not many years ago, said to be a pardon from the Pope for Jacques de Molay. What she hadn’t known was that the Grand Master had paid homage “in secret” to Edward of England as a knight companion. Another piece in the puzzle fell into place.
King Edward III and his son Edward the Black Prince, who in 1348 instituted the Most Noble Order of the Garter with twenty four knights companions…
Sir John Chandos of the Garter, companion to Edward the Black Prince and hero of the Hundred Years’ War. Although as strategist of Poitiers he had won vast territories of France for the English King, he was honored even by his enemies as a peacemaker. He died in 1370 of battle wounds at the Chateau Mortemer. The Chronicles of Froissart said of him, “It was a great pity he was slain, for he was so wise and full of devices, he would have found some means of establishing a peace between France and England”…
She would have liked to photograph the pages, but they had politely taken her GeM from her. So she took a few notes. Genealogical lines continued for generations, occasionally diverted down unexpected channels by revolution, sterility, or murder.
She had not anticipated following so many royal lines. A dried-up sinecure passed over centuries from one old aristocratic lion to another, until the twentieth century brought things to a crisis point.
At last, she arrived at the end of an errant string of names that looked promising:
Major Sir John Chandos, KCB, DSO, MC, Royal Dragoons Guards. b. Derby, April 13, 1908, d. Beirut, May 31, 1987. Mentioned in dispatches from the Levant Campaign, 1941.
That was all. A Knight of the Bath, a holder of the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross—a British officer of some accomplishment. This information she wrote down carefully. It was not as extensive as she had hoped, but the regiment and dates were useful. Here the line ended abruptly.
A page had been removed.
She contemplated the blank book for a moment, then grasped that she had gone as far as she could here. She reached for her GeM before realizing it was in the librarian’s hands.
A few minutes later she was in the Via dei Condotti, walking quickly past the high-fashion shops toward the Spanish Steps. In one of the vitrines, a digital projection of a model danced, wearing a dress priced at 17,000 euros. Shopping all around her were women who looked as if they too had been electronically projected into the street, women wearing the blistering gold and orange of autumn, trailing perfumes, admiring their own airy skin in the window glass.
Maryse caught sight of herself. Her face looked red and Irish and irritated in the cold morning sun. So intent for so long on the spirit, she was startled by her flesh; so she walked faster toward the shade of a small café looking up at the famous Steps.
She ordered tea with lemon and concentrated on a GeMsearch, reading rapidly through screen after screen.
Royal Dragoons Guards. Took part in the 1936 peacekeeping mission to Palestine. Withdrawn in 1939, evacuated from Dunkirk, recommitted to the invasion of Germany. Thousands of names scrolled past. Every medal awarded, every soldier, every serving officer for the past century was listed.
But her search requests found no mention of Major Sir John Chandos of the Royal Dragoons. Not a whisper. She squinted at her notes again to make sure of the dates and the spellings. It was odd that there should be nothing—he had, after all, been a Knight of the Order of Malta as well.
She called up her electronic dossier of Peter Chandos. Born in Besharri, Lebanon, 1985. Mother called Rafqa Chandos, father unknown. Attended Maronite schools. Ordained 2007.
Abruptly, Maryse looked up at a cluster of priests passing the café, all young men in black cassocks and white bands, arguing about the forthcoming conclave. Their Italian was too loud and fast for her to follow. One of them caught her looking at him and grinned back at her, making a wry face—he was slender, his skin the smooth color of clay, his eyes a clear brown.
It was getting warm. She took off her coat and breathed in the air of the piazza, seeing all at once the swift life coursing around her.
Cohen Brothers, Yavne Street, Tel Aviv, 1220h
“Shimon Tempelman to see Ivan Luel.”
The office administrator was a squinting young woman whose face glowed blue-green in the low light of the corridor. She was surrounded by cabinets that shone like steel. Her computer screen lit up the cosmetic glasses she wore; a really good—and younger—policeman might be able to read that screen in her eyes just by getting into an attentive conversation with her, Tempelman thought. He wondered how much easier it would be if he had proper eyesight. As Director of Security for the Technion University, he tried to keep to himself the reality that his eyes were fading.
“Mr. Luel will be with you directly. He’s telephoning.” She mirrored his English accent with one of her own—she was clearly one of the top form of secretaries. “He will have only a few minutes for you, Mr. Tempelman. He has an engagement with a client.”
“Thank you. My business will take only a few minutes.”
He looked around at the glassy walls and the fluid-looking art and thought about the sums of money that flowed invisibly through these law offices. Patent law, he knew, was a form of the old protection racket—you pay enough and no one will raid your claim. His old mother had wanted him to be a lawyer because she admired professional men who never got their hands dirty, unlike his father who had been a jeweler down a lane in South London. An open invitation to thieves, the old man’s shop was a warren of caged bracelets and watches covered in carbon dust. He always complained that the inventory never moved. Well, it moved whenever the local villains paid a call, Tempelman chuckled to himself. He had learned a good deal from those men, his father’s most faithful customers—enough to become a policeman smarter than most. Smart enough to stay out of actual police work and lead a comfortable life “protecting” other people’s treasured secrets from the kind of villains he had known in his youth.
Now here he was again. It was his profession, he had to admit: one sinecure after another won by allowing important people just enough of a glimpse of his considerable intelligence to be satisfied of his reliability. He was too smart to require much—pettiness was the best defense against customer revolt, he had learned—and too smart to reveal much. He had found that people were more threatened by enigma than by certainty. He gained his ambassadorship by dropping hints to a junior Cabinet minister about some artworks trafficked through back channels out of Britain. Alas, the art was never traced. But he had done a creditable job, and the references he carried in his GeM were impeccable, ready to be beamed to the chief partner of the Tel Aviv office of Cohen Brothers.
In the past, he had often debated with himself about the kind of return he would accept for his investments. Sometimes it was a position, sometimes a promotion—with a few off-the-books benefits. Police officials were always looking for clever men and willing to provide extra incentives. In this case, however, there was no debate. He knew exactly what he wanted from Mr. Ivan Luel.
Just a small share. Nothing noticeable. Just enough to provide for a comfortable retirement on a Greek island with a nice golf course. Crete, perhaps. A minuscule share of what was coming—that was all he asked. Hardly worth discussing. He was not ambitious.
Ambition was for others. He knew he would have made a remarkably good policeman—but to what end? What was the return on good police work? The best police end up acclaimed and poor. Or acclaimed and dead. At least he had been smart enough to do the job without bypassing the opportunities that came his way. Most of the people he had worked with were hopeless.
