Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

“I guarantee it,” Holliday said.

  “All right,” said Bakshi. “I will tell you.”

  And he did.

  19

  “So we’ve got his address,” said Lazarus as they rode a tuk-tuk away from Bakshi’s and back to the hotel. “What do we do with it now?”

  They rode through the stunning chaos of Mumbai streets. Holliday was deep in thought. Seated facing backward, looking at the city scene as it unraveled behind them, Holliday tried to concentrate on a single vehicle and follow its path. It was almost impossible.

  “It’s a matter of urban camouflage. Unless Raman has eyes in the back of his head, it shouldn’t be too hard to follow him around for a few days until we get a feel for him.”

  The tuk-tuk reached the hotel and deposited them in front of the main door.

  “I can’t see how it’s possible,” said Lazarus. “A man like him will be in a big car with lots of bodyguards. We could get stuck in traffic anytime and lose him easily.”

  “That would be true. We could try to follow him in a cab or a car or even a tuk-tuk, but what I’m suggesting is a little bit different.”

  * * *

  Rohit Bapat sat in the rear of a workingman’s restaurant he owned, eating deep-fried onion balls and a fiery curry, which he scooped up with chunks of naan, occasionally dipping the bread into a bowl of raita to cool off his mouth and tongue. Bobby Dhaliwal, dressed in one of his exotic Bollywood outfits, sat across from his boss, with the plastic mailing tube on his lap. He had a beer in front of him, which he occasionally sipped.

  “Is that it?” Bapat asked, curry dripping down his chin and onto the napkin tucked into his shirt.

  “Yes, boss. I had to kill him to get it.”

  “No matter,” said Bapat. “He was no longer useful anyway.” He dipped his bread into the raita and bit a chunk off, swallowing noisily. Using his hands, he picked up one of the deep-fried onions balls, dipped it into the raita as well and shoved half of it into his mouth, biting down hard. He dropped what was left of the onion ball onto the side of his plate, belched and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Let me see it,” he ordered.

  Dhaliwal uncapped the mailing tube and slid out the scroll. He held it up carefully for Bapat to see.

  “It looks like a piece of goat shit,” said Bapat skeptically. “You’re telling me this thing is priceless? How can a piece of petrified goat shit be priceless?”

  “It is a scroll, boss. It was made by monks almost two thousand years ago. From what I understand, the Vatican would do anything to get their hands on it, if only to keep it away from the Jews.”

  “What does this fucking goat turd have to do with the Jews?”

  “The Jews own all the Dead Sea Scrolls that were ever discovered—all except this one.”

  Bapat turned in his chair and gestured for a beer. A man brought it to him unopened, bowed and placed it on the table. The fat gangster used his thumb to flip it open. He took a long swallow and belched again, then shook his head. “How can these goat turds everyone wants be so valuable?”

  “I’m not an expert,” said Dhaliwal, “but I found a piece of paper in the Frenchman’s office offering five hundred million dollars in U.S. funds.”

  “Then this is indeed a great goat turd that you have brought me. If what you say is true, you have brought me the single weapon I need to bring down Raman and to fulfill my destiny.” He paused and shook his head again. “Imagine that. Kota Raman and his empire brought down by a goat turd.”

  * * *

  The first thing Holliday and Lazarus did once they had formulated their plan was to go out and purchase the cheapest, most garish, obviously touristy clothes they could.

  Their next stop was a garage that sold motorcycles and scooters. Holliday, who was more accustomed to motorcycles, chose an olive green Royal Enfield Bullet that looked as though it might have been driven by a dispatch rider in World War II. Lazarus, having never driven anything besides a car, chose a battered bright red Vespa scooter. Both men bought helmets with heavily tinted visors. Holliday’s helmet was a garishly striped red and green, while Lazarus’s was robin’s egg blue with an amateurish flame job painted on both sides.

  “You realize we look like complete bloody idiots,” Lazarus said, looking at Holliday in full gear on the old motorcycle.

