The Templar Inheritance

by Mario Reading

  FORTY-SIX

  John Hart stood at the base of the slope that led up to Solomon’s Prison and cursed whatever evil cloud had caused him to venture into Iran. Each minute he lingered on Iranian soil made it that much more likely that something would happen to bring him to the attention of the authorities. And maybe it had already happened? Maybe Hassif was gathering his forces together at that very moment to apprehend him?

  He glanced across at Elwand. Elwand looked as sick as a dog. He gazed at Nalan. She looked poised and decisive. Excited even. Hart forced a smile onto his face. He slipped out his pocket Leica and took a few shots. His battery was close to zero.

  Elwand nodded to him and pointed to the rope. Hart heaved it out of the boot of the car and he and Elwand looped it about their arms and began the ascent. Nalan followed along behind, talking all the while on her mobile phone, whether in Farsi or Kurdish, Hart could not tell.

  ‘Hassif is coming,’ she said to him at last, in English. ‘With six armed men. They left the Darvish Teahouse ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Six armed men?’ said Hart. ‘How can we deal with six armed men? Hadn’t we better get out of here while we still can?’

  ‘It’s too late for that. The teahouse is only twenty minutes’ drive from here along a single-carriage road. We are committed.’

  ‘Where the hell are your other cousins then? I thought they were coming here to protect us?’

  ‘Where they must be. Do not worry, John.’

  ‘Worry? Me?’ Hart shifted his end of the rope to his other arm. It weighed as much as a dead man. He stared up the slope ahead of him. Solomon’s Prison was the last place on earth that he wanted to revisit at that particular moment. In fact it was the last place on earth he would ever want to revisit. ‘Perish the thought.’

  ‘Britannia. Look.’ Elwand was pointing away into the middle distance.

  Hart squinted. He could just make out a trail of dust on the road leading in from the main Bukan highway.

  ‘This is them. Two cars.’ Elwand held up two fingers.

  ‘Two. Yes,’ said Hart, for want of anything better to say. He felt like dropping the rope and legging it round the mountain to the safety of the other side. He looked down at Nalan behind him. She was making light going of the climb. To look at her, he decided, you would think that she was setting out on a bracing after-breakfast walk in a comfortable old democracy like Switzerland – not an assignation in an alien totalitarian state with the man who had tortured and brutalized her parents.

  Three hundred metres up the slope Hart began cursing the weight of the rope. Then he cursed Hassif. When he was through doing that he cursed his ancestor, Johannes von Hartelius, and then he cursed the stupid Copper Scroll and his gullibility in believing the thousand-year-old message that had caused him to come all this way looking for it. Now he was merely the bait in someone else’s trap. The jam in their sandwich. And what if these very same people decided that the odds against them were no longer worth the candle? He would be dangling by his neck off an Iranian cargo crane before he knew what hit him. Bloody, bloody fool.

  Soon, he and Elwand were up near the lip of the volcano again, just as they had been two days previously. Hart could see the hole through which they had sieved the rope the last time they had visited the ill-begotten spot. He remembered the nightmarish climb down inside the funnel, and the even more nightmarish climb back up again. What crazy brainwave had caused him to suggest this location to Nalan in the first place? He had vowed never to come back here. Not for a thousand Copper Scrolls. And yet here he was. With the Deputy Chief Intelligence Officer, Border District, following half a kilometre behind him, and with a vanload of armed men in his train. Christ, maybe the Iranians would send in helicopters? What was to stop them doing that? Elwand and his buddies would be okay. They knew where to go. Where to disperse. But he and Nalan would be sitting ducks.

  Elwand eased his way out over the rock face and started to swing one end of the rope back and forth. ‘Catch it, Britannia. Just like you did the last time.’

  Nalan drew in her breath as she peered over the lip of the volcano. ‘This is a terrible place. Your description did not do it justice, John.’

  Nalan’s horror at the prospect below her pleased Hart. He had started to feel isolated in his reaction to the place. ‘You can’t describe places like this. You can only feel them. It’s like a tomb down there. Believe me. A living, open tomb.’ He caught the rope Elwand threw him and slid it through the gap in the rock.

