The Templar Inheritance

by Mario Reading

  Hartelius laughed. He knew that he could not counter the Amir’s arguments. If their situations were reversed he would have done exactly the same thing. The laws of hospitality were paramount in both of their cultures. Once bread had been broken and oaths taken, there was no possibility of retrogression.

  ‘So,’ said the Amir. ‘It is settled then. We will meet in the Chouf. Failing that, we will meet in Paradise.’

  ‘Paradise is shared then?’

  ‘There is only one God, Hartelius. We both believe that. Only a rogue or a fool would expect Him to choose sides at this stage of the proceedings.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Amir ordered his men to cover their horses’ hooves with fragments of blanket. The same was to be done with the horses’ muzzles, so that they would not cry out or call to each other. Then each man was to coat his face and hands with a paste made of sand, palm oil and charcoal, so that no light would reflect off them.

  Night was falling by the time they were finished with their preparations. The Amir led his Saracens wide of the plain and down along the curve of the seashore, so that they would be approaching the margrave’s camp in a different direction from the one expected.

  Earlier, while it was still daylight, he had had one of his men secretly map the ridges and contours of the land. This man was tasked with leading the Amir’s force through the darkness, under cover of the sea’s hiss.

  The Amir rode in the van, a few feet behind his lead scout. He wore a white covering on his back, as did all his men. In the darkness the white shone out against the black of their fighting clothes, giving each of them a clear view of the man in front as they rode in single file.

  One of the Amir’s scouts had also done a head count of the margrave’s men using an abacus, with the results of his readings recreated on a sand table for all to see. It appeared that there were close on eleven hundred soldiers pitted against them. Not all were knights, however. Some were bowmen. Others were pikemen. These last would surely have trouble in the darkness. They could be discounted, therefore, leaving the odds at about six to one.

  But the element of surprise would be on the Amir’s side. He would need luck, and the absolute silence of his horses. Added to which there would a period, while his men surged through the camp, where they would be lit up by the margrave’s campfires, and would thus be vulnerable. This was their Achilles’ heel. The success or failure of the Amir’s plan would rest on what happened during this period of the engagement.

  The lead scout reined his horse back so that the Amir might approach parallel to him, ensuring that neither man would reveal the white markers on their back to any advance guard. The scout leaned across and touched the Amir’s right arm three times, just below the elbow joint. The Amir nodded in the darkness and tapped the man once in return on the right sleeve with his crop.

  He eased his horse into an amble. He counted off a hundred paces in his head and then turned the amble into a trot. He counted out another one hundred paces, and now he was able to see the margrave’s campfires in a horseshoe curve curling away from the sea, aiming in the direction of where the margrave thought the Amir’s most likely line of attack might be.

  The Amir felt his heart quicken in his chest. One part of him wanted to seek out the margrave personally and kill him – to punish him for all the horrors he had perpetrated on those of the Amir’s people who had had the misfortune to come under his thumb. But another part of him knew that a wise fighter understood when to fight and when to pass up a fight that would bring him no immediate benefit.

  He eased his mount into a canter. He counted to fifty in his head and moved into a gallop. If only he had his late stallion, Antar, beneath him. Or one of Antar’s progeny. He could hear the thudding of his horse’s hooves in the sand. The whisking and thumping of those following behind him. How could the margrave be so stupid as to mount no guards on the sea side of his camp? The man had the strategic sense of an imbecile.

  The Amir sensed, rather than felt, the first fall of arrows beside him. He raised his shield and moved it back and forth in front of him, exactly the way his master-at-arms had trained him as a youth – only in this manner, he knew, could one be certain that any arrows that struck the shield would bounce harmlessly off it.

  His Saracens began to whoop behind him. The Amir, too, joined in. There was no virtue in silence any more. The more noise the better. Fear was a major factor in victory. Panic was a powerful weapon.

  ‘Unfurl the banners.’

