The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how?’

  Hart hesitated. But what harm could it do? It might even work in his favour. Puncture the man’s morale just that little bit more. ‘Your bullet hit my telephoto lens. The one in my backpack. It shifted the slug away from my body. I felt as if I’d been hit across the back with an iron bar. You lucked out, Captain. Not everyone you kill stays down.’

  The Captain’s eyes turned inwards. ‘Maybe my luck is running out?’ He refocused on Hart again. ‘Your telephoto lens, you say? Makes a change from the Bible, anyway.’ His face broke into its customary grin. But the effect was macabre. Like a piranha fish leering at its prey from below the waterline, its features exaggerated by the water.

  Hart positioned himself over the Captain and pinioned the man’s arms with his legs. He was scared. The man below him was a killer. And a rapist. And a torturer. A man for whom morality played no part. A man who would kill you as soon as look at you. A man for whom the words ‘regret’ and ‘empathy’ did not exist.

  Hart felt under the Captain’s belly and undid his belt. While he did this he held the Captain’s own pistol tight against his ear. Maybe he should let it off by mistake? Who could blame him for firing under these circumstances? Who would ever know? Who would even care? The man’s brains would spatter over the undergrowth and it would all be ended.

  ‘Tempting, isn’t it?’ said the Captain.

  ‘I’m not like you,’ said Hart. ‘I don’t kill on a whim.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said the Captain.

  Hart retrieved the Captain’s belt and used it to tie his hands behind his back. Then he rifled through the Captain’s pockets. No knives. No spare pistols. Nothing useful. Just a carnelian rosary, some American cigarettes and a windproof lighter. Hart pocketed the cigarettes and the lighter. After a brief hesitation he pocketed the rosary too. He didn’t know why.

  When he turned the Captain over, he was forced to look at the man’s face close to. The Captain was smiling. Grinning from ear to ear. Hart lurched sideways so that the Captain would not be able to knee him between the legs. He could imagine the Captain biting a chunk out of his windpipe like an attack dog. Worrying at him despite his ligatured hands.

  In the top pocket of the Captain’s combat outfit he found a pair of flexicuffs.

  The Captain grinned some more when Hart took them out. ‘You know what I use those for?’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘I used them on her, amongst other things. When I wanted to do things to her that caused her to squirm too much. I tied her hands together and locked them round the bed head. Then I could do whatever I wanted to her. Didn’t matter how much she squirmed. I’ve never known a girl to squirm and scream so much. I reckon she secretly enjoyed it, don’t you? Some women do, you know. I tell you, once…’

  Hart stood up. He wanted to start beating the Captain around the head with his own pistol. To batter his head to a pulp. But a single glance at Lumnije’s recumbent body was enough to show him how much he would be needing this man in the coming hours. And, following that, how much he would relish handing him in to the authorities.

  Lumnije was groaning. Hart locked the Captain in his own handcuffs and replaced the man’s belt around his waist. Then he went over to attend to his patient.

  The Captain had heard Lumnije’s groans too, and recognized their significance to him. ‘I’d give her some morphine. Quick. She’s bound to be in pain when she wakes up.’

  ‘What do you care? You’re only looking to cover your back. If she wakes, she’ll kill you. And do you know what? I’ll let her. If she needs morphine, I’ll give it to her in my own time. Life or death? It’s a throw of the dice as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘Isn’t everything?’ said the Captain, grinning.

  TWENTY

  Lumnije had a heavy concussion. Hart realized that much. The pupils of her eyes, when he twitched open her lids, were uneven – one considerably larger than the other. She was bleeding out of one ear. She was breathing maybe forty times a minute. Hart thought that the normal baseline might be half that. Maybe less.

  He let his hands travel over her body. He felt almost guilty as he did so. As though he were betraying her trust in some way. Putting himself on a par with her aggressors.

  ‘Like that, did you?’

  It was the Captain. Hart ignored him.

  On the surface he could see and feel no real damage beyond countless small abrasions and tears. He treated these with swabs, antiseptic and sulphonamide. He tried to remember if he had heard somewhere that one shouldn’t use morphine for head injuries, but he couldn’t remember. His main fear was that he might have missed something in his cursory body check. Something serious. So he gave her the morphine anyway.

  ‘Hey. How about me with the morphine?’ said the Captain. ‘I’ve been shot.’

  ‘I need you,’ Hart said. ‘I need you walking. You are going to carry her.’

  ‘The fuck I am.’

  ‘It’s either that or a shot to the guts. I’ve got no more time to argue with you. You can die alone, by the side of this track, in agony, if that’s what you want. No water. No morphine. Nothing. It’s a more decent fate than you’ve ever offered your victims. Either that or you carry her.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Captain. ‘When you put it like that.’

  ‘I do.’

  The Captain sighed. ‘Why have I begun to believe you all of a sudden?’

  ‘Maybe because what I am saying is true?’

  The Captain tried to crane his head backwards to stare at his wound, but his prone position made that impossible. ‘You know what your best bet would be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To leave us both here and fuck off back home where you belong. You’re intact. Unwounded. A walking miracle. Why throw away your life? My men will find me eventually. And I’ll always think kindly of you.’ The last part was said with heavy irony.