  This time Elwand had brought a steel crowbar with him. He climbed down from the rock and attached the rope to the crowbar with two half hitches, then jammed the crowbar against the base of the hole. They had no intention of using the rope, of course, and were simply going through the motions in case anyone was watching them through binoculars, or, God forbid, via a drone. This, at least, was what Elwand had assured him back in Bukan. Now Hart was not sure.

  Seven hundred metres below them the two cars carrying Hassif and his men pulled into the parking lot beside Elwand’s car. Six men piled out of the minivan, and a single stout figure climbed out of the accompanying Mercedes. Hassif. Hart noted that the men surrounding him weren’t carrying any obvious weapons.

  There was a lot of shouting and gesticulating, followed by much pointing up the hillside. Then Hassif barked out some orders. Hart suspected that Hassif had simply been ensuring that no casual visitors to the site were to be seen, because the six men now threw open the back of his Mercedes and helped themselves to the automatic weapons secreted there.

  ‘Shit. Look at that. He’s got an armoury in there. I hope they don’t open up on us.’

  ‘We are not yet within range,’ said Elwand.

  ‘Well, that’s a comfort,’ said Hart. He watched the six men begin their climb up the hillside towards them, with Hassif puffing along behind. ‘Maybe he’ll have a heart attack?’

  ‘God is far too just to let someone like Hassif die of a mere heart attack,’ said Nalan. ‘Come. We need to move round the lip of the volcano to the eastern rim.’

  ‘I really hope you know what you are doing,’ said Hart.

  ‘My cousins know what they are doing,’ said Nalan. ‘We are the bait, remember. You must look as if you are running now.’

  Hart found that bit the easiest to mimic. He broke into a run, alongside Elwand and Nalan, just as if they had found themselves surprised by Hassif and his men and were trying to get away.

  ‘Go on. Faster. Run ahead of us. He must think you feel that I betrayed you.’

  There were a few scattered shots from the hillside below them. Hart could hear the spent bullets fizzing through the air above him. One or two ricocheted off the rocks below. Hart heard a distant shriek, which he assumed was Hassif telling his men to cool it, and not risk hitting anyone valuable.

  ‘Quickly, quickly,’ said Nalan.

  Hart had little idea of what plan, if any, Nalan had hatched with her cousins. Everything had been conducted in far too much haste, in his opinion, and there had even come a point, early on in the proceedings, when Nalan had given up translating everything for him and had simply left him to stew in his own juices. Elwand had attempted to take up the slack in terms of Hart’s understanding of the situation, but his efforts had fallen largely by the wayside. It had been extremely humiliating. As if they had purposely left him out of the loop.

  Hart was astonished, therefore, to see close on a dozen men, armed with assault rifles and telescopic sights, emerge like ghosts from the cover in front of him.

  ‘Now we get down. Here. Behind these rocks.’

  Hart spreadeagled himself beside Nalan in the lee of a jagged outcropping of rock. His new position gave him a superb view of the six now struggling men accompanying Hassif, a hundred and fifty metres below them down the hillside. He began to understand why, throughout the entire history of warfare, enlightened combatants had always sought to defend and hold the upper ground.

  The trap had been well sprung �
�� the outcome a foregone conclusion. Hassif’s six armed men were caught way out in the open, already exhausted from sprinting up the hillside, and therefore sickeningly vulnerable. The dozen rested men who passed him by, and amongst whom he recognized Nalan’s five remaining cousins, dispersed themselves behind the ample cover at the top of the hill. Hart expected someone to call out to Hassif’s men to give themselves up, but this did not happen.

  What followed was as close to a clinical execution as Hart had ever witnessed. Hassif’s men were systematically picked off by men occupying the higher ground and benefiting from the immense advantage of telescopic sights. It was a massacre. Each approaching man was targeted by at least two shooters. If he tried to fire back, he stood no real chance of hitting anything because of the upward arc forced upon him by the contour of the volcano. It was all over in under a minute.

