The Templar Inheritance

by Mario Reading

  The soldier came up first. He reached into his tunic jacket and retrieved a torch. He handed it to Hart. Hart put on an expression of mock surprise. He pretended to offer the torch back and the young soldier laughed for the first time since he had entered the building. Hart indicated with his fingers that the boy should mask the beam in some way. While he did that, Hart leaned down and motioned Nalan to close the outside door and switch off the light.

  She climbed up the stack of boxes and took Hart’s hands.

  ‘Can you hang down, if I hold you, and kick the boxes away with your feet?’

  ‘Yes. Swing me.’

  Hart swung Nalan from side to side. She was surprisingly light to hold. Barely half my weight and worth two of me, Hart decided.

  When she’d kicked the boxes away he dragged her up into the loft. At one point he was forced to hold her tightly against his chest or risk dropping her. He caught her scent again at that moment – an elusive mixture of jasmine and musk, with just the faintest edge of citrus underlying it, like the discarded peel from an orange on a warm afternoon. Was he imagining it, or did Nalan rub her cheek ever so briefly against his as he held her in the darkness?

  ‘What is the boy’s name?’ he asked.

  ‘His name is Rebwar. The name means “farmer”. One who knows his place in this world. One who knows his country.’

  ‘That’s a good name. Later, you can tell me what yours means.’

  ‘Later. Yes. Perhaps I will tell you.’

  They followed Rebwar down the narrow corridor that snaked between the accumulated loft clutter. At one point Rebwar stopped and pointed to the right. He briefly unmasked the torch.

  ‘What is that?’ Nalan came up beside the men and took the torch. She shone it onto the object. ‘What is this, John?’

  Something closed down in Hart when he recognized the old-fashioned, fixed-bracket, Cinestar camera mount. He took the torch from Nalan and aimed the beam below the object. Then he flicked the light away and covered it again with his hand. He’d seen all he needed to. ‘It’s nothing. Just a bunch of old metal.’

  Nalan took him by the arm. ‘Tell me. You know what it is. I saw by your face in the reflected light that you know.’

  ‘Really. It’s nothing. I thought it might be a weapon of some sort. Something that we could use. But it’s just some old junk.’

  Hart shadowed Rebwar the last few yards to the end of the loft space.

  Nalan slapped him on the foot. ‘You. I see you are still carrying your cameras. You never let them go. This was a camera, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t a camera. You know what a camera looks like as well as I do. And that was no camera.’

  ‘Then tell me. What did you see there that I didn’t?’

  Hart sighed. He lowered his voice even further. ‘I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you what I think I saw if and when we ever get out of here. Okay? The very same time you tell me about your name. Meanwhile we have work to do. And precious little time to do it in.’

  SIX

  The first tile took about ten minutes to prise off with Rebwar’s military-issue knife. The succeeding tiles proved a little easier to loosen. Hart decided that Rebwar must have done some construction work in his time, because he seemed to intuit the quickest and most soundless way to open the gap onto the roof space. Hart was more than content to leave him to it.

  They were working in complete darkness now, and speaking only in monosyllables. Rebwar handed each tile silently back to Hart, who passed it along to Nalan. She piled the tiles up in manageable stacks of five along the floor line of the loft so as to avoid any danger of upsetting them in the darkness and giving their location away.

  About twenty minutes into the process they heard the echo of a major explosion somewhere below them, followed by a concerted volley of gunfire.

  ‘That’s it. They’ve broken through.’ Hart ducked his head towards Nalan in the darkness. ‘They were using grenades before. But that was no grenade. More like an explosive charge. C-4 maybe. Or some sort of IED they made up from the grenade charges. Either way, it will have done the job.’

  Rebwar was taking advantage of the noise from below to smash through the remaining tiles with the stock of his assault rifle.

  ‘Look. Moonlight. We’re out of luck.’ Hart beckoned to Nalan to slide past him.

  Rebwar helped her wriggle out through the hole he had made and onto the roof.