  The Amir’s bannermen unfurled their great white banners and let them sweep out behind them in the wind of their passing.

  This is it, thought the Amir. This is what it feels like to be alive.

  It was only when the margrave’s men threw off the simmering wooden covers of their hidden bonfires and flamed them with dried brushwood soaked in alcohol that the Amir realized that he and his men were riding straight into a trap.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hartelius twisted in his saddle and cast a sidelong glance down the valley towards the margrave’s camp. He could see the pinpricks of the margrave’s bonfires dotting the distant sand like emerging stars. He turned back and headed up the defile. The prospect of other men fighting his battles for him made him feel physically ill.

  The Amir’s scout was leading the way fifty feet ahead, with von Szellen, Klarwein and Moberg behind him. The remainder of Hartelius’s Templars were bringing up the rear, immediately behind Hartelius, the princess, the princess’s handmaiden and Ibn Arabi, the Amir’s Sufi master, who was also known as Shaykh al-Akbar, or Al Akbariyya.

  Hartelius, on first meeting the Sufi, had been astonished at the man’s relative youth. How could a man of a mere forty summers be the master of anything? Most of the priests Hartelius knew were nearer sixty than forty. That was the one major advantage of the priesthood over soldiering, surely? You had a middling fair chance of surviving into old age.

  Still, he had finally done what the Amir had suggested and shown the man the contents of the Copper Scroll.

  ‘The Amir said you could speak every language known to man. Can you speak this?’

  Ibn Arabi had laughed. ‘I can speak Arabic, Berber, Farsi, Spanish, something that passes for German, and a little Catalan. This language you show me is none of these.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ Hartelius could feel his stomach churn with bitterness. Of course there had never been the remotest chance that this man might unlock the secrets of the Copper Scroll. How could there possibly be, given that a dozen scholars had slaved over the conundrum for seventy years and had seen no daylight? ‘Do you have any idea at all of what language this might be written in?’

  Ibn Arabi had run his oil lamp back and forth across the manuscript. For a moment Hartelius had feared that he might be about to burn it, or to attempt to damage it in some way, but the Sufi had no such intention. ‘This is a great treasure. You realize this?’

  ‘Yes. It is the greatest treasure we Templars possess.’

  Ibn Arabi had watched Hartelius for some time. ‘If you succeed in having this translated, with or without my help, will you promise me that the truths contained within it will be used for the greater good of everyone? Not just for the Christians that happen to possess it?’

  Hartelius had sighed. ‘I can promise you no such thing. And I would be a liar if I said I could. The Copper Scroll does not belong to me. I am its temporary guardian through a quirk of fate, that is all, just as I am the guardian of the Holy Lance through a similar happenstance. Anything I discover about the scroll will be handed back to the masters of my Order. That is my gage. It is they who will decide on its future. I will have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Then I cannot help you.’

  ‘I never expected that you would.’ Hartelius took back the scroll. ‘But you know, don’t you? I can see by your face. You know what language this is written in.’

  ‘I know, yes.’

  Hartelius swallowed back his pride. ‘The Amir sa
id that you would help me if you could. He said that you Sufis do not conform to what you are expected to conform to. That there are greater things to adhere to in this world than meaningless dogma. Greater passions to be driven by than fear.’

  ‘What else did the Amir say?’

  ‘He said that I am Sufi too. But that I do not know it yet. He said that there is only one truth, and that truth is God. All else is meaningless.’

  ‘And are you Sufi?’

  ‘I am nothing. I am a soldier.’

  Ibn Arabi smiled. ‘Do you love truth?’

  ‘What is truth? How can I love something I do not understand?’

  Ibn Arabi closed his eyes. ‘You place me in an impossible position. You realize that?’

  ‘If you tell me so.’

