The Templar Legion t-5

by Paul Christopher

  “How unfortunate,” said Saint-Sylvestre. “Did Mr. Euhler say when he was coming for you?”

  “Three,” said Betty Brocklebank promptly. She suddenly made a startled little sound. “Good Lord, look at the time. I’ll have to start getting us ready.” There was a brief pause. “He did say a limousine,” said the Brocklebank sister firmly.

  “Of course,” answered Saint-Sylvestre. “Not a problem at all, Miss Brocklebank. Until three, then.”

  “Until three,” she answered. “Good-bye, Herr Gesler.”

  He hung up the phone and thought for a moment, then dialed the concierge desk in the main lobby.

  “Two questions,” he asked when the female concierge answered. “Can you tell me where the Rosewood Hotel Georgia is located, and where can I order a limousine on short notice?”

  The Rosewood Hotel Georgia turned out to be within easy walking distance, only a few blocks away from his own hotel. After ordering a limousine from a local service, Saint-Sylvestre walked up Burrard Street and turned right onto Georgia Street. The sun was shining and to the north a wall of mountains stood crisply against a bright blue sky.

  For the most part Vancouver seemed to be a very young city; none of the buildings the policeman saw were more than a hundred years old, and except for something that looked like a half-scale version of the British Museum that turned out to be the Vancouver Art Gallery, even though it was called the Courthouse, glass and steel seemed to be the order of the day.

  The Rosewood Hotel Georgia was an older twelve-story building at the corner of Georgia and Howe streets, its bricks freshly acid-washed and a doorman under the canopy of the main entrance. The lobby, all reds and golds and deep browns, had that freshly renovated look that was a little at odds with the somewhat old-fashioned 1920s exterior. Saint-Sylvestre wasn’t even slightly interested.

  He rode the elevator alone up to the eleventh floor and found 1124. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out the same surgical gloves he’d used in Euhler’s apartment and slipped them on. He knocked and then took half a step to the left. There was a moment of silence and then a muffled voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Fax, Mr. Euhler.” Room service could be denied and housekeeping refused, but a fax would almost certainly open the door.

  Calling him Euhler was a risk, but a calculated one. Betty Brocklebank had given him the room number, but if she’d called back for some reason asking for a Mr. Euhler and the man wasn’t registered at the hotel under that name, flags might go up.

  Saint-Sylvestre heard the chain come off and the lock click. He let the steak knife from breakfast drop down into his right palm as the door opened, and moved forward, concentrating all his attention on the man’s diaphragm.

  There was no hesitation; with the knife’s serrated edge turned upward, Saint-Sylvestre drove the steak knife into the man’s body with all his strength, penetrating flesh just below the xiphoid process, where the ribs joined the sternum. The stainless-steel blade plunged into the right ventricle and straight up through the pulmonary artery and the aorta, virtually slicing the organ in half.

  The policeman pushed forward into the short hallway, kicking the door shut behind him. Saint-Sylvestre saw the first blood begin to gush from the man’s mouth and nose as five and a half liters of fluid began to flood into his chest cavity, and he pushed forward one last time before taking a step back and simultaneously releasing his grip on the knife.

  The man fell backward and Saint-Silvestre moved away quickly, making sure the door was completely closed. He turned the lock and put on the chain before turning back to his victim. There hadn’t been a sound except for the man hitting the beige broadloom carpeting when he dropped dead. A check in the hallway mirror confirmed that Saint-Sylvestre hadn’t gotten a spot of blood on him except for the fingers of the right surgical glove.

  He knelt on one knee, wiping the blood off on the carpet but leaving the glove on for the moment.

  The body was lying at a slight angle, halfway into the room proper with its legs in the hallway. The man was tall, gray-haired and had what used to be called a military mustache. He was wearing a white shirt, the front of which was now covered in blood, pin-striped suit pants and highly polished, expensive-looking lace-up shoes. He wore a signet ring with a powder horn dangling from a rosette and encircled by the Latin motto Celer et audax-The swift and the bold. If memory served, once upon a time the man he’d just killed had been an officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

  There was nothing else of interest on the corpse and Saint-Sylvestre doubted the man was the type to keep his wallet in his rear pants pocket, so he didn’t bother rolling him over. Instead he stepped over the dead man and entered the hotel room proper.

