The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  ‘Yes you can,’ said the Captain. ‘In fact you’ll have to. Because I’m not letting you out of my sight from here on in.’

  Biljana eased herself out of the car. She felt in her pockets.

  ‘They’re empty,’ said Captain. ‘I have your purse. And I have your passport. Here.’ He threw her the purse. ‘You can have this back. I don’t take money from widows and orphans. The passport I’m keeping.’

  Biljana stared at the Captain for a moment, looking for more significance in his words. But there was none. She stepped behind the tree. ‘You could at least turn your back.’

  The Captain hesitated. Then he made a curious spitting noise with his mouth and turned his back.

  Biljana started running.

  She had made barely ten yards before the Captain reached her and grabbed her by the hair.

  He yanked her head back and slapped her hard across the face.

  Biljana fell forward onto her knees and started crying. A bus drove past in a clatter of gravel. Biljana could see the faces of the passengers staring blankly at her through the windows. But the bus didn’t stop. It disappeared over the crest of the hill in a cloud of diesel fumes.

  The Captain straight-armed Biljana’s hands behind her back and forced her towards the car.

  ‘I still need to pee.’

  ‘So piss yourself. Do you think I care any more? People who get up to dirty tricks always end up paying for them. That’s life.’

  Biljana snatched one of her hands back from his grasp and turned to face him. ‘What do you want from me? Why are you doing this? Why are you behaving like such a beast?’

  ‘Your mother,’ said the Captain, a half-smile on his face. ‘I want your mother’s silence. It’s as simple as that.’

  Biljana stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. Then she remembered what she had said back at the chess club. About her mother being still alive and in Djibouti. What had she done? How could she have been so stupid? ‘I lied to you back there. I was frightened. My mother’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t give me that.’

  Biljana scrubbed the tears from her eyes. ‘It’s true, though. She committed suicide a month ago. I came out here on my own.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ The Captain rolled the word around his mouth like a boiled sweet. ‘You’re a fifteen-year-old girl. Do you think I was born yesterday?’

  Biljana managed to put the vestige of a sneer into her voice. It was surprisingly easy given the way she was starting to feel about her father. ‘Fifteen-year-olds are considered young adults by the airlines. We can travel wherever we like unaccompanied. I can’t believe you don’t know that.’

  The Captain shook his head as if an insect had unexpectedly settled on it. ‘How did your mother kill herself then? Tell me that. Fast. Don’t stop to think.’

  He listened to Biljana’s explanation, his head cocked to one side like a bird-dog. ‘So. What were you doing living in Macedonia? In a Christian village? You told me you were a Muslim back at the chess club. This makes no sense.’

  Biljana took a step towards him. ‘Majka was only trying to protect me. She knew nobody would ask questions she couldn’t answer in a Christian village. It was the one way she could think of to give me a decent upbringing.’

  The Captain grunted. ‘So she told you all about me? A wet-behind-the-ears teenager like you? I don’t believe you. She’d have tried to protect you from the truth. I know your mother, remember. Better than you think. She was tougher than she looked.’

  ‘Then how did I know where to find you?’ shouted Biljana. ‘How did I know about the monastery? How did I know to search out Maria and ask her where you were? Tell me that.’

  The Captain shrugged. ‘There’s more to this than you’re telling me. You’re smart. But not that smart. You must have had help. It goes without saying.’ The Captain thought for a moment, his brow creased in concentration. ‘So, whatever happens, I’m keeping you. I’m going to give you six hours – until we get beyond the border and find somewhere to spend the night. Then you’re going to tell me everything.’ He squinted into the sun. ‘I’m halfway willing to buy this notion of yours of your mother’s suicide. For the time being, at least. She was that sort of a woman. Selfish enough to off herself on your fifteenth birthday and leave you to fend for yourself.’ He straightened up. ‘But I’m not willing to buy the rest of it. All this crap about you travelling alone. You can forget it. There’s something or someone else behind all this, but I haven’t got the time to find out now.’ He waved his hand. ‘You can climb back into the rear of the car. I’ve got child locks. I don’t fancy you sitting in the front with me any more. You’d probably throw open the passenger door and bounce out and break your neck just to spite me.’ He shook his head. ‘That was a damned stupid thing to do, running away like that. I’m in the Foreign fucking Legion. I jog five days a week. I can outrun you with my eyes shut. Don’t ever try it again, or I’ll break your leg for you. Then you won’t be running anywhere in a hurry.’

