The Templar Brotherhood Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JAMES BECKER

  The Lost Testament

  “Extremely satisfying and ridiculously exciting! I was glued to The Lost Testament. . . . Let the fast pace, the exciting plot, the likable leads, and the spot-on prose carry you away.” —For Winter Nights

  Echo of the Reich

  “Amazingly good.” —Fresh Fiction

  “It deserves the widest possible audience.”

  —Reviewing the Evidence

  “Clever and imaginative twists . . . highly recommended.”

  —Euro Crime

  The First Apostle

  “Fast-paced action propels the imaginative and controversial plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This is an utterly spellbinding book . . . stunning and breathtaking. . . . I was left shattered and stunned.”

  —Euro Crime

  The Messiah Secret

  “An entertaining hunt-and-chase thriller . . . appealing and clever protagonists coupled with intriguing history.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Superbly crafted . . . it breaks new ground . . . a tightly worded, sharply written thriller.”

  —CrimeSquad.com

  “Exciting and gripping . . . gets your adrenaline racing.”

  —Euro Crime

  ALSO BY JAMES BECKER

  The First Apostle

  The Moses Stone

  The Messiah Secret

  The Nosferatu Scroll

  Echo of the Reich

  The Lost Testament

  The Lost Treasure of the Templars

  The Templar Archive

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter Smith

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698187023

  First Edition: October 2017

  Cover photos: man standing in cave © Paul Gooney/Arcangel; human skull © freedomnaruk/Shutterstock; note written in Latin © Le Panda/Shutterstock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Praise for the Novels of James Becker

  Also by James Becker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Writing a novel is a lonely occupation, and I would like to thank both my British literary agent, Luigi Bonomi of LBA, and his American counterpart, George Lucas of Inkwell Management, for their continued support and encouragement. And, of course, my thanks go to Brent Howard and the dedicated team at Penguin Random House in America, who manage to weed out the bits that don’t work and give a good polish to what I always hope is a diamond in the rough.

  And, finally, and as always, my profound thanks to Sally, for her patience and recognition that although I might be in the same house as her, and even in the same room, I’m not always actually there, my mind transporting me to all sorts of unfamiliar locations, back and forth across the centuries and around the world.

  Prologue

  Villeneuve du Temple, Paris

  19 November 1307

  He had endured with fortitude. That, nobody could deny.

  They’d started relatively gently, placing rods between his fingers and squeezing his hands in a kind of vise to break the bones in his fingers one by one, but he’d said nothing in answer to their repeated questions. Then they’d subjected him to the searing agony of the strappado, tying his hands together behind his back, attaching weights to his feet, and then jerking him off the ground by a rope secured to his bound wrists. But still he’d remained silent, even when they’d used the red-hot iron to burn deep furrows in the flesh of his naked body, but when they lost patience and put him on the bed, he knew he would finally break.

  They tied his body down, lashing his arms and legs with ropes so that he couldn’t move at all, his feet projecting over the end of the iron frame. Then they coated his feet in oil, stoked the charcoal brazier, added more fuel, and positioned it just inches away from the soles of his naked feet. Almost instantly, a wave of unbearable agony swept through his body as he felt—and could even smell—his own flesh start to cook.

  And then he screamed. A scream that cut through the dark and gloomy silence of the makeshift torture chamber located in the cellars under the Paris preceptory of the Knights Templar. A scream that sounded as if it could echo for a thousand years, or imprint itself forever on the dank stone walls of the chamber. A scream that sounded as if it might never end.

  But it did. As the last of his breath was forced out of his lungs, the man jerked twice against his bonds and then lay still and silent, his ruined body limp.

  “Insert the screen,” the inquisitor ordered.

  The two torturers stepped forward and slid a thick and heavy plank of wood between the brazier and the feet of the heretic, feet from which smoke was rising and from which most of the skin had already been burned away, the flesh beneath blackened from the heat, blood dripping steadily onto the unyielding and stained stone floor.

  For a f
ew seconds the inquisitor said nothing more, just stared at the body lying in front of him. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

  “Try him.”