  “That’s the general idea,” answered Holliday, his voice muffled by the visor.

  They spent the next three days following Kota Raman’s large black Mercedes around the city. His trips were erratic—some short, some long. The locations ranged from tall office buildings to small confectionaries, storefronts to gigantic factories.

  There was one thing each day had in common. Toward late afternoon the Mercedes would inevitably drive up the Mumbai peninsula to Shivaji Park, a large green sanctuary full of children’s play areas, gardens of peace and meditation for the elderly, and what Raman clearly came for: the cricket fields. It didn’t seem to matter who was playing on the large training pitch in the park; Raman seemed to enjoy them all. Without fail, he would set up a folding chair and table and a white-jacketed servant would appear out of nowhere bearing a silver service of tea and biscuits. Raman was never alone, but usually when watching the cricket matches he had only his second in command and one burly bodyguard accompanying him.

  On the fourth day Lazarus and Holliday decided to act. They had one of the hotel cars take them to Shivaji Park an hour ahead of the time Raman usually arrived. There, they waited until he had set himself up with his table and tea, and then they approached him slowly. They were dressed in light business suits, and Lazarus carried the portfolio of items from Devaux’s laboratory in Paris. The second in command and the bodyguard reacted quickly. Spotting Holliday and Lazarus approaching their boss, the two men intercepted them when they were still fifty feet away from the cricket pitch.

  “My name is Ali Kapoor. Do you have business here?” Kapoor was tall, broad shouldered and looked as though he might have been a wrestler in his prime. He was impeccably dressed in an Armani suit. The bodyguard beside him was much larger and remained silent.

  “We have important business with Mr. Raman and we must speak to him immediately.”

  “You don’t mind if my friend here checks you for weapons, do you?” Kapoor said.

  “Not at all,” said Holliday. He lifted his arms and spread his legs slightly.

  The bodyguard did a thorough pat-down and then did the same for Lazarus. The bodyguard shook his head. Holliday and Lazarus returned to a normal position.

  “Follow me,” said Kapoor.

  Kapoor led them over to where Raman was watching the cricket match. The men on the practice field were dressed immaculately in white uniforms.

  “These two men say they have business with you, boss,” Kapoor said, stepping to one side.

  “And who might these gentlemen be?” Raman asked, squinting up from his chair.

  “My name is Colonel John Holliday. I was recently at an archaeological dig in a place called Qumran outside Jerusalem. The words ‘The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East’ were carved into the wall of one of the caves there. The same cave where my cousin and her husband were murdered. Those words also appeared in a scroll that was recently stolen from you by a man named Ranjit Dhaliwal.”

  “Should I take your word for this or do you have proof?”

  “My name is Peter Lazarus. I’m an agent for Interpol and here is your proof.” He handed the portfolio they had removed from the apartment in Paris over to Raman.

  Raman unzipped the portfolio and snapped his fingers. The white-coated servant appeared and cleared off the table beside Raman. He laid the open portfolio on the table and began to go through it page by page. When he was finished, he closed the portfolio and turned back to Holliday. “How do you know it was Dhaliwal?”

  “Because I shot him high in the right arm
as he was going out the door and because Mr. Lazarus here used his connections to find out who he was and where he was from.”

  “Interesting,” said Raman. He continued speaking. “You gentlemen have done me a great service. Surely there is more than altruism involved here.”

  “I wish to know where you got the scroll from originally,” said Holliday.

  “Why should that be of interest to you?”

  “I would have thought it was obvious,” said Holliday. “When I find out who it was, I intend to kill him just the way my cousin and her husband were killed, not to mention getting revenge for the death of my best friend.”

  “You are a believer in revenge, then, Colonel Holliday?”

  “At one time I would have said I didn’t believe in it, but apparently I’m a changed man.” Holliday’s voice was chilly with death.