  ‘Impossible, because I am both master and servant at the same time. And because I believe that the servant of whom I am master has shown more wisdom in this than I have.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The Amir understands men’s hearts. He loves you. Therefore he understands your heart. All loves are a bridge to divine love. Yet those who have not had a taste of it do not know.’ Ibn Arabi sighed. He pointed to the Copper Scroll with the tip of his little finger. ‘I will say this once and once only. Go seek out the Yazidis in Lalish. They may be able to help you. For I most assuredly cannot.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Shepherd’s Bush, London

  FRIDAY 3 MAY 2013

  Amira Eisenberger looked across the kitchen table at her ex-boyfriend, John Hart. This was the first time she’d had the opportunity to study him at close quarters since picking him up at Heathrow Airport an hour earlier. For immediately on his emergence through the Arrivals Gate he had been surrounded by a maelstrom of reporters, most of whom she knew, if not by name, at least by phizog, fighting to interview him.

  ‘Oh come on, Amira. Give us a frigging break,’ Martin Halsom of Sky News had called out to her from behind his sound man. ‘You can’t keep him all to yourself. He’s one of us.’

  Amira had paid no attention to his plea. Nor to that of any of the others, however friendly she might be with them outside business hours. She had shuttled Hart in front of her and out of the airport as if he were a film star on a lightning visit to promote his new movie.

  Once he was in the clear, Hart had shaken his head as if he were recovering from a sucker punch to the jaw. ‘I didn’t think anybody was picking me up. I was going to take a taxi.’ He had snatched another look back over his shoulder at the sad gaggle of newspaper people and TV reporters gathering up their flotsam and jetsam behind him. They all knew better than to argue with Amira. ‘Were those people really there for me?’

  ‘No. They were waiting for Justin Bieber. They just thought you were him.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Hart had looked across the car roof at Amira as she fumbled for her keys. ‘I feel I should tell you that I’ve booked a room at the Frontline Club. I thought I’d stay there and not at my flat until I found my feet again. At least that way I’d be certain of getting fed.’

  ‘Well, cancel it. You were working for me in Iraq. I’ve been writing your story while you were banged up. So you are staying with me. Don’t worry. I will feed you.’

  ‘In exchange for an exclusive, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. For your exclusive story. What do you think? That I want you back in my life again after your affair with that little fascist in Germany?’

  ‘No. I didn’t think that.’

  ‘Thank God for small mercies.’

  Hart leaned back in his chair and looked round the room that he had once known so well. The place stank of cigarettes. There were unwashed dishes in the sink. Papers and books strewn across all the visible surfaces. Used coffee cups weighing down the papers. The prospect of eating anything in such an environment appalled him. The place had gone catastrophically downhill since he’d last visited, ten months before, and Amira with it. It could have doubled as one of the Camberwell sets from the film Withnail & I.

  ‘You’ve lost weight.’ Amira was watching him as you would a prize steer. ‘And you’ve got a new scar on your forehead.’

  ‘I jumped off a roof and someone’s AK47 belted me on the head.’

  ‘I suspected as much.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘You’re a celebrity now,’ she said. ‘You do realize that? A star photojournalist. A made man. You’ll forever be the guy who shot dead the suicide bomber. It’ll be like a travelling footnote. You’ll be able to write your own ticket from here on in.’ Amira didn’t seem particularly happy at the prospect. ‘Well. You probably guessed as much when you saw your reception committee at the airport. Those pieces I wrote about you triggered it. There wasn’t much other news. So you found the front pages and stayed there. Heroic reporter saves Kurdish girl at the risk of his own life. Takes down human bomb with single shot. “The Templar” strikes again.’

  Hart pushed an overflowing ashtray out of the way with the back of his hand. ‘That wasn’t how it was and you know it. I mostly sprayed the wall above his head because I forgot, in the heat of the moment, that assault rifles throw their barrels upwards when you have them on full auto, and not where you aim. I just got lucky, if you can call it that. And I acted from naked fear, Amira, not heroism. Single shot my arse.’

  ‘But single shot is how it read. And that’s what people want in the news. They are sick of downbeat stories. They want triumphs. Good over evil. That sort of crap.’

