Sword of the Templars

by Paul Christopher

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Never mind.”

  “The old man is dead, isn’t he?” Peggy said. “I didn’t really look too closely, but he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s dead,” nodded Holliday.

  “This is crazy,” said Peggy. She was breathing hard, eyes wide.

  “It’s the sword,” said Holliday. “It’s got to be, it can’t be anything else.”

  “They killed him,” said Peggy weakly. Her chest was rising and falling too quickly; she was hyperventilating, the adrenaline running through her hard. He knew the feeling. It could carry you away, make you want to do something, to make a move, any move, rather than hold your position and figure the odds.

  “There are at least two of them out there, maybe three. Someone must have followed us here from the airport. They were ready for us.”

  “You think Broadbent set this up?” Peggy asked, unbelievingly.

  “There’s some connection. Now’s not the time to try and figure it out. We’ve got to get out of here alive.”

  “Amen to that,” said Peggy. “How?”

  Holliday pointed the barrel of the assault rifle at the narrow door in the kitchen wall.

  “That leads to the vegetable garden. I saw it on the way in. The garden’s between that stone granary and the side of the house.”

  The building was square, twelve feet on a side with a conical thatched roof and raised on “straddle stones” to keep out vermin and the damp. There were no windows, only a wide plank door on one side. The space between the ground and the floor was too narrow and too constricted to be a sniper position; their attackers were effectively blind on that side. Coming out the kitchen door, the granary would be in front of them beyond the vegetable garden with a line of trees twenty yards to the west on their left, separating L’Espoir from the main road.

  The rental car and Carr-Harris’s Land Rover would be ten yards to their right, the Land Rover screening the little Toyota. The Land Rover was a four-door with right-hand drive. The Toyota was a two door; to get somebody into the passenger seat would require going around to the open side of the vehicle, exposing them to killing fire.

  “Where are the keys to the rental?” Holliday asked.

  “In my bag,” said Peggy. The bag, miraculously, was still slung over her shoulder. The Toyota key had an electronic buzzer. He looked over Peggy’s shoulder at the spike on the doorframe. There was no plastic buzzer key. He closed his eyes for a second, visualizing the moment when they rolled into Carr-Harris’s farmyard.

  Was the window of the Rover rolled down or was it closed? Would someone like Carr-Harris lock up his vehicle or leave it open? Hard to say. It didn’t really matter; they didn’t have too many options, and they were running out of time. He had kept the door to his house bolted; he’d heard the old man throwing it open when he answered the knock.

  But maybe he never used that door. Maybe he came into the house through the kitchen. Lots of people did that; the country version of coming in through the garage. Holliday glanced at the door. No bolt. He frowned. Too much to think about; he was getting a headache. His own adrenaline was still pumping. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The bad guys would be regrouping. Now or never.

  “Do exactly what I tell you,” said Holliday.

  He explained the plan to Peggy, and less than two minutes later, keeping low, he cracked open the kitchen door and listened. Nothing but the cascade rustle of wind in the trees and the rattling shiver of it blowing the bulrushes around the little pond like dry bones.

  He felt a sharp tug of old memory: a sinister moment in a dark movie theatre long ago, watching a film called Blowup as the actor David Hemmings stands in a strange, silent parkland, listening to that same ghost wind sound, wondering if he has just witnessed a murder. All of that with the grassy knoll in Dallas still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind. Knowing what it’s going to feel like a split second later when everything is suddenly about to go terribly wrong and your life is about to change forever. He blinked in the afternoon sunlight and tried to shake off the sudden sense of ominous dread. And failed.

  Holliday listened, muscles tense. Nothing at all. He took a deep breath and held it, then threw open the door, rising to his feet and running into the open, screening Peggy, who was on his heels.

  “Now!” Holliday yelled. Peggy lifted the rental keys, squeezing the plastic tab. There was a loud beeping sound as the doors unlocked on the far side of the Land Rover.

  Their aim distracted by the beeper, the invisible shooters concentrated on the Toyota, stitching the side panels and the windows with rapid, silent fire. Peggy peeled left behind him, and they threw themselves into the Rover, him behind the wheel, her into the back.

  Holliday jammed the ignition key into its slot and hauled the automatic-shift lever into reverse. Bent far over to the right, he kept his head down and rammed his foot down on the accelerator.

  The Rover rocketed backward, and Holliday slewed the wheel around blindly, shifting slightly in his seat to catch a glimpse out through the windshield, gauging the moment, then dragging the shift lever down into drive and hammering the gas again, sending them flying toward the open gate as bullets snapped and banged into the rear of the vehicle.

