The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  The man standing beside her was dressed in the uniform of a senior officer in the wartime German Wehrmacht. He, too, was looking directly at the camera. His visor hat was pushed well back from his forehead, revealing a widow’s peak of pale-coloured hair, suggesting that the photograph had been taken whilst he was nominally off duty. The logo, in English, read: ‘Wartime Luftwaffe test pilot Inge von Hartelius and her husband, Johannes, posing in front of the Messerschmitt 262A in which she first broke the sound barrier.’

  Hart’s hand rode automatically to his hairline and touched his own widow’s peak. It was an entirely pointless gesture. The evidence was laid out in front of him. He and the Wehrmacht officer might have been identical twins.

  FIFTEEN

  Hart was barely aware of the funeral service. It was at the old woman’s insistence that he had finally agreed that she and her daughter might contact the local priest and arrange for a Mass, following her repeated assurances that his father was, on paper at least, still a Catholic. He also gave her permission to invite along any of his father’s friends who might care to swell the congregation. Nobody turned up. It was at this point that the old woman had tried to persuade Hart to consent to a novenario, which she explained was a sequence of nine daily memorial services that traditionally followed the inhumation, and which were crucial to the safe and speedy arrival of the defunct in heaven.

  Hart had thrown up his hands in horror. ‘This is absurd. I believe in God, not in what people have made of him. I’m not going to sit in a strange church for nine days, all alone, mourning a man I’ve never met via a series of rites I don’t believe in. It simply doesn’t…’ he had hesitated, fearful of alienating his only ally in Guatemala even further … ‘punch my ticket.’

  Hart had privately convinced himself by now that his father had been assassinated by rogue elements of the local Catholic Church, incensed at his choice of a pseudonym that implied the Pope be shafted. Who else would mimic the crucifixion to the extent, even, of mirroring the spear thrust in Jesus’s side, midway between the fourth and the fifth ribs? Failing that, maybe someone had uncovered the fact that his father was originally German and had taken revenge on him for some alleged atrocity his grandfather had committed during the war?

  That idea was so far-fetched that Hart discarded it out of hand. His grandfather had been Wehrmacht, not SS – that much was clear from the photograph. And people didn’t revenge themselves on the children of people who behaved badly towards them but on the people themselves. And anyway, the American continent was stuffed full of the descendants of former Nazis. The place would have become a bloodbath long ago. No. Here in Latin America people were killed because of drugs, money, religion, politics or sex. Nothing else counted. And certainly not the Second World War, which had avoided the place entirely.

  Hart was gradually coming to terms with the fact that he would probably never find out who killed his father, and that all he would derive from the whole benighted trip was that he wasn’t quite the half-English, half-American straight-down-the-liner he had thought he was – in fact, he wasn’t American at all. He wondered if his mother had known about his father’s German background when she married him? He decided probably not, as his mother was an honest being and would undoubtedly have told him. Now, given her condition, he would never know for sure.

  Hartelius? Johannes and Inge von Hartelius? The names made perfect sense, Hart supposed, given his own variation on the theme. Johannes von Hartelius to James Hart to John Hart in three generations. He couldn’t see himself using the von Hartelius name, however, tempting as it might be to style himself as a wannabe German aristocrat in order to wrong-foot some of his more irritating colleagues. He’d been John Hart for nearly forty years now and it suited him. Plus he couldn’t speak German and knew next to nothing about the country and its history. It was odd, though, to realize how much cultural preconceptions dominated one’s life, when, in reality, it was genetic predetermination that probably ruled the roost. The males in the von Hartelius family were clearly prepotent. Peas in a pod. Each one looked like the other regardless of who the mother was. It was one of nature’s object lessons, and it had just reared up and stung him in the eye.

  Hart walked into the hotel bathroom and stared at his face in the mirror. Yes. He could pass as a German at a pinch. But then he could pass as an American, or as an Englishman, or as a Dutchman, or as an Australian as well, if called upon to do so. So what significance beyond the mildly intriguing did his father’s ancestry hold for him? Probably none at all.

  Hart was on his way out to an early dinner when the shakes overwhelmed him. The movements were so convulsive, and so far beyond his ability to control them, that he was forced to sit down on the edge of the pavement or risk collapsing.

  Hart had never experienced anything quite like it. Not even following his first major bombardment in Sarajevo, when he had found himself subject to tremors and half-tremors and soarings and swoopings of the stomach for what had seemed like days, but which were probably only hours. Or even minutes. For normal time seemed to have eluded him in the aftermath of the bombing.

  This time the shaking was largely confined to his hands, arms and upper body. Hart hugged himself as tightly as he was able, but the juddering would not stop. Sweat poured down his face and back, drenching his shirt and trousers. His teeth began chattering, and he was forced to clamp his mouth shut with one dancing hand or risk a splintered tooth.

  Hart wondered for a moment whether he wasn’t having a recurrence of the malaria he had once contracted during the bush war in Sierra Leone, after he had managed to mislay his chloroquine in a spate ditch, but he soon discarded the idea. He was far too war-wise not to recognize the signs of post-traumatic stress. He had seen it in others many times and had pitied them for it, whilst still going on to plunder their images for his camera. Now he, too, was a victim of the syndrome. It was an object lesson in humility.

