The Sword of the Templars t-1

by Paul Christopher

  He picked up a small, rubber mallet from the worktable and brought it down hard on the side of the amphora. The jar shattered, pieces of brittle clay dropping to the zinc surface of the table. Half a dozen gleaming cylinders of pure, butter-colored gold tumbled out, each one about ten inches long and three inches in diameter. The cylinders, like the wine jar, were sealed with resin at one end. Rodrigues picked up one of the tubular objects.

  “A scroll from the ancient royal library at Alexandria, saved by the military commander Amr ibn al-As, not destroyed by him during his conquest of Egypt in the sixth century-a story, by the way, that Saladin was quick to quash, since Amr ibn al-As was a contemporary of Muhammad and many of the works in Alexandria were in contravention of the Koran and thus should have been destroyed under strict Muslim law.”

  Rodrigues shrugged, shifting the gold cylinder into his other hand. “Perhaps an unknown work by Homer? One of the Greek tragedies by Euripides? Mathematics from Archimedes? A map to the secret location of Imhotep’s fabulous tomb? The way to King Solomon’s Mines? A treatise on medicine by the first true doctor, Aesculapius?” He paused. “The Holy Church’s greatest fear is in this place-I have seen the evidence myself-the Lost Gospels of the Apostles from their own mouths, in Aramaic, not handed down through centuries of translations each with their own interpretation. Somewhere hidden there might well be the most sacred and dangerous of them all-the Gospel of Christ himself.” He shook his head. “No wonder the Vatican and the Sodalitium Pianum would have you dead, and me, as well. News of this place would shake St. Peter’s Basilica to its very foundation.” The ex-priest lifted his broad shoulders once again.

  “Who knows what else lies here? I have been working at this for more than fifty years and have only barely scratched the surface; others were here before me, as well.

  “It is not just the Library of Alexandria that was hidden in Jerusalem. Hadrian’s library is here, as well, the Library of Pergamon in Athens, the texts from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, long thought to have been destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, all of them are here and more. It is the wisdom of the world, nothing less, wrapped in skins of gold, all of it.”

  “There are more scrolls then?” Holliday asked, excited. “More amphorae?”

  “Thousands,” answered Rodrigues. “Enough to fill the hold of the Wanderfalke and its sister ship Tempel Rose, the Temple Rose. Ten thousand, perhaps more; I’ve never bothered to count. De Flor was a well-known trader in wine out of La Rochelle and the Levant; what better and safer way to move such a treasure about than hidden in clay casks? Even in crusader times they knew that gold was inert and would be the safest form of transport; that is why they had a smelter at Castle Pelerin. The scrolls have remained intact for the better part of a millennium. The ones still to be examined wait in the lava tunnels that you see around the cave. The rest are in the good hands of friends of the Order.”

  “Order?” Holliday said. “You mean the Templars?”

  “Of course,” said Rodrigues. “As I said to you, there have been White Templars and Black since the beginning. We couldn’t let all this great knowledge fall into the wrong hands. That’s why your uncle joined us.”

  “Grandpa was a Templar?” Peggy asked. “He knew about all this?”

  “Yes,” nodded Rodrigues. “That is why he hid the sword.” The ex-priest turned to Holliday. “To protect and pass the secret on to you if you proved yourself worthy of the task.” He turned back to Peggy. “And you, as well.”

  Suddenly the dim lights in the huge cavern flickered. Almost instinctively Holliday’s hand reached out and swept up the old sword from its pedestal mounts. With his other hand he wrenched the Czech automatic from its holster and thumbed off the safety. Then the lights flickered again and finally went out. Utter darkness fell.

  33

  The lights came on again almost immediately.

  “What the hell?” Peggy said.

  “A crude approximation of an alarm,” said Rodrigues, hefting the shotgun. “Apparently my fireworks didn’t disable all our visitors. They’re almost here. We have to leave. Now.”

  “We could stay and fight,” said Peggy.

  “No. He’s right. They’ve got automatic weapons; we’ve got a shotgun and a pistol. Time to bug out.”

  “This way,” said Rodrigues. He bent down and picked up a battery-powered lantern from beneath the table with the shattered wine jar and headed across the cavern toward one of the lava-tube entrances. As they climbed the ascending layers of petrified lava Holliday saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned.

