Blake was a genial man, he's been described by witnesses as relaxed, friendly. But by children as, spooky. Right now, he spooked the boy Rory when he asked him in a gentle voice, "can you describe this woman again, hm, Rory?"
"She was beautiful," he stammered, "she was bad."
"Bad?"
"Yes, like my aunt Lucy."
The boy's fingers went to his pimples. His mother explained that Aunt Lucy was her elder sister in the army. Blake got the picture.
"This woman, you say she killed two men who had guns, and she killed them with bare hands?"
"Yes."
“And she took the bodies away in your mother’s car?”
“No, the other man did.”
“The other man?”
“He shot the men with a long gun.”
Blake left the folks with their son. The neighbors heard nothing, which means the guns involved had silencers. Blake would have agreed, just like some of the neighbors thought, that the boy made his story up. But there was blood on the street, right near the spot where the red Ford had been. There were tire tracks as well, yards away by the intersection.
There was chatter on the radio when he got into his car. It was about a Plymouth and some chase on the highway. There was another chase along the road to Shugborough Hall too. That was freshest because, according to the radio, there were bodies on the highway.
Blake frowned. Who was this mystery woman and where did she come from?
He quickly joined the light traffic off to Shugborough county.
—
5
No calls yet from the kidnappers of Andrew Gilmore. No word from Paul Talbot or the Financier. The jaunt took them past silent houses, breezy fields, a church that sat alone in the middle of a graveyard.
An old geezer raked dead, dry leaves by the church. He was snakes except for baggy trousers and galoshes; his watery eyes followed them as they passed. Further on they encountered no soul, nor houses for another ten minutes.
The team left the road when they heard a car coming from behind them. It was Borodin who heard it first.
“Oh shit, hide!” Miller shouted.
They dove behind a low wall of an old graveyard.
The car left the main road and climbed up the tiny trail to the dirt path. Olivia thought it was odd. Why would the driver leave the main road? Has the team been spotted?
“Lay low, people. We may have been spotted,” Diggs whispered.
Liam said, “it can’t be.”
“This is Britain,” Olivia instructed, “this country invented the mail.”
“You mean the first post office?” asked Anabia.
Olivia glanced at him. Anabia explained that the first post office was in Scotland.
“Yeah,” said Olivia, without much enthusiasm.
The car came presently. They all ducked out of sight except Olivia, who got a glimpse of the face under the broad-rimmed hat and black shades. The man had a grandpa face, not the sort that told old funny stories, but the type that scared kids. A waxen old face.
“Did you see his face?” Miller asked when the car had gone.
“Yeah.”
Miller unrolled a map. Shugborough Hall was just up ahead. But they would have to get off the path they were on and back to the main road. There was a stone house nearby, behind the low wall. Diggs and Borodin went over the fence to check it out. They came back shortly to tell the group the house was empty. But it appears the occupants were not far off.
“Maybe a family on vacation somewhere,” Diggs said.
The five people stalked along the old wall, the shrubs and soft earth cushioned their progress as they scaled the wall and disappeared into the old stone house through the back.
Soon, the sun dropped low in the horizon, and shadows grew. The apartment was a circular one, a small living room in the middle, and two rooms on both sides; Olivia found oatmeal in the fridge and some vegetables. There was beer in the fridge. Liam commandeered it, and the men drank.
There was electricity, but that would draw suspicion. Olivia lit two candles, and by its light, they talked.
“No idea who this Financier is?” Olivia asked Miller.
“No, no one has seen him before, or her.”
“Yeah, could be a woman.”
“That’s the point, he could be anybody,” Miller said.
Diggs stared from across the room, beer in hand, he said, “or he could be nobody.”
“Whoever he is, I know we would be surprised when we finally meet him,” Olivia said.
“So the Templars gold is here, in this town?”
They turned to Borodin. He had asked the question with a beer in his mouth, it had given his voice a drunken quality. Or maybe he was drunk, Olivia worried.
“We think it is,” she said.
There was a sound outside, and they froze.
—
Earlier in the afternoon, detective Blake Camden had ridden his Volkswagen Polo off the road and into a dirt road. He had done this on a hunch that he could not name. He figured though that the woman he was after if she had help, would keep off the main roads.
This woman had left more bodies in the road before the Essex bridge. Men wearing ski masks and heavily armed. Assassins.
They were being identified by the department. Meanwhile, the trail as still hot, and Blake didn’t want to lose it.
If he had looked just left of a particular stone fence, he’d have seen the top of the head of the woman he was after.
He had driven around Shugborough Hall and the county for an hour asked questions in a bar across the street from the Lutheran Church. No one had seen a woman and perhaps a man with her. And no, they hadn’t heard about the killings either.
But one thing was clear to Blake Camden.
This woman was on the run from killers, and she’s in search of something.
If Blake could figure what she wanted, then he’d find her.
—
Each member of the team reached for his gun. Miller crept across the room and put out the candles.