  Hart hunched forward and tried to overcome the shaking by a process of rationality. The whole thing was hardly surprising, he told himself. A pistol had been aimed – first at his body and then at his head – and two botched shots had been fired. Shots that he had been convinced, in his essential being, would kill him. He had wilfully ignored the after-effects of these and had travelled halfway across the world only to find his father crucified, stark naked, on the wall of his study. What had he expected? That he would be able to soldier on with his life as if nothing had happened?

  Gradually – despite the shaking and juddering that was inhabiting his body – Hart became aware that he was being watched. A woman was staring at him from the far corner of the square. She was sitting on a bench, her legs zigzagged beneath her. When it became clear that he had seen her, she started up from her place and headed towards him. Hart’s fevered imagination came up with a picture of a dog that has been forced to sit for too long and has finally resolved to anticipate its master’s command to come to heel.

  The woman approaching him was around fifty years old, of Maya descent. She did not wear the traditional floor-length huipil, however, and neither did she have a head covering of any sort, but instead she wore a Western-style dress of a black silk material, set off by a black jade necklace of a strange geometrical design, with gold and coral inlays. Her manner of walking, too, was at once elegant and knowing, as if, long ago, she had made a study of its effect and was no longer able or willing to shake off the habits of youth.

  If she had been younger, Hart might have assumed that she was a streetwalker, on the lookout for evening trade – in Central America, the zocalo, or central square, was where such women often approached you. But this lady was no streetwalker. Maybe she had seen him collapse onto the kerb and was concerned for his welfare? But Hart doubted it. There was intent in her walk.

  He rose, meaning to give her the slip, but his legs gave out on him at the halfway point and he lurched backwards onto the kerb in a muddle of arms and legs. He put out a warding hand to slow her down. ‘I’m fine,
Señora. Absolutely fine. I’ve had a little too much to drink, that’s all. I’ll be right as rain in a minute.’ Hart realized that he was babbling to the stranger in English.

  The woman halted two yards from where he sat. She, too, replied in English. ‘You must come with me, Mr Hart. My name is Colel Cimi. There are things you should know about your father. Things that only I can tell you.’

  Her English was American-accented and oddly imprecise, as if she was being forced to act as both speaker and interpreter for want of an assistant. Hart suspected that she had once been fluent in the language but had fallen out of the habit of speaking it. He tried to gauge the expression on her face but failed.

  ‘Why should I come with you? You’re a total stranger to me. And what should I know about my father?’

  Colel Cimi fluttered her hand. A 1972 Lincoln Continental glided towards her from a distant part of the square. The car shone with a combination of Turtle Wax and four decades of elbow grease. The premium-grade whitewalls rumbled over the cobbles. The burnished trim gleamed in the reflection of the streetlamps. The chrome glistened like shot silk.

  ‘And how do you know my real name? Tell me that? How do you know I’m not called Pope? I’ve told no one that here. I’ve just let them make their own assumptions.’ Hart realized that he was sounding petulant and needy, like a fatally compromised man in a street brawl trying to act tough.

  The Lincoln drew up behind Colel Cimi and its driver got out. He was wearing a white Guayabera shirt and a simple pair of dark trousers, not the chauffeur’s uniform, peaked cap and polished boots Hart might have expected given the immaculate condition of the car. He held the rear door open, his expression indicating that he didn’t much care whether Hart got in or not.

  Hart allowed Colel Cimi to help him to his feet. He was shaking like a man with the ague and was thus far too weak, or so he now managed to persuade himself, to effectively resist her ministrations. The truth was that he found her presence – and her offer of unfolding secrets relating to his father’s life – tantalizing.

  Hart sank back onto the rich burgundy leather seats. Despite the twitches and jerks emanating from his central core, Hart’s photographer’s eye noted that the seat covers were not original but had been installed at some later date. As had the leather on the dashboard console and the French polished walnut inlays. Money had been lavished on this car.

  The chauffeur reached across and tucked a blanket, patterned with geometric Maya designs, around Hart’s legs. It, too, was a work of art.

  Hart noted that Colel Cimi did not help tuck him in. Maybe she thinks that what I have is catching, he told himself. Or maybe she lacks the maternal touch? There was something about the woman that was as icy cold and polished as the black jade pendant that she wore around her preternaturally elegant neck.

  The car started out of town. Hart decided that he no longer cared what happened to him. Kidnap? Extortion? Murder? It was all the same in the end.

  His shakes were getting worse. He began to pitch and buck against the seatback as if he were tackling Niagara Falls on a lilo.

  ‘Take one of these, Mr Hart. It will calm you down.’ Colel Cimi inclined towards him. In her hand was a pill and an open bottle of mineral water.

  ‘No, thanks. I never take pills from strange women.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Hart clutched his knees. He began cursing his runaway body. What was wrong with him? Had his system decided to take a nosedive after twenty years of accumulated tension? Or had the shock of his father’s unexpected death finally flipped his off switch for good? He had a sudden image of himself as a drooling, juddering, straitjacketed zombie being forcibly sectioned inside an asylum for bewildered photojournalists.