  Hassif was left standing alone on the hillside, his hands at his sides, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. As Hart watched, Hassif dropped to his knees and fumbled for his mobile phone. Or it might have been a pistol.

  Nalan stood up from where she was sheltering and shouted down to him.

  Hassif raised his hands above his head and waved them to show that he was not holding anything. Then he sat back in the dirt like a child in a sandpit. Hart felt almost sorry for him.

  Nalan’s cousins dispersed like chamois down the hillside. Ignoring Hassif, they set about collecting the dead men scattered around him. When this was done, they carted them the remaining distance to the edge of the volcano and tumbled them over the lip.

  Nalan and Elwand started down towards Hassif. Hart followed them. Bahoz, Saman and another man, whom Hart did not recognize, moved across to meet them.

  Only now was Hart able to see Hassif clearly for the first time. The man was unutterably nondescript. Hart had been expecting a monster. A man with the wages of sin stamped across his features. Instead he saw an elderly, overweight man, with dyed hair and a dyed beard, sucking air in through his teeth and close to hyperventilating.

  The five of them accompanied Hassif to the top of the hill. The remainder of Nalan’s cousins and kinsmen came to join them.

  Nalan was the first to speak. She pointed to the lip of the volcano, and then down at Hassif’s car. Hassif answered her. Nalan spoke again.

  Hart edged his way towards Elwand. ‘What is she saying?’

  Elwand leaned towards him. ‘She is asking if he has brought all the film with him in his car, as agreed. If he has not, she will throw him personally into Solomon’s Prison after his men.’

  Hassif was nodding vehemently now. Throwing his arms around. Selling himself dearly, thought Hart. Trying to cut a late deal.

  Bahoz, the youngest of Nalan’s cousins, broke away from the others and sprinted down the hillside. Everyone watched him. When he reached a patch of scree he began a skiing motion with his feet, negotiating the broken rock as if he were surfing on snow. In five minutes he was at the bottom of the hill.

  He disappeared inside Hassif’s car.

  He emerged after two minutes and squinted up towards them. Nalan’s phone rang. They could all see Bahoz talking into his phone, and hear Nalan replying to him nearby. Bahoz was making the universal symbol of empty-handedness.

  Hassif said something to Nalan, and Bahoz disappeared back inside the car.

  Hassif was grinning and smiling now, his expression that of a man who feels he will soon have fulfilled his part of the bargain, and who is confidently expecting his competitors to fulfil theirs. If it wasn’t for the neat pile of weapons stacked about thirty yards down the slope, thought Hart, it would be impossible to believe that a gun battle had taken place here a mere ten minutes before. Or that anything untoward had happened. Maybe Hassif really did have the measure of it after all?

  Bahoz re-emerged from the Mercedes far below them and a further conversation took place by phone. At the end of the conversation Nalan nodded at two of the men waiting beside her. These were men Hart did recognize. Hart assumed that everyone would now make their way down the hillside and clear the area, and that these men had simply been detailed to collect up the fallen weapons. But no. The men came towards him, smiling. Hart smiled back.

  The two men caught him by the arms and wrenched them behind his back. Hart cried out, but another man he had not noticed slipped in behind him and gagged him before he could speak.

  Hart tried to struggle but it was impossible. The three men were bearing down on him with all their weight. His arms were soon secured and his pocket camera taken. One of the men took out the camera’s memory card and crushed it beneath his heel. Then he tossed the shattered SIM card over the lip of the volcano, after the dead men. He slipped the now useless camera into his side pocket.

  Hart was forced back against a rock and left there, half sitting and half lying. Hassif clapped his hands together. He was sweating and smiling at the same time. Even though things suddenly appeared to be going his way again, he still looked sick.

  Hart tried to bypass the gag with his tongue but it was impossible. How could this be happening? He had offered himself as bait alongside Nalan to trap Hassif. Were her people now about to hand him over to Hassif in exchange for the film of her parents that Nalan wanted destroyed?

  Hassif indicated Hart with both hands, and made as if he intended to start down the hillside back towards his car. He was clearly expecting some of the men present to drag Hart to his feet and accompany him.

