The Last Templar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 A secret lost for a thousand years. A deadly race to keep it buried. |
|
| Author | Raymond Khoury |
|---|---|
| Country | Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Suspense, Mystery novel |
| Publisher | originally by Ziji Publishing paperback by Orion Books |
| Released | 2005 |
| Released in English | 2005 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback Hardcover) |
| Pages | 440 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 0752879685 |
The Last Templar is a novel by Raymond Khoury, released in 2005.
Contents |
[edit] Back Story
(A secondary plot, telling the backstory of the modern day portion of the novel is interspaced in separate chapters throughout the story. The summary of the backstory presented below is in chronological order, with the numbers showing the order they appear in the book.)
1)The prologue begins in the year of 1291 with the fall of Acre, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to the Saracens. Martin of Carmaux is a Knight Templar who is ordered to desert the battle and accompany a small party of Knights carrying a small chest. The knights leave the city in one of the last ships available, the Falcon Temple.
4)At sea Aimard who is the senior knight, hides the chest in the headpiece of the ship. The Falcon Temple is caught between two storms, and Aimard is severely wounded when he is thrown against the chart table. The knights escape in the ship's longboat, and the Falcon Temple sinks. Aimard carries a leather pouch with him to the land.
3)After fighting a gang of mamelukes the Knights stop in a small village. Aimard realizes that his earlier wound is mortal and charges Martin and three other survivors of the ship's company to take an encoded letter to the Head of the Templars. Before dying Aimard hides the leather pouch he rescued from the ship under a gravestone. Aimard also reveals the source of the Templar's power over the Roman Church to Martin. Martin is at first surprised, but accepts Aimard's trust. The next day Martin and the others depart for France.
5)In Tuscany in January 1293 Martin and Hugh, the ship's captain are still on their way to Paris. Hugh becomes feverish, and Martin, having first hidden the encoded letter in a rock formation resembling the templar cross, goes to a town seeking aid. He meets a doctor who offers food and medical aid, but the doctor betrays him. Martin and Hugh fight a short battle in the mountains against the doctor and his cronies - resulting in Hugh's death and Martin's capture. Martin is sold to slavers.
2)In Paris, March 1314 the head of the Templar Order order Jacques de Molays is visited in prison by King Philip IV and Pope Clement. The king asks him about the secret treasure the Templars had been accumulating for the past 200 years, but de Molay tells them there is no treasure, and is condemned to death the next day.
6) Martin escapes from the slavers, retrieves the encoded letter, and reaches Paris in March, 1314. He returns in time to see the Grand Master being burned at the stake, and commits himself to maintaining the legend of the Templar's threat to the Roman Church.
[edit] Plot summary
In the present four people on horseback dressed up as Templars enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during a party when it was displaying The Treasures of the Vatican. The Templars come in and take a multigeared rotor encoder. Their leader says "Veritas vos Liberabit" and they leave. They killed many with Uzis and one by decapitation.
Tess Chaykin was there when it happened and after talking to the FBI when they got on the scene she left. When she went to see a friend who had been hurt in the chaos, he told her that they were Templars who had taken the box. So on her way to the lobby she ran into the detective investigating the case Sean Reilly. She told him what she had learned and he was pleased.
The man who had decapitated the guard at the museum Gus was trying to sell an antique collector one of the spoils from the museum. The antique collector Lucien tipped off the police and the next time Gus came the cops were watching him. Gus killed Lucien and was chased by Reilly until he crashed his car. In the hospital a man came to see him and got the name of the person who hired Gus. This man wasn't with the police. After he had the name he killed Gus and went to Branko Petrovic who had hired Gus. The man got another name from Branko and killed Branko too. Then he went to the next victim’s house Mitch Adeson and killed him too.
Tess started looking for the man that her friend from the hospital had said she should visit. Tess being an archaeologist had been with William Vance on a dig years ago and now she was seeking him. She found him in a cemetery visiting his dead wife. Vance shot her with a taser and kidnapped her. She found out it was him who had taken the device from the museum. A monk named De Angelis came and Vance fought him. Then Tess managed to escape into a sewer with some of Vance’s papers and escaped to Reilly. She gave him the papers. When Reilly had decided to go through the tunnels in search of Vance and the place she was being trapped in she received a call from her mother who said Vance was at Tess’s house. She arrived at her house and gave him the papers and he left.