  The room was much smaller than Saint-Sylvestre’s suite at the Hotel Vancouver but with the same beige-and-chocolate color scheme. There was a closed suitcase on a rack at the end of the bed, and an attache sitting open on a small desk under the room’s single window. The suit jacket matching the dead body’s trousers was hanging over the back of the chair that stood in front of the desk.

  He checked the inner pockets of the suit jacket. There was a Coach billfold in the left pocket and a BlackBerry Torch smartphone in the right. The wallet was full of British identification in the name of Allen Faulkener, including a driver’s license, a firearms certificate from the Home Office allowing Faulkener to own and carry a Heckler amp; Koch P30 nine-millimeter/.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and a Matheson Resource Industries biometric key card.

  He kept the wallet, sliding it into his own jacket pocket, and took the smartphone as well; there was no point in making it easier for the inevitable police detectives who would be called in to investigate this Faulkener man’s murder to identify the body.

  Saint-Sylvestre turned to the attache case. A fat, blue-backed copy of the proxy agreements for the Brocklebank sisters’ shares in Silver Brand Mining and a maroon European Union/United Kingdom passport for Allen Faulkener. Nothing else. The attache case smelled brand-new. There was no ticket stub or boarding pass, which confirmed Saint-Sylvestre’s assumption that Faulkener had flown into Vancouver on a private jet. The Immigration Canada stamp in Faulkener’s passport was dated yesterday. Somehow he’d found out about Euhler’s death within hours.

  It was enough to give the policeman pause. In Kukuanaland he could instill fear with a look and held almost as much sway with Kolingba as Oliver Gash, but this was Matheson’s world, and it occurred to Saint-Sylvestre that perhaps he was biting off more than he could chew. By the same token, at least for the moment Matheson was unaware of his existence, and sometimes invisibility was the most powerful weapon of all.

  Saint-Sylvestre dropped the wallet, smartphone and passport into the attache case, then went to the end of the bed and gave the suitcase a quick once-over. There were two things of potential use: one was a silk green-red-and-black Rifles regimental tie and the other was the nine-millimeter H amp;K semiautomatic in a nice, molded leather Bianchi paddle holster. He took the weapon out of the suitcase, checked to see that the magazine was loaded, snapped the magazine back in place. It was certainly a step up from a steak knife, but dangerous if he was caught with it. Canadian gun laws were even tighter and more controlled than those of the Brits, and that was saying something. He went back to the attache case, dumped the gun and the tie into it along with the rest of his booty, then closed it up without locking it by spinning the combination locks.

  Taking the case, he went back to the body, knelt down and slipped the signet ring off the index finger of the right hand and then put it on his own finger; a little loose but it wouldn’t fall off. He stood and looked around one last time. Nothing out of place except a body on the floor. He stepped over Allen Faulkener’s corpse and went down the short hallway to the hotel room door.

  Saint-Sylvestre set the lock, unhooked the Do Not Disturb sign from the knob, then opened the door and stepped into the main hall. It was empty. He closed the door, listening a
s the lock clicked, hung the sign and peeled off the surgical gloves, shoving them into the hip pocket of his trousers. Ninety seconds later he stepped into the empty elevator and rode down to the lobby. Thirty seconds after that he stepped through the main door of the hotel and back into the sunlight.

  Invisible.

  24

  They had been marching through the jungle for most of the day, and now the sun was dropping low, the light filtering down on the broad trail going from dappled greens to copper and gold. The monkeys screeched their complaints and every now and again flights of angry egrets flew up squawking from patches of wetland as they passed by.

  The trail moved almost due west, roughly following the line of the river, which they could sometimes catch glimpses of in the distance to the south. According to Limbani the trail was all that remained of an elephant walk, a migratory pathway that had not been used for decades or perhaps even longer.