  A round shattered the rearview mirror six inches from his head, but it was too late. He dragged the wheel left, and the Rover swayed wildly, brushing into the trees on the opposite side of the lane for a few seconds, almost careening into the unseen ditch. They burst out onto the roadway and into the light. Holliday swung them left, heading down to the main road a hundred yards away. He risked a quick look over his shoulder. No one behind them.

  Peggy rose up nervously from the backseat and looked warily around.

  “I think we’re okay for now,” said Holliday.

  He looked to the left. He could just make out the chimneys and the dark thatched roof of L’Espoir beyond the trees as they sped away. There were dead bodies to deal with, evidence to remove. It would take them a little while. Maybe they’d even burn the place down like Uncle Henry’s. He swung out onto the wider main road and turned toward Leominster. They were all right for the moment, but for how long?

  11

  They left the Land Rover in the car park of the Leominster Sainsbury’s supermarket and walked to the British Rail station. Twenty minutes later they boarded a train bound for the main junction city of Crewe, in Cheshire, then quickly caught a connecting train to the ferry terminus in Holyhead, Wales.

  After a cursory run through Her Majesty’s Customs they went on board the high-speed Stena ferry, a catamaran powered by twin Rolls Royce jet engines that looked more like a giant blue and white shoebox on monster skate blades than an oceangoing vessel.

  On the inside the ship was fitted out like a cut-rate Las Vegas casino, complete with video poker, slot machines glowing neon, and a constant tinkling background track of European-style Muzak playing against the overpowering throbbing roar of the jet turbines deep down within the hull of the ship.

  Snot-nosed Irish kids trolled the lounges begging their mothers and fathers for euros to play the slots while the weary parents sagged in the padded vinyl airline-style seats, staring out at the rushing, steel-blue Irish Sea, exhausted from a day’s shopping for running shoes and school clothes for the fall at the discount outlet stores in Holyhead.

  Sixty miles of open sea and ninety minutes later they reached the Ireland side at Dun Laoghaire, pronounced “Dun Leery,” the ancient port once used by Viking raiders as a base from which to raid the English coast. The name was changed to Kingstown in 1821 in honor of a visit by George IV, then promptly changed back to Dun Laoghaire exactly a hundred years later on the heels of Irish independence.

  Dead tired, Holliday and Peggy dragged themselves off the ferry in the fading evening light, took the footbridge across Harbour Road, then staggered down the long flight of steps to the Dublin Area Rapid Transit platform. They caught the short-run commuter train to Connelly Station in Dublin, six miles to the north, lined up for a tax
i, then drove into the center of the city.

  Taking the cabdriver’s advice they booked into Staunton’s, a trio of elegant Georgian town houses that had been turned into a hotel overlooking the large, lush, iron-fenced rectangle of St. Stephen’s Green. It was just past ten o’clock. They locked the door to their room, flopped down onto the twin beds, still fully dressed, and were both asleep in seconds.

  When Holliday woke up the following morning Peggy’s bed was empty. Twenty minutes later she was back carrying a green and gold Dunnes Stores bag and two large paper cups full of Seattle’s Best Coffee. She went into the adjoining bathroom to unpack the toiletries while Holliday gratefully slurped at the coffee.

  “There’s a big shopping center on the far side of the park,” she called out. “We should go there later and stock up.”

  “Good idea,” said Holliday. Everything they’d brought with them had been in the trunk of the rental car parked in Carr-Harris’s yard. All they had now were their passports and their wallets.

  Peggy popped her head around the bathroom door.

  “I’m going to have a quick shower. Why don’t you go down and order us breakfast?”

  “All right,” said Holliday. She went back into the bathroom and shut the door. A few seconds later he heard the hiss of the shower. He finished his coffee, then left the room, locking the door behind him. He went down the elegant winding staircase to the main floor, then threaded his way through several connecting corridors to the dining area.

  The room was smallish and relentlessly red. Red walls, red carpet, and red leather upholstered chairs. Several curtained windows looked out onto the roaring morning traffic heading around the park.

  It was almost eleven, and the room was empty except for an elderly priest in the far corner reading The Catholic Weekly and drinking coffee. Holliday seated himself at a table beside one of the windows, his joints still aching from the previous day and a night spent on a too-soft mattress.

  A waitress appeared idiotically overdressed in the Irish interpretation of a French maid’s uniform, complete with a frilly apron and a frilly little hat to match. Her nametag read NADINE. She had a long, rodent-like face and graying hair bizarrely done up in overtight, African-style cornrows that acted like a Botox injection, viciously pulling up the skin of her forehead and painfully arching heavy, dark eyebrows that ran together over the bridge of her long nose. She appeared to be in her late fifties and looked extremely bored. She had a thermos jug of coffee in her hand that she was holding like a weapon.

  “Are you still serving breakfast?” Holliday asked.

