclair do the honors since she had obviously masterminded the brilliant deception. There was another cough and this time Holliday realized it came from outside the door, but all eyes were on Meg.

She removed the contents of the True Ark one by one and laid them out on the soft surface of the moving blanket. The Holy Grail was exactly as she'd described it, a roughly turned wooden cup that looked as though it had been made on some ancient lathe, which it probably had; the Egyptians had used bow lathes a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Easy enough to find on the archaeological black market.

The Crown of Thorns was made of old rusted iron, a common torture device used by the early Romans. The cloth part of the device was long gone but the intent was still clear: a sack was fitted over the head coming down to the eyebrows in front and to the mid-neck in back, covering the ears. Heavy iron chain was sewn into the hem with the chain just above the eyes, around the ears and down to the middle of the neck in back.

The purpose of this was to weigh the sack and produce eight to ten pounds of downward pressure. Inside the cloth at the eye line and going all around were inward-facing, slightly downward-pointing thorns of iron. The weight of the chain pulled the iron thorns into the flesh of the head, and sometimes even through the skull and into the brain. The device was used well into the Middle Ages and was a favorite of the Spanish Inquisition.

The Ring of Christ was just as impossible to date for authentication as the chalice and the crown. It was a simple bronze ring, justifiably tarnished with age and with a coinlike upper surface. The Romans and the people they conquered in the Holy Land were very likely to have worn rings just like it in the first century.

The design on the coin on the upper surface showed the Chi-Rho X-shaped symbol that was the combination of the first two letters of Christ's name in Ancient Greek. Between the arms of the X were the symbols for alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. Together the Chi-Rho symbol was used as a sigil, or magic seal, by early Christians. The ring seemed terribly familiar and Holliday suddenly remembered seeing one almost exactly like it in a little museum at Kourion on the Island of Cyprus.

Meg Sinclair saved the best for last, reverently removing the shroud, which was actually nothing more than a large shred of rotting cloth. Holliday grinned.

He had no doubt that if tested the cloth would show remnants of human tissue and various organic stains, and if dated would show it to be contemporary with the time of Christ. The cloth was almost certainly byssus, the fine white linen typically used for the wrappings of late Pharaonic era Egyptian burials. Taken altogether the relics were a tour de force. Meg glanced into the box one last time and pulled out something else: two interlocking pieces of wood, probably imported cedar from the mountain slopes of Syria. Jean de Saint- Clair's Instrument of G.o.d, the early Jacob's Quadrant, that had allowed him to navigate his way to the Farther Sh.o.r.e and an exact copy of the one he'd found in the ancient vizier's tomb in Libya the year before.

Meg turned to him, smiling, and then she winked. Holliday paled as the truth sank in. Meg had known about the navigation instrument from the very beginning. That meant that Bernheim, the French naval historian, had been in Rex Deus's pocket well before they'd met in La Bra.s.serie Malakoff in Paris.

And it was Bernheim who'd pointed him toward Brother Morvan and inevitably to his meeting with Meg Sinclair in the chapel on Mont Saint-Michel. He cursed himself for a fool. He'd been set up from the start and he hadn't seen it, even though part of him must have known that the meeting at the island fortress was too much of a coincidence, the first of many, in fact. Now it was going to cost him his life as well as Peggy and Rafi's.

Operation a.s.syrian began just like Byron's poem described--like a wolf coming down on the fold, the sheep in this instance being the members of Rex Deus. The only warning was the cracking triple bark of the Galil mounted grenade launchers and the shattering sound of breaking gla.s.s. By instinct Holliday dropped to the floor, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

Three heavily armed soldiers clad in black armored vests, black balaclava ski masks and dark goggles rolled through the ruptured stained-gla.s.s windows, following the three grenades that were still spinning down the length of the refectory table.

Two of them were flash-bang stun grenades and the other was smoke. The flash-bangs went off first, blinding everyone at the table as every retinal receptor short-circuited along with an eardrum-rupturing blast of disorienting 180-decibel sound. A split second later the smoke grenade went off and the room began to fill with thick yellow smoke.

There were moans and screams all around Holliday as he climbed to his feet and peered into the smoke. People blindly stumbled into him as he struggled to find the door. There was a crashing sound and the door into the room burst open and he heard a loud voice bellowing, "Sa'al Holliday, to me!"

Sa'al was Israeli for Lieutenant Colonel. Holliday fought his way to the door along with the rest of the dazed, blind and deafened members of Rex Deus who were still standing.

One of them was the Pentagon general. Holliday elbowed him in the throat and the heavyset man went down. The only thing between him and the door was the reeling figure of Miles Bainbridge, the cash or credit card televangelist who was rubbing at his tear-stained cheeks and moaning. Holliday c.o.c.ked his fist and punched him in the mouth as hard as he could, feeling the expensive capped teeth shattering beneath his knuckles. Finally he made it to the door.

A black-suited figure gripped him by the arm. "Colonel Holliday?"

"Yes."

"Long time no see, sir. Please come with me and hurry, the clock's ticking."