  They reached the head of a narrow valley between two low, jungle-shrouded hills and Limbani raised a hand and stopped. Holliday looked back over his shoulder and saw that all of the paler warriors had stopped on his signal as well. Directly behind him Peggy looked as though she were about to speak but Holliday shook his head. He heard a sharp whistle from somewhere well ahead and Limbani visibly relaxed.

  “The point men will check out the way ahead,” Limbani said.

  Holliday smiled at the exotically dressed man using such a modern military term for his forward scouts. Limbani raised his fist into the air and Holliday watched as the pale warriors stood at ease along the trail behind them.

  “We can rest here for a few moments,” Limbani murmured quietly. He squatted down under a high-crowned tree covered with thin, waxy leaves and heavy with a blue, pear-shaped fruit.

  “They look like Japanese eggplants,” said Peggy, dropping onto the ground beneath the tree.

  “Dacryodes edulis,” said Limbani, smiling. “Sometimes called safou, African pear or the bush butter tree.”

  “Edible?” Rafi asked.

  “Very. Pick one,” said Limbani. “The bluish color means they’re ripe. They taste like slightly acidic plums, if you’re looking for a comparison.” He shook his head. “Kolingba could have employed thousands of people to work plantations of these trees. The fruit is excellent both raw and cooked, the oil content of the fruit is higher than virtually any other organic species and if planted properly it could outdo sunflower oil as a crop. Even the wood is salable: an excellent substitute for mahogany and much more sustainable.” Rafi stood, stretching his arms up to pluck the dangling fruit from the lowest branches.

  Limbani suddenly winced and clutched his side as though he had a cramp. The spasm passed and the tension seemed to ease as his pain receded. It occurred to Holliday that Limbani must be in his late sixties by now and he’d been setting a much younger man’s pace as they trekked through the jungle to their destination, wherever that was.

  “Much farther?” Holliday asked.

  “Another day.” Limbani pointed at the hills ahead of them. “They are called the Crocodile’s Eyes. We will camp on the right eye tonight,” the older man said. Holliday let his own eyes go out of focus and he could see the similarity-two low humps rising above the surface of the river. Limbani spoke again. “As well as being a convenient place both to camp and to make an ambush, the Eyes mark the eastward limits of the territory of my people, the Umufo omhloshana. Isikaya indawo.”

  Holliday glanced at Eddie and the Cuban gave him the translation.

  “The home place,” he said. “The place of our fathers, okay?”

  Rafi had picked enough fruit for all of them and handed them around. Holliday took a bite. Limbani was right-it tasted like a combination of a plum and a pear. Juicy, too. He took another bite, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

  “You still haven’t told me how you knew our names,” said Holliday.

  “You saw the mask,” said Limbani with a wistful little smile. “Perhaps I am a griot-a witch doctor.”

  Peggy let out a dry laugh. “A witch doctor with a degree in tropical diseases from the Universite de Paris. That’s one well-educated witch doctor.”

  “So you know something about Amobe Limbani,” said the black man, a glimmer of humor in his tired old eyes. “What do you think you know from what you have seen of him?”

  “I think he’s really good at changing the subject,” said Rafi, biting into his fruit. “Why don’t you answer Doc’s question?”

  “Doc?” Limbani said quizzically. “You are also a doctor, then? You move very much like a trained soldier.”

  “You’re doing it again,” said Holliday, laughing.

  “Doing what?” Limbani said, eyes wide and innocent.

  “Changing the subject,” said Peggy.

  “What was the question?”

  “You know what the question was,” said Holliday. “How did you know who we were?”

  “That question? The answer to that question is very simple.” Limbani shrugged. “I had a spy.”

  “Who?” Holliday asked.

  “Think about it for a moment,” said Limbani. “It will come to you.”

  It was a basic lesson he’d taught to his lieutenants in his days at West Point; sometimes you got so involved with the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute tactics of a focused situation you lost sight of the overall strategy, the big picture that was going to win you the battle or even the war.

