The Templar Salvation (2010)

by Raymond Khoury

  He was flying southwest, headed for another island—a much smaller one this time, the island of Kassos, his official destination. It was in the opposite direction to where he needed to end up, but it was the most suitable foil, given that its tiny airport didn’t have a control tower and that procedures had to be followed rigorously if he didn’t want to raise anyone’s suspicion. Which he wouldn’t. Finding holes in the procedures, no matter how rigorous, was second nature to Steyl. He knew what he was doing, probably better than anyone in the business.

  He reached the approved altitude in less than a minute and radioed the tower again, and was instructed to switch over to the approach controller’s frequency. He did so, got cleared to stay at fifteen hundred feet all the way to Kassos, and was told to switch over again, this time to Athens Information, for the rest of his journey. Which he did. But he also did something else. He switched off his transponder. Without it, the plane’s transponder code, altitude, and registration wouldn’t appear on the tower’s radar. It would only show an anonymous blip.

  He kept up the pretense and stayed on his announced heading for another minute while gently descending to an altitude of five hundred feet. He contacted the tower again, but got nothing back. Which made him smile. They couldn’t hear him. He was out of radio contact—which also meant he was outside the radar’s sweep.

  He could now go anywhere he liked, undisturbed.

  He banked left to head south and passed the southwestern tip of Rhodes. He maintained that heading for another ten kilometers over open water, then pulled the plane sharply around to a northeasterly heading, toward his real destination: a remote location just under three hundred miles away, deep inside Turkey.

  The visibility that low was lousy. A light wind and high barometric pressure had generated a light mist that squatted ominously over the water. Steyl couldn’t see Rhodes anymore because of it, which was good. It meant no one could see him from land. His only remaining risk was being spotted by a ship. So he switched on his weather radar, which would show any vessels ahead of him. He’d have plenty of time to skirt around any that happened to crop up and continue on his stealthy voyage.

  At low altitude, he’d get there in a little over an hour. He didn’t plan on spending more than a few minutes on the ground, so the round trip would take around two and a half hours, total. Which was fine for a low-altitude, sightseeing trip to a small island that didn’t have a control tower. He wouldn’t be missed.

  He checked his watch, then pulled out his satphone and called Zahed. He informed him of his progress, then settled back and took in the view as the Conquest’s twin turboprops reeled in the Turkish coast. If all went well, he anticipated parting company with the Iranian by the end of the day. He’d then head back to his villa in Malta, where he would lie on his sundeck with a cold beer in his hand and figure out how to spend his latest chunk of easy money.

  ZAHED WAITED ON THE EDGE of the salt lake and watched as the sun tore itself from the far side of the water’s pristine, flat surface.

  By mid-morning, it would look like an infinite expanse of white under a radiant blue dome. Right now, the low sun was bathing it with a crisp, bronze-like wash. It looked like a dull metal sheet that stretched out from right under his feet all the way to the horizon. Another insane landscape, he thought. He’d seen more of them in the last few days than he thought possible. The entire cursed region seemed to him like it had been cut and pasted from another planet. He took comfort from the thought that he’d soon be out of it. Back into comfortable, familiar, earthly settings. Back home. Where he’d be feted for achieving the impossible.

  For bringing back his prize.

  The early morning air was still and cool and reeked of salt. It helped with his dizziness, but not with his throat, which felt as parched as the dry lands that were spread out before him. He was also shivering. He’d lost a lot of blood, and despite the painkillers, he was still hurting badly. The shakes were also getting worse. He needed medical attention, and soon. He knew his hand was bad. He knew it might never work properly again, knew he might lose it altogether. Either way, it would have to wait. He had to get out of there, fast. The American woman had managed to escape. She would have alerted the Turks. His hand was a huge price to pay, but it was still cheap when compared to his freedom and, quite probably, his life.