  ‘I thought you were wedded to the truth?’

  ‘I am. But truth depends on a variety of factors. It’s not just someone’s opinion. You did do those things I wrote about. And people need heroes from time to time. It amused me to make you one. You can call it subjective truth if you want.’

  ‘But “the Templar”? Couldn’t you have thought of a better hashtag?’

  ‘No. You’ll thank me one day. People remember nicknames.’

  Hart cocked his head to one side and stared at her. ‘Amira. . .’

  ‘No. Don’t say it.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Whatever you were going to say. How dreadful I look. What a mess this flat is. Why I’m talking to you like this when I should be throwing you out on your ear.’

  Hart stayed silent for a long time. ‘Why don’t I take you out to dinner? The Ivy or Le Caprice. Your choice.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of being mobbed again, Mr Hero?’

  ‘No. They’ll be bored with me already and searching for new victims. Newspaper people need feeding, like guppies. And you just cut them off at the tit. For which I’m sincerely grateful, by the way.’

  ‘You don’t like being a celebrity, you mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’re hungry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t we eat here then? I’ve got a freezer. And a microwave.’

  ‘I’d probably get food poisoning.’ Hart stood up. ‘Jesus, Amira. You can afford a cleaner. Why don’t you get one?’

  ‘I like it like this.’

  ‘No, you don’t. This is how Wesker used to live. But you’re not Wesker. I know he was your mentor, but why emulate his incapacity for housekeeping? He was a disaster in everything bar journalism.’

  Amira tapped at her mobile phone. ‘Sometimes I wish I was more like him. At least he was able to drown his sorrows in whisky until that fascist thug threw him off the balcony in Germany. But I hate the bloody stuff. And I value my brain too much to fill it full of drugs.’

  ‘I value your brain too. But you don’t need to keep it in a skip. Or smoke it to death.’

  Amira put the phone to one ear and her finger to another, like a child refusing to listen to its mother’s chiding. ‘Takeaway Chinese suit you?’

  Hart closed his eyes. ‘As long as they provide chopsticks. No power on earth will persuade me to eat off your cutlery.’

  Amira flicked him a V sign. ‘Chinese it is then.’

  TWENTY-NINE

&nb
sp; ‘I want you to look at this for me.’ Hart held out the same sheet of vellum parchment he had shown to Nalan Abuna – the one containing Johannes von Hartelius’s last words.

  Amira spooned some more Dim Sum into her mouth, disdaining the throwaway chopsticks the caterer had provided, and which Hart was manipulating with what she felt was a certain louche dexterity. ‘I’ve already seen it. You showed it to me last summer, remember? Just after your late girlfriend and her tame SS storm trooper had tried to kill me. I don’t understand why you’re still so fascinated by it.’

  ‘Look again. Hold it up against the light. Better still, play your lighter backwards and forwards behind it. Just try not to burn it, please.’

  Amira made a face. She flicked on her lighter and held the parchment against it. She drew in her breath at the mass of additional material revealed by the flame – the dozens of words snaking between the conventionally written lines and up the margins of the vellum. ‘I can tell you this much. Your ancestor had verbal diarrhoea. Either that or extreme Asperger’s. They say it’s genetic, you know?’

  Hart pretended he hadn’t heard. ‘Nalan discovered the hidden writing by torchlight when we were hiding in the cellar in As Sulaymaniyah. She says Hartelius must have done it with urine, or sperm, or some other colourless liquid available to him in his cell. Something that wouldn’t show up on a cursory reading, but only when held up against a concentrated light source. Like a candle with a reflector, say.’

  Amira shoved the manuscript back across the table to Hart in feigned distaste. ‘Nalan?’

  ‘Oh come on, Amira. Nalan Abuna. My guide and translator in Kurdistan. You’ve already written about her, remember? Not only that, but it was your own bloody newspaper who paid her to assist me in the first place.’