But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not through courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption.
After the day of the march I didn’t see Belbo again for about a year. I fell in love with Amparo and stopped going to Pilade’s—or, at least, the few times I did drop in with Amparo, Belbo wasn’t there. Amparo didn’t like the place anyway. In her moral and political severity—equaled only by her grace, her magnificent pride—she considered Pilade’s a clubhouse for liberal dandies, and liberal dandysme, as far as she was concerned, was a subtle thread in the fabric of the capitalist plot. For me this was a year of great commitment, seriousness, and enchantment. I worked joyfully but serenely on my thesis.
Then one day I ran into Belbo along the navigli, not far from the Garamond office. “Well, look who’s here,” he said cheerfully. “My favorite Templar! Listen, I’ve just been presented with a bottle of ineffably ancient nectar. Why don’t you come up to the office? I have paper cups and a free afternoon.”
“A zeugma,” I said.
“No. Bourbon. And bottled, I believe, before the fall of the Alamo.” I followed him. We had just taken the first sip when Gudrun came in and said there was a gentleman to see Belbo. He slapped his forehead. He had forgotten the appointment. But chance has a taste for conspiracy, he said to me. From what he had gathered, this individual wanted to show him a book that concerned the Templars. “I’ll get rid of him quickly,” he said, “but you must lend me a hand with some keen objections.”
It had surely been chance. And so I was caught in the net.
And thus did the knights of the Temple vanish with their secret, in whose shadow breathed a lofty yearning for the earthly city. But the Abstract to which their efforts aspired lived on, unattainable, in unknown regions … and its inspiration, more than once in the course of time, has filled those spirits capable of receiving it.
—Victor Emile Michelet, Le secret de la Chevalerie, 1930, 2
He had a 1940s face. Judging by the old magazines I had found in the basement at home, everybody had a face like that in the forties. It must have been wartime hunger that hollowed the cheeks and made the eyes vaguely feverish. This was a face I knew from photographs of firing squads—on both sides. In those days men with the same face shot one another.
Our visitor was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, and a pearl-gray tie, and instinctively I asked myself why he was in civilian clothes. His hair, unnaturally black, was combed back from the temples in two bands, brilliantined, though with discretion, showing a bald, shiny crown traversed by fine strands, regular as telegraph wires, that formed a centered V on his forehead. His face was tanned, marked—marked not only by the explicitly colonial wrinkles.
A pale scar ran across his left cheek from lip to ear, slicing imperceptibly through the left half of his black Adolphe Menjou mustache. The skin must have been opened less than a millimeter and stitched up. Mensur? Or a grazing bullet’s wound?
He introduced himself—Colonel Ardenti—offering Belbo his hand and merely nodding at me when Belbo presented me as an assistant. He sat down, crossed his legs, drew up his trousers from the knee, revealing a pair of maroon socks, ankle-length.
“Colonel … on active service?” Belbo asked.
Ardenti bared some high-quality dentures. “Retired, you could say. Or, if you prefer, in the reserves. I may not look old, but I am.”
“You don’t look at all old,” Belbo said.
“I’ve fought in four wars.”
“You must have begun with Garibaldi.”
“No. I was a volunteer lieutenant in Ethiopia. Then a captain, again a volunteer, in Spain. Then a major back in Africa, until we abandoned our colonies. Silver Medal. In ’43—well, let’s just say I chose the losing side, and indeed I lost everything, save honor. I had the courage to start all over again, in the ranks. Foreign Legion. School of hard knocks. Sergeant in ’46, colonel in ’58, with Massu. Apparently I always choose the losing side.
When De Gaulle’s leftists took over, I retired and went to live in France. I had made some good friends in Algiers, so I set up an import-export firm in Marseilles. This time I chose the winning side, apparently, since I now enjoy an independent income and can devote myself to my hobby. These past few years, I’ve written down the results of my research. Here…” From a leather briefcase he produced a voluminous file, which at the time seemed red to me.
“So,” Belbo said, “a book on the Templars?”
“The Templars,” the colonel acknowledged. “A passion of mine almost from my youth. They, too, were soldiers of fortune who crossed the Mediterranean in search of glory.”
“Signor Casaubon has also been studying the Templars,” Belbo said. “He knows the subject better than I do. But tell us about your book.”
“The Templars have always interested me. A handful of generous souls who bore the light of Europe among the savages of the two Tripolis…”
“The Templars’ adversaries weren’t exactly savages,” I remarked.
“Have you ever been captured by rebels in the Magreb?” he asked me with heavy sarcasm.
“Not that I recall,” I said.
He glared at me, and I was glad I had never served in one of his platoons. “Excuse me,” he said, speaking to Belbo. “I belong to another generation.” He looked back at me defiantly. “Is this some kind of trial, or—”
“We’re here to talk about your work, Colonel,” Belbo said. “Tell us about it, please.”
“I want to make one thing clear immediately,” the colonel said, putting his hands on the file. “I am prepared to assume the production costs. You won’t lose money on this. If you want scholarly references, I’ll provide them. Just two hours ago I met an expert in the field, a man who came here from Paris expressly to see me. He could contribute an authoritative preface….” He anticipated Belbo’s question and made a gesture, as if to say that for the moment it was best to leave the name unsaid, that it was a delicate matter.
“Dr. Belbo,” he said, “these pages contain all the elements of a story. A true story, and a most unusual story. Better than any American thriller. I’ve discovered something—something very important—but it’s only the beginning. I want to tell the world what I know, hoping that there may be somebody out there who can fit the rest of the puzzle together—somebody who might read the book and come forward.
In other words, this is a fishing expedition of sorts. And time is of the essence. The one man who knew what I know now has probably been killed, precisely to keep him from divulging it. But if I can reach perhaps two thousand readers with what I know, there will be no further point in doing away with me.” He paused. “The two of you know something about the arrest of the Templars?”
“Signor Casaubon told me about it recently, and I was struck by the fact that there was no resistance to the arrest, and the knights were caught by surprise.”
The colonel smiled condescendingly. “True. But it’s absurd to think that men powerful enough to frighten the king of France would have been unable to find out that a few rogues were stirring up the king and that the king was stirring up the pope. Quite absurd! Which suggests that there had to be a plan.
A sublime plan. Suppose the Templars had a plan to conquer the world, and they knew the secret of an immense source of power, a secret whose preservation was worth the sacrifice of the whole Temple quarter in Paris, and of the commanderies scattered throughout the kingdom, also in Spain, Portugal, England, and Italy, the castles in the Holy Land, the monetary wealth—everything.
Philip the Fair suspected this. Why else would he have unleashed a persecution that discredited the fair flower of French chivalry? The Temple realized that the king suspected and that he would attempt its destruction. Direct resistance was futile; the plan required time: either the treasure (or whatever it was) had to be found, or it had to be exploited slowly. And the Temple’s secret directorate, whose existence everyone now recognizes…”
“Everyone?”
“Of course. It’s inconceivable that such a powerful order could have survived so long without having a secret directorate.”
“Your reasoning is flawless,” Belbo said, giving me a sidelong glance.
The colonel went on. “The grand master belonged to the secret directorate, but he must have served only as its cover, to deceive outsiders. In La Chevalerie et les aspects secrets de l’histoire, Gaulthier Walther says that the Templar plan for world conquest was
