His voice trailed off and his eyes opened wide as though he were looking at something. He smiled.
"Oh," he said. "I see it. I see… "
Then he died.
Selena stood.
"He's gone."
"So is Brother Jacob," Nick said.
Ronnie and Lamont were checking the bodies at the other end of the chapel. Lamont had a ragged gash on his cheek where a splinter had ripped into it.
"They're all dead," he said.
"Good riddance." Nick holstered his pistol. "How the hell did they know we were here?"
Lamont moved over to Nawabi's body and began going through his pockets. He held up a cell phone.
"Might be something on this to tell us."
"We'll let Stephanie look at it."
"Better call Harker," Ronnie said.
CHAPTER 39
Elizabeth was reading an intelligence brief on dissident activity in Russia when Nick called.
"Director, we ran into trouble."
"What happened?"
"We were at the monastery. ISIS showed up and everything went bad from there. They have four new martyrs but one of the Syriac monks is dead. So is Count Mercurio."
"Mercurio? What was he doing there?"
"Same thing we were. Chasing down the Grail."
"Are any of you hurt?"
"Lamont has a splinter wound but that's it. We were lucky."
"A splinter wound?"
"From a wooden pew. We were in a chapel. They had AKs."
"Are the police there yet?"
"No."
"Was the Grail there?"
"No."
"Can you get back to Incirlik?"
"I don't think there's time. People will have noticed our car and someone will put it together. Every cop in Turkey is going to be looking for us."
Elizabeth's fingers sped across her keyboard. A live satellite view of the monastery appeared on the wall monitor. She could see Nick's blue Toyota in the parking lot.
"Leave now and start driving back toward the base. I'll task a helicopter to pick you up, but it will take time to reach you. I have a visual of the monastery and I can see your car. I'll track your GPS."
"Copy that, Director."
"If you get stopped, stall them. Do not engage in any hostile action with Turkish forces, understood?"
"They may not give us a choice."
"I mean it, Nick. Turkey is still technically an ally. You shoot a cop and I've got an international incident to explain to the president."
"I'll do my best, Director. But they start shooting at us, we're going to shoot back."
"Nick… "
Stephanie came into the room as Nick broke the connection.
"What's up?"
"Trouble. ISIS followed the team to Mor Gabriel and they got into a firefight. Count Mercurio is dead and so is one of the Syriac monks."
"Mercurio? What was he doing there?"
"That's what I said. He was looking for the Grail, what else?"
"Did Nick find it?"
"No."
"Maybe it's time to give this up," Stephanie said. "It feels like we're running after a myth."
"You may be right. Nick didn't say whether or not he found out anything else. If he didn't, we've reached a dead end."
Elizabeth made the call that would send a helicopter to pick up the team. On the monitor, the red dot of Nick's GPS moved away from the monastery.
"Unless they have new information, I'm bringing them home," Elizabeth said.
"Did King Arthur's Knights ever find the Grail?" Stephanie asked.
"It depends on what version you're looking at. There's a movie by John Boorman called Excalibur, where Percival brings back the Grail and heals the King so he can go fight Mordred in the final battle. But I don't think anyone ever brought it back in the original stories. A few of Arthur's Knights saw it. That was a big deal."
"Didn't most of them die?"
"All except one, as I recall."
"Seems like it's worth your life to go looking for it."
"I never believed it existed," Elizabeth said. "I'm not sure I believe it now."
"What about that manuscript Selena found? The Book of Simon?"
"Even if it's real, that doesn't mean the cup has magical powers."
"That doesn't matter," Stephanie said. "What matters is what people believe. And if there really is a cup that caught Christ's blood, it's the most important Christian artifact in existence."
Elizabeth watched the GPS signal on the screen.
"It's important to Muslims, too. For them, it's a relic of one of their prophets. They believe Christ will come back and convert all the Christians to Islam. That's the signal for the Mahdi to appear. Then comes the Day of Retribution, what we call the Last Judgment."
"Convert the Christians to Islam? Good luck with that," Stephanie said.
CHAPTER 40
They'd been driving for several hours. Nick had been waiting to see flashing lights in his mirrors. They'd passed a large town called Viransehir. Now they were back in open country, all fields and orchards.
"I'm sorry about Mercurio," Selena said. "He was a good man. There aren't many of those left these days. At least we don't meet many of them."
"The people we tend to meet are anything but good," Nick said.
"How did those assholes find us?" Lamont asked.
Nick swerved to avoid a pothole.
"Good question. Someone in ISIS is good at what he's doing. A better question might be why do they keep showing up?"
"That's easy," Selena said. "They think we'll lead them to the Grail."
Ronnie sat next to Lamont in the back, behind Nick. "How did they get on to Mercurio in the first place?"
Selena turned in her seat to look at him. "Probably their contact in the Swedish police. I wonder if they caught him yet?"
She turned back and looked out at the flat, Anatolian plain passing by.
"What are we going to do next, Nick?"
"It depends on Harker. She'll probably send us to Malta."
"There's no proof it went to Malta."
"No, but there's a pattern here."
"What pattern?" Ronnie asked.
"Each time the Grail is about to fall into the wrong hands, it's moved somewhere else. Theodosius gave it to Anastasius as he was dying. Anastasius gave it to the monk at Mor Gabriel, so he must've been worried about its safety. Then it was handed over to the Hospitallers when the monastery was going to be overrun by the Mongols. The Hospitallers took it to Rhodes. Then Sulemein shows up with an overwhelming force."
"It's like trouble follows it," Lamont said.
"Right. If I were protecting the cup and I saw Sulemein coming, you can bet your ass I'd find a safer place for it. It makes sense it would be sent on to Malta. The Knights held out there, so they wouldn't need to move it again. If it's anywhere, it's likely to be hidden somewhere on the island. Malta is our best bet."
"What if we don't find anything there?"
"Then we're done."
They came around a sweeping curve. Straight ahead police blocked the road with two cars nose to nose across the highway, leaving only a narrow space between.
A policeman stepped out from the cars and held up his hand. He was armed with a pistol in a holster. Two more cops waited beside him with M-14s held at port arms. They looked unfriendly. Two others were stationed behind the cars, taking aim at the Toyota with their rifles.
Ronnie said. "We try to run that, we're toast."
"Get your diplomatic passports out," Nick said. "We'll try to bluff our way through."
He turned to Selena. "You do the talking."
He slowed the Toyota and stopped.
The cop with the pistol kept his hand on the butt of his gun and approached the car.
"What's the trouble, Officer?" Selena asked in Turkish.
"Passports," the cop said. He had a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve. He held out his hand.
"He wants to see our passports," Selena said.