The man in black virtually dragged him out of the room. Holliday noticed a silenced Glock 17 in his hand. One of Katherine Sinclair's heavies was slouched on the floor, his own Glock on the floor beside him and his brains leaking onto the wall.

"He drew down on me," said the man in black. They rushed down the corridor to a narrow set of stairs leading down. "We have to hurry, sir, please." They clattered down the stairs with other black-suited soldiers close behind them.

"You're Shaldag? Unit 5101?" Holliday asked, referring to the Israeli Special Forces group. Shaldag was supposedly responsible for marking the target for Operation Babylon, the destruction of the nuclear reactor at Osirak in Iraq.

"We don't exist, sir," answered the man, gripping his arm again. They stepped out into the big commercial-style kitchen in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Poplar Hill. "And we were never here, sir." The man's voice was familiar but Holliday couldn't quite place it. They reached the tunnel leading to the stables. Holliday saw another of Katherine Sinclair's guards sprawled across the floor. The results of those strange ethereal coughing sounds Holliday had heard.

"He draw down on you, too?" Holliday asked.

The man led him into the stone-lined tunnel.

"No, sir," said the man. "He fired on me. We don't fire unless absolutely necessary, but we always fire back when fired upon."

"That sounds like something I might have said," Holliday said and grinned.

"You did, sir. Roman Military Tactics 301, sir. Boom, Ah, USMA-Rah-Rah, USMA-Rah-Rah, Ooh, Rah, Ooh, Rah . . . sir." The West Point Rocket cheer. Who was this kid in the black balaclava helmet? They reached a set of stone steps and raced up them to exit in the stables.

"Do I know you?" asked Holliday. They ran across the garage side of the stables and out into the sheeting rain. Visibility was almost zero but the man in black seemed to know where he was going.

They ran into a grove of poplars and down a narrow, almost invisible path. He could hear the sound of gunfire behind him. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. There were a dozen black-suited men behind him.

They reached a clearing. Two UH-1 Iroquois helicopters stood in the clearing, rotors spinning. Surprisingly the choppers sported the red and white livery of the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. The sliding doors of the helicopters were open, a black- balaclava-wearing soldier standing beside each one.

"This way," said the man at Holliday's side, grabbing his arm in an iron grip again. Holliday, his shepherd and six others crowded into the vehicle. Even before the door slammed shut they were in the air. A man seated beside the pilot turned and slipped off his headphones. His face was darkly tanned, lined and worn by too much sun and too much worrying.

"We lose anyone, Menzer?" asked the older man.

"No, sir. All present and accounted for."

"Excellent," said the older man. His caretaker pulled off his balaclava.

"Misha?" Holliday said, dumbfounded. "Misha Menzer?" The thick eyebrows, pointy chin and the beak of a nose were a dead giveaway, although the Menzer he'd known had a face spotted with pimples and wore heavy plastic gla.s.ses. His ex-student grinned.

"That's me, sir. Thayer Hall, sir. Cla.s.s of oh-five. You told me I'd wind up in the car wash at a base motor pool if I didn't pull up my socks." Menzer had been one of his exchange students back in the day. A better sense of humor than soldierly apt.i.tude, he'd thought at the time.

"Nothing I like better than being proven wrong," said Holliday. He reached out and clapped his ex-student on the shoulder. "Especially when I get my a.s.s pulled out of the fire."

"My pleasure, sir," said Menzer. "Pulling a.s.ses is our business, sir. They needed someone who'd recognize you. I volunteered. Orders from the boss." He nodded toward the man beside the pilot and said something in Hebrew to the other men on the chopper and they laughed. Holliday glanced out the window. He was vaguely aware of flying over hills and forest land but that was about it. He tapped the man in the front seat on the arm. The older man turned and slipped off his headphones.

"They said they'd kill my cousin and her husband if I didn't cooperate. We have to get them before it's too late," Holliday said urgently, yelling over the whickering clatter of the rotors and the roar of the big turbine.

"No need," yelled back the man. "We got a heads-up that they were going to be s.n.a.t.c.hed, from the Vatican of all places. A man named Father Thomas Brennan, of all people. Head of the Vatican Secret Service," said the older man. Sodalitium Pianum. Holliday had b.u.t.ted heads with Brennan once before, also about a kidnapping.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We s.n.a.t.c.hed them first," said the man in the copilot's seat. "They're safe and sound. We've got them at Ramat David Air Base up near Haifa in the north, waiting to fly over here and meet you."

Holliday felt his heart swell with relief.

"Thank you," he said gratefully.

"Tsu gezunt," said the older man. "You're welcome."

"I take it you're Mossad," said Holliday. "Misha wouldn't say."

"Misha is a good boy, a good shot, too," said the older man. "We had a man infiltrating Quince's group. Turns out they're an outsourcing operation the CIA uses for black bag operations in so-called friendly countries. Our man GPS-tagged your shoes and the Sinclair woman's cell phone with data-pulling chips. We've been following you ever since."

"That doesn't answer the question."