The Last Templar

by Raymond Khoury

Reilly made a quick visual check of the area’s vulnerabilities and decided it was as good as any for an overnight stop. He headed for the SUV’s rear door. “Let’s see what our man in Istanbul’s got for us.”

  WHILE REILLY WAS BUSY putting in the last of the aluminum struts and setting up the tent, Tess had managed to get a small fire going. They were soon working their way hungrily through the case of supplies Ertugrul had provided, washing down slices of basterma sausages and kasseri cheese boreks with bottled mineral water.

  Reilly watched Tess’s eyes beam with delight as she opened a small carton and pulled out a piece of lokma, wolfing it down, her fingers dripping with syrup.

  “This local guy of yours is a godsend,” she managed before popping another piece into her mouth. “Try these, they’re delicious. I couldn’t get enough of them the last time I was here. It didn’t help that I was pregnant at the time.”

  “So what brought Vance out here?” he asked as he sampled a piece.

  “My dad was working on a dig not too far from the Ararat Anomaly. Vance was desperate to have a look, and my dad invited him in.” Tess explained how in 1959, a U-2 spy plane on its way back from a reconnaissance flight over the then Soviet Union flew over Turkey and took some images that intrigued the CIA’s photo analysts for years. Word eventually leaked out and, in the late nineties, the pictures were finally released, causing a small sensation. Way up in the Armenian mountains, not far below the summit, was something that looked like a ship. Close-ups revealed what appeared to be three large curved wooden beams, resembling part of the hull of a large vessel.

  “Noah’s Ark,” Reilly said as he flashed back to vague headlines in the press.

  “A lot of people were fascinated by it, my dad included. Trouble was, even when the Cold War began to thaw, the area was still very sensitive. The mountain’s only twelve miles from the Russian border, less than twenty to Iran. A few people were granted permission and tried to climb up to see what it really was. James Irwin was one. The astronaut. Walked on the moon, and later became a serious convert to Christianity. He tried to climb up for a closer look at the anomaly.” She paused. “On his second attempt, he fell and died.”

  Reilly frowned. “So what do you think? Is it really Noah’s Ark?”

  “The consensus says it isn’t. Just a curious rock formation.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. No one’s actually reached it or touched it. What we do know is a story of a flood and a man with a boat and with a whole bunch of animals, it’s in writings going all the way back to Mesopotamia, writings that predate the Bible by thousands of years. Which makes me think that maybe something like that really did happen. Not that the whole world was flooded. Just a big area somewhere in this part of the world. And one man survived it and his tale passed into legend.”

  Something in the way she said it seemed so definite, so final. Not that he necessarily believed in Noah’s Ark, but…“It’s funny,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I would have thought archaeologists, of all people, would be drawn to the mysteries of the past with more of an open mind than others, with a sense of wonder about what could have happened at a time that’s so distant and removed from what we have today…and yet your approach is so rational and analytical. Doesn’t it take away from the, I don’t know, the magic of it?”

  She didn’t seem to see anything paradoxical about it. “I’m a scientist, Sean. I’m like you, I deal in hard facts. When I go out and dig, I look for evidence about how people lived and died and fought wars and built cities…myths and legends I leave to others.”

  “So if it can’t be scientifically explained…?”

  “Then it probably didn’t happen.” She set down the box of lokmas and wiped her face with a napkin before stretching back lazily and rolling over to face him. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Back at JFK.”

  “Yeah…”

  “How come you didn’t pull me off that plane? You could have arrested me, right? Why didn’t you?”

  From the vaguest hint of a smile and the glint in her eyes, he knew what she was getting at. She was taking the lead, which was just as well given his grating hesitation to move in that direction himself. He ducked it, for now, with a noncommittal “I don’t know,” before adding, “I knew you’d be a real pain in the ass and probably scream the house down if I took you in.”

  She edged closer. “Damn right I would.”

  He felt a slight quickening in his chest and shifted his position, sliding down and leaning in more to face her. “Plus…I figured, what the hell. Let’s see if she’s as smart as she thinks she is.”

  She leaned closer still. Her face was now hovering inches away from his, her eyes moving over his face. The curling smile widened. “How magnanimous of you.”

  The sky, the forest, the campfire…it was perfect. He could feel the warmth of her lips radiating out, beckoning his, and for a brief moment, he felt everything else fall away. The rest of the world simply ceased to exist.

  “What can I tell you, I’m a magnanimous kind of guy. Especially when someone’s out on their own…pilgrimage.”

  She held the minute gap separating their lips. “So given that you’re here protecting me,” she whispered, “I guess that kind of makes you my own personal Knight Templar?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You know,” she mused, eyeing him playfully, “according to the official Templars’ manual, you’re supposed to stand guard all night while the pilgrims sleep.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Chapter six, subsection four. Check it out.”

  The feeling was unreal.

  “You think you can handle that?” she asked.

  “No sweat. It’s what we Templars do.”

  She smiled. And with that, he leaned in and kissed her.