  His phone beeped. He reached for it and turned to face the opposite direction and concentrate on the horizon. It wasn’t long before he spotted the tiny dot, streaking in low and fast, the low sun glinting off its windshield. He confirmed to Steyl that everything was clear, then gave his men a nod and took a step back for a wider view. The engines of two SUVs, which were parked a hundred meters apart, one behind the other, rumbled to life. Then their lights and their flashers came on, two distinct sets of red and yellow beacons against a perfectly flat copper backdrop.

  Zahed watched the plane line up along the axis made by the two SUVs and studied the makeshift runway beyond them. It looked perfect. Dry and hard, flat as a football field, not a ripple as far as the eye could see. The lake’s name, Tuz Golu, simply meant “salt lake.” Which is what it was. A massive, six-hundred-square-mile pool of shallow, saline water that dried up and turned into a gargantuan bed of salt every summer. Two-thirds of the salt that ended up on dining tables across Turkey came from there, but the mines and processing plants that made it happen were farther north or on the other side of the lake. The area Steyl had chosen was, as the pilot had predicted, deserted. It was also less than an hour’s drive from Konya. Yet more feathers in the pilot’s peacock tail of a cap. And yet more confirmation for Zahed that he had chosen well.

  Moments later, the faint buzz of the aircraft cut through the silence. It was barely audible at first, then it turned into an earsplitting roar as the plane swept low over the parked cars, its inertial separators open to direct any salt powder away from its engines. Its undercarriage virtually skimmed the front car’s roof before touching down flawlessly. Zahed was already moving, clambering into the lead car as Steyl engaged the engines’ reverse thrust and braked hard up ahead.

  The two SUVs accelerated heavily and chased after the aircraft. Less than seven hundred meters later, they were parked alongside it.

  The transfer didn’t take long. With the plane’s turboprops still beating the air, the boxes of codices were loaded up first, stacked behind the backs of the two rear seats. Then it was the human cargo’s turn.

  Reilly.

  He was hustled up to the plane and dumped behind a partition at the very back of the cabin.

  Still unconscious. But alive.

  Which was how the Iranian wanted him.

  Less than four minutes after touching down, the Cessna was airborne again. An hour and eleven minutes later, it was back on the ground at Diagoras. It didn’t spend more than twenty minutes on the tarmac. The handling agent who drove up to the plane was the same man that Steyl had dealt with when he’d first landed in Rhodes. He didn’t need to check the plane again. Zahed sat out the formalities silently huddled behind the partition, alongside the inert Reilly. Steyl filed his flight plan and signed the forms, got the all clear, and took off again.

  Iranian airspace was less than three hours away.

  Chapter 60

  Sitting in the back of the Jandarma Humvee, Tess felt pulverized. After what had felt like an interminable run of horrors, she’d finally found something to feel good about. A crack of light had somehow found its way through the dark shroud that had been suffocating her since that fateful day in Jordan, but just as quickly as it had appeared, it was now gone again. All the elation, relief, and excitement—wiped out in a few minutes and replaced just as quickly with more foreboding and gloom.

  She hated the helplessness, the sense of defeat, the fact that yet again, she and Reilly had been bested. Most of all, she dreaded finding out what had happened to him and couldn’t help but imagine the worst. The Iranian now had what he wanted. There was no reason for him to hang around. There w
as also no reason for him to show any restraint in whatever it was he had planned for Reilly.

  The thought made her stomach turn.

  The local police had shown up soon after the shoot-out, alerted by the gunshots. The Jandarma had swooped in shortly afterward. The Iranian and his thugs had taken away their dead crony’s body, but there was still plenty of evidence of the bloody shoot-out in the old woman’s house, all of which had only made the Jandarma officer angrier. Tess had sat there passively as he’d bawled her out for having left the hotel in Zelve without authorization, and she’d played dumb, saying she’d only been following Reilly’s lead. She also concentrated on keeping the old woman’s role in all this under wraps and made sure the woman understood to follow her lead and not mention the gospels the Iranian was after or the stash of troves in the underground crypt.

