The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  ‘Are you saying we’re being followed by just one man?’

  ‘The Captain. Yes.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  ‘I know.’ She hesitated. ‘He want me.’

  ‘You mean he wants to kill you?’

  ‘No. He want me back.’

  Hart stared at her. ‘Is that what this is all about then? Him wanting you?’

  ‘No.’ Lumnije shook her head. ‘I rather die than let him touch me again.’

  They were jogging by this time. Away from the direction the shots had come from.

  The sun was fully risen now, its face above the trees. Hart was sweating. The perspiration was dripping down his back and leaching into his trousers. It was beyond his understanding how Lumnije could keep going after all that had happened to her. Just like the damned boy who had abandoned him at the clearing, she seemed tireless.

  The two of them had been on the run for close on eighteen hours now, with no sleep. Hart could feel himself beginning to hallucinate, humming under his breath to the rhythm of the cameras striking his chest, struggling to keep his eyes open. All he wanted was to curl up somewhere safe. Meanwhile the girl just hustled on, her arms pumping, her head jacked to one side as if she was listening out for something.

  ‘We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to hide up.’

  ‘No. He will find us.’

  ‘He’s not a superman,’ said Hart. ‘I told you that.’

  ‘He’s worse.’

  Hart continued jogging, although it was more a flailing movement by now. The last three days had taken it out of him – the preparation, the walk to the rape house and what happened afterwards. He could feel the familiar tightening in his chest, which the cigarettes usually took care of. But he had no more cigarettes. Hell of a time to go cold turkey.

  He started fantasizing about setting traps for the Captain. Bending back trees, maybe, like they did in Vietnam. He could hardly cut punji sticks, though, with only a three-inch penknife. He cursed himself for venturing out so stupidly unprepared. Talk about an amateur. Hunger was a yawning void in his stomach and they had drunk the remainder of the water hours ago. The empty plastic bottles clattered uselessly against his back. He imagined pouring himself a Coke from a pinch-waisted glass bottle into a tall glass with ice and lemon. It did no good.

  The bullet took him in the small of the back and drove him forward. His body slithered up the track as though propelled by an explosive charge. He lay face down in the dirt but he was conscious. He could hear everything.

  He heard the Captain’s footsteps behind him and felt rather than saw the Captain stoop to look down at him. He felt the Captain’s fingers as they disentangled the cameras from about his neck, ripping out the film to expose it.

  It was then that he heard the cry. She had come back for him. Lumnije had come back for him.

  The Captain dropped the cameras and began to run. Hart could hear the clomp of the Captain’s boots disappearing up the track ahead of him. He was going after Lumnije.

  Hart sat up. Why wasn’t he dead? The Captain had shot him. He felt behind himself. Touched his rucksack. Opened it. Fished out his telephoto lens. The big one. The one he had mortgaged his soul to pay for.

  It was bent and skewed out of shape. The lens was shattered. It had taken the full force of the Captain’s bullet and deflected it somehow away from him.

  Hart stood up. He felt as though someone had struck him between the shoulders with a polo mallet. At full swing. From horseback. He dropped to his knees and teetered, ready to fall. But the Captain was running after Lumnije. He must do something before it was too late.

  He looked to his right. The Captain’s rifle lay on the track like a dead snake. The Captain must have heard Lumnije come back and run straight after her. The man probably had a pistol strapped to his waist. He didn’t need the rifle. And Hart was dead. As far as the Captain was concerned, Hart was dead. You don’t shoot a man in the back only for him to rise up again like the Firebird. Like the bringer of doom. Lumnije had saved his life by coming back. Her return had prevented the Captain from checking inside his rucksack and finding the telephoto lens, putting two and two together.

  Hart grabbed the rifle and shucked off the rucksack. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. The next time, whatever happened, the Captain would kill him. Probably slit his throat.

  Hart started up the track. First at a hobble. Then at a jog.

  SIXTEEN

  The Captain ran. He could hear the patter of the girl’s feet ahead of him. He was catching up. He was still a young man. Fighting fit. Well fed. The girl was wrecked. She would be his shortly. Nothing was beyond him now. He could feel the testosterone surging through his limbs.

  How easy it had been to kill the man. He had seen him flailing through the trees and taken a snap shot. The bastard had rocketed forwards like someone launched out of a cannon. A human cannonball. Later, when he had the girl, he would go back and check for more film in the man’s backpack and expose that too. Bust the data cards. Then he would be safe. Maybe he would even take the man’s ears as a souvenir to prove to the other men back at the camp that he had got him.

  He saw the girl fifty metres ahead of him. The crazy bitch had come back when she heard the shot. Why had she done that? She could have been three or four hundred metres further ahead now. Half a kilometre maybe. Given herself a chance to escape.

  He caught himself laughing. Well, he would have got her anyway. It was inevitable. He could probably sniff her out by this stage. There’d been no water to speak of at the house, just an outside rain bucket. They brought all their drinking water in. Some of the girls were pretty ripe after two weeks of not washing. But his soldiers didn’t seem to care. Fucked them anyway.

