"But I still wasn't giving up, so I went to the castle, anyway. I was sure that once I was actually there, they'd have to let me at least look around. I don't usually trade on my own family connections, but in this case I thought, stupidly, that they'd provide entree.

"Before I got to the castle I talked to some of the villagers. All of them have enormous respect for Lord McCall, and they say he's a kind and generous man who makes sure their needs are all seen to. You might say that they more than respect him-they worship him. None of them would ever move a finger to harm him or compromise him in any way. One of them told me that his son was alive thanks to McCall, who had paid all the expenses for open-heart surgery in Houston.

"When I came to the iron gate at the entrance to the estate, I couldn't find any way to get in, and no one responded to the bell. I started walking along the wall, just to see what I might find. Finally I came to a place where the stone had crumbled a bit, just enough to suggest a tenuous handhold or two. You should know that my favorite pastime was rock climbing. I started climbing at ten, and I've climbed a lot of pretty good cliffs. So climbing over that wall didn't look particularly hard to me, despite the fact that I didn't have a rope or anything. Well, I couldn't resist.

"Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to climb up on the wall and jump inside, onto the grounds of the estate. Off in the distance, in the middle of the woods, I saw an ivy-covered stone chapel and started toward it. I heard a sound, then felt a terrible pain and fell. I don't remember much else. I was crying and writhing in pain. A man was standing there with a rifle, aiming it at me. He called somebody on a walkie-talkie, a four-by-four drove up, they put me in it and drove me to the hospital.

"I was paralyzed. They didn't shoot to kill, but they did aim carefully enough to leave me like this.

"Naturally, everyone said the guards on the estate had been doing their duty. I was a trespasser who'd jumped the wall. And believe me, none of the authorities was interested in pursuing it further."

Ana had listened to Elisabeth's story in silence. Now, looking at the vibrant young woman, her heart swelled in sympathy and outrage.

"I'm sorry," she said. Anything else seemed superfluous.

"Yeah, me too. But the point is, it seems pretty certain that the kindly Lord McCall is anything but. I asked my father to give me a detailed list of everyone he knew of who had any relationship with McCall. He didn't want to do it, but he finally gave in. He hasn't been the same since my accident. He never wanted me to be a reporter, much less devote my career to these things on the fringes. So we kept digging, Paul and I, with more reluctant help from my father, and we did manage to put together a basic picture.

"Lord McCall is a strange person. Never married, a connoisseur of religious art, incredibly wealthy. Every hundred days a group of men arrive at the castle by car or helicopter and stay for three or four days. None of the locals knows who they are, but the sense of the villagers is that they're as important as McCall himself. We've managed to identify some of them, though, and have followed the trail of their businesses, and I can tell you that there is no significant financial event in the world that can't be traced in one way or another to him and his friends."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they're a group of men who pull the strings, whose financial power is almost as big as governments', which means they influence governments around the world."

'And what does that have to do with the Templars?"

'Ana, for years now, I've been studying everything written on the order. I have a lot of time, and I've come to some conclusions. In addition to all the organizations that claim to be the heirs of the Temple, there is another, secret organization, made up of men who stay in the shadows, all very important, and who inhabit the very heart of the heart of society. I don't know how many there are or who they all are-or at least I'm not sure that all the ones I suspect of belonging to this group actually do. But I think that the true Templars, the heirs of Jacques de Molay are there and that McCall is one of them. I've learned a lot about his Scottish estate, and it's interesting. Down through the centuries it has passed from hand to hand, always to men who are single-solitary, even-and rich and well connected, and every one of them obsessed with keeping out strangers. I think there's a Templar army, if you will, a silent, well-structured army whose members hold high positions in virtually every country."

"You seem to be talking about a Masonic organization."

"No, what I'm referring to is the authentic, core organization, the one nothing is known about, not even that it exists at all. With the list my father gave me and the help of an excellent investigative reporter, I've managed to make a partial organizational chart of this new Temple. But it hasn't been easy, I'll tell you. Michael, the reporter, is dead-a year ago he had a fatal car accident. I suspect they killed him. Nasty things seem to happen to those who get too close. I know-I've followed what has happened to curious people like us."

'A pretty paranoid vision of things, this worldwide conspiracy, murders, cover-ups."

"Yes, but still, I think there are two worlds: the one we see, in which the vast majority of us live, and then another, underground world that we know nothing about. That's the place from which these various organizations-financial, Masonic, whatever-pull the strings. And that's where this new Temple can be found, in that underground world."

"Granting that you're right, which I'm not so sure of, it doesn't explain what relationship the Templars of today have to the shroud."

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I've told you all this because your Padre Yves could be…"

"Say it."

"He could be one of them."

"A Templar in this secret society that you think- think, mind you-exists?"

"You think I'm seeing things, that this accident, this wheelchair, has made me paranoid, but I'm a reporter just like you are, Ana, and I can still tell reality from fiction. I've told you what I think. Now you can act as you see fit. If the shroud belonged to the Templars, and Padre Yves comes from the family of Geoffroy de Charney-"

"Even then," Ana interrupted her. "Even given all that, the shroud is not the cloth that Christ was buried in. We know it dates from de Charney's time, basically, and I think the Templars would have had to know it was a recent creation, or at least that its provenance was dubious-and I just don't see them staking everything on another half-baked relic, as they seem to have done…"

Listening to Elisabeth, Ana realized how ridiculous she herself must have looked, taking the time of serious scholars to expound on her own theories.

At that moment she didn't like herself much. She felt like a fool that she'd lost her head over a far-fetched story, trying to out-investigate the pros in the Art Crimes Department. It was over, she told herself; she was going back to Barcelona on the next plane. She'd call Santiago. She knew he'd be delighted when she told him she was moving on, that she'd had enough of the shroud to last a lifetime.

Elisabeth and Paul left her to her thoughts. They could see the skepticism-incredulity, really-reflected on her face. They had spoken to only a handful of people about their investigations into the new Temple, because they feared for their lives and the life of anyone who helped them. But this reporter had gotten herself in pretty deep, and they thought she had a right to know what she was up against.

"Elisabeth, are you going to give it to her?"

Paul's words brought Ana out of her reverie.