The Last Templar

by Raymond Khoury

  She wasn’t moving anymore. She was on land.

  The dread gave way to relief, and she tried opening her eyes, but they stung fiercely and she quickly decided to take it slowly. The images around her were blurry and faint. She panicked for the briefest moment before realizing that something was blocking her view. Reaching up with a trembling finger, she brushed away the wet mat of hair that covered her face, and she gently felt her eyelids. They were all puffed up, as were her lips. She tried to swallow but couldn’t. She felt like she had a ball of thorns stuck in her throat. She needed water, the unsalted kind.

  Slowly, the hazy images drifted into focus. The sky still looked dull and gray, but she felt the sun coming up behind her, and judging from the roar of the breaking surf, that was also where the sea was. She tried to sit up, but her other arm was pinned down by something and wouldn’t move. Pulling on it caused a rippling pain to shoot through her. Reaching across with her free hand, she saw that it was tied down with a rope that had eaten its way into her flesh. Lying back down, she remembered strapping herself and Reilly to the wooden hatch cover.

  Reilly. Where was he?

  She realized he wasn’t next to her on the platform, and the dread came thundering back. She sat up and struggled to free her arm and managed to slip it out from under the rope. She pushed herself to her knees and slowly stood up, taking in the surroundings. She could make out a long expanse of sand that stretched away from her, up and down the coast, sweeping across to a rocky headland at each end. She took a few hesitant steps, scanning the deserted, desolate beach through half-shut eyes, but saw nothing. She wanted to shout out his name, but her burning throat wouldn’t allow it. And then she felt a wave of nausea and light-headedness wash over her. She weaved slightly, then sank back to her knees, feeling any lingering energy slip away. She wanted to cry, but no tears came.

  Unable to find any more strength, she flopped forward onto the sand, unconscious.

  WHEN SHE WOKE UP AGAIN, things were very different. For one thing, it was quiet. No howling wind. No pounding surf. Although she could hear the beating rain in the background, it was heavenly quiet around her. And then there was the bedding. Not a plank of wood, nor a cushion of sand. This was an actual, bona fide bed.

  She swallowed and immediately sensed the improvement in her throat, and as she looked around, she understood why. Looming over her was an IV drip, hanging off a small chrome stem by the bed, its tube taped to the inside of her arm. Her eyes darted around. She was in a small, simply furnished room. Next to her bed was a simple chair of turned wood and a side table. A small carafe of water and a glass sat on the table on a lacy, white mat whose edges were slightly frayed. The walls were whitewashed and unadorned, except for a small, wooden cross on the wall by her side.

  She tried to sit up, but her head was swimming. The bed creaked under her shifting weight, the noise echoing out of the room. She heard footsteps and some garbled words, a female voice, urgent, and then a woman appeared, smiling at her as she studied her with concern. She was a large woman, in her late forties, and had olive skin and curly brown hair that was tied under a white scarf, bandana-style. Her eyes sparkled with kindness and warmth.

  “Doxa to Theo. Pos esthaneste?”

  Before Tess could answer, a man hurried in, looking delighted to see her. He had wire-rimmed glasses, a coppery tan, and gelled, rat-pack hair that gleamed like black enamel. He blurted out some hurried words in the same foreign language to the woman before smiling at Tess and asking her something else that she found incomprehensible.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, her voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “I don’t understand…”

  The man looked stumped and exchanged a quizzical glance with his companion before turning to Tess. “I apologize, I thought you were—you’re American?” he asked in a heavily accented English, as he reached over and handed her the glass of water.

  Tess took a sip and nodded. “Yes.”

  “What happened to you?”

  She searched for the words. “I was on a boat, we hit a storm, and…” Her voice trailed off. Clarity was fighting its way through the fog of her mind, and questions were forming. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  The man leaned in and felt her forehead as he spoke. “My name is Costa Mavromaras. I’m the local doctor, and this is my wife Eleni. Some fishermen found you on the beach at Marathounda and brought you here to us.”

