The Templar Concordat

by Terrence O'Brien

  Look at her, he thought. She’s begging. Tossing her hair around, top buttons carelessly left open. Slut. A wasted life, he thought, wasted until now. He smiled down at her, down her perfect body, down to her tanned legs, and saw the potential, saw what she could become. Only an artist could see it. And Rashid was truly an artist. He was one of a kind. Unique.

  She removed her sunglasses and looked directly into his eyes. “I’m Teresa Nelson,” she said and extended her hand. Rashid took it, felt the life in it, felt the softness, felt the potential, moved a thumb over a firm vein on the back of the hand, held it a moment too long, and quickly pulled a chair over. He thanked the lord for his luck, and wondered just how the evening would unwind. He knew how it would end.

  * * *

  “It must be beautiful down there,” she said.

  “Where?” asked Rashid.

  “The beach. Look how beautiful it is. I’ve wanted to walk in the surf at night ever since we came here.”

  “Why don’t you?

  She looked down. “I’m afraid to go out there alone at night… and… well… my husband… you know… won’t wake up until morning…” Her dangling sandal brushed against his leg and she wore an impish smile.

  “Well, let’s go,” said Rashid. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.” And then, he thought, we can go back to the perfect safety of my room.

  She bounced up like a little girl and grabbed his hand. “To the beach, my kind sir.” She tossed her hair and laughed. “To the beach.”

  They walked down the pebbled path that led from the terrace to the beach, passed deserted cabanas, palm trees, and shrubbery. Rashid took off his shoes and rolled up his white pants and Marie swung her sandals from a finger.

  “Look,” she said, pointing back behind them and walking backward. “Look how the surf wipes out our footprints. It’s like we were never here. Invisible. This is what I have always imagined. A moonlit beach, surf, sand…” She looked down, then up into his eyes, “And a strong, handsome man.” She bushed a finger down his cheek.

  Rashid pulled her to him, but she put her hands on his chest and looked up and down the beach. “There’s nobody here,” he said. “Just us.”

  “I know,” she whispered softly, “but…” She leaned her head on his chest. Let him lead. Don’t push it.

  Blood surged to his temples and his neck felt hot. Balance. Art. Perfection. Patience. No. Not here, he thought, not here. Discipline. Strength. Resolve. Purity. Art, not graffiti. Remember who is the artist and who is the slut. The artist does not compromise for the slut. The artist excises the slut and leaves divine beauty.

  In control of himself again, he said, “You look lovely, Teresa.” He held one of her hands in both of his, looked around and said, “Do you think there may be too many people down here? It’s a nice night, and I’m afraid people will come walking by. And, well… you know…” He squeezed the hand a bit and looked into her eyes.

  She looked down and traced a finger up his arm. “I’m… well… my room… my husband, he’s…”

  He put a finger on her lips, and said, “It’s Ok. I have a very nice room.”

  * * *

  Callahan watched the small screen on his GPS and heard the three beeps in his Bluetooth earpiece. Marie had squeezed her phone through her small handbag, signaling they were on the move to Rashid’s room in case he hadn’t been able to hear the conversation. But he had heard every word of the conversation and continued listening as predator and hunter circled each other.

  He could also see her GPS position on the screen. It was the same technology as the GPS units in autos, except it was adapted to hikers and could transmit the location of one person to the screen of another. Superimposing her location on top of a Google Earth picture of the hotel complex allowed Callahan to follow her progress. The Templars controlled the Taiwanese company that manufactured these units, and had run a customized order for their own field operatives.

  He knew she would dawdle and delay enough for him to get into Rashid’s room before they arrived, but he wasted no time running up the stairs and slipping through the corridors to room 715. A bellboy had traded a pass key for ten American hundred dollar bills, more than he made in a year, so getting into Rashid’s room was no problem.

  He scanned the room and closet, and took a seat at the desk. He quickly inventoried the equipment he carried in the roomy pockets of the cargo pants, moving a hand to each pocket in turn. Silenced .22 caliber Beretta. Fifty-thousand volt Taser that could drop a man at twenty feet. Two-foot length of cord. Handcuffs. Duct tape. Wire garrote. Folding knife. Zippered leather pouch with several color-coded syringes and small bottles of drugs.

