'Nice to see some good old-fashioned greed making a comeback,' Aparo snorted. 'Makes a change from the misguided wackos we're usually hunting down.'
De Angelis leaned forward, clearing his throat and glancing at Jansson. 'Their treasure was never recovered, that much is generally accepted.'
Jansson tapped his fingers on the papers. 'So this manuscript could be some kind of treasure map that Vance is now able to read.'
'That doesn't make sense,' Tess interjected, suddenly feeling out of place as the faces around the table turned to face her. She turned to Reilly before continuing, propped up by what she read as a supportive look. 'If Vance was after money, there was a lot more he could have taken from the Met.'
'True,' Aparo answered, 'but the stuff on show would be virtually impossible to sell. And from what you've told us, the treasure of the Templars has got to be worth a lot more than what was on show, plus it can be sold freely without fear of prosecution since it won't have been stolen, just found.'
The agents were nodding in agreement, but De Angelis noted that Tess looked doubtful, although she appeared to be wary of expressing her thoughts. 'You don't appear to be too convinced, Miss Chaykin.'
She grimaced with unease. 'It's clear Vance wanted the encoder to be able to read the manuscript he found.'
'The key to the treasure's location,' Jansson confirmed, half questioning.
'Probably,' she said, turning to him. 'But it depends on how you define treasure.'
'What else could it be?' De Angelis was hoping to see if she had gained any intimation from Vance.
She shook her head. 'I'm not sure.'
That was good, if she was telling the truth, De Angelis thought.
He hoped she was.
But then she dashed that hope and continued. 'Vance seemed to be after something else than just money. It's like he's possessed, he's a man on a mission.' She walked them through the more esoteric theories of the Templar treasure, including the notion of their being part of some cabal guarding Jesus's bloodline. She glanced at De Angelis as she was saying it. He was staring at her blankly, giving nothing away.
Once she'd finished, he waded in. 'Putting all the entertaining conjecture aside,' he said, as he flashed her a slightly condescending smile, 'you're saying he's a man who's out for revenge, a man on a personal crusade of sorts.'
'Yes.'
'Well,' De Angelis continued with the calm, soothing manner of a worldly college professor, 'money, especially a lot of it, can be a phenomenal tool. Crusades, whether in the twelfth century or today, cost a lot of money, don't they?' He looked around the table.
Tess didn't answer.
The question hung briefly until Reilly stepped in. 'What I don't get is this. We know Vance blames the priest and, by inference, the Church for his wife's death.'
'His wife and daughter,' Tess corrected him.
'Right. And now he's got hold of this manuscript that he says was, I don't know, scary enough to turn a priest's hair white within minutes of being told about it. And we all seem to agree that this manuscript, which is written in code, is a Templar document, right?'
'What's your point?' Jansson interjected.
'I thought the Templars and the Church were on the same side. I mean, the way I understand it, these guys were the defenders of the Church. They fought bloody wars in the name of the Vatican for over two hundred years. I can imagine their descendants being ticked off at the Church for what happened to them, but the theories you're talking about,' he said as he looked at Tess, 'are about something they supposedly discovered two hundred years before they were persecuted. Why would they have anything in their possession, from day one, that would worry the Church?'
'It could help explain why they were burned at the stake,' Amelia Gaines offered.
'Two hundred years later? And there's another thing,' Reilly continued, turning to Tess now.
'These guys went from defending the Cross to desecrating it. Why would they do that? Their initiation ceremonies just don't make sense.'
'Well, that's what they were accused of,' Tess said. 'Doesn't mean they actually did these things. It was a standard accusation at the time. The king used the very same charges a few years earlier to get rid of an earlier pope, Boniface VIII.'
'Okay, but it still doesn't make sense,' Reilly went on. 'Why would they spend all that time fighting for the Church if they were hiding some secret that the Vatican didn't want exposed?'
De Angelis finally rejoined the discussion in his usual dulcet tone. 'If I may ... I think that if you're going to entertain such flights of fancy, you might as well consider another possibility that hasn't yet been discussed.'
The gathered group turned to face him. He paused, letting the anticipation build before proceeding calmly.
'The whole conjecture about our Lord's bloodline comes up every few years and never fails to generate interest, whether it's in the realm of fiction or in the halls of academia. The Holy Grail, the San Graal, or the Sang Real, call it what you will. But, as Miss Chaykin has very articulately explained,' he pointed out, nodding graciously at her, 'a lot of what happened to the Templars can simply be explained by that most basic of human traits, namely,' turning now to glance at Aparo, 'greed. Not only had they gotten too powerful, but without the defense of the Holy Land to keep them occupied, they were now back in Europe—mostly in France—and they were armed, they were powerful, and they were very, very wealthy. The king of France felt threatened and rightfully so.
Being virtually bankrupt and heavily indebted to them, he desperately coveted their wealth. He was a loathsome man by any account; I would be inclined to agree with Miss Chaykin on the whole affair of their arrest. I wouldn't read too much into their accusations. They were undoubtedly innocent, true believers, and Soldiers of Christ to the death. But the accusations gave the king the excuse to get rid of them, and, by doing so, he killed two birds with one stone. He got rid of his rivals and got hold of their treasure. Or at least tried to, given that it was never found.'
'This is physical treasure we're talking about now, not some kind of esoteric 'knowledge'?' Jansson asked.
'Well, I like to think so, but then I've never been blessed with a great sense of fantasy, although I do understand the appeal of all the colorful, alternative conspiracy theories. But the physical and the esoteric could be related in another way. You see, a lot of the interest in the Templars stems from the fact that no one can unequivocally explain how they got to be so rich and so powerful in such a short time. I believe it's simply the result of the abundance of donations they received once their mission was widely publicized. But then, who knows? Perhaps they did find some buried secret that made them incredibly wealthy in record time. But what was it? Was it related to the mythical descendants of Christ, proof that our Lord fathered a child or two a thousand years earlier . . .'he scoffed lightly, 'or was it something much less controversial, but potentially far more lucrative?'
He waited, making sure they were all still following his line of thought.
'I'm talking about the secrets of alchemy, about the formula to turn ordinary metals,' he calmly announced, 'into gold.'
Chapter 43
The faces around the table were frozen in silence as De Angelis took them through a brief history of the arcane science.
The historical evidence supported his proposition. Alchemy was indeed introduced into Europe during the Crusades. The earliest alchemical works originated in the Middle East and were written in Arabic long before they were translated into Latin.
'The alchemists' experiments were based on Aristorie's theory of earth, air, fire, and water. They believed that everything was made up from a combination of these elements. They also believed that with the right dosage and method, these elements could each be transmuted into any of the others. Water could easily be turned into air by being boiled, and so on. And since everything on the planet was believed to be made up of a combination of earth, water, air, and fire, in theory at least, it was thought possible to transmute any starting material into