Diggs crawled on the floor towards the back door. Borodin and Liam Murphy took the front door. Olivia felt Miller’s breath coming out of his chest in ragged spells. She recalled the injury he sustained on his cheek on their way in. It had been close. The fact that any of them could die on this adventure was a constant reality.
Diggs hissed from the back door, “stay down, stay low.”
The footsteps stopped.
All hell broke loose. Silenced gunshots bored holes in the walls, the doors, and the windows shattered. Olivia lay flat on the hard floor, her hands over her head, heart beating crazily. The thought that kept screaming in her head was: how the hell did they know we were here?
Things fell and broke. Someone was whimpering beside Olivia on the floor; it was Balthazar. The man had been silent most of the evening. Olivia stretched her hand out and caught the man’s neck in her grip.
“How did they know!?” she asked harshly.
Balthazar sniveled and pushed himself away.
The assault lasted for about two minutes. When it stopped, Olivia crawled towards where she thought the walls might be. Her hands scraped against shards of glass. She got on her feet. Someone grabbed her, “stop!” the person whispered.
It was Miller.
Together, they felt there way towards the backdoor, where they saw an outline of Lawrence Diggs where he crouched by the fridge.
“I counted five guys, “ he said, and Olivia wondered how he managed it in the chaos.
“I think there are three in the front and two in the back, they’re making their entry from the front door. We go out the back, safer that way.”
A penlight appeared in his mouth, and Olivia saw the former CIA agent was bleeding from his hands. Glass cuts, she reasoned.
The others gravitated over to the kitchen.
“Victor and I will take the front. Liam and Anabia on the left and right. Miller, you protect Olivia in the middle.”
&
nbsp; He looked at the faces to make sure each understood his task, “there’s a house twenty meters from this one, we go there and make a stand there. These are professionals, there’s no running from them. We have to make a stand.”
Oh God, this is hot, I can’t believe I’m doing this again after Rome.
Olivia steadied herself. She held her gun between her thighs and bent forward. Diggs held two large guns in both hands. They will be loud, Olivia thought, this will be loud.
And it was.
Two men were standing on both sides of the door. They were dressed like the ones she had encountered in Clapham earlier, ski masks and tactical clothes, the works. And they had guns she had only seen in gun magazines and movies.
Diggs delivered headshots on the two guys.
It was dark outside, Olivia barely saw the ground. Two men appeared from the left side of the house and two more from the right.
“Get down!” Diggs snapped.
Olivia bent even lower, she heard gun blasts, and she knew they were finished, for there was no way they could match the firepower of their attackers.
But somehow she had a moment to see that the men after them fell one after the other on both sides. And it wasn’t because Diggs shot them. As they ran down the trail, Liam was babbling.
“What the hell happened back there? I wasn’t even shooting!”
Borodin said, “I was.”
As they neared the house, Diggs had designated they a man was standing beside the house. He had a gun on his shoulder, it was pointing at them.
Diggs raised his gun and was going to shoot at the man.
“Stop, I’m a friend!” the man said. He stepped out of the shadows, and his face caught the light.
Olivia saw that the man’s rifle had a scope, and he was wearing night vision glasses. He started walking around the house. Olivia saw they had been standing behind the house. They followed the stranger to the other side where there was a porch, white steps lined with flower pots. Like the one they left, this house was empty.
There was a grey colored jaguar parked in the dirt road.
The man got in the driver’s seat. “Get in,” he said.
Miller took the passenger seat, and the rest of the team filed into the back.
“We have to get away from here as fast as we can,” he said, “you were walking into a trap.”
“Who are you?” Miller asked.
“Name’s Bud Chapman,” he stretched his free hand to Miller, “I’m M16.”
Liam Murphy groaned beside Olivia, “oh no.”
They followed the stranger.
Liam Murphy stopped, “where’s Balthazar?”
“Who’s Balthazar?” Bud Chapman asked.
“No one,” said Miller.
—
Detective Blake Camden was back in Shugborough county in the morning again. The police were there before him, he did t like that. He rushed past folks who had come to see what happened to the Upham house.
Blake ducked under the tape and saw police chief Rudolph, his superior, talking with an old woman. The woman was crying and dabbing her eyes with a white napkin.
Chief Rudolph called Blake over.
“This woman here says the house belonged to his uncle Upham, might want to talk with her.”
Blake nodded at the woman.
She launched into a monologue about her inheritance and the lineup on her family tree. Abbreviated, the story was, uncle Upham was on vacation in Sussex with his wife, fishing in some river down there.
“So, who would want to harm your uncle?”
She looked at the house again, “I don’t believe anyone would.”
“Good, go home, ma’am.”
“What?”
“Tell uncle Upham about this only when he gets back,” Blake said as he walked into the house.
It was a mess. Streams of sunlight came in through the bullet holes in the wood. It was a wonder they didn’t find any bodies. He made this comment to the forensic guys dusting for prints.
“Some lucky bastards they must be,” said one of the cops.
“They?”
“Yeah, all this trouble must be for more than one bloke.”
Blake went into the kitchen, thinking it made sense what the cop said. Then he came back out and went out the back. Blake crouched and parted the grass there. He called the cops.
