Martin is disappointed and knows that they have now lost Jerusalem. The chief Crusader William of Beaujeu, fell to poison and his mentor Aimard asks him to run away with an artifact given to him by William – an object in an ornate but small chest. Aimard convinces him that they need to leave in the only ship left, the Falcon Temple. This, Aimard explained, is far more crucial to stay and die, even if they slew some Saracens in the interim. That ship was captained by Hugh.
Cut to modern day. When the New York Metropolitan Museum displays ‘Treasures of the Vatican’ exhibit, four horsemen appear – the crowd takes them to be part of the show organized by the event managers; they proceed slowly towards the museum entrance.
Tess Chaykin, her mother Eileen and her daughter Kim are in the museum at that time. When the horsemen casually behead a guard who came to stop them, the crowd realizes that they are not part of the show. Pandemonium breaks out and the horsemen gallop into the museum.
Tess watches one of them taking an ornate box (the same that was in the prologue) and then gathers them all – others with the treasures looted – and gallops away. He has also seen her once but his face was covered except for the eyes.
The detective Sean Reilly who arrives at the scene is astounded at the carnage he witnessed. His deputy Nick Aparo is equally aghast.
Back in Vatican, Cardinal Brugnone, meanwhile, is dismayed to read that one of the stolen items was a ‘multi-geared rotor encoder’. The Cardinal knows but distracts the person and later, he is determined to defeat the enemy from gaining any benefit from the use of it. He needs to find and stop them – whoever they are.
Tess, in the meanwhile is also looking for the item which the fourth horseman specifically took and stumbles across the description of the same multi geared rotor encoder.
Tess is stunned to learn of a Templar connection with the device. From a friend who was in the museum and was injured in the same attack.
Meanwhile, stupidly, one of the toughman tries to intimidate an antique dealer who does not blush at selling illegal items. The man’s name is Gus Waldron. The antique dealer, Lucian Boussard agreed to find a man who is not finicky but recognizes the item as one stolen from the Vatican exhibit. This is too hot for him and also a chance to ease of increasing pressure from the Feds. He reports Gus, knowing that he will return the next day to confirm the sale and agree to the money.
What follows is a high action drama. Gus realizes that he has been set up. All the tell tale signs are there. Unmarked cars moving into positions all around. When he reaches Gus, he confirms his suspicions, takes Gus as hostage and sets him calmly on fire before pushing him onto the street. He then lets loose a volley into the cops and runs. He throws a slowing cab’s driver out and takes off in it, but Reilly, who is in his jeep follows him and after very high nerve biting drama, manages to collar him. And sees that he has an ornate cross on him.
Reilly meets Tess and is intrigued by her theory on Templars. He did not connect the cross with the Templars until she mentioned it to him.
Reilly and Tess feel a growing attraction to each other but Reilly is frustrated by her refusal to step away and let the detectives do the work. She is searching for two Templar experts whom she wants to track down to help her with her investigation.
Gus in the meanwhile is tracked to the hospital where he is admitted and an unknown man dressed as a hospital orderly injects something into him which causes his heart to fail. They think that it is a heart attack until the coroner spots the needle mark and identifies the substance that was injected.
Gus provides the name of just one person who hired him to the unknown assailant, due to torture – before he is killed, of course. That person is tending horses in a stable and is brutally murdered and a fire started in the stable. Reilly and team are now desperate to talk to the remaining two guys – unless it is the forth guy who is hunting the other three.
Cue the third guy who was in hiding and unwisely decides to steal back to his apartment one time in the middle of the night and is pushed off the roof of the building to his death.
Tess in the meanwhile is doggedly pursuing her investigation and seeks the help of two professors she used to know through her archeological father. She zeroes in on Vance but he seems to have clean disappeared from the earth after her wife died. She finally tracks him down to the cemetery on the anniversary of his wife’s death but realizes that he, Vance, is indeed the fourth horseman who took the artefact. (How did she know is a bit obscure and artificial but we will skip that). She is tazered and taken to his hiding place (in a ruined and abandoned church, as she learns later). He is followed and Tess manages to escape from him, leaving her wallet but taking the documents he needs to decipher with the crypto machine he took from the Met. She manages to escape through the tunnels. She meets Reilly and gives the document to be copied. However, she gets a phone call from home and realizes that Vance has visited her mother and is threatening the lives of her mom and daughter (subtly, so that only Tess knows). Stupidly, she decides to run (without telling Reilly) with the original and gives it to Vance, who takes it and promptly disappears.
There is another thread where de Angelis, a cleric, joins the investigation. He is a clerical representative from the Vatican, willing to supply the background information as required but soon we realize that it is more than that. He is deeply suspicious of Tess and wants to ‘take care of her’ when the time is right. She is the threat: the FBI is simply interested in nabbing Vance and the murderers of the other three but Tess will not rest until she finds out the basic cause.