  He moved in closer and the kiss turned more urgent. They melted into each other, lost in the moment, their minds free from thought, consumed by a sublime rush of feel, smell, and taste—and then something intruded, a familiar undertow nagging at him, pulling his mind to a darker place, to the face of his devastated mother and to a man in an armchair, his arms hanging lifelessly to his side, a gun lying innocently on the carpet, the wall behind him splattered with blood.

  He pulled back.

  “What?” Tess said dreamily.

  He frowned inwardly as he sat up. His eyes had taken on a haunting, distant glaze. “This…this isn’t a good idea.”

  She raised herself and snaked a hand through his hair, pulling his mouth closer to her. “Oh, I beg to differ. I think it’s a great idea.” She kissed him again, but just as their lips touched, he drew back again.

  “Seriously.”

  Tess pulled herself up on her elbow, momentarily dumbfounded. He was just looking at her, dejected.

  “Oh my God. You are serious.” She looked at him askance and flashed him a cheeky grin. “This isn’t some Lent celibacy thing, is it?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Okay, so what then? You’re not married. I’m pretty sure you’re not gay, although…” She made a “maybe” gesture. “And last time I checked, I thought I looked pretty damn good. So what is it?”

  He was struggling to put it into words. It wasn’t the first time these feelings had sneaked up on him, but it had been a while. He hadn’t felt this way about someone for a long time. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  It wasn’t easy. “I know we hardly know each other, and maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but I really like you, and…there are things about me I think you need to know, even if…” He didn’t continue, but the implication was clear. Even if I end up losing you because of it. “It’s about my dad.”

  Which completely threw her.

  “What does this have to do with us? You said you were young when he died, that it hit you hard.” She saw Reilly wince. From the first time he men
tioned it back at her house that evening, she knew she was trespassing on difficult ground, but she needed to know. “What happened?”

  “He shot himself. For no reason.”

  Deep down, Tess felt a knot unwind. Her imagination had taken her to some even darker places. “What do you mean, for no reason? There had to be a reason.”

  Reilly shook his head, and his face clouded. “That’s the thing. There just wasn’t. I mean, none that made sense. He was never outwardly gloomy or moody. We eventually found out he was sick, he was suffering from depression, but there wasn’t any reason for it. He had a good job, he liked his work, we were comfortable, he had a loving wife. By all outward indications, he had a great life. It didn’t stop him from blowing his brains out.”

  Tess leaned into him. “It’s an illness, Sean. A medical condition, a chemical imbalance, whatever you want to call it. You said it yourself, he was sick.”

  “I know. The thing is, it’s also genetic. There’s a one in four chance that I’ll get it.”

  “And a three in four chance that you won’t.” She smiled supportively. He didn’t seem convinced. “Was he getting treated for it?”

  “No. This was before Prozac became the new aspirin.”

  She paused, mulling it over. “Have you had yourself checked?”

  “We have routine psych evaluations at work.”

  “And…?”

  “They haven’t found anything wrong.”

  She nodded. “Good. I don’t see it either.”

  “See it?”

  Her voice softened. “In your eyes. I could see something, a bit of distance, like you’re walled off, always holding something back. At first I thought it might be your MO, you know, the badge talking, the strong, silent type.” She was beaming with conviction and reassurance. “It doesn’t have to happen to you.”

  “What if it does? I’ve been through it, I saw what it did to my mom. I wouldn’t want to put you, or anyone I care about, through it.”

  “So you’re going to shut yourself off from the rest of the world? Come on, Sean. It’s like telling me we shouldn’t be together just because, I don’t know, your dad died of cancer. Who really knows what’s going to happen to any of us? You just live your life and hope for the best.”

  “Not everybody wakes up one morning and decides to ride a bullet out of this world. The thing is, I recognize a part of him in me. He wasn’t that much older than I am now when he did it. I look in the mirror sometimes and I see him, I see his look and his stance, and it scares me.”

  She shook her head with obvious frustration. “You said your priest helped you through it?”

  He nodded absently. “My dad wasn’t into religion. He questioned faith out of existence, and my mom, well, she kind of toed the line, she wasn’t particularly spiritual anyway. After he died, I just shut down completely. I couldn’t understand why he did it, why we didn’t see it coming, why we didn’t stop it from happening. My mom was a total wreck. She ended up spending more and more time with our priest who, in turn, started talking to me about it. He helped me understand why neither of us was to blame and showed me another side of life. The Church became my sanctuary, and I never forgot it.”

  Tess visibly rallied herself, speaking now with renewed determination. “Well, you know what? I appreciate the concern and the warning, it’s very gentlemanly of you, but it doesn’t scare me in the least. You needed me to know, and now I do, okay? But I don’t think you can go on like that, you can’t let something that’ll probably never happen ruin your life. You’re only helping to turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re not him, okay? You’ve got to let go, live your own life, and if that’s not working, well then maybe something’s fundamentally wrong in the way you live your life. You’re alone, which isn’t a great start, and God knows you haven’t exactly chosen a bright and merry line of work.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Well maybe you need to do something else.” The grin made a timely, and welcome, reappearance. “Like shutting up and kissing me.”