  Something closed down in John Hart’s chest. Had this been on the cards all the time? Had he simply been the most perfect sort of patsy imaginable? He could feel the sense of outrage consuming him. He had even, God forbid, travelled into Iran under his own steam, risking none of Nalan’s family in the process. What an ass. What a consummate ass he had been. He lurched to his feet and aimed a kick at the man nearest to him, but he only succeeded in twisting round on the spot and falling down again. He lay on the ground and waited for what was about to happen to him. One thing he knew. He would sell himself dearly from here on in. He wouldn’t go to his fate like a lamb to the slaughter. They’d have a fight on their hands.

  As Hart watched, lost in his own sense of high dudgeon, four of Nalan’s cousins bore down on the leering Hassif. They took Hassif’s arms and legs and pinioned him to a flat rock. Hassif began to scream. One of the other men walked behind Hassif’s head. The man felt about in the pockets of his baggy shirwal trousers and brought out a black leather box, about the size of a large book. He opened the box and took out a syringe. Hassif shrieked some more.

  Hart tried to rock himself sideways and onto his knees, but someone was pinning him down with their foot. The gag in Hart’s mouth was tight and getting tighter. He tried to signal Nalan with his eyes, but she refused to look at him. All her concentration was on Hassif.

  The man with the syringe threw something silver to one of Nalan’s cousins – Hart could no longer remember exactly who was who any more, but it might have been Elind. Elind placed the object in Hassif’s mouth and began to screw it open. Hart realized that it was a mouth clamp. The sort of thing that might once have been used for dentistry, or as a prelude to take out someone’s tonsils and adenoids. Hassif ululated through the opened aperture.

  The first man now indicated to the others that they should support Hassif’s head. When this was done, he sat himself astride Hassif’s chest, aimed the syringe inside his mouth, and injected him a number of times. Then he waited.

  Hart closed his eyes. Were they intending to torture Hassif? Punish him in some way by extracting his teeth? Was this some weird sort of Kurdish blood revenge? Then what were they going to do with him? He could feel the bile rising in his throat.

  The man sitting astride Hassif’s chest bent forwards again. This time he was holding a scalpel in his right hand. Hart could see Hassif’s feet drumming on the ground.

  The man made a series of quick movements, and then stood up. He was holding something bloody in his hand. He moved towards the lip of the v
olcano and tossed it into the void.

  The dental gag was unscrewed and Hassif was dragged to his feet. His hands were untied. His knees immediately gave way, but four men were supporting him now and he remained on his feet. His mouth was rimmed with blood.

  Elwand tied the end of the dangling rope about Hassif’s waist. Hassif began to kick and fight. He was making gagging noises, but no real sound was emerging from his mouth. No human sound, anyway. Hart realized that it was Hassif’s tongue they had cut out. The man who had done the cutting shook a jar of pills in front of Hassif’s face. When he was sure that Hassif had registered the fact of the pills, he shoved them into Hassif’s pocket with a flourish.

  Hassif was manhandled to the edge of Solomon’s Prison and held there, looking down. Nalan approached him. Hart expected her to say something to Hassif, but all she did was spit in his face. The men surrounding him levered him over the rock ledge and took up his weight on the rope. Then they began lowering him. It took four of them to do it.

  Nalan watched the action of the rope with a frozen expression on her face.

  Hart shook his head and looked up at the man who was pinioning him. The man seated him upright again and left him to his own devices. But he did not untie him, nor did he take out the gag.

  Elwand circled his hand when he saw that Hassif had reached the bottom. He pointed to the tension of the rope against the crowbar and twanged it with his finger.

  The man who had cut out Hassif’s tongue handed Nalan the scalpel. Nalan crawled to the mouth of the hole and began sawing at the rope.

  Hart threw himself forwards, but it was a pointless gesture. All he succeeded in doing was to ensure that he was even further from standing up without someone’s help.

  The rope parted and fell into the abyss. The crowbar clattered to the ground. The swish the rope made as it looped into the void merely added to the unholy silence left after its landing. Elwand picked up the crowbar and turned to go.