A few days later Reilly found out that everything is X-Rayed before it comes into the US so he went to the airport and found the files from when the multigeared rotor encoder was being sent. They found out that is was a letter by Aimard (look in the second paragraph in the secondary plot for what was in the letter). It mentioned a place called Fonsalis. Tess found out that this meant, “well of the willow” and with research found out where it was. So without telling Reilly she went to the airport to got to Turkey. Reilly found her at the airport and came with her. When the arrived in Turkey they took a jeep to Fonsalis and when they got there they found it was under water from a nearby dam. They dove under and retrieved the bag. When they surface they find Vance there and he takes the pouch. Vance allows Tess to know that the Falcon Temple had sunk during the storm and the chest was in the headpiece.
As Reilly, Vance, and Tess were talking De Angelis and another man were shooting at them and managed to kill their guide and Vance’s thugs. When they escaped Vance suspected the Vatican to be behind the attack. As they talk about what could be in the hidden chest Vance says that it could be the truth to the gospels and that most of them are false. Reilly being a Christian argues with this, but finds his argument plausible. Reilly decides they are just going to go home because he was there to capture Vance and he did. Tess then runs away with Vance to find the Falcon Temple leaving Reilly in the middle of nowhere.
As Reilly is standing around De Angelis comes in a helicopter and we find out he was the one killing the men from the museum, and that he is not only a priest, but also a CIA operative. Reilly is then taken to the Vatican where he is told by Cardinal Brugnone that the Templars found the diary of Jesus and that in the diary he claimed to be a man and not miraculous.
Tess and Vance board a ship and find the Falcon Temple just as two biblical sized storms blow in. Reilly and De Angelis chase them from another ship and De Angelis uses a machine gun to sink Tess's ship. Reilly then finds a life raft he uses to find Tess. When the storm passes Tess finds herself in a hospital room on a small mediterranean island. When recoved she found that Reilly was badly hurt and in a coma, So she walked around the island and found the headpiece. She also found the chest inside containing the diary of Jesus Christ himself. She couldn't read it, but she knew it was in Aramaic. When Reilly recovers they walk around and find Vance who attacks them and steals the diary. Vance stumbles over a cliff with the diary and dies destroying the diary. The story ends soon after.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Martin of Carmaux
Martin is in the secondary plot of the story and is a Templar. After his mentor Aimard dies he is to take a message to the Grand Master, but after many perils he is captured in Tuscany and forced into slavery for years before returning to France.
[edit] Aimard of Villiers
Aimard is also a Templar in the secondary plot of the story and appoints Martin to take a message to the Grand Master when he dies.
[edit] Tess Chaykin
Tess is an archaeologist and was in the museum when it was attacked. She is a main part in discovering where the pouch is and after she befriends Reilly they go together to Turkey to find the pouch.
[edit] Sean Reilly
Reilly is a FBI agent and is appointed the case of the attacking of the museum. After capturing Gus and finding the other two people who attacked the museum dead he befriends Tess.
[edit] Gus, Branko Petrovic, Mitch Adeson
These were the three men who with Vance attacked the museum and took the multigeared rotor encoder. The three are killed by De Angelis who hunts them down and kills each in a different way.
[edit] William Vance
Vance is the main antagonist and raids the museum and takes the device. His motives are to release to the world of Christianity that their beliefs are false. He wants to do this because a priest said to him that abortion is like murder, and because he and his wife didn’t abort their unborn daughter and Vance’s wife both died. Vance dies after he falls from a ledge after being chased by Reilly.
[edit] Monsignor De Angelis
De Angelis is a priest, but also a CIA operative. He kills the three raiders and sinks the boat Tess was on to prevent them finding the headpiece.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Khoury, Raymond (2005). The Last Templar. Orion Publishing.
- Book's Official website. Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