  The GPS showed Marie entering the beachfront lobby of the hotel. He moved back into the closet. The Bluetooth earpiece let him hear the conversation between Rashid and Marie, and she inserted words into the conversation that helped him track their progress.

  “Let’s get through the lobby,” she giggled, “there are too many people here.” On Callahan’s screen, the blip moved across the roof of the hotel over the lobby, since the Google map was a top-down view of the hotel. That meant the blip traversed the roof above Marie’s actual position in the hotel.

  At the elevator, she complained, “These elevators take so long.” Now the blip on the roof was above the elevators. They had practiced this, and he knew where she was.

  When they entered the elevator, she said, “Now I have you all alone for the first time.” The blip centered over the elevators. Rustling of clothes indicated some fast foreplay.

  He heard more giggling in his earpiece and the blip moved across the roof toward the room where he hid. They were coming down the hall toward him. When they entered, Marie would pull Rashid down on the bed on top of her, and when she was ready for Callahan to move, she would say, “This is sooo wonderful.” Callahan would come out of the closet, toss the drug kit on the other bed, loop the garrote around Rashid’s neck, and hold him until Marie could get the syringe into his butt.

  The GPS showed them almost at the door. He could hear them in his earpiece, but he heard nothing outside the door to the room. In the earpiece he heard the keycard in the lock, but heard nothing in the real lock, no clicking, no latch turning, no door opening. Now the GPS showed them in the room with him.

  But he was alone in the room. In the earpiece, he heard Marie say what a nice room Rashid had. What’s going on? Then it hit him. Rashid had two rooms. Callahan was in room 715, but Rashid and Marie were in another of the rooms directly above, or directly below him. The hotel had eighteen floors. It was one of those resort hotels designed with a cookie cutter. Each room was identical, stacked one on top of the other for eighteen floors. They could be in 315, 815, 1115, or 1415. Guest rooms started at the third floor, so they were in any of fifteen other rooms in the stack. The GPS unit simply showed the blip on the roof above any of fifteen rooms.

  Damn. He cursed his own stupidity, but felt a cold chill listening to Marie playing the vixen for the terrorist. She didn’t know there was a problem, and she thought he was right there in room with her, hiding in the closet with a gun and drugs. She felt safe. She knew a Templar had her back.

  He was on the seventh floor, so there were eleven possible rooms above him, and four possibles below. He sprinted to the stairway door, banged it open and took the metal stairs up three at a time to the next floor. When he reached room 815, he shoved the keycard in the slot as quietly as he could and quickly moved into the room. Empty.

  In his earpiece, he heard Marie gasp, “Well, you sure seem ready, my stallion.”

  Up another floor, and down the hall. Room 915 had a couple in bed watching TV. “Sorry, wrong room.” He backed out and raced for the stairs.

  “I’ve waited four whole days to get you in bed,” Marie cooed, “and now that I have you, I’m not letting you go.” The earpiece played it all for Callahan.

  On the next floor, 1015 was empty. Back on the stairs, he crashed into the concrete block ins
ide the stairwell, pumped his legs, and pulled himself up with the railing.

  “This is sooo wonderful,” said Marie. The signal. That was the signal. She had pulled him down on top of her on the bed. She was calling Callahan to come out of the closet and grab this guy. Again he heard the signal, but a bit louder, “Hmmm, soooooo wonderful!”

  Room 1115 was a party, and when he entered a very large woman immediately thrust a drink at him. “Party Pooper!” she shouted after him.

  Now Marie knew something was wrong, terribly wrong. She glanced toward the closet. Nothing. And something else was wrong. Rashid had expertly twisted her over on her front, looped an arm around her throat, and cut off her air supply. The pressure of his arm on the sides of her neck and his other hand pushing her head down had also cut off the vital supply of blood through her carotid arteries to her brain. Her last thought was it only took four seconds without blood for the brain to lose consciousness.