  ‘You next,’ said Hart. He pointed to Rebwar’s AK47 and made a shooting sign with his hands. ‘Just in case.’

  Rebwar slid through the gap in the tiles and Hart followed him. Once out in the open Hart cast around himself, trying to gauge exactly where they were in relation to the breached steel door. He decided that they were maybe twenty feet over and a little to the right of it. Way too close for comfort. If one of the gunmen emerged from the basement and looked up, they would be sitting ducks.

  Hart motioned for Rebwar and Nalan to precede him once again. He didn’t fully trust the remaining tiles to support his weight, and didn’t want to risk bringing the others down with him if the roof caved in. He was no lightweight. He measured a little more than six foot three inches in height and weighed fourteen stone.

  There was a crash from inside the loft space.

  ‘Christ. They’re in there already. One of them must have tripped over the row of tiles we left.’

  Hart allowed himself to slide down the angle of the roof towards Nalan, using his hands as brakes. To hell with the danger of falling through. Worse awaited him if he stuck around.

  Rebwar hung back. He cast a single look over his shoulder at Nalan and Hart. Then he laid himself flat against the angle of the roof and aimed his AK47 towards the hole he had just spent the past twenty minutes making.

  ‘Rebwar, no. Come with us.’

  Rebwar made a disparaging motion with his hand.

  An arm appeared through the hole in the roof, followed by a face.

  Rebwar fired and the face disappeared.

  Hart was now twenty feet below Rebwar, and about five feet away from where Nalan was supporting herself on the roof edge.

  ‘Pull back, Rebwar. They’ll use grenades.’ He looked at Nalan. ‘Tell him. Now they know we are armed, they will kill us, and they won’t care how they do it. He mustn’t stay where he is.’

  Nalan began to speak, but the roof above them erupted before she could complete her sentence. The men inside the loft space were firing through the tiles. The light from their head torches speared through the gaping holes left by the bullets, creating mini searchlights in the sky.

  Rebwar tumbled towards Hart, his AK47 skittering over the tiles behind him. Hart tried to grab him, but at the very last moment the force of gravity caused Rebwar to double over and turn what amounted to a somersault. Hart could only watch in horror as he pitched over the roof edge and into the courtyard below.

  ‘John. The gun.’

  Hart slapped one hand onto the AK47’s sling as it slithered past him. The movement upset his own precarious balance, and he began sliding downwards. Only the thick rubber soles of his desert boots prevented him overshooting the edge.

  Hart lay splayed onto the roof, the AK47 gripped in one hand, the fingers of his other hand locked onto the upper edge of one of the roof tiles. He daren’t move. If he broke the surface tension that saw him pinned to the tiles by the slightest of adherences – if he moved even so much as one knee – he would slide over the edge and into the courtyard.

  ‘John. Let go. It is not a long drop. Don’t be scared. I can see all the way to the bottom.’

  ‘How far down is it?’

  ‘Six metres. Maybe seven.’

  ‘Shit.’

  The gunmen inside the loft space were shooting at random through the tiles. More spears of light emerged about ten feet above Hart’s head. Very soon they would find him by default.

  Hart raised his hands, consigned himself to God, and slid over the edge, twisting his body round a
s he did so, so that at the very least he would be facing forwards when he landed. There was a sickening pause and then he hit the ground, feet first. He threw himself to one side, just as he had been taught to do on the parachute tower during school cadet-force training. The AK47, which he was still holding by its sling, belted him on the top of the head.

  Hart lay on the ground and tried to take an accounting. Was anything broken? Irremediably twisted? A trickle of blood snaked over one eyebrow and gathered in the hollow of his eye. He brushed at it with his sleeve. His limbs felt intact – his ankles, when he flexed them, appeared to work. He realized that he was lying on something soft. He turned over and saw Rebwar staring at him out of his single remaining eye.