  The names and the accent threw Tess. “Where is…here?”

  Mavromaras smiled at his assumption. “Our house. In Yialos.”

  Her face must have still been mired in confusion, because the doctor’s brow furrowed, mirroring her look. “Yialos, in Symi,” he explained, then paused, studying her. “Where did you think you were?”

  Tess’s mind blurred.

  Symi?

  What was she doing on a Greek island? A rush of questions flooded her mind. She knew Symi was in the Dodecanese islands, somewhere close to the Turkish coast, but she wanted to know exactly where it was and how she’d gotten here. She wanted to know what day it was, how long it had been since the storm had struck the Savarona, how long she’d been drifting at sea—but that could all wait. There was something else she desperately had to know.

  “There was a man with me,” she asked, her voice rising in urgent quivers. “Did the fishermen find anyone else…?” She stopped when she saw the doctor’s expression turn guarded and watched with rising concern as he glanced at his wife. He looked back at her and nodded, and there was an unmistakable sadness in his expression that strafed her heart.

  “Yes, they found someone, on the same beach as you, but I’m afraid his situation is a little bit more serious than yours.”

  Tess was already pulling her legs off the bed.

  “I need to see him,” she urged them. “Please.”

  TESS’S LEGS, already weakened and barely able to support her for the short walk down the corridor to the adjacent room, almost gave way under her when she saw Reilly. The top of his head was wrapped in a big, neat dressing, and there was no sign of blood. There was a dark, yellow bruise around his left eye and cheek, and both his eyelids were swollen shut. His lips were cracked and bruised. An IV drip like hers snaked down into his arm, but he also had a respirator mask strapped to his face, the machine pumping away noisily nearby. Worst of all was the color of his skin. It had a bluish, deathly pallor to it.

  Tess felt a great tearing inside as Mavromaras helped her into a chair by Reilly’s bed. Outside, the rain hadn’t stopped. The doctor explained that the fishermen had found them when they’d been out checking on their boats on a beach on the island’s east coast. They had rushed them over to him in treacherous weather, braving the rain-soaked roads of the island to reach the town and his clinic.

  That was two days ago.

  Her condition hadn’t really worried him, as her pulse had responded quickly to the IV solution and, although she didn’t remember it, she had been drifting in and out of consciousness the whole time. Reilly, however, was in worse shape. He’d lost a lot of blood, his lungs were weak, but they could deal with all that. The blow he’d clearly taken to the head was the main problem. Mavromaras didn’t think it had cracked his skull, although he couldn’t tell for sure as there weren’t any X-ray facilities on the island. Either way, he’d suffered a major trauma to the head and hadn’t regained consciousness at all since he’d been found half-drowned on the beach.

  Tess felt the blood drain from her face. “What are you saying?”

  “His vital signs are steady, his blood pressure is better, his breathing is weak, but at least he’s doing it himself, unaided—the respirator is only there to keep him hyperventilated, to make sure his brain gets enough blood while he’s unconscious. Beyond that…”

  Her face clouded as she fought off the terrifying thought. “You’re saying he’s in a coma?”

  Mavromaras looked at her, somberly. “Yes.”

  “Do you have everything you need to treat
him here? I mean, shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?”

  “This is a small island, and I’m afraid we don’t have one here. The nearest one is on the island of Rodos—Rhodes. I’ve been in contact with them, but unfortunately the air ambulance helicopter was damaged three days ago when trying to land in the storm, and they’re waiting to fly in some spare parts from Athens to fix it. It wouldn’t have been able to fly here anyway because of the storm. They’re hoping the weather will improve tomorrow, but, to be frank with you, I’m not sure moving him is a good idea, and besides, he won’t be any better off over there, there’s not much they can do either aside from hooking him up to some more advanced monitors that we don’t have here.”

  Tess felt the fog that shrouded the room growing thicker. “There’s got to be something you can do?” she stammered.

