Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page A

harsh mountains of Afghanistan. Somebody had died here and not too long ago.
    They found Eddie in the kitchen. He was slumped with his back against one of the cupboard doors beneath the sink. His shirt was bloody from the right side of his chest to hiswaistband. The wound bubbled slightly as Eddie breathed in and out. He was alive, but not by much. Holliday knelt down beside his dying friend.
    â€œWho did this to you?”
    â€œ
Una perra
. She was a traitor. She was playing both sides,
mi compañero
. Phone.”
    Eddie smiled weakly, blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His breath was coming in harsh little gasps. “I think I gave the
puta
as good as she gave me.” He lifted the blood-covered butcher knife feebly and then dropped it.
“Hasta luego, mi colonel.”
The bubbles stopped frothing from the wound in his chest. Holliday crouched beside his friend for a moment, and then closed Eddie’s eyes.
    â€œToo many times, too many times,” he whispered, hard, cold tears forming at the death of his friend, a man he’d loved like a brother. The whole thing had been a setup right from the beginning. Carrie’s objective had always been the notebook. She’d led them along like the Pied Piper. He felt like an utter fool.
    They found Carrie in the bathroom. There was a Glock 19 on the tile floor beside her. With one motion Eddie had sliced her from waist to heart. Her organs and intestines spilled out on her lap as if on the floor of a slaughterhouse. Hollidayrummaged around her corpse, uncaring of the blood that was getting all over his hands and arms. He eventually found her cell phone and scrolled down to the last call she’d made.
    â€œSeven-oh-three. McLean, Virginia. The Company.”
    â€œWhy not the Paris division?” Lazarus asked.
    â€œBecause she was working for a black cell inside the CIA. There’ve been rumors about it for years. The little bitch here even mentioned it to me on her way to Paris.”
    â€œSo what do we do now?” Lazarus asked.
    â€œWe are on the top floor of a building without elevators. We’ll have to clean them up as best we can.”
    They dragged Eddie into the bathroom and loaded him into the bathtub, followed by the body of the woman. Going back to the kitchen, Holliday rummaged around in the cupboard under the sink. He found a bottle of ammonia and a box of lye soap. He looked through the drawers and discovered two boxes of cling wrap and took it all back to the bathroom.
    â€œSee if you can find me a dry-cleaning bag and a roll of any kind of tape, preferably duct tape.”
    Lazarus left the bathroom and Holliday started on the bodies. He filled the tub until the remains of the Pilkington woman and Eddiewere covered, and then stopped the water. He poured in the half gallon of ammonia and sprinkled the box of lye over the interior of the old claw-foot tub. He took the cling wrap and covered the tub from side to side and end to end. Lazarus returned with two dry-cleaning bags and a roll of duct tape.
    â€œHelp me with this,” Holliday said.
    They spread the bags out over the top of the bathtub as tightly as they could, taping as they went.
    â€œIf we’re lucky, the lye and the ammonia will keep the stink down for a day or two and the dry-cleaning bags and Saran wrap should keep it down for a day or two more.”
    â€œThen what?” Lazarus asked.
    â€œWe find another hidey-hole. And then we see what’s in the basement of the Vatican Administration Building.”

7
    Rusty Smart sat in the living room of a safe house on Fort Myer Drive just across the Potomac from D.C. The room was cluttered with plasma-screen computers and printers, and there was a complex communications setup that included satellite phones and stolen image-tracking links with five Keyhole units. There were three other men in the room with him: Tom Harris, James Black and Paul Streeter—all members of a ghost unit