  It seemed to be working. They were taking her and the old woman to the local police station for their own safety, as well as, undoubtedly, more questions. It hadn’t been a comfortable lie, since she knew that her only hope was with these local cops, but she didn’t think that added level of disclosure was relevant to their efforts. All she could do now was wait—and hope. Maybe they’d manage to lock down the country before the Iranian made it out. Maybe they’d get lucky and stop him at some roadblock. Maybe they’d catch him at some border crossing or at some local airfield.

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to massage the worry out of her temples. The thoughts weren’t offering her much solace, not when all they were doing was conjuring up harrowing images of a bloody confrontation that ended in disaster for the man she loved.

  “I’m sorry,” the old woman said, her soft-spoken words pulling Tess out of her swamp of despair.

  “For what?”

  “If I hadn’t sent my granddaughter … If I had stayed hidden … none of this would have happened.”

  Tess shrugged. Of course, there was truth in her words. She and Reilly could well have been flying back to New York right now. But, she also knew, life didn’t work that way. Unintended consequences were part of its fabric, and there was little point in wallowing in regret.

  “It’s not over yet,” Tess told her, trying to believe her own words.

  The old woman brightened. “You think … ?”

  “There’s always a chance. And Sean’s usually pretty good at spotting them.”

  The old woman smiled. “I hope you’re right.”

  Tess managed to give her back a half smile and tried to block out the gruesome worst-case scenarios that, she knew, were not only possible, but probable.

  Chapter 61

  Reilly woke with a start, flinching backward with a sudden intake of breath. An acrid smell was spearing his nostrils, an intensely vile odor that reminded him of rotting corpses. His eyes flared wide, and his vision snapped to attention and broke through the tarlike mire inside his skull.

  The Iranian was right there, up close and personal, mere inches away from his face. His hand was hovering under Reilly’s nose, holding the small ampule there far longer than was necessary. The man was sweating and was blinking with nervous energy, and he seemed to be visibly enjoying the discomfort he was causing. Then he flicked the ammonia tab away and pulled back, giving Reilly a fuller view of his captor.

  “You’re back,” the Iranian said. “Good. I really didn’t want you to miss this.”

  Reilly didn’t know what he was talking about. There was a distinct lag between the words coming out of the Iranian’s mouth and his absorbing their meaning. They didn’t sound promising. His thoughts spun off to Tess and he looked around, worried he’d find her there too. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

  “No, she’s not here,” the Iranian told him, as if reading his thoughts. “We didn’t have the time to go looking for her. But I’m sure I’ll bump into her again sometime. I’d like that.”

  Reilly felt his blood boil, but he kept it hidden. There was no point in giving the Iranian the satisfaction of seeing him unsettled. Instead, he grinned and tried to say something, but felt his lips crack. He moistened them with his tongue, then said, “You know, that’s not a bad idea. She doesn’t have any gay friends.”

  The Iranian’s hand flew up and punched Reilly across the cheek.

  Reilly kept his head turned away for a moment to let the pain settle, then faced the Iranian again and managed a slight, lopsided grin. “My bad. Guess you haven’t come out of the closet yet, huh? Not to worry. It’ll be our little secret.”

  The Iranian raised his hand again for another strike, then pulled back and smiled. “Maybe she can convert me. What do you think?”

  Reilly felt heavy-headed and decided there was no point in riling the man up any further. He focused on taking stock of his surroundings and saw that he was in a small aircraft, one with a cabin he wouldn’t be able to stand upright in. A prop plane, judging by the engine noise.

  One that was airborne.