We realize that the document that Tess filched and returned contains the text which is decoded by the machine that Vance has.
Now comes another absurdity in the story. By the photos taken in the luggage where it was earlier transported, FBI agents manage to reconstruct it and decode the copy of the document. (Really? How?). They use it to decode the document. This describes the ancient story where Martin (yes, the one in the prologue) is given two copies of the document by the dying priest and asked to take it back to the Templar homeland.
When Tess discovers where Vance may have gone, she makes another run to the airport (to Turkey) but is followed by Riley who decides to join her in the search. Unknown to both, there is a lackey of de Angelo in the plane, watching them and de Angelo himself, shorn of his clerical vestment and in a nice suit, goes to their destination in a private Gulf Stream to intercept them. Reilly joining Tess is a complication, yes, but not something that cannot be ‘managed’.
When they discover that the church is now at the bottom of a lake – an artificial lake created by building of a dam, they dive down to get it. They come back with a package, only to find Vance sitting on the boat with armed guards. Tess hands the package to Vance who opens it only to find an astrolabe there. The real treasure sunk to the bottom of the sea, according to the note attached in the same bag. So, if it was all lost, why the secrecy?
Before they can puzzle it out and also puzzle out how to escape from captivity by Vance, the guard is killed by a faraway bullet. They run in the car belonging to Vance. When they finally stop, Vance explains that what he is after is not treasure or riches but ‘the Truth’.
What follows is highly enlightening. And based on facts. Many of you may already know the facts because other nonfiction works cover these but if you have not been reading those, these will be astonishing facts. First of all, the current bible has been compiled by selectively putting together some gospels – and leaving out most others which have conflicting information. Second, many of the others, especially the early ones, do not describe Jesus as the Son of God but simply a preacher, who preached universal love – no sign of the miracles there. Third, a gospel was written by Judas, who is the brother of Jesus. Fourth, at least one of these gospels describe a conjugal relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.
In addition, even the book of Mark, part of the New Testament, initially did not ascribe any divine powers to Jesus but was embellished later. In any case, all of the gospels were written at least 600 years after the death of Christ, which means that the stories were orally passed from mouth to mouth until then, giving rise to the possibility of distortion.
All this is before we even talk about the Gnostic Bible, which is a set of books that advise you to look for peace and salvation inside you rather than depend on symbols and rituals, like all religions advise you to do.
On top of that, all three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are Abrahamic and believe in Abraham as the original Prophet. So the Templars were trying to unify all these religions based on historical facts, shorn of all the symbolism and miracles, and thereby eliminate religious strife, which is the largest cause of struggle and death in the world, historically speaking (Also true in reality). It cuts Reilly, who is deeply religious, to the quick and he decides then and there to send Vance back to the FBI and go back. Tess is not ready to accept it and she frees Vance and runs away with him in a jeep when Reilly is asleep.
Hurt by the betrayal of Tess (yet again?) Reilly is pondering his next move when a helicopter comes to take him to the bishop. He learns that de Angelis is not what he seems and the bishop, Brugnone, tells him how important it is to protect belief in the current version of Christianity to avoid dumping a huge share of the population into despair and gloom. (Not to protect the interests of the Church per se but to avoid taking away the hope and trust in God that gives solace to countless millions who need this to find meaning in life and to cope with the vicissitudes of daily living).
But on the whole, the story aims more for tension than realistic portrayal. Even though Tess keeps running away irresponsibly from the police, FBI and even Reilly, he keeps making excuses for her with a dog like devotion that rankles. She foolishly finds out onboard the rented trawler Savarona that Vance is capable of killing and that she herself could lose her life, when they are close to getting to the figurehead of the sunken boat. Yet, just after the captain of the ship was murdered in cold blood by Vance, she eagerly leans forward when the masthead was drawn up from the bottom of the sea to find out what secrets it may contain. Go figure.
And it ends like a Hollywood action blockbuster, in the mid seas, in the middle of a raging storm with one boat containing a murderous and determined Vance and the other boat with Reilly and a murderous and determined de Angelis, both fighting to get to the masthead for different reasons of their own, both evil.
And ends in a huge spurt of action where both Reilly and Tess doing what action movie heroes and heroines do, regardless of logic or consequences.
A good read, if you leave your brain far away and just want to enjoy the ride. The historical background adds a little bit of heavy texture to the story, which is nice.
The story goes a bit longer than that. Reilly and Tess survive – no, I am not giving away any twists; in stories like this the main characters always survive and are in a Greek island, recovering. Surprising twists happen there before the story ends on a satisfactory note.
7/10
= = Krishna
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