  Hart cried out. He lurched backwards and kicked the body away with his legs like a cat. Rebwar’s head was at an odd angle, and one side of his face seemed darker than the other. Once he’d got over his initial shock, Hart crawled over to check Rebwar’s pulse. But in the thin light of the moon it was clear that it was not the fall that had killed Rebwar, but a bullet that had exited through the tiles below him, destroying his cheekbone and one of his eyes. There would be no pulse left to find.

  ‘John!’

  Hart looked upwards. Nalan was hanging off the edge of the roof above him.

  ‘I’m scared to let go. You must catch me. They are coming out.’

  ‘It’s okay, Nalan. Let go. I am directly beneath you.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘It’s not far. You told me so yourself. Just let yourself drop. I will break your fall. I promise.’

  Hart positioned himself below and just to the right of where Nalan would land. As she dropped he angled forward and attempted to sweep her into his arms. But the force of her fall from nearly twenty feet above him caused him to lose his footing. The two of them pitched headlong onto the ground.

  Hart crawled over and helped Nalan to her feet, using his body as a shield to what lay beyond him. But she had already seen Rebwar. She began to moan.

  ‘Come, Nalan. We must go. I can hear them climbing across the roof.’ Hart picked up the AK47.

  ‘I killed him.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. The gunmen did.’

  ‘I made him ashamed. I gave him his rifle back. I killed him.’ She started across the courtyard towards Rebwar’s body.

  Hart took her arm. ‘He is dead. We can do nothing for him. We need to save ourselves.’

  Nalan allowed Hart to hurry her away. But she never took her eyes off Rebwar’s body.

  SEVEN

  Hart urged Nalan ahead of him up the narrow corridor leading to the courtyard. The husks of the abandoned tanks, trucks and field guns that formed part of the museum’s collection glittered spectrally in the thin light of the moon. He glanced back at the shattered doorway that led to Saddam’s torture rooms. The gunmen would come running out of there as soon as they had made certain that only one out of their three possible targets was dead. And that would be any minute now. There was only one thing that he and Nalan could do.

  ‘We need to get inside one of these tanks.’

  ‘Why? It would be madness.’

  ‘No. The men who are after us will assume we escaped via the street. The outer gate is open. It would be the obvious thing for us to do. No one will think to look for us in an abandoned tank.’ Hart wasn’t as confident as he sounded. But he knew the gunmen would have cleared the museum and its precincts before he and Nalan were remotely out of range of their weapons. The two of them wouldn’t stand a chance against experienced street fighters. They’d either be herded up or killed out-of-hand.

  Hart led Nalan away from the open grille and the body of the dead curator. He sized up each of the tanks in turn.

  ‘Please hurry.’ Nalan looked urgently behind her. ‘They are coming. I can hear them.’

  ‘Here. We can get inside number three. They won’t see us unless they climb inside too. Look. The turret is fixed open. So it will seem less suspicious to anyone checking.’

  ‘This is madness. They will find us.’

  ‘It’s too late for anything else. Trust me. This way we’ll be able to hear them before they hear us.’

  Nalan climbed onto the tank and disappeared inside the turret. Hart followed her. The heft of the abbreviated AK47 might be comforting, but he knew that the weapon wasn’t of any significance in the greater scheme of things. It had been allocated to a wet-behind-the-ears boy guarding a museum – which meant that it was probably a veteran of the First Gulf War and the gun sights hadn’t been adjusted since. The men following them would be able to outshoot and outgun him with no difficulty at all.

  Hart sat across from Nalan in the cramped cockpit. A little moonlight leached in through the open turret, illuminating their faces. ‘If they look inside, keep your legs tucked in and out of their sightline. Okay?’

  She nodded.

  ‘If one of them spots us, I shall kill him. When I start firing, you must run, using the trucks and field guns as protection. I will stay inside the tank and cover your escape – the armour plating will shield me. I want you to agree to this now. Before they come. I need to be able to concentrate on them and not to have to worry about you.’

  Nalan watched Hart’s face intently, as if she were searching for the real truth behind his litany of words. Finally, after a long pause, she nodded, her expression that of a child listening for a distant bell. ‘Yes. I will do as you ask me.’

