‘How did you find me?’ Hart said at last.
‘You brought me here once. For a dirty weekend. Remember? Three years ago. When you still liked me. One night we went to the pub. Actually had a good time for a change. There was a local man there. Wanted to become a journalist. He gave me his card.’
‘And?’
‘I finally called him. Yesterday. Asked if he would drive down and check if you were here. He did. You were. I came.’
Hart shook his head slowly. ‘You are something, Amira. I’ll give you that.’
‘I’m your friend. That’s what I am.’ She hunched herself more closely inside her coat. ‘Now tell me what happened out there in Iran.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know you, John. I know what it means when you hide yourself away like this. You’re hurting. Like a little boy who’s been bullied in the playground.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘No one’s been able to contact you. Even that idiot man-friend of your mother’s didn’t have a clue where you were. Oh, and he’s clamouring for more money, by the way. I hope you discovered Solomon’s treasure while you were out there, because you’re going to need it.’
‘Fuck off, Amira. You’re the one who’s doing the bullying.’
‘Well, at least you’re getting your sense of humour back.’ She sniffed the air a little, as if she might be able to detect something significant through the cigarette smoke she was allowing to pass through her half-opened lips. ‘Buy a girl a drink?’
Hart sat up straighter. ‘This is about the story, isn’t it? You want your pound of flesh. And sod friendship. Why not come clean for a change?’
Amira groaned. ‘The story is part of it. Yes. You promised it to me. But I could still do with a drink. I’ve just spent five hours in a car with no air-conditioning and with Rider driving. He could probably do with a drink too after the tongue-lashing I’ve just given him.’
‘Rider?’
‘He’s waiting back there in the car. And let me tell you. Sterling Moss he isn’t.’
‘Your conversation on the way down must have been scintillating.’
‘Yes. He depressed me about the prospects in the Middle East. Then he depressed me about the UK economy. Then he depressed me about you. When he started depressing me about all his aches and bloody pains I drew a line in the sand and told him to belt up. Washed straight over his head, of course.’ She made a vague gesture with her cigarette towards the sea, as if she needed to illustrate her point with something concrete.
‘So it is about the story? My first instinct was dead on, as usual.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Because you’re a journalist over and above everything?’
Amira hesitated. ‘But that doesn’t make me any the less your friend. You just happen to be the sort of man stories stick to, John. You’re like a roll of human flypaper. I just trail along behind and pick you up when you’re down.’
‘And I’m down now?’
‘Well? Aren’t you?’
‘At which point you swan in and strip the flypaper of its stories?’
‘Something like that.’
Hart looked at her for a long time. Then he laughed. ‘Okay, Amira. Where do you want me to start? At the fact that there was no Copper Scroll to begin with? That I was sent on a wild goose chase by a desperate man, facing certain death, who cast around for the most unlikely place on earth he could think of to pretend to have hidden something, and I, his distant descendant, fell for the story nine hundred years later – hook, line and fucking sinker – and ended up with egg all over my face? Or do you want me to start with last week? With the bad guy who had his tongue surgically removed and was then lowered eight hundred feet down an extinct volcano to starve to death? He’s still down there. Probably only been dead a couple of days. The Iranians could find him easy-peasy and martyr the people that did it in revenge for the years of rape and murder and torture he inflicted on them in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Or do you want me to start a few days earlier, when the father of an Iraqi kulbar boy who was guiding me across the border for the princely sum of a hundred bucks stepped on a landmine, twenty feet in front of me, which blew both his legs off and injured his son so badly that I had to cart them both down into Iran on the back of a donkey, with the father’s legs tucked inside the pockets of his coat so that he could be properly buried?’
‘Christ Jesus.’
Hart turned back towards the sea. ‘Well, you wanted a story. Reckon you can write that, do you? Do it justice?’
‘You know I can’t. You wouldn’t last a week out on the streets.’