  “Go!” he commanded. On the far side of the cavern one of Kellerman’s men appeared, a squat weapon in his hands and a set of American Technologies lightweight night-vision goggles balanced on his forehead. Holliday saw a red beam flash across the cavern from the man’s weapon: a fire-and-forget laser scope. He didn’t wait to see the man’s elected target, or take the time to aim his own weapon; at this range it would be futile. He simply aimed high and squeezed the trigger of the Czech pistol, spraying the entire clip of twelve rounds in the enemy’s general direction. Delay was the objective now, not accuracy. The inside of the cavern rang with shattering echoes as he emptied the gun. The man got off one shot and ducked away. Behind Holliday there was a grunt of pain and surprise. He turned. Rodrigues had been hit, blood blossoming on his shirt, low on his right side. Hopefully no more than a flesh wound. He sagged against the smooth wall of the cave by the entrance to a lava tube. Peggy took the big flashlight and the shotgun from his hands, supporting him under one arm.

  “Into the tunnel, as fast as you can,” the ex-priest moaned.

  Holliday tossed away the empty gun, transferred the sword into his right hand, and ran up the last few levels to take Rodrigues by the other arm. Together he and Peggy helped him into the relative safety of the lava tube. Behind them there was the sound of ringing automatic fire. More than one weapon. Kellerman’s people had arrived in force.

  “Twenty paces into the tunnel. The generator,” grunted Rodrigues. “Be careful,” he warned.

  Holliday and Peggy eased the wounded man forward, the tunnel barely wide enough to allow them passage, the ceiling low above their heads. Ahead of them they could hear the roar of the diesel generator, the fumes souring the air slightly. Holliday could also feel a slight movement of the air across his face. Fresh air.

  At twenty paces there was a widening of the tunnel, man-made, and a deep, square-cut little chamber on the left. Inside the tiny room there was a bright yellow six-thousand-watt Yamaha diesel generator chugging quietly and a hundred gallon tank of kerosene. A length of PVC tubing led up into a narrow crack in the ceiling, carrying most of the fumes away.

  “The switch,” managed Rodrigues.

  Holliday found the switch on the side of the generator and threw it. The sound of the generator stopped in mid-cycle, and the lights went off. It might slow their pursuers for a moment, but with the active infrared goggles it wouldn’t stop them. Peggy switched on the battery-powered lamp. A cone of light bloomed, showing the way ahead.

  “Another ten paces,” muttered the ex-priest. He coughed and dark, coffee-ground blood poured over his lips and down his chin. Not a flesh wound then, noted Holliday. The man was bleeding internally. He needed medical attention, and quickly.

  “What about ten paces?” Holliday asked urgently, helping Rodrigues down the tunnel. Their pursuers couldn’t be much more than a minute or two behind them.

  “Trip wire. Fishing line,” the ex-priest managed, coughing again and doubling over.

  They stepped forward carefully, Peggy shining the light ahead, keeping the beam down, illuminating the base of the tunnel. Holliday, supporting Rodrigues, now came up behind her.

  Fifty feet farther on the light caught a length of taut, black fishing line stretched across the tunnel, calf-high, invisible unless you were looking for it.

  “Where is it?” Holliday asked.

 
“Up,” muttered Rodrigues.

  Peggy swept the light up toward the ceiling. The trip wire led upward, threaded through blackened eyebolts, to a small hole in the roof about eight inches across. In the hole were two round, olive-green metal objects, each about four inches in diameter. Holliday recognized them instantly: OZM-72 antipersonnel mines, the Russian version of the American M16 “Bouncing Betty” he’d used in Vietnam and the Yugoslavian PROM-1’s he’d seen during the Bosnian War. Triggered on the ground, the device would bound into the air to waist height before exploding. In the case of these two mines they would fire downward into the lava tube. Each of the OZM’s carried a charge of slightly more than a pound of cast high explosive. The slaughter in the lava tube would be horrifying. On ignition anything for a hundred feet in either direction would be shredded into hamburger.

  “Help him over the trip wire,” said Holliday.

  Together he and Peggy managed to get the failing ex-priest over the deadly thread. They headed on, hurrying now more than ever, trying to put distance between themselves and the hideous booby trap behind them. A dozen yards along the tube, the passage suddenly veered sharply to the right and began heading upward at a steep angle. Holliday could feel a rush of cool air on his face now, and in the distance he thought he heard the sound of thunder. Somewhere above them yesterday’s storm was returning.

