Kurtz, Katherine - Adept 03 - The Templar Treasurel

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Katherine Kurtz - Adept 03 - The Templar Treasure.html

A SECRET BROTHERHOOD. AN ANCIENT EVIL…

Mystic and historian, Sir Adam Sinclair is Master of the Hunt, leader of a secret

brotherhood at war with the dark and unholy Powers that menace our world.

Now an urgent summons sets the Adept on a life-or-death search for the Seal of

Solomon, an ancient bronze artifact that can bind - or unleash - the demons of old.

Guarded for centuries by the legendary Knights Templar, the Seal has been stolen

by ruthless and dangerous forces.

If humanity is to survive, Sinclair must complete the quest for…

THE TEMPLAR TREASURE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

are the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE ADEPT: THE TEMPLAR TREASURE

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the authors

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace mass market edition / July 1993

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and

distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without

the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please

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purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or

encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the

author's rights is appreciated. ;

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10.014.

ISBN: 0-441-00.345-1

ACE® Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10.014.

ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For

Dr. Sheila Rossi,

who taught Adam Sinclair

much of what he knows about hypnosis,

and also for Christine Hackett and Suzanne Eberle

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful thanks are owed to the following people, whose assistance was invaluable

in filling out much of the rich background for this book:

Ms. Kirsty Beck, for technical information concerning not only Hebrew art objects of

the First Temple Period but also archaeological methods of dating such artifacts;

Cantor Alwyn Shulman, Dublin and Terenure Hebrew Congregations, and Dr. Jay

Barry Azneer, D.O. for insights into Jewish funeral practices;

Mr. Donald Little, administrator of Fyvie Castle on behalf of the National Trust for

Scotland, and his wife, Liz, for their generosity in allowing us to spend five hours of

their precious time exploring Fyvie;

Mr. Brian Nodes, administrator at Blair Castle, for opening up Earl John's Room after

the end of season and allowing a private look at Bonnie Dundee's breastplate and

morion;

Dr. Martin Hardgrave, for sharing with us a resident's knowledge of the city of York;

Dr. Ernan J. Gallagher, Ireland, and Dr. A. V. Davidson, Scotland, for technical

medical advice;

Dr. Richard Oram, for his continuing guidance on questions of Scottish history;

Mr. Kenneth Fraser of the St. Andrews University Library, for his ongoing assistance

in matters of general research;

And the staff of the St. Andrews Tourist Information Bureau, for their cheerful

readiness to dig up all manner of information not covered by the guidebooks.

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prologue

THE Yorkshire home of Professor Nathan Fiennes was fitted with the latest in

household security systems. Ritchie Logan even knew what kind, because the

company installing it had seen fit to publicize the fact by fixing a bright red box to

the gable end of the house, marked with their company logo. Such displays were

intended to deter casual thieves - and maybe they did deter amateurs and

opportunists - but Logan was a professional. As far as he was concerned, knowing

in advance that the house was wired only served to make his job easier.

But then, the promise of easy pickings had been one of the attractions of this job.

Besides being offered a handsome cash retainer merely to breach the house's

security and open the safe, Logan had been assured that he might have his pick of

the jewellery and other valuables kept there. The man who'd engaged him for this

job, sitting in the passenger seat of the rented Volvo, was after something else

entirely - some kind of archaeological artifact.

Logan cruised slowly past the cul-de-sac where the house lay, and noted with

satisfaction that nothing had changed. Half an hour before, from a vantage point on

the main road, he and his employer had watched the owners and their dinner

guests leave, all of them dressed for the theatre as anticipated. If no one returned

in the time it took to make one more long orbit around the city walls, Logan felt

reasonably confident that the house would remain empty for at least another two to

three hours. As he swung into Monkgate, heading toward the city, he stole a

sidelong glance at the man sitting next to him.

He still had not figured out Monsieur Henri Gerard. The Frenchman looked nothing

like the sort of man likely to hire a professional cat burglar. Had Logan seen him on

the street, he would have pegged Gerard as someone hoping one day to make a

name for himself in law or politics - conservatively well dressed and respectable-

looking, probably approaching forty, with sleek, dark hair brushed straight back

from a high forehead and a dapper moustache trimmed pencil-thin in a style

reminiscent of a young Maurice Chevalier. This Gallic impression was heightened by

the continental cut of his dark suit and the fact that he spoke English with a Parisian

inflection.

He was an odd duck, Logan decided, as he eased the big car along Lord Mayor's

Walk and then swung left into Gillygate, skirting the city's medieval walls. From the

very beginning, Gerard had made it clear that his sole purpose in coming to England

was to acquire an antique bronze seal currently in the possession of the owner of

the house targeted for tonight's venture. According to Gerard, the seal was of value

only to a historian like himself. If that was true, it would confirm Logan's suspicion

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that the Frenchman was one of those academic fanatics who would do literally

anything in order to steal a march on a rival scholar - in this case, Dr. Nathan

Fiennes, a distinguished philosopher presently lecturing at the University of York.