  “This is not the place to discuss such things. You will come to my house for dinner tonight and we will discuss your concerns and my interest in Mr. Dhaliwal and his employer. I am beginning to see that what I thought was a simple transaction goes much deeper than the simple buying and selling of an artifact. Dismiss your driver and come with me. You will be perfectly safe.”

  “Why should we trust you?” Lazarus asked.

  “Because unlike Mr. Dhaliwal and his employer, I am a man of honor. If I guarantee your safety, I will die myself to secure it. Now come along.”

  * * *

  A 1956 Ford one-ton pickup, its color scraped off almost to the bare metal, sat at the end of a narrow makeshift airfield. In the rear of the truck a .50 caliber heavy machine gun was mounted. It was manned by a figure wearing a filthy shirt and torn trousers along with a hastily wrapped half turban on his head. The man in the cab of the truck, seated behind the wheel, was heavy-set, muscular and dressed entirely in white, except for his neatly wrapped turban, which was jet black.

  The light gray Piper Meridian turboprop appeared out of nowhere, its coloring as vague as the Afghan sky. It hit a tiny runway at the extreme end, its single prop reversing almost immediately. By the time it reached the pickup truck it was rolling slowly. It came to a full stop within thirty feet of the truck. Two men climbed down from the aircraft. One was Ranjit Dhaliwal. The other was Rohit Bapat.

  As Bapat’s sandaled feet touched solid ground, he fell to his knees and then to his hands in an attitude of prayer. Bapat, who had foolishly gorged himself before flight, vomited. He was always a nervous flier under the best of circumstances, but having had such a large meal accompanied by at least half a dozen bottles of beer was asking for disaster.

  Dhaliwal left his boss for a minute and climbed back into the plane. He returned a moment later with a bottle of water. He helped his boss to his feet and handed him the bottle. Bapat accepted it gratefully, and he took a long swig, filling his mouth, then spit it out onto the dusty ground. He took another long draw of the water, swallowing it this time, then handed the rest back to Dhaliwal. Dhaliwal recapped the bottle and slipped it into the pocket of his light linen jacket. Bapat delicately stepped around the pool of vomit and headed toward the pickup truck, the twin barrels of the .50 caliber machine gun following him as he moved. Behind them the single-engine turboprop turned and went hurtling down the runway. It rose into the late-afternoon sky, disappearing in the haze. Bapat reached the passenger side of the truck and pulled open the stiff, resistant door. He sat down beside the driver.

  “Your friend rides in the back,” said the man in the black turban.

  “There’s room enough for him beside me,” said Bapat.

  “He rides in the back,” repeated the black-turbaned man.

  Bapat turned to Dhaliwal and shrugged.

  Without a word Dhaliwal went to the rear of the truck, boosted himself over the transom and sat down on a bench directly behind the machine gunner. Without another word the man in the black turban turned on the engine and threw the old truck into gear, and they turned away from the small airfield.

  Three hundred yards away they found a two-lane highway and followed it for about an hour. A side road to the right presented itself and the truck turned, heading toward a low range of hills in the distance. Turning off the side road, they followed a pair of rutted tracks for perhaps fifteen miles before eventually reaching a small compound that looked completely abandoned. They turned in through the gate in the wall and quickly parked.

  “Get out,” said the man in the black turban. Bapat did so. He went to the rear of the truck and told Dhaliwal to join him. The truck moved toward the smaller of the two buildings. The smaller building was fitted with two large doors. As the truck approached, the black-turbaned man honked his horn. Immediately the two doors of the building opened and the truck drove in.

  “We must get inside at once,” said the man in the turban. “The drone is due to pass over us in five minutes.”

  He pushed Bapat and Dhaliwal toward the simple wooden door. He knocked twice and the door was opened by what appeared to be a low-level servant. The three men stepped inside and the door was closed behind them.

  “Take off your shoes,” the turbaned man said. He led them down a carpeted passageway to a small room. There was a single man in it. He was on his knees, moving up and down and muttering prayers under his breath while he touched his chest, lips and closed eyes with his bare hands. He did this for a few moments and then stood.

