The Templar Legion t-5

by Paul Christopher

  “Nobody’s lived on Daset T’qit in a very long time, if ever,” said Rafi as he cut the tiny motor and drifted toward the dock.

  “Why did you choose this place?” Holliday said.

  “I didn’t,” said Rafi, using the tiller to guide the old boat between the stone arms of the dock. Holliday could see worn steps carved into the stone that went right down into the water. “I was doing research on the Ethiopian Beta Jews and their original settlements at Tana Kirkos, the bigger island. I just casually asked about Daset T’qit in passing, and one of my translators got really spooked, went white as a sheet. He told me the place was taboo and that its nickname was Maqabr Aswad Muslim-the Tomb of the Black Muslim.”

  “This gets us back to Ragnar Skull Splitter and his Arab friend, doesn’t it?” Holliday asked.

  “That’s right,” said Rafi. “Abdul al-Rahman.”

  “But I thought you said this was Roche-Guillaume’s tomb,” said Holliday.

  “It is.” Rafi grinned. Peggy looped the rope in the bow around a rock peg that looked as though it had been there for a thousand years. She stepped out of the boat onto the steps and trotted up to the top of the dock. Holliday and Rafi followed her up to the narrow stone pier at the head of the stairway.

  “It’s beautiful!” Peggy said. “It’s like one of the paintings by that French guy. . the customs clerk. . ”

  “Rousseau,” said Holliday. She was right; the solid mass of foliage in front of them was as detailed and exotic as one of the famous artist’s strange and wonderful jungle scenes. There was every shade of green, from forest shadow to vivid lime, celadon and emerald, pinks and reds and bright yellows. Smooth leaves and serrated, big and small, vines that curled up and around larger trees and huge gnarled roots dragging up from the rich black earth like the groping fingers of buried giants. The only thing missing were the gazing lions and the naked women. He could hear the chittering of monkeys high above them and the shrieking calls of angry birds.

  There was something sinister here as well, so real that Holliday found himself wishing he had some sort of weapon with him. From his arrival in Vietnam barely six months after his eighteenth birthday to tours in Afghanistan and Somalia, he’d been in some dangerous places in his life, but this was different. Somehow he knew that stepping into that forest would be like stepping off the edge of the world and that once within it he might never find his way out again. Holliday suddenly remembered a quote from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he’d memorized in high school but hadn’t understood until now: “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

  More than once he’d been in locations where he sensed and somehow almost felt the past and present occupying the same space and time: the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, where you could almost hear the echoing boot heels of the SS troops marching on parade each noon of the occupation. The killing fields of Antietam in Maryland, where you could still hear the screams of the twenty-two thousand men who were struck down there, still taste the cloying grit of gunpowder in the air. Or a quiet little forest in Picardy in the north of France called Belleau Wood whose dark, rich soil was fertilized with the blood of ten thousand U.S. Marines and an uncounted number of their German adversaries.

  Holliday felt it here more than he’d ever done before. He knew without a doubt that this place would somehow take them all into a world of madness, into the deep, true heart of darkness, beating like some monstrous drum. He shivered, even though it was stunningly hot. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it still lingered faintly. Every nerve in his body was screaming, Run.

  “Watch out for the monkeys,” warned Rafi. “They tend to hurl their feces at you.”

  “Lovely,” said Peggy. “Poisonous snakes and poopthrowing monkeys.”

  They stepped into the forest.

  Within a few feet it was obvious that they were on some kind of well-worn trail. Vines and boughs had been slashed, and recently by the looks of it. The trail was also littered with half-chewed bits of bark and rotting, partially eaten fruit.

  “The monkeys aren’t fussy eaters, I see,” said Peggy.

  “Who’s your gardener?” Holliday asked. “This trail’s man-made.” He was getting unpleasant flashes of the Viet Cong jungle trails around Bu Prang.

  “Maybe it’s the ghost of the Lost Templar.” Peggy laughed.

  “Nothing so spooky,” said Rafi, who was leading the way. “Halebo Iskinder comes out every few weeks and keeps it clear.”

  “I thought it was haunted,” Peggy said.

