and placed the order, then turned back and stared at him across the table. “Have we both hedged enough?”
He agreed, time to drop the act. “You paid me an obscene fee, then sent me in there blind just to see what would happen.”
“And if that were true?”
“If I were still a Justice Department agent, I’d probably beat the living crap out of you.”
“And in your retirement?”
“It’s still up in the air.”
He allowed his words to settle in, staring out through the wall of glass to the hotel’s cloisterlike courtyard. Then he faced the Brit. “I’m going to eat my free breakfast, take my fifty thousand euros, and head home. As we like to say where I come from, I don’t have a dog in this fight.”
“What do you know of the Knights Hospitallers? Or, as they are called today, the Knights of Malta?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“Thankfully, I do.”
* * *
Sometime around 1070 a small group of merchants from Amalfi founded the Hospice of St. John the Almoner near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. They were Good Samaritans, stretcher bearers for pilgrims who’d survived the arduous journey to the Holy Land. Eventually they constructed hospitals across all of the land conquered by the Crusaders. In 1113 Pope Paschall II bestowed upon them papal legitimacy, their trademark habit a black surcoat with a cowl, an eight-pointed cross in white linen affixed to the left breast. By 1150 they had grown into soldier-monks, knights errant of the cross, becoming the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
Their first duty always remained caring for the sick, but their second was tuition fifei. Defense of the faith. Interested parents would place their son’s name forward at birth and pay a large fee. Acceptance came at age eighteen. To be eligible then the young man had to be strong, well built, and fit enough to endure the life of a soldier.
And the pedigree had to be perfect.
In the beginning, an applicant had only to be legitimately born into a noble family. By the 14th century that evolved into both parents having to be of noble, land-owning gentry. A hundred years later applicants had to prove nobility in the male line back four generations. Eventually, by the 16th century, all four grandparents were required to be of noble stock. Passage money, what it took to support a knight for a year in the Holy Land, became the final initiation fee. Once anointed, each knight endured a year’s training, then swore to have faith, repent his sins, and live in humility, being merciful, sincere, wholehearted, and brave enough to endure persecution.
With the fall of the Holy Land in 1291, the age of the warrior-monk ended. The Knights Templar never grasped that change and faded in 1307. The Hospitallers adapted, keeping their primary mission charity but evolving from a land-based cavalry force to a sea power, conquering and taking Rhodes in 1310. They then became the Order of the Knights of Rhodes and acquired a new purpose.
Keeping both the Ottomans and the corsairs at bay.
After Constantinople fell in 1453, Rhodes became the last outpost of Christianity in the East. The knights acted as a buffer between the Latin-Christian Western world and the Eastern infidels. Their fighting ships and galleys dominated the Mediterranean, their white cross on a red matte striking fear into their enemies.
Members organized themselves into eight langues, one for Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Castile, England, Germany, and Aragon, which represented the major political divisions of the time. Those were further subdivided into bailiwicks and commanderies. The langues headquartered in auberges, where members lived and ate communally. Traditional national rivalries never faded, though, and led to regimental conflicts between the langues, but enforced discipline and a strong hand eventually forged the langues into a tight, cohesive fighting force.
In 1522 the Turks finally succeeded in retaking Rhodes.
The knights loaded their ships and left, drifting for seven years. In 1530 Charles V of Spain granted them Malta, and its twelve thousand inhabitants, in exchange for a single falcon, payable yearly to the viceroy of Sicily on All Saints’ Day.
The island had not been much of a prize. Just a chunk of limestone seven leagues long and four wide. Its stony soil was unfit for growing much other than cotton, figs, melons, and other fruits. Honey was its major export and main claim to fame. Just a few springs near the center was all the running water. Rain was the main supply. Wood was so scarce