  That last point struck home and goosed his blood pressure. It didn’t help his condition, which was pretty damn awful. His head was pounding from the inside with what felt like a polonium-level hangover. His breathing was hard and painful. Blood had caked inside his nostrils, blocking most of the airflow to his lungs, which were also hurting from the battering his rib cage had suffered. He could also taste a foul mix of mucus and blood that was sitting in his throat. The sensation was soon replaced by the pain that was being telegraphed from every corner of his body as his neurons came back online. His eyelids felt heavy, and one of his eyes, he now realized, was half-shut, no doubt from swelling. His lips also felt swollen and had scabbed cuts in several places. He knew he had to have busted ribs and had probably lost a tooth or two as well. Weirdly, his socks and shoes were also missing.

  He was laid out on some kind of cushioned seating at the very back of the cabin, an L-shaped banquette that abutted a wood-paneled partition that separated the small niche from the rest of the cabin. He tried to move and realized that his hands and feet were tied. His hands were behind his back, so he couldn’t see what was holding them together, but his ankles were bound together with some white string. All four joints were already hurting from the strain, and he could see the swelling and bruising where the string was biting into his flesh. An odd thought glided into his mind, the notion that it might have been pulled from the curtains at the old woman’s house. It wasn’t particularly thick, but it was strong and there had been enough of it to go around his ankles many times.

  He didn’t think he was going to be wriggling his way out of it anytime soon.

  He glanced out of the small oval window on the cabin wall facing him. He couldn’t see any clouds. There was nothing out there but endless blue sky, clear and unblemished. He tried to figure out what direction they were flying in. The sun seemed to be streaming into the cabin from the front of the aircraft, slightly to the right and at about a forty-five-degree angle. It had the bright intensity of a morning sun. It seemed to indicate that they were flying east. East, from somewhere in central Turkey.

  He pictured the map. Nothing good was east, not for him. Syria. Iraq. Iran. Not the friendliest of places for an American FBI agent.

  His blood pressure spiked further.

  He looked at the Iranian. “We’re heading east.”

  The Iranian didn’t respond.

  Reilly said, “What, your visa run out?”

  The Iranian smiled thinly and said, “I miss the food.”

  Reilly glanced down at the man’s hand. It didn’t look great. Its dressing was loose and messy, and it was heavily stained with blood.

  Reilly nodded in its direction. “You might need some help cutting up your steaks.”

  The Iranian’s smile disappeared. He smoldered quietly for a beat, then his right hand flew up and punched Reilly again. He breathed in deeply and said, “Hang on to that thought. You’ll need it on your way down.”

  A flood of unpleasant images cascaded through Reilly’s mind. Images of hostages held for years in grimy cells deep i
nside hostile territory, chained to walls, beaten and abused and forgotten until some nasty illness finally liberated them from their torment. He was about to say something, then he remembered something else and his blood pressure shot further into the red zone.

  The report. The one he’d been given back in Istanbul.

  The one about the Italian airport official with the pulverized bones. The one they thought had been tossed out of a helicopter or a plane.

  Alive.

  He flushed the fear away and snared the Iranian’s smug look. “I don’t even know your fucking name.”

  The Iranian debated answering for a beat, then seemed to decide there was no harm in it and said, “It’s Zahed. Mansoor Zahed.”

  “Good to know. Wouldn’t want you buried in an anonymous grave. That’s just not right, is it?”

  Zahed gave him a thin smile. “Like I said. Hang on to that one too. You’ll have plenty of time to savor it.”

  THE IRANIAN EYED REILLY CURIOUSLY.

  Although he thought he’d decided what to do with him, he was still of two minds about it. Both options were very attractive.

  He could still take Reilly back to Iran. Lock him up in some isolated hellhole in one of the country’s prisons. Have fun with him for years to come. The agent would be a great source of intel. They’d break him, without a doubt. Then he’d tell them everything he knew about FBI and Homeland Security procedures and protocols. On top of recovering the trove of Nicaea, capturing and bringing back the head of the Counterterrorism Unit of the FBI’s New York City field office—and without leaving a trail of bread crumbs at that—would be a spectacular coup for Zahed.