  “The money I pay Iskinder isn’t,” Rafi said. “Besides, Iskinder likes having a secret from the other ferrymen on the lake.”

  “What secret?” Peggy asked.

  “That,” said Rafi as they stepped out into a small natural clearing.

  Under the protective overhanging branches of a single baobab tree there was a windowless stone building that looked very much like a small chapel or a large mausoleum. The structure was built of the same brown basalt as the Coptic monasteries and churches scattered along the shores of Lake Tana. The arched door was made of dark wood with broad strap hinges. Above the door, worn with time but still clearly visible, was a heraldic crest: a lion, rampant, looking right on a field of seven stripes.

  Peggy lifted her camera immediately and took a half dozen shots. “Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Lost Templar.”

  “Doesn’t it ever start to bug you?” Holliday asked, raising an eyebrow. “All the Indiana Jones stuff?”

  “I’m used to it,” said Rafi. “Water off a duck’s back by now. At least she doesn’t ask me to wear a fedora and carry a bullwhip. It’s just Peggy being Peggy.”

  They approached the building.

  “When I arrived the door was sealed with pitch,” explained Rafi, pointing to the thick, black, tarry substance that still could be seen around the edges of the arched doorway.

  “It was sealed?” Holliday asked, running his hands over the wood surface. It was ironwood of some kind, extremely hard and very old.

  “Hermetically,” answered Rafi.

  “How’s that possible?” Holliday asked. “The door’s solid but there had to be some air exchange through the stones or the floor.”

  “Let me show you,” said Rafi. He leaned hard against the door and pushed. It didn’t budge. Holliday put his shoulder to it as well and the door grudgingly opened, a long lance of sunlight spearing dramatically into the room and illuminating the object in the middle of the floor.

  It was a stone sarcophagus, eight feet long and four feet wide and made of huge slabs of polished black basalt. The sides of the sarcophagus were carved with extraordinary scenes: what was surely a Viking ship being attacked by crocodiles, men in Roman tunics marching, their standard held high, and laboring slaves, backs bent with the weight of heavy baskets, their legs shackled to one another. The top of the sarcophagus was slightly more conventional, showing the stone effigy of a knight in chain mail, gripping his sword in both hands. The sword’s blade was entwined with a snake and at the knight’s feet a baboon slept, curled into the fetal position. On the knight’s free arm was a stone shield carved with the familiar Templar cross inlaid in a darker basalt. The sarcophagus was resting on the backs of six crouching lions made of the same black stone as the cross.

  “The tomb of Julian de la Roche-Guillaume, I presume,” said Holliday, his voice suddenly a bit breathless. He went to the sarcophagus and let his fingers trail the length of the old warrior’s sword, a sword in stone not much different from the one in Damascus steel he’d found hidden in his uncle’s home in Fredonia, New York, and which had started him on his long Templar adventure-a world within a world and plots within plots, stretching up through the centuries until today.

  “More than that,” said Rafi. He turned away from the huge stone coffin and went to the far wall. For the first time Holliday noticed that the walls had been covered with tarpaulins that hung on lines and rings like shower curtains. With no pause for dramatic effect Rafi pu
lled the dull green cloth aside.

  Peggy’s eyes went wide.

  “Holy crap,” she whispered, awestruck.

  5

  It was a vision of paradise.

  “The Garden of Eden,” said Peggy, her camera forgotten.

  As Rafi pulled the curtains back from all four walls he revealed an enormous panorama, the sarcophagus in its center. The artist had painted it from some high vantage point, capturing the jungle, the enormous cascades of the waterfall and the nearby hills in perfect detail. Every tree, every branch, every leaf, every rocky crag and outcropping was captured in glowing greens and ochres, blues and whites and brilliant yellows, the magnificent arc of the rainbow as the water dropped into the foaming gorge as perfect as a photograph.

  Looking closer, Holliday could see that the jungle was alive, populated with birds, beasts and reptiles, snakes hanging from trees, a jaguar half-hidden by dappled shadows and perfectly in proportion, a line of tiny black human figures winding along the middle hill, wicker baskets balanced on their heads and shoulders as they walked down the hill and delivered their load onto strangely shaped dugouts waiting on the river. It was a masterpiece and a perfect dreamscape for the sleeping knight in the center of the tomb, beautiful enough to last him for eternity.