  ‘I’m okay, you know. Really. It’s probably only a touch of malaria.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d been drinking?’

  ‘I lied. I wanted to put you off. I thought you were playing the Good Samaritan.’

  ‘Hardly that.’ She laughed. ‘Hardly that.’

  The rest of the journey was conducted – apart from the occasional litany of curses from Hart – in silence. By the time they drew up at the back of Colel Cimi’s isolated ranch house, Hart’s shivering was in temporary remission. He staggered out of the car with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. Despite the residual heat of the day, he felt chilled to the bone.

  ‘You have sweated though your clothes, Mr Hart. Would you like to put on something of your father’s? He was about the same size as you.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Ah. “I’d rather not.” I recognize the quote. It is from Herman Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener. One of your father’s favourite stories.’

  Hart stared at her in horror. ‘I never knew my father, Señora Cimi. So I don’t know what he read. I don’t know if he went to the cinema or to the theatre. I don’t know if he preferred dogs to cats. I don’t know if he was gay or straight or bisexual. Preferred classical music or rock and roll. Not to put too fine a point on it, Señora, I know fuck all about my father, and even less about you. You could be the person who killed him for all I know. Or you could be an escaped nutter with a passion for pimpmobiles and for picking up stray gringos on whom you will later conduct grotesque experiments in a bid to give yourself eternal life. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you know about my father and let’s be done with it.’

  Colel Cimi laughed. Behind her the chauffeur rolled his eyes and pretended to clap his hands in polite applause.

  ‘I was your father’s mistress, Mr Hart. If that is the correct word for the condition of a paid concubine. I am certainly not his killer.’

  ‘My father paid you for sex?’

  ‘He bought me this house. Settled a monthly allowance on me. Gave me presents.’ Her hand flicked towards her necklace. ‘So, to all intents and purposes, yes, I was paid for sex. But it was more than that in reality. Much more.’

  ‘Are you telling me you were in love with him?’

  ‘No. How could I have been? He was twenty-five years older than me. He bought me from my father when I was fifteen.’

  ‘Bought you?’

  ‘Came to an understanding. Does that sound better? My family was very poor. And your father wanted a virgin. A person he could shape to his will.’ She motioned Hart to a chair.

  Hart sat down with a thump. He huddled forward in his blanket and stared at the woman in front of him as if she might at any moment burst from behind a curtain in yet another elusive guise. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that the house in Antigua belongs to you as well? That it forms part of some grotesque bride price? And that I’d better not be getting any wrong ideas about inheriting the damned thing? Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘No. The house belongs to you. You are James’s only child. There are laws about such things. It is only proper.’

  ‘You can take it, then. With my compliments. You can add it to your property portfolio. I don’t want charity from a man I never knew. A man who didn’t speak to me for thirty-six years. A man who bought virgins.’

  ‘He loved you, Mr Hart. Your father thought the world of you.’

  That silenced Hart for a moment. He tilted his head to one side like a cat listening for birdsong. ‘He had a very curious way of showing it.’

  ‘Still. He did. He followed your career. Got me to trawl the internet for mentions of your name. Endlessly planned on meeting you.’

  ‘It was one heck of a meeting when he finally pulled it off. I’ll give the old man that.’

  Colel Cimi leant forward, her expression suddenly bereft. ‘I would have come to the funeral. You believe that, don’t you? I would have been there. But I am not liked by the Church. By decent people. Women like me are scorned in Guatemala. This is still a very Catholic country.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one not to attend. The congregation consisted of exactly three people. The woman who cleaned his house, her elderly mother, and me. O
h, and the priest. Who I had to pay sixty dollars for the use of his church, and who was pissed off that I wouldn’t agree to a novenario.’

  Colel Cimi gave another of her laughs. They were curious eruptions that sounded more like coughs than laughter. ‘You and your father were more alike than you think. You were both prepared to pay to get the things that you want.’

  Hart was not in the mood to cut either himself or his hostess any slack. ‘Pay how? With the shakes? With what happened to me out there in the zocalo? Maybe that is payment of a sort, come to think of it.’

  ‘For the shock of your father’s death, you mean?’

  ‘For surviving when I should have died. For using other people’s grief as the fuel for my ambitions as a photojournalist. For the two empty chambers in the gun a complete stranger pointed at me a few days ago in Syria, which should have put paid to me for good. These shakes are probably God tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Straighten up, John Hart. Get a grip.”’

  ‘You believe in God, then, Mr Hart?’

  ‘I know God. I fear God. It’s no longer a question of belief with me. It’s way too extreme for that.’

  ‘You are a lucky man.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m cursed. Because I am utterly incapable of living a good life. God despises me. I despise myself.’

  Colel Cimi got up. ‘You may not have noticed, Mr Hart, but you have an erection. This is a sign that the shaking you have is malarial, and not due to PTSD or shot nerves. That it is simply a reminder of an illness that lurks in your bloodstream, and not a full-blown repeat attack. Trust me, Mr Hart. You must go to bed now. Santiago will show you the way. He will give you quinine and sleeping tablets. Tomorrow, when you are feeling better, we will have our talk.’