Hart stood up. ‘Well, all right then. At least we’ve got that straight.’ He hitched his chin towards the road. ‘I’ll take you and Rider for that drink now.’
FIFTY-NINE
Post Scriptum Chartres Cathedral
JULY 1250
The princess allowed her son to take her arm and lead her across the sward towards the main entrance to the newly finished cathedral. She still retained much of the beauty of her youth, although her auburn hair had long ago turned white, and her eyes, though hardly lustreless, had lost just a little of their sparkle. Indeed, she wore the darkened clothes of one who mourns. But the fact that her son, and stepdaughters, and the stepson in Templar clothing who accompanied them wore no such accoutrement, suggested that her loss was an old one, and that she wore the clothes more out of habit than immediate need.
She allowed the bishop, who was waiting for her at the portal, to come forward and replace her son at her side.
‘Princess, we are honoured indeed to have the daughter of the great Frederick Barbarossa at the inauguration of our cathedral. The king himself has asked that I conduct you to the memorial to your husband, Johannes von Hartelius, Baron Sanct Quirinus, that has been built, exactly to your requirements, to the right hand of the altar, neighbouring the chancel.’ The bishop halted momentarily, as if he were out of breath, causing the princess to halt with him. ‘Of course, it was not without some difficulty that we secured the permission of the Holy Father to allow the image of a Muslim man – and therefore, dare one mention it, a heathen – to accompany that of your husband on the memorial and to be allowed inside the precincts of the cathedral. But in the circumstances that accompanied the restitution and the translation of the Copper Scroll half a century ago, together with the vast sum that followed on from that translation, and which was instrumental in allowing the cathedral to be both built and dedicated according to the Holy Father’s wishes, all objections were graciously lifted.’
‘The objections of the Jews, you mean, given that Solomon’s new temple was to be built here in Chartres and not in Jerusalem as Solomon so clearly intended?’
The bishop shrugged. ‘The Jews. Ah. So very unfortunate. Such an ill-omened race. It was felt that they should not be encouraged towards unrealistic expectations. Chartres is so much better, don’t you think? The true soul of Christendom transposed from the Holy Land to here. This was surely what Solomon would really have wanted if given the choice.’ He indicated that the princess should walk ahead of him up the main aisle. ‘He was, after all, renowned for being one of the world’s great pragmatists, was he not?
The princess managed a half smile. Old battles, fought long ago. She started up the aisle, followed by her son, Johannes von Hartelius, Baron Sanct Quirinus, and her stepson, Grimwald von Hartelius, who had abrogated his droitural rights as eldest son to become a simple Templar Knight, just as his father had been before him. They were followed in their turn by Paulina, Agathe and Ingrid von Hartelius, Grimwald’s sisters, daughters of Adelaïde von Kronach, first wife of the dedicatee, and dead now these fifty-two years past.
The seven stopped before the memorial, the echo of their footsteps diminishing behind them as if snatched away by an invisible hand. The princess looked down at the stone image of her husband in full armour, a dog at his feet, his face placid in rest, his features stamped upon both his son’s faces as if with a die. Then she looked
to his left at the stone image of the Amir, his head partially turned towards his friend, his Saracen armour and chainmail an incongruous presence in a church dedicated to the cult of the Virgin and to the glory of her own son, the King of the Jews. The Amir, unlike the Christian knights and paladins who surrounded him within the precincts of the church, rested his feet on the back of a falcon.
‘Your husband, the baron, was killed six years ago in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor, was he not? During the siege of Jerusalem?’
The princess turned away. ‘Six years ago, yes.’
‘And this man?’ The bishop pointed to the Amir.
‘His friend. Yes. He died during the sixth Crusade. Betrayed by the Sultan Al-Kamil.’
‘Ah. The Crusade that ended in March 1229 with the restitution of an unfortified Jerusalem? And the coronation of your nephew as king? How they all seem to blur in the memory.’