  Hart pulled the Captain to his feet. He looked down at Lumnije. This was impossible. Impossible.

  Hart took off the Captain’s belt again and used it to tie Lumnije’s hands together. Then he hung her across the Captain’s shoulders, with the belt hooked through the man’s battledress pockets, so that her legs trailed behind like the tails of a skirt.

  He slid the pistol into his waistband and took Lumnije’s legs in either hand.

  ‘Now walk. No more talking. Just walk.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Hart imagined the three of them leaving a slug trail behind them. Seen from above they must present a strange picture. What would a circling buzzard make of them, for instance? Some previously unknown creature, perhaps, slithering and stumbling up the slope? The beast with two backs? But there was no way on earth that Hart could carry Lumnije alone. He needed the Captain. Needed a human packhorse.

  It took them the better part of two hours to make their way back to the spot where he and Lumnije had had their falling out. Hart looked back down the defile. How had Lumnije survived the fall? Someone must have been smiling on them both. Or making a mockery of them. Playing the long game.

  As soon as he allowed the ‘smiling’ analogy to enter his head he was tempted to laugh out loud. Smiling on him, maybe. Hardly on Lumnije. He tried to get his head round what she might feel when she woke up and saw their changed situation – the killer of her parents and her brother – her tormentor and rapist – carrying her. But he soon gave up. He would deal with that as and when he came to it.

  At the beginning of their trek the Captain had tried to work on him psychologically. Predictably. To tell him stupid stories. Disgust him. Draw him into his own world view. But soon the Captain was fighting for breath so hard that he no longer had the energy left to talk.

  Hart was grateful for that. The Captain’s stories did work on him. And the worst thing was that he suspected they wer
e all true.

  The Captain, for his part, delighted in disgusting Hart. Testing his parameters. And he paid no mind, at least at first, when Hart told him to shut up. He knew that Hart needed him now, and this knowledge was precious to him. The Captain only had to wait. Hart would have to sleep some time and then the Captain’s moment would come. And he would relish every second of it.

  His wound was bad. Sure. No doubt about that. But not so bad that he could not walk. He felt weak, too. Very weak. But not quite as weak as he made out. The heavy breathing was largely for effect.

  How old was this Anglez, the Captain wondered. Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Probably scared shitless at what had happened to his calm, well-ordered life. The Captain had seen it countless times before. Had used it to his advantage. Ruthlessness has its very own logic. And it was kinder in the long run. Why make people suffer unnecessarily? Just kill them and get it over with. That way you can gather in more victims. Like a soul harvest.

  The Japanese had been masters of it. The Germans too. And the Russians. Races with iron in their guts. Not like the English, with their fuzzy principles and pissant pieties. When did they last have a war on their own territory? The Captain didn’t know. But it was one hell of a long time ago for sure. Yet still they persisted in meddling in other people’s wars. They should keep their snouts out. War hurt. The strong always dominated the weak. War was like a river in spate, washing everything away before it. Best get yourself a raft right at the beginning. Then cling to it like merry fuck and let no one else aboard.

  The Captain hated the Anglez. He realized that now. Hated him with a bitter and resentful hatred. At first he had brushed aside the humiliation of his present condition. Ignored it. But now he knew that if his men came across him like this, with him trussed up, a prisoner, and the Anglez behind him, forcing him to carry the whore like a beast of burden, he would never be able to hold his head up again. Could never hope to control them in the way he had been doing.

  He would have to do something. Anything. And soon. Before he got too weak. Before the blood loss finally got to him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Give me your arm.’ Hart held out his hand.

  ‘What the fuck for?’

  ‘I’m going to inject you with morphine.’

  ‘No you’re fucking not.’

  Hart sighed. ‘If you don’t collaborate I’ll shove the needle in your neck.’

  The Captain looked up at Hart. Maybe the Anglez did have some balls after all? Did have some sense in his head? The morphine would put him to sleep, as it was laced with a strong tranquillizer. The Anglez needed sleep, that much was a certainty. And the only way he could sleep was to be damned certain the Captain was sleeping too. People had been known to work their way out of fibre cuffs before – even chew their way through them if they were desperate enough and were given enough time.

  The Captain proffered his arm. Well. He needed sleep too. And the pain was intense. About as bad as it could get and you not pass out. The Captain had been complaining for the past hour that he could no longer carry the whore. The Anglez had seemed not to be listening. But now he had thought up this little ploy for himself.

  Full on, thought the Captain. The pain was full on. He suddenly knew he would welcome the morphine. There was time. A whole lot of time. He knew where they were going now. And the whore showed no signs of waking up. She’d probably scrambled her brains falling down the hill. What a dumb cunt. To fall down a hill like that. What had she been thinking of? Had she been trying to off herself again? Maybe twenty per cent of the girls in the rape house tried to kill themselves over the course of time. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. But it was fun beating them up and then raping them again afterwards. The Captain had taken quite a liking to it. Him and some of his men. He liked seeing their frightened faces. Making an example of them in front of the other girls. It had become compulsive. Like the killing.

