Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher

as another crate rolled down the ramp of one of the wagons. “There is also an amount of gold specie in the shipment—an amount we didn’t manage to get into Switzerland before Allied intelligence set up shop there.”
    â€œThings are that bad for the Reich?” Pius asked.
    â€œThere is no Reich, Holy Father. There is only panic. The Führer thinks he can win the war by moving imaginary tanks and men across his maps, and those in high command are rats looking for holes to hide in.”
    â€œSo the Vatican is a rathole to you, Colonel Huff?”
    â€œThis has been planned since the Führer opened the Western Front. The war was lost on that day and most of the SS command were aware of it. The authority comes from Reichsführer Himmler himself.”
    â€œAnd if our gentle Heinrich was told the Vatican did not wish to take part in his plan?”
    Huff shrugged. “Do whatever you wish, but the
Obersturmbannführer
Roedel and his SS Tenth Army will be leaving Rome in two weeks. They can either do it by driving the panzers through Saint Paul’s and the Sistine Chapel on their way north, or down the Appian Way. The choice is entirely yours.”
    â€œYou threaten the Holy See?”
    â€œFor ODESSA and its Kameraden—certainly.”
    *   *   *
    â€œHe actually threatened the Pope?” Lazarus asked. “You heard him?”
    â€œIt was common knowledge and he left enough armed men to make good on the threat. There were soldiers dressed as priests everywhere. Huff would have shot the Holy Father in the blink of an eye.” Nardi smiled and puffed on his cigarette. “Although I think it was a ruse, a way for thePope to give himself an excuse if the story ever was made public—which it eventually was, of course.”
    â€œBlackmail,” said Lazarus.
    â€œIt was mutual, I can assure you.” Nardi smiled. “In the end both of them benefited. After Ber Ruffinono Nogara, director of the Special Administration of the Holy See, closed the doors of the administration building cellars all the gold and paintings and sculptures and priceless manuscripts no longer existed.”
    â€œI’m surprised with all that information you weren’t killed years ago.”
    â€œIt’s because I never made a fuss about things. What I didn’t see that night I picked up from conversations Huff had with various people. Huff never knew it, but I spoke quite a bit of German and understood pretty much everything he and the Pope talked about that night. If you did not have any power, the Vatican and the Nazis chose to believe you were simply invisible. I made sure I was one of those people. I had my uses, but I had no power. Huff would say things with me in the room simply because he assumed I had no idea of what was being said.” The old man paused and crushed another cigarette into the stained old Cinzano metal ashtray on his bedside table. “And I’ve probably said too muchnow. And it’s also my bedtime, so if you gentlemen would be kind enough to leave the money you promised me on the table behind you, I can take to my bed.”
    They did as Nardi asked and left the little rooms over the café. They drove out of Tuscany and back to Rome the following morning.
    *   *   *
    The apartment Eddie and Carrie had rented was close to the Vatican and located on the top floor of a large block of flats on Via Rusticucci. It had four small bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen. Holliday took the key down from its hiding place above the door. The moment he stepped into the hallway he knew something was wrong. There was a familiar stench in the air. The metallic throat-catching odor of blood and the dark smell of human feces.
    â€œOh, shit,” Holliday whispered, glancing toward Lazarus. He’d smelled that smell from the jungles of Vietnam to the hot desert sand of Iraq and the