  One of the torturers stepped over to the brazier, wrapped a length of heavy cloth around the end of an iron bar that projected from the side of it, pulled it out, and moved across to stand beside the body on the metal bed. He looked across at the tall wooden chair in which the black-robed inquisitor was sitting, awaiting final confirmation. Then he lowered the glowing end of the bar onto the stomach of the heretic and simply left it there.

  Again, the smell of burning flesh rose from the bed as the red-hot iron seared its way through skin and flesh, but the body of the man remained silent and motionless.

  The inquisitor made an impatient gesture, and the two torturers began loosening the bonds from the dead body, preparing to drag the corpse out of the chamber.

  “If we go on at this rate, Brother Guillaume,” the second inquisitor said, “we will have none left to subject to the cleansing flames. How many is that now?”

  Guillaume Humbert, better known as Guillaume of Paris, the Grand Inquisitor of France and Confessor of the King, and the man given the task of extirpating the heresy of the Knights Templar, shook his head.

  “Do not be concerned. He is the twenty-third soul we have failed to save, another suicide prompted by our gentle and righteous questioning. There are plenty of others still awaiting our attentions.”

  The rules governing the use of torture by inquisitors were based upon a papal bull issued on 15 May 1252 by Pope Innocent IV and entitled Ad extirpanda, and were comparatively rigid. But, like all rules, they were subject to discussion and interpretation. No individual, for example, could be tortured more than once, but the inquisitors simply regarded each new session as nothing more than a continuation of the first or the previous interrogation, and would continue indefinitely, until they’d either got what they wanted from the subject or he or she—because with regard to the appalling danger of heresy the church made no special allowances for women—was dead.

  They were also forbidden to spill blood, to cause mutilation or death. This meant that no cutting instruments such as knives or pincers could be used, but crushing devices such as thumbscrews or iron boots that shattered the bones of the feet were felt to be entirely acceptable, and any mutilation that resulted was simply seen as an accidental by-product of the process, merely collateral damage. One favored technique was to extract the teeth, one by one and ignoring the comparatively small volume of blood that resulted as each tooth was pulled out, and to ask a question before each extraction. Then they’d probe the fresh cavity with a slim but red-hot spike if the answers failed to satisfy the inquisitors.

  Death, when it occurred, was considered to be either an accident caused by the overenthusiastic application of a particular technique or instrument, or a deliberate act of suicide by an unreformed heretic, unable to speak the truth to his inquisitors. In fairness, as the task of the inquisitor was to save souls, torturing an individual to death was generally seen to be counterproductive, because of the certain knowledge that the soul of a suicide would be immediately and permanently consigned to the devil and the flames of hell. It would be an obvious and unfortunate failure of their task.

  When Guillaume of Paris had begun his work, there were 138 members of the Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, or the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, more commonly known as the Knights Templar, languishing in the dungeons of their own preceptory, located just outside the city walls on the northern side of Paris. Thanks to the range of tortures applied, only 115 still remained among the living after exactly one month of questioning, and many of those would clearly not emerge from the building alive. And if Guillaume of Paris had his way, those that did survive would only be permitted to walk the short distance from the preceptory to the heavy wooden stake where they would end their days in the flames that would consume their bodies but ultimately, if the teachings of the church were to be believed, save their immortal souls.

  The men chosen to extract detailed confessions of the heresies perpetrated by members of the Knights Templar were friars of the Ordo Praedicatorum, or Order of Preachers, the religious order approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216. They had become known as the “Black Friars” because of the black cappa, or cloak, they wore over their white habit, and from the fifteenth century onward they were commonly referred to as the Dominicans, after the name of their founder, Saint Dominic of Guzmán. A more irreverent Latin name that would later be given to them was Domini canes, meaning “Hounds of the Lord,” a play on the name Dominican.

  The order was founded to preach the gospel and combat heresy—meaning anything that the church did not agree with—and its motto was Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare, which translated as “To Praise, to Bless, to Preach.” But there was little evidence of any such noble and intellectual paths being followed in the dungeons of the Villeneuve du Temple. Instead, the two black-robed friars spent their days sitting on their elevated wooden seats, watching with total impassivity as a seemingly endless number of men were dragged into the chamber and their bodies progressively broken in front of them as the questioning, and the tortures, grew more intense.