  The more he thought about it, the more he didn’t know what he’d do when the war was over and Serbia was victorious. Maybe hire himself out as a mercenary? That’s what most of the guys did. Once you were bitten by the need for action it was almost impossible to shake it. You had to follow it like you would the leader in some dance. Snaking and reeling behind him. A dance of death.

  The Captain began drifting off. It was good. Maybe the Anglez had slipped him an overdose? Get rid of him that way? The fool clearly couldn’t face murder head on. Didn’t have the balls for it. Few people had.

  It took a special sort of person to kill dispassionately. A person like him.

  The Captain.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Hart had found the rock spring while reconnoitring up the track ahead of them during a rest period. The water seemed clean and fresh. It was this that had given him the idea of doping the Captain.

  Truth to tell, he hadn’t known what to do with the man. As a child he had always fantasized about how easy it would be to kill someone in warfare. He had read trashy mags like any other boy his age, and played soldier games and watched war movies. But when it came down to it, the real thing was a little different. Killing a man in cold blood – even a man who boasted to you of the most bestial of crimes – was another thing entirely. Different from taking a snap shot at them when the odds were against you. A snap shot that just happened to hit its mark.

  But the rock spring changed the dynamic. Changed it totally.

  When he was sure the Captain was out cold – that the tranquillizers had cut in and that the morphine was biting – he dragged the man’s prone body past the rock spring and farther along the track. Way beyond the point where the Captain could possibly hear the water pinkling into the natural basin that housed it behind him. Then he walked back down the track, clearing any sign of their progress with a cut branch. The Captain would wake up and continue on his way. Dehydrated from the morphine. Woozy from the tranqs. Like an automaton. While he and Lumnije would have drunk their fill. Hart knew this. Was counting on it.

  He scooped up the water in his palm and tipped it into Lumnije’s mouth. Then he massaged her throat so that she would swallow. Whenever she gagged, he waited. Then he began again. Only when she had drunk her fill did he drink himself.

  Then he stood up. Next step.

  He would carry Lumnije himself now. He fastened her hands around his neck with the cuffs, and attached her to his waist by the belt. He slipped her legs through his arms, with his thumbs tucked through his own belt for stability. He didn’t trust the Captain. Didn’t believe he could dominate the man all the way to the monastery. And where would he find any UN forces to hand him in to when he got there? No. The man was more trouble than he was worth. That’s why Hart had dosed him with enough morphine to fell a horse. One thing he had to say for the Serb paramilitaries. They came prepared. Their first-aid packs were second to none. They clearly expected to be shot at some point in their careers and wished to survive when it happened. And largely out of pain with it.

  The rehydrating effects of the water soon wore off. Hart went from feeling semi-euphoric to depressed in under thirty minutes. Lumnije groaned louder now. It sounded to him as though she was hallucinating. Yes. That seemed to be it. Her body jerked and thrashed on his back. Maybe she was reliving all that had happened to her? That was the most likely scenario.

  Hart had to stop and rest every five hundred metres. He counted the steps out loud to himself. The last hundred were always the worst. By the end of each section he was mewling with exhaustion. Muttering to himself. Asking himself where he was. What he was doing. Why he was there. Cursing. Cursing his destiny. Then it began all over again.

  The countryside around them was gradually changing. Becoming less mountainous. They’d been on the lower, wooded slopes of a vast granite range for most of their journey. Now, in the far distance, maybe twenty miles away as the crow flies, Hart could make out villages and habitations. Farms. Barns. Churches. Blurred, but defi
nitely there. It was inconceivable that he wouldn’t come across somewhere similar very soon along their trail. And if it was Serb-held, and they refused to offer him food and water, he would hold them up with his pistol. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Christ, but he was angry enough for that now. It was the anger that was carrying him onwards. The anger and the outrage.

  There was something about carrying another human being on your back that profoundly changed your manner of thinking. Because that person was reliant on you for everything. Lumnije seemed real to him, all of a sudden, like nobody else. She was part of him. Her fragile body locked to his by sweat and blood. Symbiotic. Almost related.

  Once he felt her pissing down the backs of his legs. He laughed. This was a good thing, he decided. The spring water must have passed through her kidneys. Flushed her out. He felt like a father with his child.

  Another time he stopped and checked her pupils. The difference in size was lessening. But still he gave her more morphine. He couldn’t afford to have her awake and out of her head on his back. He needed her docile. His to do with as he saw fit.

  Like the Captain, he caught himself thinking. Just like the Captain.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  He sensed the monastery before he saw it. There was something neat about the trail he was following. As if many people had walked it. It was no longer simply a bare mountain trail. It was heading downwards. It was going somewhere. Leading to some precise destination.

  First came the vines, as if bearing witness to incipient civilization. On a south-facing hillside. Heavy with grapes. Cared for and nourished. Nearly ripe for harvest. The fundamental signs of domestication.

  Hart picked his way along the trail, Lumnije tight against his back. He thought of calling out to see if anyone would answer, but decided against it. There might be Serbian soldiers. Guards, protecting the vines. Protecting the crops. For there were apple trees. Cherry trees. Almonds. Walnuts. Quinces. Hanging in clusters all around him. Like the bloody Garden of Eden.