  Racing up the stairs, Callahan heard nothing in his earpiece, nothing at all. How many more floors? He had just left eleven. That meant six more, or was it seven? One minute per floor? Seven minutes? Or was it thirty seconds per floor? Three minutes? Or four minutes? Math wasn’t working. He raced out the stairwell door and down the hall to 1215. Two naked men on the bed gaped in surprise, and laughed madly when he left and ran back to the stairwell.

  Now the sing-song humming came through the earpiece, not Marie, but Rashid.

  Marie came awake to Rashid’s face hovering above her. “You’re Ok,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just a momentary interruption of blood flow so we could get more comfortable. There. Now I think we can really get to know each other.”

  She tried to sit up, but both arms were stretched out above her head and she couldn’t move. The same with her feet. She swiveled her head around and saw both arms and legs were securely tied to the sturdy bedposts.

  “What? What’s going on? Why… I’m… I’m tied up? What is this?” She was stammering, and knew she had to regain control. Callahan wasn’t going to come to the rescue, and she had to do it alone. Calm. Control. Think. She giggled. “Is this a game, my stallion? Tie my hands, tie my feet, and I’m yours? Mmmm, this is soooo wonderful.” She moved her hips in a beckoning way, and forced a seductive smile through the sick terror gripping her body.

  Tied? Tied? He had her tied up? Callahan hit another empty room. What’s going on here? Did Rashid know she was a Templar? Had they been made?

  Rashid turned back to Marie with the bartender’s long-bladed filleting knife in his hand. “A game, my American whore? Yes. I suppose it is. It’s a game. A wonderful game, and it begins now.” He grabbed the hem of her skirt and easily slit it up to her waist. Then he continued, slicing off each button, gingerly hooking each side of the split dress with his knife tip, and flipping it to the side.

  He stood back with his hand on his chin, appraising her. “Very nice, very nice. You do me honor, slut. Tonight, my dear, we will make great art.” He leaned over and traced his fingers across her forehead and down the line of her jaw. “Great art. I am the artist, and you are the… what shall we say? You are the slut? No, the slut is the canvas. And this,” he held up the knife, “this is my expressive tool, transferring muse to the medium.” He waited for the scream. Nothing. Damn. Some people are no fun. He sighed and jammed a wadded sock into her mouth. Marie gagged and struggled for air through her nose.

  He doesn’t know anything about the Templars, Marie thought. He really does think I’m the silly wife of an American drunk from Toledo. He’s just a serial killer who targets women when he’s not blowing up airliners. He’s supposed to be a bomb throwing terrorist! Jihad and all that. Why didn’t we know this? Why didn’t we know this? Who the hell? Where is Callahan? Where? Where? Where? Did Zurich know? Panic rose again but she refused to surrender. Make him talk. Make him talk. Talk? Talk? With a gag in my mouth? Look for a way out of this. Think. Anything.

  Callahan also felt the panic. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. This was taking too long, and Marie was paying for it. He was supposed to be there, in the closet with the gun and drugs. Rashid should already be in a peaceful, drugged coma. Marie should be safe by now.

  Rashid slowly cut her panties and sliced the bra in the middle, again using the knife tip to precisely fold the pieces back on each side. “You are a lovely woman,” he said, “but you will now become infinitely more lovely, a vision of pure beauty, with a purity that will wash all the filth of the Americans from your soul. A fitting gift to God? Yes. To God to God to God we go, from slut to art, oh humdeedoo…”

  Callahan hit the top floor. A dining room, and a waste of time. Nowhere to go but down. He had guessed wrong. Marie and Rashid were in 315, 415, 515, or 615. Where had he started? Room 715? That meant three or four rooms to check? What if he missed a floor? Are floors printed on the stairwell doors? If he had gone down first, rather than up, he would have found them by now. Why had he gone up?

  At each landing on the way down he jumped, with one foot landing on the middle stair below him, and the next on the landing. Grab the railing. Swing around to keep the momentum. At the sixth floor, he crashed down the metal stairs and tasted blood running down his face.

  Marie tried to calm herself, seeing nothing but death ahead now. Other Templars had faced the same for nine-hundred years, and they had faced it like warriors. If this was her time, this was her place, and this was how it would happen, she would go out like a warrior. This would be her finest hour. Death in Battle.