  Thirty metres now. He slapped the pistol on his hip. Stupid to have left his rifle behind, but he hadn’t wanted it cluttering him up while he was running. The pistol would do. He didn’t want to actually kill the girl. She’d gotten to him for some reason, probably because she didn’t fear him. Even after nearly three weeks she didn’t fear him. She lay there and let him do what he wanted, but he was unable to break her, unable to get through to her, not to where it counted. Any other girl he would have killed but this one was special. She was Burim Dardan’s daughter – Albanian royalty. And she didn’t frighten. But he bet she was frightened now. Oh yes. Sure enough she was frightened now.

  He caught up with her in a small clearing next to a gorge. He could hear water pissing away below them. In another world, at another time, you might have gone fishing down there for trout, or held a picnic. It was that scenic. But people didn’t do those sorts of things any more. Not in Kosovo. Not with the war on.

  The girl stood looking at him from the centre of the clearing. She was breathing like the bulls you see in those Spanish films with the lances in their backs, thought the Captain. Great, heavy breaths that shake the entire body. As if the body is a lung.

  He drew his pistol, but let the weight of it carry his hand down to his side. ‘Come here, girl.’

  ‘No. You will have to kill me.’

  ‘I won’t have to kill you. I’ll just wound you. In the arm, maybe. Or the upper leg. Just above the knee.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to carry me.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Why won’t you kill me? You’ve killed all the rest.’

  ‘It would be too easy,’ said the Captain. ‘And I am tired of killing.’

  ‘No you’re not. You say that for effect. You killed those people we passed, didn’t you? There must have been ten of them. You killed them all.’

  ‘Them? Oh, they don’t count. Those aren’t people. They’re just numbers. Another ten to add to the tally. I thought you meant real killing. Like your father. Like the Anglez. Killing that counts.’

  The Captain was walking towar
ds her all the time. But Lumnije could not move, not any longer. She thought of her father and her mother, of her brother and the Anglez, of what had happened to her these last few weeks. About the sweetness of escape and the bitterness of being captured again. The Captain must indeed be a superman. Had to be. Everything he did he won at. Everyone who opposed him he beat.

  She summoned up a residue of strength from somewhere deep inside her body and began to edge towards the top of the gorge.

  The Captain quickened his step. ‘Stay where you are.’

  Now Lumnije was running towards the gorge and the Captain was sprinting to cut her off.

  ‘No. Stop.’

  He was levelling his pistol at her.

  She tripped and fell. Right on the edge of the gorge she tripped and fell. She could feel the tears of frustration clouding her eyes. Her body ached and her legs would no longer obey her. She turned onto her front and began to crawl.

  The Captain slowed up. He had her now. She was his.

  Hart appeared at the furthest edge of the clearing. He raised the rifle. His hands were shaking.

  ‘Stop. Don’t move. Drop your pistol.’

  The Captain must surely have been astonished at Hart’s sudden re-emergence from the dead but, if he was, he showed no sign of it. Maybe he didn’t quite believe it? Maybe he didn’t hear Hart call out to him? Maybe he was so concentrated on the girl he had no time for anything else?

  Hart fired a single shot. It wasn’t meant as a warning shot, but it missed the Captain cleanly. It severed the upper branch of a tree ten feet to the man’s right.

  The Captain fired three closely spaced shots at Hart with his pistol, but Hart was way out of range and the shots petered out long before they could do any damage. The Captain continued towards Lumnije. It was clear that he intended to take her alive and use her as a bargaining tool.

  Hart raised the rifle and shot at him again, making due allowance for the rightward drift of the first bullet, just as he’d been taught during Corps practice at Bisley while he was still at school.

  He saw the Captain spin, then disappear over the edge of the hillside towards the river.

  Hart let the rifle drop and sat down. Then he turned onto his side and curled up into a foetal ball.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was nearly midday. Four hours after Hart had shot the Captain.

  ‘He’s still following us,’ said Lumnije. ‘He’s still on our trail.’

  Hart turned towards her, his eyes wide with shock. ‘Impossible. I shot him. You saw me do it. You’re imagining things. You’re seeing ghosts.’

  ‘Look.’ Lumnije pointed far down the valley behind them.

  A solitary figure was making its way along the trail. Even at a distance of nearly a kilometre, it was clear to both of them that the figure was that of the Captain. It was wearing military camouflage and a combat cap. At one point the sun glinted off the pair of dark glasses the Captain had been wearing when they last saw him, brandishing his pistol at the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Jesus Christ. What is the bastard made of? Granite? Do bullets bounce off him?’

  ‘What? Like they bounce off you?’

  ‘My telephoto lens, not me.’ Hart shaded his eyes. ‘Does he have the rifle? Lumnije, does he have the rifle? I know I should have chucked it over the gorge.’ He squinted against the sunlight. ‘My long sight isn’t good. Can you see?’

  ‘No. No. He doesn’t have it. But he is limping. You must have hit him after all.’

  ‘I should have checked he was dead. Gone down after him. I thought he fell into the gorge and we were rid of him.’

  ‘How could you check? The man is invulnerable. Nothing can kill him.’

  Hart made a face. ‘He must have hooked up onto a tree or something.’

  The two of them stared at the approaching figure as if hypnotized.

