Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page B

gray hair, took a short sip of brandy. His English wasperfect, though slightly accented. He nodded formally and began to speak. “My dear friends, the most common difficulty in the transfer of money from one place to another is its size and weight. Billions of dollars in currency are lost every year due to vermin infestations in the basements where it is hidden. The simple fact that a billion dollars in American currency weighs nine tons is an enormous problem. It’s extremely risky to transport it in any of the ordinary commercial ways. Thus our proposal is this: Fine art is simple, compact and easy to move in any number of ways. In fact, international trade in such works of art can be done perfectly legally and with no customs necessary. By calculating the value of each work of art using an objective scale, the art held in a central bank or vault could then be used as currency. Ergo, one organization owes another organization a billion dollars. The first organization has a theoretical deposit in the bank of art and therefore pays the other organization in the value of X number of artworks that it has on deposit. In point of fact art has been used this way on a smaller scale for years. The art simply becomes a different form of currency. Our suggestion is that the banking institutions or vaults be located in countries not involved with Leonardo. Thereare several of these, but obviously Switzerland would be the simplest and most central option.”
    Cardinal Secretary of State Arturo Ruffino spoke up. “Why not the Vatican?” he said. “We already hold much of the art in our own vaults.”
    Russell Smart laughed derisively. “I don’t mean to be blasphemous, Your Eminence, but that would be rather like taking all the gold from Fort Knox and storing it in Sing Sing Penitentiary instead. You know as well as I do that the Vatican, particularly the Vatican Bank, has more corruption in it than a giant block of Swiss cheese. I agree with Mr. Giri. Set it up in Switzerland.”
    For a moment there was a great deal of chatter around the table. After letting various people vent their opinions, Sir Henry Maxim rapped his knuckles on the linen tablecloth.
    â€œGentlemen, shall we vote on the subject? All those in favor of setting up their own bank or vault in Switzerland, raise your hands. Those against it and in favor of continuing the discussion on the subject, remain as you are.” Every hand was raised except for Ruffino’s and Pytor Novestev’s of the FSB.
    â€œWe appear to have a majority. It seems that Leonardo is going into the business of Swiss banking.”

    *   *   *
    Holliday sat in the window seat of the direct Air France flight to Nassau in the Bahamas and looked out the window into the dead black night. Beside him Peter Lazarus breathed evenly as he slept. The L-1011 was cruising at over thirty-eight thousand feet and the dark clouds rolling off into infinity mimicked the Atlantic so far below them.
    He realized the feeling that had been slowly creeping over him, perhaps for years now. It was the soft breaking of his heart. How long had it been now since Amy’s death? All he knew was that she had been gone longer than he had been with her. His memories of the good times had been eroded by the time he had lived without her. He could remember the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin and the look of her smile, but it gave him nothing now. Age had come upon him silently and with it a deep, weary loneliness.
    To make it worse, his cousin Peggy and her archaeologist husband, Rafi, had been brutally murdered in the sands of Israel. And now Eddie, as noble a warrior as he had been a friend, had been murdered too. The people he’d treasured had vanished and all that was left was this never-ending quest that had begun almost a thousand years before in the heart of France.
    The question was, did he care anymore or did he just want to do what soldiers