  The inquisitors knew, of course, that there was not the slightest possibility that any of the members of the Knights Templar were innocent of the charges laid before them. That would imply that the pope, Clement V, and the king of France, Philip IV, better known as Philippe le Bel or Philip the Fair—the men who, on Friday 13 October 1307, had orchestrated the arrest of every member of the Templar order they could lay their hands on—were both wrong. That could obviously not be the case, as Clement V, as the occupant of the Throne of Saint Peter, was relaying the word of God, with Philip acting as his secular confederate. The guilt of the Templars, therefore, was undeniable, well-established and common knowledge, and all the inquisitors were doing was trying to extract signed confessions for the crimes and heresies that they were certain the knights had perpetrated.

  Because their guilt was certain, no witnesses for the defense would ever be called, no denials of the charges accepted, and of course there was no possibility of counterarguments. Anything the accused men said apart from a confession was clearly intended as nothing more than a devious way of excusing their very obvious guilt, so it could be—and invariably was—disregarded.

  And up to that point in the interrogations, most of the Templars had admitted to at least some of their crimes after only the mildest of torture techniques had been applied to them. Most, for example, had admitted denying Christ upon their reception into the order, and even more that they had spat upon a crucifix during some of their secret ceremonies. Because it was known that members of the Knights Templar were forbidden to enjoy carnal relations with women, it was widely believed that they engaged in homosexual activities, but this charge, perhaps unexpectedly, bearing in mind what they were suffering, was admitted by almost none of the imprisoned knights. On the other hand, most agreed that they had been required to indecently kiss their superiors in the order, usually on the navel or at the base of the spine. In truth, and a fact that was certainly known but totally ignored by the inquisitors, according to the established rules of the Knights Templar, sodomy was regarded as an entirely sufficient reason for a knight to be expelled from the order, an offense that was considered just as serious as the murder of a Christian or desertion on the battlefield. And those knights who had admitted to this crime against nature had only done so when the agony of their tortures reached levels that almost no human being could endure.

  Some other members of the order had admitted virtually everything the inquisitors suggested, in some cases even before they’d received their first wound from the glowing iron bar or had any of their fingers broken, but others stubbornly refused to say anything no matter what persuasion was applied to them, and even after having been shown a f
orged letter purporting to have been written by the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, in which he confessed to every crime and practice suggested by the inquisitors and urged his subordinates to promptly do the same.

  And although Guillaume of Paris was satisfied with most of the answers he was extracting from the rank-and-file members of the order, there was one question about which he had been specifically ordered by King Philip to obtain an answer. So far every knight he’d questioned had either denied any knowledge of this matter or had simply refused to reply. To make matters worse, it was not a question that directly related to what Guillaume privately regarded as the “Templar heresy,” but concerned an entirely different matter, definitively secular rather than religious.

  In fact, it was a question that he did not feel was appropriate to ask in the circumstances, though he knew he had no choice in the matter. If he disobeyed the king, he knew he could easily find himself back in that selfsame torture chamber, but this time as a victim rather than as an interrogator. And he would do anything to avoid that happening.

  Having disposed of the broken body of the last victim, the two torturers returned to the chamber and stood before the pair of inquisitors, awaiting further instructions.

  “Whom do you wish to question next, Guillaume?”

  For a few moments, the Grand Inquisitor did not reply to his fellow friar, considering the strategy he would use for the next interrogation. The problem he had was that he was certain very few members of the Knights Templar order would know the answer to the question he’d been told to ask, and that those high-ranking knights would probably be prepared to endure any torture, and even go to their deaths, rather than reveal that particular piece of knowledge. But he was certain that the Grand Master, the knight in charge of all the other Templar Masters around the world, would know the information he sought. The two other men likely to have had access to the information were Hugues de Pairaud, the Visitor of the Temple, and Geoffroi de Charney, the Preceptor of Normandy. A third possible knight was Geoffroi de Gonneville, the Preceptor of Aquitaine. None of these four men, all of whom were just yards away from the torture chamber, chained to the walls of the dungeons, would be likely to talk easily, and he dared not run the risk of any of them dying under interrogation. Those four were destined to publicly burn, or never emerge from prison again. His instructions in that regard had been most explicit.