  Hart was taken aback by her sudden amenability. He cradled the AK47 against his chest and began to seesaw backwards and forwards as though he were holding a baby. As he rocked he attempted to sum up their situation in his head – but the only thing he managed to do was to mire himself in trivialities.

  Physically, both of them were okay. Still mobile at least. And not desperately in need of water or food. As far as concrete resources were concerned, Hart still had his cameras slung around his neck, but by now they were probably smashed and useless. For some strange reason, though, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them. Maybe they did define him, as Nalan had suggested? Maybe he did feel naked without them? Did he really use them as his calling card to the world? As his justification for living? It didn’t say a lot for him, if that was the case. He shook his head, irritated at his capacity to stray off message.

  Loud voices from out in the courtyard jerked him back to the present. He tried to judge where the speakers were standing by the way their voices echoed off the surrounding buildings. He placed them near the open grille gate, close to the body of the dead curator. He counted five distinct voices – possibly six. They appeared to be engaged in a heated debate.

  Thirty seconds into the debate one man’s haranguing voice rose high above the others. There was an answering shout from the men surrounding him, followed by the sound of running feet. Then silence. A few seconds later there were two concerted volleys of gunfire. Then more silence. A shorter, single volley followed. Then silence again.

  ‘What happened?’ Hart hunched forwards. ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘That you, the spy-journalist, and me, whom they called your whore, had run out into the road. That we must have been recognized by our soldiers, which is why they had not fired on us. There was something about night-vision glasses too, which I did not understand. Then the leader told them to follow him outside and they shouted “Allah is great”.’

  ‘Do you think they’ve been killed by the army? Was that what the firing was all about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe some are still waiting out there in silence? Or maybe they have all been killed and we can climb out?’

  ‘No. We can’t risk it yet. We must stay inside the tank where we’re safe. If your soldiers think they have killed the gunmen, they will rush the museum. The problem is that they may think booby traps have been left here. Or that there are snipers. If so, they will come in firing. Or even mortar the place first. In that case we will be in as much danger from them as we are from the gunmen.’

  Both
were silent for a while. Hart tried his phone again and then put it away in disgust. The tank might as well have been lead-lined. He glanced across at Nalan.

  It was clear, by the little he could make out of her expression, that she was still struggling to come to terms with Rebwar’s death. What could he say to comfort her? The boy had died trying to save them – that was a given. Maybe, too, he had made that decision partly because Nalan had offered him his manhood back, alongside his weapon. But the ultimate call had been his. Hart was far too experienced in the vagaries of warfare to allocate blame or guilt in such a situation. But Nalan might not view the matter in quite the same light. She had lived through hell as a young girl, and that fact would colour all her actions. He needed to say something – anything – to reconnect with her.

  He switched on Rebwar’s torch and partially shaded the light with his hand. ‘Your name, Nalan. You promised to tell me the meaning of your name. Remember?’

  Nalan looked up at him. Her eyes seemed preternaturally large beneath the red-gold thatch of her hair. ‘The light. They will see it and come for us.’

  ‘No. They won’t. We’re six feet down in here. Tucked in behind a further six inches of armour plating. And the moon is high and getting higher. It will disguise the glow of the torch.’

  Nalan touched the diamond chip set into her nose. Then she began to play with her wrist bangles. Her mind was clearly elsewhere.

  ‘Nalan. You promised.’

  She sighed and turned her attention full on him. ‘My name means “the one who moans”.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It means “the one who moans”.’

  ‘What kind of a name is that?’ Hart had blurted out the words before he could stop himself.

  Nalan permitted herself a fleeting smile. ‘It is not what it seems. The nal is the reed flute we Kurds play when we are sad. The word comes from the Persian. A nalan, then, is the one who plays the flute. Therefore “the one who moans”. Rumi spoke of such a flute in the first lines of his Masnavi. I will translate it into English for you. But it will not be a good translation, because I am not a poet.’ She hesitated. ‘Listen to the reed and the tales that it tells. How it sings of separation.’