  Around them the lava tube was changing; as they neared the surface the walls of the tunnel began to close in. The smooth floor felt slick with mud, and the walls were coated with heavy bacterial slime. It was getting harder and harder to get Rodrigues to keep walking, his coughing increasing with each step, his legs dragging, and his body beginning to shake uncontrollably as he went into shock. Holliday knew the signs. He wasn’t going to last much longer.

  “Pocket,” moaned the dying man. “Book. Take it.”

  “Later,” soothed Holliday. “There’ll be time for that later.”

  “Now!” Rodrigues demanded with authority.

  Still moving forward Holliday fumbled in Rodrigues’s back pockets and found a small leather-bound notebook at least half an inch thick. It looked very old. Holliday stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket and carried on. The ground began to rise even more steeply, and their knees bent with exertion. Rodrigues was almost deadweight now. Ahead Holliday thought he saw a crack of light.

  Without warning all three of them were picked up and thrown to the ground by a massive concussion. A split second later there was a rolling, earsplitting explosion and a second concussive blast as a gusting roar of heat enveloped them and passed on.

  Holliday got to his feet, still hanging on to the sword. The glass in the battery-powered lamp was broken, but enough light was coming down from above to light their way. Peggy abandoned the lamp, and clutching the shotgun, she and Holliday managed to get Rodrigues up. They stumbled forward toward the light. Holliday felt a few splashes of rain on his face, and above them thunder roared. A moment later they reached the ragged end of the lava tube exit and stepped out onto the rugged surface of the ancient crater and into the teeth of a biting wind and a growing storm. A bolt of spiked lightning flashed across the gray-black clouds roiling overhead.

  “The badger comes out of his lair,” said a voice. “A little the worse for wear, it would seem.”

  Axel Kellerman. He was dressed like the quintessential British country squire in a tweed suit with a waistcoat, walking boots, and a rabbit-skin trilby hat. He sat perched on a flat ledge of broken stone a few feet from the entrance to the lava tunnel. In the distance, almost half a mile away between the two volcanic lakes, Holliday could see Rodrigues’s isolated cottage. More rain began to spatter down. Above them the storm was breaking, the winds pulling at their clothes. Thunder rolled.

  Seeing Kellerman standing there dressed like that and in those circumstances, Holliday suddenly realized just how insane the SS officer’s son really was, living out some Goethe-like Sturm und Drang aristocratic fantasy. Kellerman wasn’t alone; one of his blond thugs stood close to him, machine pistol held to the neck of Manuel Rivero Tavares, the captain of the San Pedro.

  Between Peggy and Holliday, Rodrigues sagged to the ground.

  “Put the shotgun down, Miss Blackstock,” said Kellerman, smiling. “You can keep the sword for now, Dr. Holliday. It suits you.”

  Peggy carefully did as she was told.

  Holliday kept his eyes firmly on Kellerman.

  “I’m very sorry, Doutor,” said Tavares, his eyes pleading. “I could not help it.”

  “A few simple threats,” said Kellerman. “Apparently the good captain has grandchildren. Little girls.”

  He looked past them down the ragged hole in the ground.

  “I gather from the noise a few moments ago that some of my employees fell afoul of some sort of IED.” Kellerman grimaced. “That’s more lives you owe me, Dr. Holliday, although they served their purpose. Now at least I know where my legacy is hidden. It only remains for me to retrieve it.”

  “The legacy isn’t yours any more than it was your father’s,” said Holliday. He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly in his hand. “It doesn’t belong to any one man.”

  “It belongs to anyone who takes it,” spat Kellerman, getting to his feet and stepping closer. “The world has always been that way. Victory to the strong.” He sneered down at the curled still figure of Rodrigues. “Defeat to the weak.”

  “We’ve all heard that filth before,” said Holliday. “ ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ ‘Kraft durch Freude,’ ‘Drang nach Osten,’ and in the end none of it came to pass.” He shook his head. “You’re nothing more than a dirty joke gone wrong, Kellerman, just like your father before you.”

  Light flashed in the New World Nazi’s eyes. He surged forward, fumbling beneath his tightly buttoned jacket, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. There was a blinding flash of lightning and an enormous thunderclap. The heavens opened.