  Reilly’s eyes moved over her face. She was trying to make sense of his life, drumming heartfelt optimism into him, and yet he hardly knew her. He felt something familiar, something that he was starting to recognize only happened when he was around her: in a word, alive.

  He leaned into her and pulled her onto him, tightly.

  AS THE TWO FIGURES on the screen drew closer, their gray-blue heat signatures merged into one misshaped lump. The muted voices were now gone too, replaced by the muffled sounds of clothes being discarded and of bodies moving against each other.

  De Angelis cradled a warm cup of coffee as he watched the screen with disinterest. They were parked on a ridge that overlooked the depression where Tess and Reilly had set up camp. The tailgate of the beige Land Cruiser was open, revealing two screens that glowed in the darkness. One was a laptop, from which a lead snaked out to a Raytheon Thermal-Eye infrared surveillance camera that sat on a tripod, dominating the landscape before it. A parabolic directional microphone nested on a second tripod. The other screen belonged to a small, handheld PDA. It blinked with the position of the GPS tracker that clung clandestinely onto the underside of Tess’s travel bag.

  The monsignor turned and looked down on the dark valley below. He was quietly pleased. Things were under control, and that was how he liked it. They were close and, with a bit of luck, they would beat Vance to it. He still didn’t know exactly where they were heading; he would have preferred to have audio capability inside their car, but the opportunity to plant a bug there hadn’t presented itself. Not that it mattered. Whatever they found, he would be right behind them, waiting to scoop it up.

  That was the easy part.

  More difficult was the question of what to do with them once that was achieved.

  De Angelis took one last lingering look at the screen before flicking the last of his coffee into the bushes.

  He wouldn’t be losing sleep over it.

  Chapter 55

  When Tess woke up, daylight was filtering in from outside. She drowsily reached over, but her hand only found empty padding. She was alone in the sleeping bags, which had been zipped together. Sitting up, she remembered that she was naked and found the clothes that had been hurriedly discarded the night before.

  Outside, the sun was higher than she expected, and on checking her watch she saw why. It was almost nine, and the sun was already halfway up a strikingly blue sky that was clear and unblemished. She squinted as she looked around, finding Reilly standing by the Pajero with his shirt off. He was shaving, using hot water from an immersion coil water heater plugged into the lighter socket.

  As she walked up to him, he turned and said, “Coffee’s ready.”

  “I love this Ertugrul guy of yours,” she marveled as she checked out a smoking thermos. The rich smell of the velvety black coffee roused her senses. “You guys really do travel in style.”

  “And you thought your tax dollars were being wasted.”

  He wiped his shaving foam off and kissed her, and, as he did, she again saw the small, discreet silver crucifix on the thin chain around his neck that she had noticed the night before. It wasn’t something people wore much these days, she thought, not in her neck of the woods anyway, and it had an old-world charm to it that threw her. She didn’t think it would be something she’d find remotely attractive, and yet, on him, it was somehow different. It seemed to fit; it was part of who he was.

  A short while later, they were back on the road, the Pajero eating up the bumps and potholes of the pitted tarmac as they ventured further inland. They passed a few deserted houses and a small farmhouse before leaving the narrow road they were following to take an even narrower forest track that climbed steeply.

  As they drove past a copse of balsam trees from which a young villager was tapping the fragrant, resinous storax, Tess now saw the mountains looming ahead and felt a surge of excitement.

  “Over there. See that?” Her pulse quickene
d as she pointed at a hill in the distance. Its peak had a distinctive, symmetrical profile. “That’s it,” she exclaimed. “The double humpback of the Kenjik ridge.” Her eyes ate up the notes and the map in her hand as she reconciled them with the landscape before them. “We’re there. The village should be in the valley just on the other side of those mountains.”

  The track cut through a thick cluster of pine trees, and as they emerged out of it and back into the light, they rounded a hillock and, with the Pajero now making use of the full might of its four-wheel drive, kept climbing up until they crested the ridge.

  It wasn’t what she expected. The sight hit her like a sledgehammer.

  There, before them, nested in the valley between two ranges of lush, pine-covered mountains, stretched a huge lake.

  Chapter 56

  Tess’s entire body froze as she stared out in bewilderment, then her hand clawed at the door latch and she was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop. She stormed over to the edge of the ridge and looked around in utter incomprehension. The dark, shimmering lake just lay there peacefully, stretching from one end of the valley to the other.

  “I don’t get it,” she blurted. “It should be right there.”

  Reilly was now standing next to her. “We must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “No way.” Tess was all flustered, her mind racing, poring over the details of the journey they had taken, revisiting every marker along the way. “Everything fitted perfectly. We followed his journey to the letter. It should be here. It should be right here.” Refusing to accept the glaring mistake, she scrambled down through the trees and walked a little further forward to get a better view. Reilly followed her.

  The lake extended to the farthest reaches of the valley to their right. Its opposite end was obscured by the forest.

  Tess stared at the placid water in disbelief. “I don’t get it.”

  Reilly took in their surroundings. “Look, we can’t be that far off. It’s got to be around here someplace. We just screwed up somewhere on the way up.”