  ‘He is going to catch us,’ said Lumnije. ‘Nothing can stop him.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’ Hart tried to take Lumnije’s hand but she snatched it away. They both began to run. ‘He is limping,’ said Hart, between breaths. ‘So I must have hit him. Or else he damaged his leg falling. Trying to get away from the rifle. Maybe both. So he’s sure to be losing blood. So we’ll be getting stronger. And he’ll be getting weaker. Don’t you see?’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  They forged ahead in silence for a while. The fright seemed to have galvanized them. They had both forgotten, for the time being at least, just how hungry and thirsty they were.

  ‘Thank you for coming back for me,’ said Hart. ‘I’ve been meaning to say.’

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Then why did you come back?’

  Lumnije flapped one hand at him as if she was batting off a fly. They continued for a while at the half-jog. Both were functioning at the outer edges of their capacities. Close to total exhaustion.

  ‘Why did you come back then?’ Hart repeated. ‘Tell me.’

  Lumnije shook her head. ‘Because I was scared.’

  ‘Scared people don’t return to the lion’s den voluntarily. You knew what he would do to you, and yet still you came back.’

  Lumnije stopped and stared at Hart. Her face was a mask of pain. She said nothing. Only looked at him.

  ‘Your parents?’ he said. ‘And your brother? You didn’t want to lose me too?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Come on.’ He took her hand again and was gratified this time that she didn’t snatch it back. If anyone had asked him, he would not have been able to explain why he felt so pleased. But he suspected that it had something to do with his vision of himself as a fundamentally kind man. A man whom women could trust. Nothing like the monster who was pursuing them.

  ‘We need to break trail. We need to go higher. Where he will have difficulty following us now that he’s limping.’

  ‘We need water. And food. Not detours,’ said Lumnije.

  ‘Water, yes. We can manage without food for a while longer.’

  ‘We could head down for the gorge. There is water down there for sure.’

  ‘No. That would only suit him,’ said Hart. ‘We have to risk going higher. He is injured. It will make it harder for him to follow us. Believe me in this.’

  ‘But there will be no snow melt. Not this time of the year. The streams will be dry.’

  ‘Still.’

  At the first available opportunity they cut upwards onto a deer track. Hart backed down the trail again and did his best to cover their footsteps as he did so. Then he continued further up the main track, making sure to leave a few random boot impressions as he walked. He’d read about doing this somewhere. In a John Buchan novel probably. A hundred yards further on he cut back up through the woods, walking gingerly from stone to stone, trying to leave no trail.

  ‘That will not fool him,’ said Lumnije, when he rejoined her.

  ‘But I had to try.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘You had to try.’

  ‘Are you really only sixteen?’ he said later.

  She didn’t answer.

  Hart looked down at her feet. The shoes she was wearing were coming apart. He looked down at his own. He felt a stab of guilt when he realized how effective his own were in comparison to hers. How intact. But what could he do? His were size elevens. Hers were maybe a size five. You could fit two of her feet into his one. It let him well and truly off the hook.

  ‘Maybe he continued along the trail?’ he said at last. ‘Maybe we tricked him?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. You must know him by now. He will have seen where we went. He will out-think us.’

  ‘We can’t always assume that. It will weaken us to assume that.’

  Lumnije sat down by the side of the deer trail. The movement was so abrupt that Hart nearl
y ran into her. He sat down beside her.

  ‘I need water,’ she said.

  Hart looked around. He closed his eyes and listened. Then he cupped his ears. ‘Maybe up high? Maybe we can find a lake?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  They heard a scrabbling sound far below them. Both stood up.

  ‘Do you think it’s him?’ said Lumnije. ‘That close?’

  ‘It might be a deer. Or a sheep. They probably have wild goats here too. Could be anything.’

  ‘But on the trail behind us? How likely is that?’

  ‘Not very likely.’ The expression on Hart’s face reflected his inner feelings. He was beyond masking anything any more. Beyond prevarication.

  They started up again. It was late afternoon by now, but the day was still warm. ‘He didn’t want to kill you. Why?’ said Hart at last. He was snatching breaths whenever he could, like a man with asthma.

  ‘I told you. He wants me.’

  ‘But the rest – the other girls. What makes you so different from them?’

  Lumnije shrugged. ‘Luck,’ she said. ‘I was having my time of the month when they caught us. The soldiers put me aside for later. Knowing they hadn’t touched me, the Captain took me for his own. He told me later that he was scared of getting a disease.’ After she said it she seemed shocked at her own immodesty. Shocked that she was telling him this. That the obscene could seem so pedestrian. Something, though, held her back from adding that the soldiers’ overriding intention was to see to it that all the Albanian girls got pregnant. That it was a war aim. Designed to damage the enemy psychologically.

  ‘You call that luck?’ Hart said.

  Lumnije laughed. It was the first time she had laughed since Hart met her. She threw back her head and laughed. But there was bitterness in her laugh. Something metallic. As if it was witness to its own reflection. Not intrinsically true.

  By nightfall, the Captain still hadn’t caught them.

  ‘His leg wound. It must be worse than we thought,’ said Lumnije.

  ‘How much further do you think it is to the monastery?’