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FORTY

11:05 AM

STEPHANIE POURED HERSELF A CUP OF HOT COFFEE AND OFFERED er man refused

"We’re allowed but one cup a day," he made clear

She sat at the kitchen table "Is your entire life governed by Rule?"

"It’s our way"

"I thought secrecy was important to the brotherhood, too Why do you speak of it so openly?"

"My master, who now resides with the Lord, told me to be honest with you"

She was perplexed "How did your master know me?"

"He followed your husband’s research closely That was long before my time at the abbey, but the master told me of it He and your husband spoke on several occasions The master was your husband’s confessor"

The information shocked her "Lars made contact with the Templars?"

"Actually, the Templars contacted him My master approached your husband, but if your husband knew that he was of the Teht end the contact But surely he knew"

"Your er htened "He was a wise ood for our Order"

She recalled his defense of Mark hours earlier "Did my son help with that endeavor?"

"That’s why he was chosen seneschal"

"And the fact that he was Lars Nelle’s son had nothing to do with that choice?"

"On that, madame, I cannot speak I only learned who the seneschal was a few hours ago Here, in this house So I don’t know"

"You know nothing of each other?"

"Very little, and sole with that Others revel in the privacy But we spend our lives together, close as in a prison Too much familiarity could become a problem So we’re barred by Rule from any intimacy with our fellows We keep to ourselves, our silence enforced through the service of God"

"Sounds difficult"

"It’s the life we choose This adventure, though" He shook his head "My ht"

She sipped more coffee "Your master was sure that you and I wouldyou’d come He also sent a letter to Ernst Scoville, which included pages fro you two together He knew Scoville once didn’t care for you--he learned that froreat So he wanted the two of you, together with the seneschal and myself, to find the Great Devise"

She recalled that term and its explanation from earlier "Does your Order truly believe that there’s s the world doesn’t know?"

"I have, as yet, not achieved a sufficient level of training to answer your question Many decades of service are required before I’ll be privy to what the Order actually knows But death, at least to ht so far, seems a clear finality Many thousands of brothers died on the battlefields of the Holy Land Not one of them ever rose and walked away"

"The Catholic Church would call what you just said heresy"

"The Church is an institution created by overned by men Whatever more is made of that institution is also the creation of man"

She decided to tempt fate "What am I supposed to do, Geoffrey?"

"Help your son"

"How?"

"He must complete what his father started Raymond de Roquefort cannot be allowed to find the Great Devise The master was emphatic on this point That’s why he planned ahead Why I was trained"

"Mark detests me"

"He loves you"

"Hoould you know that?"

"Mythat"

"My master knew all" Geoffrey reached into his trouser pocket and withdrew a sealed envelope "I was told to give this to you when I thought appropriate" He handed her the crinkled packet, then stood froone to the church I’ll leave you alone"

She appreciated the gesture No telling what eht stir, so she waited until Geoffrey had withdrawn to the den, then opened the envelope

Mrs Nelle, you and I are strangers, yet I feel I know much about you, all from Lars, who told me what troubled his soul Your son was different He kept his tor precious little On a few occasions I ed to learn some, but his emotions were not as transparent as his father’s Perhaps he inherited that trait from you? And I do notat the erous h the centuries, affected le-ht him for leadership and lost Unfortunately, Mark does not possess the resolve needed to co the them has proven difficult His battles with you His battles with de Roquefort His battles with his conscience All challenge hiether could prove decisive for you both Again, I do not know you, but I believe I understand you Your husband is dead and so much was left unresolved Perhaps this quest will finally answer all your questions I offer this advice Trust your son, forget about the past, think only of the future That could go a long way to providing peace My Order is unique a all Christendom Our beliefs are different, and that is because of what the original brothers learned and passed on Does that make us less Christian? Orthe Great Devise will answer many questions, but I fear that it will raise many more It will be to you and your son to decide what is best if and when that critical time comes, and hopefully it will, for I have faith in you both A resurrection has occurred A second chance has been offered The dead have risen and noalk again a: Free your rown comfortable Open yourself to conceptions more vast, and reason by more certain methods For only then will you succeed May the Lord be with you

A tear streaked down her cheek A strange feeling, crying One she could not rehly educated and possessed the experience that decades of working in the top levels of the intelligence business offered Her career had been spent handling one difficult situation after another She’d made life-and-death decisions many times But none of that applied here She’d so, black and white, and entered a realhts were not only known, but actually understood This master, a man to whom she’d never spoken a word, seemed to precisely coht

Mark’s return was a resurrection A glorious miracle with endless possibilities

"Do the words sadden you?"

She looked up Geoffrey stood in the doorway She swiped the tears away "In one way But in another they bring happiness"

"The master was like that He knew both joy and pain Much pain, though, in his final days"

"How did he die?"

"Cancer took hio"

"You miss him?"

"I was raised alone, without the benefit of faood to roithout the love of a parent"

The adreat kindness, perhaps even love, but most of all he placed his trust in me"

"Then don’t fail him"

"I won’t"

She motioned with the paper "Is this mine to keep?"