The princess closed her eyes. More old battles, no longer significant. She knew that the bishop wished to ingratiate himself with her by his comments, and by his familiarity, but all she could feel was alienation and irreparable loss.
‘They tell me that your husband was a friend, also, of Saint Francis of Assisi?’
‘The Amir, too,’ said the princess. ‘They were Sufi. All three of them. Bound together by love.’
‘I am sorry?’
‘Saint Francis, the Amir and my husband. Each believed in the love of God above all else.’
The bishop watched the princess in flabbergasted horror.
‘They wrote the Song of the Sun together. They believed the search for salvation to be a simple expression of vanity.’
The bishop swiftly crossed himself and looked around to see if anyone else was listening.
The princess pointed to the third plinth, which was empty. It was situated at the same height, and to the right, as that of her husband. ‘That is for me?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the bishop, mopping his brow. ‘That is for you.’
The princess smiled, her entire face lighting up. ‘Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale, da la quale nullu homo uiuente pò skappare.’
‘I speak no Italian, Princess.’
‘It is from the “Song of Saint Francis”. The one that I mentioned to you before. It means “Be praised, my Lord, through your sister, the death of the body, from whose embrace no living being can escape.”’
‘And do you seek death, my child?’
The princess looked up at the cathedral vaulting. Then across at her children. Then down at the effigies of her husband and the Amir. She smiled at the bishop, amused at his obvious discomfort in the face of her placidity.
‘I am in no hurry. A great man once said that even though you tie a hundred knots in it, the string remains one.’
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Yazidis of Lalish for their welcome and their gentleness. I visited their holiest shrine in 2013, and had written them into this book well before the horrors perpetrated on their innocent community by the savages calling themselves ISIS. Thank you, too, to my agent, Oli Munson at A.M. Heath, who has championed my writing so steadfastly over the years. Also to Steve Benbow for all his insights into emergency medical aid, trauma injuries, the best cars to use for car bombings, and other assorted marginalia not normally available to the public. To Michèle O’Connell, who reads my books as they are written and encourages me to surpass myself. To my infant granddaughter, Éloise Alexandrina, who has taught me patience, the value of being able to work under any conditions and not to take myself too seriously. And finally my wife, Claudia, who tolerates all my wayward journeys with the Zog Society, which so often form the backbone of my works – you are my priceless Mexican pearl.
Read on for the thrilling opening chapters of John Hart’s next adventure. . .
ONE
Katohija, Kosovo
2 SEPTEMBER 1998
The first Lumnije Dardan heard of the event that would shape the rest of her life was the sound of her mother’s raised voice.
But Jeta Dardan never raised her voice. She was a placid woman, content with her lot, happily married to Burim Dardan, Associate Professor of Politics at Pristina University, and just now taking a well-earned rest at their country cottage in the village of Katohija, a few kilometres north of Pejē, with her husband and her two children, Azem, just turned eighteen, and Lumnije, sixteen and a half.
The next thing Lumnije heard was the crackle of heavy tyres.
‘It is the Serb police,’ she said to herself. ‘They are returning.’
The Serb police had visited them three times already that summer. They had behaved themselves, for the most part, limiting their aggression to shouting and ordering people to register – Serbs on one side, Albanian Muslims on the other – together with a little minor theft. Chickens, mainly, and the occasional lamb. Always from the Albanians and never from their fellow Serbs.
Lumnije and her family were Albanian Muslims. The last time the police had come they had ordered any Serbians to paint a large S onto the door of their houses. There had been an active discussion amongst the villagers as to whether everybody ought to paint the S onto their doors as a form of protest at this infringement of their liberties by the authorities. It was finally decided, however, that no harm could come from obeying the new law, so the situation had been allowed to lapse into abeyance. The S on every other house was hardly noticed any more.