There were prints in the soft black earth.
“Better get these prints before the sun cakes it.”
The cops went to work. Blake followed the trail of the prints. He got to the next house and found more prints, a whole lot more. There were tire tracks in the dirt road there too.
It led out of the county.
Where are you off to now?
—
Bud Chapman was a field officer who had stumbled on chatter in the ether; it seemed to Olivia, for he was not saying much. And he had been sending curious stares her way all morning.
They were in a cottage in a place he called Hixon. Bud said it was used to be a safe house in the years of the cold war. At the time, the area was less populated. It was a comfortable place with a fireplace and a gallery. A church bell clanged outside; it was 6 in the morning.
Miller asked Chapman to tell his story.
"Why did you help us?"
"I have my reasons, but first, let me tell you why you have so many people trying to kill you, people."
This got the attention of everyone.
"You are Shugborough to look for the Templars gold. We've been following a string of happenings for the past weeks in the empire and other places. Artifacts getting stolen and the keepers of the artifacts killed by an assassin."
"But I have been following you," she pointed at Olivia Newton, "longer than that. You were in Rome. M16 sent me over there and I have been following that priest. But he disappeared right after the killings here in England, in Morocco and then in Miami, the artist Gabriel Capaldi."
"Your people knew all of that?" Olivia asked.
"We also know you have a piece of the clue to the Templars gold."
Liam asked, "who the fuck are those guys trying to kill us?"
Chapman smiled, "the Templars gold is worth billions of pounds, you have a bounty on your heads. You'd all be dead the moment you find it. The guys who tried to kill you tonight are a different faction, they are the Templars who protect the treasure."
He looked at Olivia again, "you pissed them off in Rome, real good. They'll keep sending more, and the finest. You haven't met the man who killed the keepers yet. He's the one I came to find, lucky I got here in time."
Olivia sighed in deep thought.
Bud Chapman asked Olivia after a moment, "why do you want the treasure?"
"They took my brother, I need the Templars gold to get him back."
"I'm sorry about your brother."
Olivia nodded.
"But I have to tell you the Templars will not let you find the gold —if for a second it does exist."
Olivia grimaced, "wait, are you telling us the treasure doesn't even exist?"
"No one knows for sure, not even the Templars—"
"It doesn't make sense," Anabia Nassif cut in, "why would they go through all of these troubles to stop us if the gold doesn't exist in the first place?"
"The Templars protect the belief, the tradition of the Templars Gold. Your actions in Rome when you went after the Holy Grail, was an affront to them. They want revenge on you. You woke the world to the possibility that the mystery is nothing but air. Let me ask you, did you find the Holy Grail?"
Olivia took a moment to answer. Flashes of Andrew Gilmore's face appeared before her eyes. The priest who turned out to be her blood. She recalled telling her mother about Andrew, and the holiday in Connecticut, along the creeks, she and Andrew catching up on life spent from each other. She swallowed the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes.
"No."
Bud Chapman stared at Olivia for a full half a minute. Then he smirked.
>
"Of course, it doesn't exist anymore, now does it?"
Anabia Nassif roused himself from where he sat in the corner.
"Excuse me, Mr. Chapman, you are saying the Templars would kill us just to keep the mystery going?"
"That's what happening exactly."
"I find that preposterous."
"Your feelings change nothing, Mr. Nassif," the M16 agent said, "this counteraction by the Templars achieves exactly what they want, a continuous belief in the myth, and the fascination for the mystery."
Anabia shook his head and dropped back in his chair.
"Now we must assume the gold exists, or why else did the abductors of your brother ask for it in exchange for your brother?" said Bud Chapman.
Liam smiled, "it circles back around, doesn't it?"
Olivia nodded.
Miller said, "if we find it, we take it, yet we leave with no responsibility for it and to anyone —because it is supposed to be non-existent. Either way, we win, if we don't get killed."
"Interesting," Bud said.
"What I don't know," said Olivia, "is what M16 gets from this."
"We get to catch a ruthless killer implicated in more 10 killings of agents in 6 countries. Now let me tell you one more thing: M16 is Her Majesty's watchman. The watchman makes sure every Nonpareil is kept safe. As long as it originates here in the kingdom. The Templars Gold is a Nonpareil. It belongs to the queen."
Miller's mouth dropped open.
"Horse shit!" he said coolly, "fuck the queen very much, Mr. Bud."
"You are Americans, I do not expect you to understand. But I must assure you beforehand that our agency is in support of your cause. We'd love to see the Templars gold kept more securely if you find it. And when that time arrives, I would be there to make sure you were protected from men like those yesterday."
Olivia rose, "thank you, Mr. Bud, we are much obliged."
He nodded.
—
Olivia spread the painting on a table that Bud Chapman provided. A low energy bulb provided illumination. A small laptop was beside the painting. Bud showed the team photos of the other artifacts. And the faces of their keepers.
Olivia saw for the first time the faces of murdered guys who were once like her, keepers of powerful clues to one of the world's most valued objects.
Gold of the Knights Templar Page 9