He nodded "I was only the deliveryrabbed hold of herself "Why did Mark and Cotton go to the church?"

"I sensed that the seneschal wanted to talk to Mr Malone"

She stood from the chair "Perhaps we, too, should--"

A knock caaze darted to the unlocked latch Cotton and Mark would have siun appeared in his hand She stepped toward the door and peered through the glass

A familiar face stared back

Royce Claridon

FORTY ONE

DE ROQUEFORT WAS FURIOUS FOUR HOURS AGO HE’D BEEN INFORMED that, on the night the master died, the archival security system had recorded a visit at eleven fifty-one PM The seneschal had stayed inside twelve minutes, then left with two books The electronic identification tags affixed to every volu tomes as a thirteenth-century codex he kneell and a marshal’s report filed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, which he’d also read

When he’d interrogated Royce Claridon a few hours ago, he’d not ram contained in Lars Nelle’s journal But one was included in the priorwith the location where the puzzle had been found--in the abbe Gelis’s church located in Coustausa, not far fro that the marshal had spoken to Gelis shortly before the priest was ram in his church When compared, the tere identical Gelis apparently solved the puzzle and the marshal was told the results, but the solution was not recorded and was never found after Gelis’s death Both the local police and thein Gelis’s briefcase Surely, Gelis’s decipher But was the murderer Sauniere? Hard to say The criiven what de Roquefort knew, the priest from Rennes would have to be included on any suspect list

Now the ht not be all bad since he possessed Lars Nelle’s journal, which contained Sauniere’s cryptogram Yet was it, as the marshal reported, the same as Gelis’s? No way to knoithout the marshal’s report, which was certainly removed froo, while he’d listened through a microphone stuck to a side pane as Stephanie Nelle and brother Geoffrey bonded, he’d learned Mark Nelle and Cotton Malone had walked to the church Stephanie Nelle had even cried after reading what the for The master had clearly planned ahead and this wholeout of control He needed to yank the reins tight and slow the momentum down So while Royce Claridon dealt with the occupants at Lars Nelle’s house, he was going to see about the other two

The transponder still attached to Malone’s rental car had revealed that Malone and Stephanie Nelle returned to Rennes froht here fro

After what happened last night with the woht Malone and Stephanie Nelle were no longer important, which hy hisa current and a for attention He’d traveled to Avignon to discover what secrets the palace archives held and to capture Claridon, not to attract the interest of the entire Aence coed to obtain Lars Nelle’s journal as a bonus All in all, not a bad night’s work He’d even been willing to let Mark Nelle and Geoffrey go, since away fro about the two ed

"We’re in place," a voice said in his ear

"Stay still until I call for you," he whispered into the lapel ht six brothers with hi in with the growing Sunday crowd The day was bright, sunny, and characteristically windy While the Aude River’s valleys ar them were perpetually raked by mountain winds

He strolled up theno effort to mask his approach

He wanted Mark Nelle to knoas there

MARK STOOD AT HIS FATHER’S GRAVE THE MEMORIAL WAS IN good condition, as were all the graves, since the ce tourist industry

For the first six years after his father died, he’d personally tended to the grave, visiting nearly every weekend He’d also tended to the house His father had been popular with Rennes’ residents since he’d treated the village with kindness and Sauniere’s memory with respect That was, perhaps, one reason why his father had included so much fiction about Rennes in his books The eion, and writers who trashed that mystique were not appreciated Since precious little was known for sure about any aspect of the tale, lots of room for iarded as the h Mark knew that a relatively unknown French book by Gerard de Sede, Le Tresor Maudit, published in the late 1960s, hat first ignited his father’s curiosity He’d always thought the title--The Accursed Treasure--apt, especially after his father suddenly died Mark had been a teenager when he’d first read his father’s book, but it had been years later, while he was in graduate school, honing his knowledge of ious philosophy, that his father told him as really at stake

"The heart of Christianity is the resurrection of physical bodies It’s the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise If Christians will not one day be resurrected, then their faith is useless No resurrection means the Gospels are all a lie--the Christian faith is only for this life--there’s noperforions preach about paradise and the afterlife But only Christianity offers a God who became man, died for His followers, then rose from the dead to rule forever

"Think about it," his father had said "Christians can have a lot of different beliefs on a lot of subjects But they all agree on the resurrection It’s their universal constant Jesus rose from the dead for them alone Death was conquered for the toward their rede for them, as they, too, will be raised fro in every tragedy, since the resurrection gives hope for a future"

Then his father asked the question that had floated in his memory ever since

"What if that never happened? What if Christ simply died, dust to dust?"

Indeed, what if?

"Think of all the htered in the naensian Crusade alone fifteen thousand men, wo the teachings of the crucifixion The Inquisition murdered millions more The Holy Land Crusades cost hundreds of thousands of lives All for the so-called risen Christ Popes for centuries have used Christ’s sacrifice as a way to motivate warriors If the resurrection never happened, so there’s no promise of an afterlife, how many of those men do you think would have faced death?"