  Room 615 yielded only Spanish curses from a huge man who charged Callahan when he opened the door. The last thing he needed now was to get tied up in a fight with this guy.

  Rashid’s insane singing and bragging about what a masterpiece he would make of Marie was all that came through the earpiece now. Masterpiece? Damn! Too slow!

  Rashid held the handle of the knife lightly between two fingers, letting it barely touch her skin, and watched the thin red line follow the blade from below her navel to her sternum. He touched the tip of the blade to his tongue. “Exquisite.” She never flinched, and she never broke eye contact.

  “But I’m afraid I’m getting ahead of myself here. My apologies. I’m not properly dressed for the occasion.”

  Room 515 was a slumber party for teenage girls who all screeched when Callahan entered. Had anyone called security when he broke into their room? Would they intercept him before he got to her?

  Rashid put the knife between his teeth and slowly removed his shirt for the slut. Let her appreciate the art. He flexed his pecs, stiffened his triceps, unbuckled his belt, and tossed it over a shoulder. Look at her eyes. She loves this. He let his zipper down and eased his trousers over his hips, lifted one leg to free it… and the door burst open. What? Who? When he turned toward the door, a man with a bloody face lifted a pistol, shot twice, and kept coming. The knee that was supporting him exploded in pain, buckled under the impact of the small bullet, and he collapsed in a tangle of legs and trousers against the night table.

  Rashid grabbed the knife from his teeth and tried to rise, but stopped when he looked directly into the barrel of Callahan’s Beretta. Callahan dug in the pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out the Taser, and shot Rashid from a distance of five feet.

  Rashid twitched on the floor when the two Taser barbs buried themselves in his bare stomach and delivered their 50,000 volts. Callahan kept the trigger depressed, and Rashid continued to twitch on the floor. He pulled his own knife, cut a rope holding Marie’s arm to the bedpost, and tossed the knife to her.

  Marie cut the other three ropes, pulled the sock out of her mouth, and jumped off the bed. She opened the leather pouch Callahan handed her, and took out the syringe with the yellow tag. When she had the syringe positioned over Rashid, Callahan cut the power to the Taser barbs, and she jammed the syringe deep into Rashid’s hip, pushed the plunger home, and watched the nerve agent paralyze the man in five seconds.

  She looked at the gash from Callahan’s fall down th
e stairs. “You’ll live,” she said.

  Callahan noticed the paper-thin cut up Marie’s torso. “Let me look at that,” he said.

  She looked down at the cut. “It’s OK, I think. Shallow and thin. Should heal up without even a hint of a scar.” She pointed down at the paralyzed Rashid. “Him. He’s an artist.”

  Rashid’s body breathed on its own, and he could move his eyes. But every other muscle was paralyzed. He could see, hear, and feel, but couldn’t move a muscle.

  Callahan took another syringe from the kit, filled it from the blue bottle, and carefully injected Rashid. The eyes closed. “That should keep him out for about two hours,” Callahan said. He snapped a handcuff on one wrist, dragged Rashid to the air-conditioning unit on the wall, looped the cuffs around a pipe, and locked it to the other wrist.

  “He’s paralyzed, unconscious, and locked up. That should give us about two hours to get our act together.”

  “Can you go get me some clothes?” Marie asked quietly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back.” He handed her the pistol.

  “You better clean all that blood off your face first.”

  When he left the room, she went into the bathroom, leaned on the sink, and stared into the mirror. She replayed everything in her mind. It seemed like she had been watching someone else. Someone else was choked, someone else tied, someone else cut, and someone else trussed up for slaughter by a madman. She had faced death in battle, just as Templars before her had. She had faced it alone, and she had faced it with honor. And that wasn’t someone else. She did it. Nobody else knew, but she knew, and that’s all that mattered. Then she vomited.

  * * *

  Callahan brought jeans and a sweatshirt for Marie, and they figured out where they had screwed up. Neither thought that Rashid would have another room, and if Marie had been paying attention, she would have known Rashid had taken her to the fourth floor instead of the seventh. She could have alerted Callahan by just mentioning the room number. And he had relied on toys.