  “It’s magnificent,” said Holliday. “Who painted it, I wonder?”

  “It was almost certainly Roche-Guillaume himself,” said Rafi. “The painting is in much the same style as the sketches he made of his other travels.”

  “He painted the inside of his own mausoleum?” Peggy said, frowning. “That’s a bit icky, don’t you think?”

  “From what I can tell he probably lived here,” said Rafi. “The mausoleum is in the same style as the Coptic monasteries around the lake, so presumably he paid local builders and quarrymen to put it up, building it to his design. The same holds true for the sarcophagus; it’s a European tradition reserved for emperors. Most burials here are much simpler affairs-a mummified body is stacked with dozens or hundreds in a church crypt or a cave. Roche-Guillaume clearly designed the sarcophagus and may even have overseen its construction.”

  “And the interment?” Holliday asked.

  “Bought and paid for. Most likely a hired priest from the monastery at Tana Kirkos, the big island I pointed out to you on the way here.”

  “Once again, ick,” said Peggy. “Paying that much attention to your own death. It’s just a little bit obsessive-compulsive, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Holliday, looking at the mural. “He visualized paradise and made sure he’d spend eternity right in the middle of it.”

  “The mural’s no vision,” said Rafi. “It’s a real place. Ten degrees, twenty-eight minutes, thirty-six seconds north by twenty-three degrees, seventeen minutes, forty-eight seconds east, to be precise. The exact location of King Solomon’s Mines.”

  “You’ve been there?” Holliday asked skeptically. “Maybe Roche-Guillaume went looking, but this isn’t done from life,” he said. “It’s a dream, Rafi. He smoked too much local weed, which I understand Ethiopia is famous for. It’s like Coleridge and the Ancient Mariner-a drugged-out fantasy.”

  “How do you explain the diamond?”

  “He bought it from someone who thought it was worthless. It was a souvenir, like one of those pennants that says, ‘Come to Cleveland,’ on it.”

  “Look,” said Rafi, gesturing to Holliday, then stepping over to the wall. He dug into his pocket, took out his Swiss army knife and pulled out the large blade. He began digging into the plaster at a point where the side and front walls of the little mausoleum joined. The plaster was at least half an inch thick and it took a little time but eventually he removed a two-by-two-inch square. He stepped aside and let the weak sunlight play on the exposed surface.

  It glittered.

  “What the hell?” Holliday said, stepping closer. Instead of the brown basalt stone he’d expected, the little patch was a rich, buttery yellow. He reached out and touched it with the pad of his index finger. “That’s crazy,” he whispered.

  “No,” replied Rafi. “That’s gold. Ninety-nine nine pure. I had a few slivers assayed in Jerusalem. All four walls, the ceiling and the floor. This whole place is lined with solid gold almost an inch thick.”

  “Where on earth was it smelted?” Holliday asked. “He didn’t bring sheets of it out of the jungle.”

  “It’s in two-by-eight panels, heated and welded together. I found a slab of basalt that was used as the form for pouring the sheets buried in the jungle just beyond the clearing.”

  “And he kept all this secret?”

  “Apparently.”

  “This is an incredible find, Rafi. Why haven’t you said anything or published?”

  “The country has been on the verge of another civil war for years. Unstable isn’t the word. The Ethiopian government isn’t big on protecting its cultural heritage and it’s as corrupt as most bureaucracies. If word of this got out the place would be overrun and gutted within days if not hours. At the very least it would be turned into a tourist trap. As a site for serious archaeological work it would be ruined. I can’t say anything, not yet anyway.” He paused. “And there’s more.”

  “More?” Holliday said, dumbfounded.

  “How’s your Latin?”

  “Still passable,” answered Holliday.

  “Read the inscription on the sarcophagus.”

  “What inscription?”

  “Just under the overhang of the lid,” said Rafi. For the first time Holliday saw the stone-carved ribbon of writing that ran around the immense stone coffin. He translated as he went along.