  Biljana made a face at him. ‘Why are you so disgusting? What did I do to deserve a father like you?’

  The Captain threw back his head and roared with laughter. Then he bundled Biljana into the back of the car and set the child locks. He got back into the driver’s seat, started the car and continued onwards towards the Ethiopian border.

  Biljana shuffled in her seat and stared at the nape of his neck. After a while he looked away from the rear-view mirror and began to avoid her stare, just as she had planned.

  She found the tracker just over an hour into their journey.

  Back in their flat in Djibouti she had questioned Rider endlessly about his technical gizmos. He had finally explained to her about the tracker, and what he intended to do with it. Where best to hide it in a car. Just how effective it was.

  While the Captain was concentrating on his driving, Biljana had been feeling furtively beneath the front seats. She knew what the tracker looked like because Rider had shown it to her. When she felt the small square box tucked tight up against the back corner of the passenger seat, a warm rush of comfort suffused her.

  Rider had done just as he had said he would. Hart, Rider and Amira would be following her.

  She was no longer alone.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  ‘Where have you hidden the guns?’ said the Captain.

  ‘Beneath the spare tyre,’ said the corporal, pointing to the rear of his car. ‘I’ve wrapped them in burlap.’

  ‘A brilliant plan. No one will ever think to look for them there.’

  ‘Where else do you suggest?’ The corporal sounded peeved, as if the Captain had turfed him out of bed too early in the morning. ‘And why should they bother to check on us anyway? They’ve got no reason to give us more than a cursory glance. We’re Europeans. Not bloody Eritreans.’ The corporal glanced at Biljana. She was watching him quizzically through the back window of the Captain’s car. ‘You didn’t hurt her any more, did you?’

  ‘I cut off one of her fingers,’ said the Captain. ‘She’s tamed now. She’ll do anything we ask of her.’

  The corporal stared at him. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. Say those sorts of things. Even in a joke. She’s your daughter.’

  ‘She’s the intended product of a rape. The fact that she happens to be my daughter is entirely coincidental. You’ve probably got half a dozen brats of your own out there somewhere. You weren’t so squeamish in Kosovo, as I remember. We were trying to repopulate the world with Serbs. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘That was in Kosovo. We were young. It was shameful what we did. I regret it every day of my life.’

  ‘Why not give yourself up to the authorities then? Stand trial? You’d feel better, I’m sure, if they put you on show and then imprisoned you for life with a bunch of African shirt lifters. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t partake in your bleeding-heart penanc
e.’

  The corporal turned and stared back down the road. It was always dangerous to question anything the Captain did, unless you were prepared to play tough yourself in return. Toughness was the only thing he seemed to understand. To the Captain, life was a constant struggle, with the Victor Ludorum going to he who remained angriest and held out the longest. ‘No. You did the right thing breaking away. I just think the girl is a mistake. We’re at the border now. Why not chuck her out and leave her? Once we’re across we’re home free. The Legion holds no sway in Ethiopia. Nobody much does. We can take a plane to Kenya. Or South Africa. Hire ourselves out as instructors to the army. Wipe the Legion’s dust from our boots.’

  ‘I’m not leaving the girl.’

  ‘What?’ The corporal hitched his shoulders back as if he’d been slapped. ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting paternal feelings all of a sudden? You haven’t seen your wife and son for ten years. I’ve never noticed you mourning them.’