  It happened in the blink of an eye.

  “Vai-te foder!” Tavares said furiously. He brought his foot down hard on the blond thug’s instep and threw himself wildly to one side. Reacting instantly, Peggy dropped to the ground, swept up the shotgun, and pulled both triggers. The heavy gun jumped in her hands, the butt thumping back into her shoulder. The thug made a grunting sound and sat down on the ground abruptly, staring down at the plate-sized bleeding hole in his belly as the torrential rainfall began.

  Kellerman had his weapon out, a flat little Walther PPK. He kept coming, lifting the pistol in his hand.

  Holliday didn’t even think twice. The sword came up, and he took one step forward, setting his leg with the knee slightly bent and his elbow locked. Unable to stop his forward momentum Kellerman ran onto the blade, unblooded for more than seven hundred years. It sliced through the thick tweed of his waistcoat, his shirt and the flesh just beneath the xiphoid process of his diaphragm. Still going forward, the broad wedge of Damascus steel thrust through both the right ventricle and left atrium of his heart before it finally ground against his spine. The furious light went out in the madman’s eyes, and Kellerman died, skewered.

  Holliday stepped back, pulling the sword out of the man’s body with a light twisting movement to break the inevitable suction. There was a ghastly sucking sound as the blade slid out of Kellerman’s chest. The dead man slithered to the ground. Holliday dropped the sword and turned, trying to wipe the rain out of his eyes.

  Peggy was on her knees, one hand cradling her bruised shoulder, staring at the corpse of the blond thug, the blood from his wound diluted by the rain into a spreading pink puddle on the rocky ground.

  “Are you all right?” Holliday asked, bending over her.

  “Just fine,” she said quietly, staring vacantly at the man she’d just blown out of his socks. “Peachy.”

  Tavares sat on the ground, cradling Rodrigues’s head in his lap, the steady rain soaking them both. Holliday knelt beside them.

  “He is my friend,” whispered Tavares, weeping, the words catc
hing wetly in his throat. He stroked Rodrigues’s forehead soothingly. “My dear, dear friend for all these years. I cannot let him die.”

  Rodrigues opened his eyes, blinking them hard against the rain.

  “We all die, Emmanuel,” murmured the ex-priest.

  He made a small sighing noise, managing to lift his hand and grip Tavares’s broad, hairy wrist. He turned his head slightly so that he could see Holliday above him.

  “Keep Manuel close. He is brother to my soul and knows about everything. He has been my eyes and ears in the world of men for a long time.”

  “I will,” promised Holliday, feeling his own eyes dampen, trying to tell himself it was the rain.

  “Kellerman is dead?”

  “Very,” nodded Holliday.

  “Good enough,” murmured Rodrigues. “Good enough.” He sighed again. “Then the torch is passed. Iacta alea est. Vale, amici.” The ex-priest lifted his head from Tavares’s lap. His eyes stared up at the dark sky, seeing nothing now. “Too many secrets,” he whispered. “Too many secrets.” He made one last, small sound, closed his eyes, and died.

  The rain crashed down in long, weeping curtains all around them in the bowl of the island crater.

  Peggy rose, turned away from the two dead men, and put her hand on Holliday’s shoulder.

  “We never really knew him,” she said sadly, looking down at Rodrigues.

  “And now we never will.”

  “What was that he said at the end?”

  “Iacta alea est. It’s what Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon and entered Roman territory, defying the Senate and starting civil war.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “ ‘The die is cast.’ There’s no way to turn back from destiny now. He meant for you and for me.”

  “And the last ‘Vale, amici’?”

  “ ‘Farewell, friends,’ ” said Holliday softly.

  Two hours later they sat in the snug cabin of the San Pedro, wrapped in blankets, a kettle whistling on the small gas stove. Peggy got up from the little table and began making tea. With Holliday and Peggy in the San Pedro bobbing gently at anchor in the tiny harbor, Tavares was dealing with the embarrassment of dead bodies back at Rodrigues’s little cottage. The rain still thundered down, hammering on the cabin roof of the old Chris-Craft, and, according to Tavares at least, making his job much easier. They would stay aboard the San Pedro tonight, and tomorrow the rotund captain would take them across the narrow strait to Flores and a flight back to civilization.