  Ever since they’d landed at Umm Rawq the big picture had faded into the background as they dodged bullets and blowguns downriver. When he actually gave himself a moment to think about it, the identity of Limbani’s spy was pretty obvious.

  “Mutwakil Osman,” said Holliday. “He’s your spy.”

  “The floatplane guy?” Peggy said.

  “The floatplane guy.” Holliday nodded.

  “Quite right,” said Limbani. “He has been friend to the Umufo omhloshana since he first began flying upriver. A firm believer in leaving people alone, of letting them make their own destinies. He has brought medicine to us and some other necessities from time to time, but most important, he gives us an eye on what is going in the outside world that could impact us.”

  “Things like Archibald Ives.”

  “Precisely,” said Limbani with a sigh. “A mineral engineer and prospector on this land could very well signal the end of these people, the end of everything here.”

  “That may have started already,” said Holliday. “In case you aren’t already aware of it, Ives has been murdered and Sir James Matheson is interested in the land here. He owns one of the biggest resource development companies in the world.”

  “I know who he is,” said Limbani.

  “He’s also interested in us,” said Rafi. “He’s become aware that we were interested in the area as well, but for different reasons.”

  “I know your reasons, too,” said Limbani, sighing again and looking every inch the old man that he was. “King Solomon’s Mines, the queen of Sheba, perhaps even Mansa Musa and Timbuktu. A great Technicolor fantasy of history that belongs with George Lucas and Indiana Jones. Cowboy science.”

  Holliday waited for Rafi’s usual short-tempered answer to critics of his slightly more narrative and intuitive attitude toward archaeology but Rafi was remarkably polite.

  “I assure you, Doctor, it’s less about the mines and the legends than it is about the extraordinary people who followed those old stories. A tomb in Ethiopia led us here, not some ‘Secrets of the Rosetta Stone’ tract they give away for free on the Internet. The tomb was that of a Templar Knight named Julian de la Roche-Guillaume who searched for something that a Viking had searched for five hundred years before and which a Roman legionnaire had died for a thousand years before that. The stories and the legends get told and told again for a thousand years or two, but there’s always a little truth left, just enough truth sometimes for the dreamers to believe in. Heinrich Schliemann read Homer, another dreamer, and found Troy.” Rafi sho
ok his head firmly. “I’m far more interested in the dreamers than the dream, Dr. Limbani.”

  Limbani gave him a slightly skeptical look, then shrugged. “A very nice little speech,” said the older man. “How often have you recited it?”

  “Once, to you.”

  Limbani scrutinized the young archaeologist for a long moment, then spoke. “If that is true, Dr. Wanounou, then you are in for a great surprise when we reach our destination, a very great surprise indeed.”

  The Brocklebank property was enormous, hidden behind a gated ten-foot-high stone wall and sitting on at least five acres of gardens. The house itself was a massive combination Tudor and Arts and Crafts-style brick-and-plank mansion with twelve thousand feet of living space, eleven bathrooms, three kitchens, sixteen bedrooms, eight of which had their own wood-burning fireplace, and one hundred and sixteen leaded-glass windows, some with colored panes and some without.

  As the limousine drove through the gates and up the drive after being buzzed in, Saint-Sylvestre was astounded to see how well the gardens had been tended. Either the Brocklebank ladies had an army of gardeners or they were obsessively compulsive about flowering plants.

  The limousine went down the long drive and pulled up in front of the covered entranceway. Saint-Sylvestre leaned forward and spoke over the seat to the uniformed driver. “Wait here; I doubt if I’ll be more than twenty minutes, tops.”

  “Whatever you say, sir,” said the limo driver.

  Saint-Sylvestre grabbed the attache case, stepped out of the limo, went up the flagstone steps of the covered entranceway and rang the doorbell. Inside he could faintly hear the echoing sound of Big Ben. A full minute later he heard the clicking of heels and the door opened. The old woman who stood there looked shocked and surprised at seeing the color of Gesler’s skin, but she recovered swiftly. A woman born in times when people of Saint-Silvestre’s skin color came to the back door, not the front.