  ‘This is different,’ said the Captain. ‘There’s something wrong here. And I want to get to the bottom of it. I don’t believe she did all this alone. If she won’t tell me voluntarily, I’ll force it out of her.’

  The corporal shrugged. In all the years he had known the Captain, he had never been able to change the man’s mind by so much as an iota once he had made it up. ‘So we take both cars across?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do we guarantee the girl won’t sing out at the border crossing?’

  The Captain grinned. ‘Because we’re going to tie her up and gag her and put her in the trunk of your car.’

  ‘My car?’

  ‘Yes.’ The grin turned into something colder. ‘Didn’t you just tell me that there was no reason for them to bother to check us? That we’re Europeans, not Eritreans? I’m only taking you at your word.’

  The corporal closed his eyes. He knew a fait accompli when he saw one. The Captain had decided to use him as a stalking horse. So what else was new? He’d spent half his existence being used by the Captain. Why change the habit of a lifetime?

  SIXTY-FIVE

  ‘They’re static,’ said Rider.

  ‘What do you mean “they’re static”?’ said Hart. ‘Can’t you speak in plain English?’

  ‘I mean they’ve made it through the border crossing and have stopped near Dire Dawa. Biljana and the Captain. For fuel or for the night. It’s eight o’clock in the evening. What’s your guess which of the two he’s chosen?’

  ‘How far are they ahead of us?’ said Amira.

  ‘Seven. Maybe eight miles,’ said Rider. ‘We lost precious time at the border getting our visas issued. We’ve made most of it up since, though. Do we close in?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amira.

  ‘How will we get the Captain back across the border if we do manage to take him?’ said Hart.

  ‘We don’t,’ said Amira. ‘Too dangerous.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Hart. ‘We made a deal with the German major that we would hand him back to the Legion. That’s the only reason the major agreed to our plan.’

  ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ said Amira.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Hart. ‘I so love watching ethical journalism at work.’

  Amira flashed a look at Rider, who glanced guiltily away. ‘I have more control over the story if we give him over to our own people here, you see. My newspaper has connections with the press office at the British Embassy in Addis. The embassy will eat him up. It’ll be a major coup for British diplomacy. The Captain can spend a well-deserved couple of years in an Ethiopian jail while we rustle up the right papers to have him transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Those guys have a lot of pull. But they don’t move quickly. It took them seven years to indict and sentence Zdravko Tolimir.’

  ‘Who the hell was he?’ said Hart. He had long ago decided it was a waste of effort arguing with Amira about what constituted principled behaviour and what didn’t.

  ‘Assistant Commander and Intelligence Chief of the Bosnian Serb Army.’

  ‘So what? Where’s the connection?’

  ‘He took part in the Srebrenica Massacre. Just like your friend.’

  ‘What did they hand down to him?’ said Hart.

  ‘Life imprisonment.’

  ‘It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,’ said Rider. ‘I bet he liked puppies and small children too.’

  ‘Stop the car,’ said Hart.

  Rider looked seriously perturbed by Hart’s sudden volte-face. ‘You aren’t going to be sick, are you?’ he said. ‘I know I piss people off sometimes. But this is ridiculous.’

  ‘Look over there,’ said Hart. ‘Looks like a farm store, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, Rider, but I don’t want to go up against the Captain without some sort of weapon in my hand. Even if it’s a sickle. We’re a few miles or so off a major city. I’d rather buy whatever it is I’m going to buy here. Where no one gives a damn.’

  Rider gave a relieved laugh. He eased the car onto the hard shoulder in front of the shop. When they emerged from the car, everybody in the street stared at them. Hart decided that it probably wasn’t every day that three conspicuously white-skinned people visited what amounted to a one-horse dirt-road town ninety-five miles from the Ethiopia/Djibouti border. And in which the average colour of the inhabitants’ skin was an elegant dark ebony.

  Two gaudily painted buses took up most of the available parking spaces in front of the shop, and a number of dust-stained sheep patrolled the main street in search of something elusive to eat. A man carrying fifty empty plastic water canisters on his head stumbled past them on his way to… Where? thought Hart. Purgatory?