  “I’m afraid not, not with comas. I can keep an eye on his blood pressure, on the oxygenation of the blood, but there’s no way of,” he paused, searching for the appropriate term, “waking someone out of it. We just have to wait.”

  She was almost afraid to ask. “How long?” she finally managed.

  He opened his hands outward, uncertainly. “It could be hours, days, weeks…There’s no real way of knowing…” His voice trailed off, his eyes conveying the rest. It obviously wasn’t just a question of “when.”

  Tess nodded, grateful not to hear him verbalize the horrible possibility that had already entrenched itself firmly in her mind the instant she had walked into the room.

  Chapter 81

  Tess hovered between her room and Reilly’s for the rest of the day, anxiously looking in on him and finding Eleni there each time. The nurse had kept on gently herding her back to her bed, reassuring her in broken English that Reilly would be fine.

  She’d given the doctor and his wife a rather different version of the events that brought her and Reilly to the island, omitting any mention of why they were out here in the first place or of the Turkish gunship opening fire on them. She’d been careful to mention that there were other people on the dive boat, in case any of the others had been found, alive or otherwise, but Mavromaras had somberly informed her that, although some debris, presumably from their dive boat, had washed up on the island, he hadn’t heard of any other survivors, or bodies, being found.

  She’d used the phone to call Arizona, getting straight through to her aunt’s house and finding Kim and Eileen there, worried at not having heard from her for several days. Their surprise at her telling them she was on a tiny Greek island was palpable even across the crackling, echoey phone line. She’d been careful not to mention the name of the island, although she later wondered why she had bothered doing that before realizing she wasn’t ready to face the outside world and its questions just yet. After hanging up, she thought she had done a reasonable job at calming their concerns over her safety, telling them she was just exploring an unexpected work opportunity in the area and would be in touch again soon.

  Around sunset, two local women had appeared at the doctor’s house and had been shown to Tess’s room. Although they spoke little English, she eventually understood that they were the wives of some of the fishermen who had found her on the beach. They had brought her some clothes: a pair of cotton pants, a nightdress, a couple of white blouses, and a thick cotton cardigan into which she happily wrapped herself. They had also brought a large, piping-hot clay pot of giouvetsi with them, which Eleni explained was a lamb and rice pasta stew. Tess had dug into it gratefully, surprising herself by wolfing down a large plateful with newfound appetite.

  Later, a hot bath had worked wonders for her general stiffness, and Mavromaras had changed the dressing on her arm, the purple bruising from the rope looking to her as though it would be with her forever. Then, and despite her hosts’ gentle objections, she’d spent most of the rest of the evening sitting at Reilly’s bedside, although she’d found it hard to talk to him the way, she knew, some people did to loved ones who were also comatose. She had doubts about whether or not it would actually help him, and she wasn’t sure if, given everything that had happened, hers was the voice he’d most want to hear. She blamed herself for what they’d been through, and, although there was so much she wanted to tell him, she wanted to say it when he was in a position to respond, favorably or not. She didn’t want to force herself on him when he was, at best, a captive listener, and, at worst, not listening at all.

  Close to midnight, she’d eventually succumbed to exhaustion, physical as much as emotional, and gone back to her room. She’d dropped off to sleep effortlessly, her head nestling between two musty pillows.

  BY THE NEXT MORNING, Tess felt strong enough to venture out of the house and walk off her stiffness. The wind was still blowing, although the rain had petered out, and she felt a short walk would probably do her a lot of good.

  She slipped into her clothes and looked in on Reilly. Eleni was there, as always, and was gently massaging his leg. Mavromaras soon appeared and examined him. Reilly’s condition was stable, he told her, but not markedly improved. He explained that in these situations, any improvement wouldn’t be gradual. It would happen more or less at once. Reilly would be unconscious one moment and, if he were to emerge from his coma, he would simply awaken without any physiological warning.