None of this had anything to do with Logan, of course. And even if Gerard was

lying, and the seal was worth more than he was letting on, Logan was prepared to

let him have it, provided that the rest of the takings were as lucrative as the

Frenchman had made out. Finding a suitable buyer for a stolen museum piece was

always a time-consuming enterprise, requiring far more work than Logan was

willing to invest when there were much quicker profits to be made on more

conventional commodities.

The only real catch in the arrangement was that Gerard had insisted on taking part

in the burglary. Logan would have much preferred to do the job alone, but the

Frenchman had argued with some heat that he had to be present to authenticate

the seal, on the chance that Fiennes might have had a copy made. Logan could

think of no reason why Fiennes should have wanted to do anything of the sort; but

then again, academics of Gerard's caliber were seemingly a breed apart. And since,

in any case, Gerard was already paying for the privilege of sharing the risks, Logan

had resigned himself to the necessity of having the Frenchman along for company.

He just hoped that Gerard wouldn't do anything stupid that might risk their getting

caught.

They crawled past the vast, floodlit pile that was York Minster, with the delicate

tracery of its spires and towers bright against the starry backdrop of a mid-

September night. On through the night-hushed streets they wove, emerging

through the Monk Bar Gate and picking up speed as they headed back along

Monkgate again. Half a mile northeast of the historic city center, as Logan made the

turn into the darker, quieter streets of an established residential suburb, Gerard sat

forward, apparently unaware how his eagerness showed.

"Just relax," Logan told his employer. "From here on out, we've got to look like we

belong to this neighborhood. We don't want to do anything to draw attention to

ourselves."

The Fiennes house was one of three detached stone villas that stood at the bottom

of a crescent-shaped cul-de-sac. Alert but relaxed, Logan drove on around the

corner into the adjoining street and parked the Volvo at the curb in an island of

shadow between two streetlamps. The two men alighted unhurriedly from the car

and set off up the sidewalk at a leisurely pace. A casual observer, noting their

conservatively cut trenchcoats and expensive leather briefcases, would have taken

them for two businessmen out to pay a social call on a friend.

They used a public footpath to cut back in the direction of their goal across the

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narrow, grassy common that ran between the two opposing rows of back gardens.

The Fienneses' property was enclosed by a high wall, but the lock on the garden

gate yielded readily to Logan's expert manipulations with a lock pick. He let himself

inside and swiftly beckoned Gerard to follow, pulling the gate to but not latched.

Crouching low in the shrubbery flanking the wall, the two paused to don black

balaclava helmets and tight-fitting surgical gloves before making their way stealthily

up the flagstoned walk to the conservatory at the rear of the house.

Gerard watched in tight-lipped anticipation as Logan took a specialized assortment

of implements from his briefcase and set himself to disabling the alarm system, his

work illuminated by a tiny pencil-flash held between his teeth. In less than a minute

they were inside the conservatory. A glass sliding door leading into the house

yielded in a matter of seconds, after which Logan led his employer stealthily into

the narrow confines of the downstairs hall, where a small lamp glowed on a side

table. Gerard made a darting movement toward the foot of the staircase, only to

feel Logan's restraining hand catch at his sleeve.

"Not so fast," the thief whispered. "The stuff in the safe isn't going anywhere, is it?

Then slow down, and let's do this thing according to plan."

Nodding somewhat sullenly, Gerard dropped back to let Logan precede him up the

stairs, toward where an overhead light dimly illuminated the upstairs landing. The

upper regions of the house were silent except for the hollow ticking of a grandfather

clock standing against the wall just outside the study. An ornate mezuzah of finely

wrought silver graced the right-hand lintel of the study door, and Logan grinned

thinly to himself as he pried it off and slipped it into his pocket. The door swung

back on silent hinges as Logan led the way across the threshold into a large square

room redolent of pipe tobacco and book bindings.

Light spilled from the landing through the open doorway. The room's only window

lay directly opposite, with a large desk set before it. The curtains were standing

open, affording a darkling view of the garden below.

"Get the curtains," Logan ordered, moving to the left, where the entire wall was

taken up by an immense built-in bookcase. When Gerard had complied, Logan

shone the beam of his electric torch along the fourth shelf from the top until its light

picked up a mousy-looking set of commentaries on the Talmud.

"I've found the benchmark texts you said to look for," he reported in a clipped

undertone, turning to set his briefcase on a corner of the desk. "Come and hold the

light while I lift them out."

As keen as his associate to get on with the job, Gerard made haste to comply,

setting his own case on the desk's chair. Logan removed the books from their place

and set them aside on the desk. The cavity left behind on the shelf was backed not

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