  Hart had to duck to enter the shop, which was protected by a fragmentary fly curtain. The shopkeeper was a young girl of little more than ten years of age. She was wearing a bright-pink school uniform and a white headscarf. Hart looked around before speaking. Ethiopia was one of the few countries on earth that had never been colonized apart from a brief period of forcible occupation by the Italians in 1936, so he didn’t quite know what language to begin with. He knew no Amharic, and his Italian was rusty. He decided to try English by default.

  ‘Do you have machetes?’ he said.

  The girl let out a long, extended wail.

  Hart froze. He could feel the back hairs on his head rising. ‘I mean…’ He paused. ‘An implement to cut things with.’ He searched desperately around for something concrete to point at, but the wall was hung with buckets, double spades and hand clippers for shearing sheep. The only visible thing that could cut worth a damn was a scythe.

  Rider chose that moment to enter the shop, accompanied by Amira.

  The girl backed towards a corner.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ said Amira. ‘She looks terrified.’

  The girl’s father entered from the rear of the shop. He smiled and patted his daughter on the head. She grabbed him round the middle and held on tight.

  Hart, Amira and Rider left the shop ten minutes later armed with three Ethiopian Lizard machetes. The knives were about two and a half feet long, with wooden handles and a curved tip ending in an upwards point, like a question mark. They were made in Tianjin, China. And they were blunt.

  ‘Great,’ said Rider. ‘How are we meant to sharpen these? With this sharpener he’s given us…’ Rider held up a rectangular whetstone for everyone’s inspection, ‘I reckon it will take us a good three hours per knife.’

  ‘But they look good, don’t they?’ said Hart. ‘Wouldn’t you think twice if someone came at you wielding one of these?’

  ‘I’d think twice if someone came at me waving a stick of rock,’ said Rider. ‘But that’s just me. I’m made that way. I have a strong suspicion the Captain isn’t.’

  It took
them another hour to reach the outskirts of Dire Dawa, thanks to a combination of bad traffic and unchecked animal incursions onto the highway. During all that time the tracker in the Captain’s car remained on standby.

  ‘I don’t like the fact that Biljana has been alone with the Captain all this time. It’s not like when she’s travelling with him in the car. He has other things on his mind then. Do you think he’ll feed her, at least?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, John,’ said Amira. ‘There’s only so much we can do. You have to give the guy some credit for a little humanity.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’ Hart rapped the windscreen with his knuckle. ‘Wait. Look over there. That’s his car. The Jeep Renegade. Parked tight up against the white Peugeot. Do you see? At the Saypress Hotel?’

  ‘Saypress?’

  ‘I suspect they mean Cypress,’ said Hart.

  Rider pulled over to the kerb opposite the hotel. ‘We’re in luck. They may call it a hotel, but this looks remarkably like a motel to me. Chances are he’ll have the room directly back from where his car is parked. We won’t need to go inside to check it out. We won’t even need to register. So who’s volunteering?’

  ‘I’ll go across,’ said Hart. ‘I got Biljana into this by acting like a damned fool and agreeing to bring her with me to Djibouti. I should have put my foot down right from the start.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have listened to you,’ said Amira. ‘She would have done it on her own.’

  ‘Yes. But it would have been a whole hell of a lot harder, wouldn’t it? Chances are that she would never have found her father on her own.’

  ‘If it makes you feel any better. Yes. You’re right. A lot of this is on you.’ Amira was fast losing patience. ‘But that’s rather missing the point, isn’t it? We’re here now. Not somewhere back in Cloud Cuckoo Land two weeks ago. Are you going to recce that motel room or not? We need to get this thing on the road. Our best time to break in would be at about three o’clock in the morning. When everyone’s asleep. We can bind and gag the Captain. We could be outside the gates of the British Embassy in Addis by early afternoon. But we need you to reconnoitre first, John. Like, now.’