Lumnije could hear her mother shouting louder now. She began to run. This was the first time the Serb police had come when the men, too, were resident in the village – her brother Azem on leave from his university studies, and her father, given the political situation, on an enforced sabbatical from his professorial duties. Maybe the Serbs were threatening him? Or angry about something one of the villagers had done? Or Azem was mouthing off to the police in the way young men with pent-up political opinions occasionally do?
Lumnije burst into the village square, her hair flowing behind her, her dress flattening against the front of her thighs. It was to be the last time in her life that she was ever able to view anything as remotely normal.
The big trucks she had heard earlier were just pulling up, but paramilitaries on foot, and heavily armed, had infiltrated the village first. Paramilitaries, not policemen.
The soldiers were splitting the men from the women and herding them into two groups. Lumnije was just in time to see her brother and her father being dragged away from her mother, who was shrieking and screaming, her face afire, her cheeks awash with tears.
Lumnije stopped in her tracks. No one – and certainly no man – had ever dared to treat her mother with disrespect.
Now Lumnije added her voice to the screaming and wailing of the women. She ran to her mother’s side. A soldier hurried her on her way with a glancing blow from his boot. Lumnije sprawled on the ground, her dress hoicked up, her underwear showing. The soldiers jeered. Lumnije began to retch.
The officer in charge of the soldiers ordered all ethnic Serbs to return to their houses. This they did, hurrying away, without backward glances. Abandoning their neighbours. Terrified too, it seemed, if not for their lives, then at least for what they might be about to witness.
Lumnije looked for her father and her brother amongst the men. The captain of the soldiers called out her father’s name. Her father stepped forward. As the most notable individual amongst the Albanian population of the village, it was natural that he should be called first. He began to protest on behalf of the villagers. Lumnije knew the tone he was using well. It was her father’s public voice. His professional voice. The voice he used beyond the confines of the home.
The captain of the soldiers raised his pistol. At just this moment, their family dog, Peta, ran in from the periphery of the group, where he had been circling and barking, and leapt into her father’s arms. It was his party trick. The thing he knew would always gain him attention, and, if he was lucky, a treat.
The captain’s shot to
ok Peta behind the head. He and her father both fell to the ground. Peta was dead, her father still alive. One of the Serb soldiers ran over and slit her father’s throat with his knife. Then four more soldiers took his body up, dragged it to a nearby Albanian house, threw it inside, and followed its passage in with two grenades.
‘Three times,’ said the captain to the howling women. ‘We have killed this filth three times.’
It was then that the machine guns opened up. Lumnije sat, cradled in her mother’s arms, and watched as the men fell to the ground like scythed corn. Her brother tried to run towards them, shouting for his mother, but he was killed before he took two paces. Any woman who tried to move towards the men was struck down with a rifle butt, or, if she was young and pretty, slapped to the ground by a soldier’s hand.
Later as the women watched, still wailing and weeping, a bulldozer was brought into the village and the bodies of the men were raised up on the hoist and dumped into an empty truck bed.
It was at this point, watching the bulldozer manhandling the bodies of her husband and son, that Lumnije’s mother broke. She ran at the captain, screaming her husband’s name. The captain shot her. It was done so swiftly, and with such contemptuous dispatch, that, for a moment, Lumnije did not realize that her mother, too, was dead.
One of the soldiers dragged Lumnije to her feet and pushed her towards a small group of young women that was being gathered together at the edge of the village. Lumnije knew them all. Each girl was weeping and shrieking, just like her. Some had covered their heads with kerchiefs and scarves in a bid to make themselves less noticeable to the soldiers. Others were too deeply lost in shock even for that. Some of the girls were unable to stay on their feet. When they were raised up they fell down again, like rag dolls. Finally their friends held them, fearing that the soldiers would lose patience and kill them.
When the clearing of the men was complete, the women were loaded onto two empty trucks. There were only young women left. The older women and the children had been herded towards the edge of the village and told to leave for Albania. If any turned back they were warned once and then shot. The bodies of those who disobeyed were loaded onto the same truck that was carrying the dead men.
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