  “ ‘ My past is my shield, my’. . uh, cruces, ‘cross is my future. Here lies, in the site of their gods, all that remains of the knight Guillaume and the’. . servus, what the hell is servus?”

  “Slave, I think,” said Rafi.

  “ ‘Slave and Great Discoverer, Abdul al-Rahman. Requiescant in pace in aeterno. May they rest in peace for all eternity.”

  “Al-Rahman’s bones are buried in the same coffin?”

  “Either that or the mausoleum was built on the previous site of al-Rahman’s grave.”

  “ ‘ My past is my shield, my cross is my future….’ What’s that supposed to mean?” Holliday asked.

  “I didn’t get it at first either,” said Rafi.

  “Get what?” Holliday said.

  “Press down hard on the cross on his shield,” instructed Rafi.

  Holliday leaned over the stone effigy of the knight and pressed down on the center of the black basalt-inlaid cross in the center of his shield. Nothing happened.

  “A little harder,” said Rafi.

  Holliday did as he was told. There was a grating sound, and then Rafi pulled out a tongue of stone that had eased out from the side of the sarcophagus. It was a stone drawer, released by some mechanism within the massive coffin. Inside the drawer was what appeared to be a book bound in leather. With the delicate touch of an archaeologist, Rafi lifted the volume up and laid it on the stone effigy. Slowly and with extreme care, he slipped a leather thong through the cover, which turned out to be a strap keeping the volume tightly shut.

  He carefully unfolded a series of thick papyrus pages like an accordion, spreading them out over the top of the sarcophagus. Holliday leaned over it. The pages were covered with line after line of text, the letters so small they were barely readable. Interspersed with the text were simple black-and-white ink drawings.

  “It’s Latin and French, side by side,” he said. “What is it?”

  “I call it the Templar Codex,” said Rafi. “From what I can tell Roche-Guillaume translated al-Rahman’s description of finding the mines and the eventual trip back to civilization.” The archaeologist pointed to a tiny illustration. As small as it was it was instantly recognizable-a Viking ship in flames, empty except for a funeral pyre and a body. “At a guess I’d say this relates to the death of our friend Ragnar Skull Splitter.” Rafi pause
d, clearly moved as he stared down at the seven-hundred-year old manuscript. “As I said, Roche-Guillaume was a historian. He wanted his own and al-Rahman’s stories to survive; and they did.”

  “People would pay millions for this, wouldn’t they?” Peggy said.

  “Easily.” Rafi nodded. “The manuscript is priceless, let alone what it reveals.”

  Holliday looked up from the pages and shook his head. “No, much more than just that. People would kill for this book.”

  “It belongs in a museum; the question is, How do I get it there?” Rafi said.

  “What’s the border situation?”

  “It varies. Kenya, the guards are all stoned on Khat and it could go either way; Eritrea is men with guns. Sudan, sometimes it’s a bunch of goats; sometimes it’s a full-scale military crossing. Somalia-don’t even think about it.”

  “Too risky to smuggle it out, then.”

  “So what do we do?” Peggy asked.

  “I want to at least get a photographic record of it,” said Rafi.

  “That’s easy enough,” said Peggy, lifting the big Nikon. “But what do we do after that?”

  “Put it back where we found it for the time being,” said Rafi. “Show the pictures to some museums, see if I can get one of them to back a proper expedition.”

  “Where’s the nearest border crossing into the Sudan?”

  “Metemma,” said Rafi. “Then Al Qadarif and Khartoum.”

  “Then that’s how we go,” said Holliday. “Photograph the codex and everything else, put it all onto a memory stick and change the chip in your camera. If some nosey parker wants to see your vacation snaps, we’ll show him a lot of goats and smiling kids. I’ll carry the memory stick and the chip, Peggy plays photographer and we keep Rafi innocent as a lamb.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Peggy snorted. “Considering who got us into this mess.”

  “Sorry,” said Rafi. “I didn’t really think; I just wanted both of you to see this place and the codex.”

  “Spilt milk and all that,” said Holliday briskly. “Let’s get the pictures taken and then let’s get the hell out of here.”