  Mavromaras had to check on another patient across the island and said he’d be back in a couple of hours. Tess asked if she could walk him out to his car.

  “The air ambulance service in Rodos called me this morning,” he told her, as they stepped outside the house. “They should be able to fly in sometime tomorrow.”

  Although Tess had been anxious earlier to get Sean to a proper hospital, she wasn’t so sure anymore. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Do you really think we should take him there?”

  A gracious smile crossed the doctor’s face before he answered. “Frankly, it’s up to you. It’s a very good hospital and I know the man in charge there, they’ll look after him well, I can assure you.” The uncertainty must have been etched clearly all over her face, because he then added, “We don’t need to make any decisions now. Let’s see how he is in the morning, and we can decide then.”

  They walked across the street, skirting a couple of big puddles of water, and reached a slightly rusting old Peugeot. Mavromaras opened its door, which, Tess noticed, wasn’t locked.

  She glanced up and down the narrow street. Even in these overcast conditions, the town was breathtaking. Tier upon tier of neat neoclassical houses painted in warm pastel colors straddled the steep hill all the way down to the small harbor below. Many of them had triangular pediments and red tile roofs and were of a pleasing, subtle uniformity of style. Water spilled down overwhelmed gutters at the sides of the road and tumbled down the steep flight of steps cutting up the hill. Overhead, the bruised sky still looked poised for another onslaught.

  “That was one hell of a storm,” Tess observed.

  Mavromaras eyed the clouds, nodding. “It was far worse than anything anyone can recall, even the oldest people in town. And especially for this time of year…”

  Tess flashed back to the storm that had hit the Falcon Temple all those years ago and, almost to herself, she murmured, “An act of God.”

  The doctor cocked a curious eyebrow, surprised by the comment. “Maybe. But if you want to think in those terms, think of it more as a miracle.”

  “A miracle?”

  “Of course. A miracle that you and your friend were washed ashore on our island. It’s a big sea out there. A little bit further north and you would have landed on the Turkish coast, which, in this area, is rocky and completely deserted. The towns are all on the other side of the peninsula. A bit further south and you would have missed the island entirely and been carried out into the Aegean and…” He raised his eyebrows and nodded knowingly, leaving the rest for her to fill in, then shrugged and threw his medical bag into the passenger seat. “I have to go. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  Tess didn’t want h
im to leave just yet. There was something comforting about his presence. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help him?”

  “Your friend is in good hands. My wife is an excellent nurse, and, although this isn’t anything like the hospitals you’re used to in America, trust me when I tell you we’ve had a lot of experience dealing with all kinds of injuries. Even on small islands like this, people do get hurt.” He paused, thought about it for a moment as he studied her, then added, “Have you talked to him yet?”

  Tess was taken aback by the question. “Talked to him?”

  “You should do that. Talk to him. Inspire him, give him strength.” His tone was almost fatherly and then he smiled, shaking his head slightly. “You must think you’ve fallen on some small-town witch doctor. I promise you that’s not the case. Many studies by prominent physicians support the idea. Just because he’s in a coma, doesn’t mean he can’t hear. It just means he can’t respond…yet.” He paused, his eyes beaming with hope and empathy. “Talk to him…and pray for the best.”

  Tess let out a small chuckle and looked away wistfully. “I’m not very good at that.”

  Mavromaras didn’t look convinced. “In your own way, although you don’t realize it, you’re already doing it. You’re praying for him just by wishing he would recover. A lot of prayers are being said for him.” The doctor pointed across the way toward a small chapel. She could see a few locals greeting each other at its door, some of them leaving while others were heading in. “Many of the men on this island earn their living from the sea. There were four fishing boats out at sea the night the storm hit. Their families prayed to God and to the archangel Michael, the patron saint of seafarers, for their safe return, and those prayers were answered. All of them managed to come back to us unharmed. Now, more prayers are being said, prayers of thanks. And prayers for your friend’s recovery.”