  “Full Irish or Continental,” she answered. “There’s no grapefruit this morning,” she warned. Her vaguely sinister Dublin drawl made the question of the grapefruit sound like a bomb threat.

  “Full Irish,” said Holliday. “Two, please. My cousin will be down in a few minutes.”

  “Your cousin, is it?” the woman said skeptically.

  “That’s right,” said Holliday

  “American, are you?” Nadine said.

  “That’s right,” said Holliday, trying to keep a polite smile on his face; it wasn’t easy. He’d had drill sergeants who were more polite.

  “Thought so,” grunted the waitress. She turned on her heel and left the room, pausing to refill the priest’s cup of coffee. She’d never offered the coffee to Holliday.

  Peggy appeared a few minutes later, her dark hair tousled and wet from the shower. She saw Holliday, veered between several tables, and sat down across from him.

  “I’m famished,” she said. “You realize the last time we ate was on the plane?”

  “I ordered for us,” said Holliday. “The waitress didn’t give us much choice, so it’s full Irish for both of us.”

  “In England that would be egg and chips,” said Peggy.

  “I think full Irish is a little more extreme,” said Holliday.

  The waitress appeared a few minutes later, an enormous plate in each hand. She set them down in front of Holliday and Peggy.

  “Holy crap,” murmured Peggy, looking down at the plate. On it were two fried eggs, sunny-side up, swimming in iridescent grease, their undersides a burnt-crisp web of charred whites, the yolks staring wetly up at her like deep orange eyes.

  Beside the eggs there was a lump of baked beans in the shape of an ice cream scoop, two wrinkled rashers of pale pink bacon, a raft of link sausages, a small crop of fried mushrooms next to a dissolving slice of fried tomato, a mountainous pile of fried potatoes, and two fried circular objects each the size of a silver dollar, one black, one white.

  “What are those?” Peggy asked, indicating the coin-shaped objects on the plate.

  “Black pudding and white pudding, miss,” explained the waitress.

  “What’s black pudding?” Peggy asked.

  “Pig’s blood and oatmeal, miss,” said the waitress. She pronounced the word “blood” as “blud.”

  “And white pudding?” Peggy said.

  “Pork meat and suet,” said the woman in the maid’s outfit. “They used to use sheep’s brains, but they’re too afraid of the scrapie since mad cow. Best part of twenty years past,” she added, as though the lack of scrapie-infected sheep’s brains was somehow a terrible culinary loss.

  “Ah,” said Peggy.

  “Will that be all?” asked the waitress, turning to Holliday. He nodded. The waitress turned and left the room.

  “I’ve lost my appetite,” said Peggy, looking down at the plate.

  “When I ate with Uncle Henry he used to scold me if I didn’t eat everything on my plate. ‘Think about the starving children in China,’ he’d say.”

  “With me it was the starving kids in Africa,” Peggy answered. She started to eat, carefully avoiding the black and white puddings. The waitress reappeared with a vintage toast rack filled with half a dozen thick-cut slices and a plate of butter.

  “I wonder what the rate of heart attacks is in Ireland,” said Peggy. She picked up a slice of toast and used it to mop up a sea of leaking egg yoke. Holliday didn’t answer, concentrating on his own breakfast for a little while. As he ate he found himself thinking about the firefight at Carr-Harris’s the day before, the old professor, his arms spread wide as he died, the man with the Russian submachine gun in the narrow hall, the bark of the Mauser.

  Almost twenty-four hours ago now. Soon someone would come by the old man’s house, the mailman or the milkman or a neighbor, and everything would begin to come crashing down on their heads. Two dead bodies in the house, their rental left behind in the yard. They’d left a trail of bread crumbs a blind man could follow, let alone the police. Except for fleeing, they’d done nothing illegal, but if they fell into the bureaucratic horror show that was bound to surround Carr-Harris’s death it would take days if not weeks to escape.

  “This is getting out of hand,” he said finally.

  “The breakfast?” Peggy said.

  “No. What we’re doing. Tracking down an old sword that Hitler might or might not have owned is a long way from murdering people. We’re way out of our depth here,” said Holliday.

  Peggy put down her fork. She turned her head and looked out through the filmy sheer curtains. A bright yellow double-decker open tour bus rumbled by, its side panels covered in manic advertising slogans, the seats on the upper decks crammed with stunned-looking tourists in bright clothing trying to cram Dublin into a day trip.

  “I think it’s too late to back out now,” the young woman said finally. “You said it yourself: those guys shooting at us yesterday must have followed us to Carr-Harris’s place. They knew exactly what they were doing.” She paused. “I don’t think people who are willing to kill to get what they want are going to back down. Even if we did bail out and head for the hills, I think they’d just track us down and try it again. We have to keep going.”