  Bapat bowed deeply and then stood up again and smiled.

  It was the man he’d come to see, the most infamous Taliban terrorist in the world and without a doubt the most powerful man in Afghanistan, a man who owned almost one hundred percent of the opium crop in the country and who, despite his power, was almost certainly certifiably insane.

  “Mullah Omar,” said Bapat, smiling at the tall bearded man with his right eye sown shut.

  20

  Holliday and Lazarus sat in Raman’s dining room. It was a simple enough place, a long table made of teak and chairs upholstered in dark blue silk. A breeze blew through the ornately carved shutters and a single stick of sandalwood incense burned on a sideboard on the far side of the room. Above them a pair of four-bladed fans turned gently.

  The food was as simple as the room and was brought to the table by several white-jacketed servants. There was rice, dal, pakora, cauliflower mixed with exotic spices, chapatis, a main dish of curried lamb and a jug of mango lassi. For dessert there was cardamom barfi, a rich, sweet confection made from condensed milk.

  “You lay an excellent table, Mr. Raman,” said Peter Lazarus.

  Holliday smiled. “I don’t know much about Indian food at all, but this was really good. It was kind of you to offer us dinner at such notice.”

  “It was my pleasure, Colonel Holliday. In my business I rarely meet with people I can have a decent conversation with.”

  “Eventually we’re going to have to get down to brass tacks, however,” said Lazarus.

  “Allow me a moment or two to pretend that I’m not what I am.” Raman smiled wistfully. “You know, I am the only man in my family to have graduated university. I managed to get quite a good first in history at Oxford. My father wanted me to become something more elevated than head of a criminal empire. That was to be for my older brother, Nadir. Unfortunately, Nadir was both impetuous and stupid. Not a useful combination. He died in a knife fight over the affections of a girl in a nightclub. As the second son it was required of me to take his place.”

  “And if that hadn’t happened?” Holliday asked.

  Raman shrugged. “In India we believe that everything is foretold and that you cannot escape the fate assigned to you. Had Nadir not died that night, he would have been killed eventually for some useless reason. Before I left for Oxford I knew that I would be returning and I think my father did as well. I think my father was very sad for me that day because he wanted me to be so much more.”

  “Why not simply stop?” Holliday asked. />
  “Because I have sisters, cousins, hundreds of people under my employ whose families depend on me. Because I am at the center of a horde of people, a horde of people I must take care of. I am father to them all.”

  “I’ve heard that rationale before,” said Holliday. “Michael Corleone used it over and over and over to justify his actions. He could have simply walked away from it all right from the start, turned his back with his beautiful bride-to-be and never returned.”

  “Yet you, Colonel Holliday, search out the people who killed your cousin. You’re as much a hypocrite as Corleone or myself, whatever you think. At the end of your life your family is everything.”

  “Who did you purchase the scroll from?” Holliday asked, a bitter tone in his voice.

  “From a thief who offered it to me.”

  “What would the thief’s name be?”

  “He never told me his name, only that the scroll could be very valuable in my negotiations with an important man I hope to deal with in Afghanistan.”

  At that moment Ali Kapoor entered the room and whispered in Raman’s ear. Raman thought for a moment and replied to Kapoor concisely. Kapoor left the room and Raman turned back to his guests.

  Raman smiled pleasantly. “It looks like our good friends Mr. Bapat and Mr. Dhaliwal have stolen the march on us.”

  “How so?” asked Holliday.

  “Apparently Mr. Bapat and Mr. Dhaliwal flew into Afghanistan today and met with the very man I had hoped to do business with. I’m afraid Mr. Bapat’s intention is the same as mine, to offer the man in Afghanistan the scroll for what he has to offer.”

  “Who is he?” asked Lazarus.

  “His name is Mullah Omar. I’m sure you’ve heard of him, Colonel Holliday.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him. He’s the most powerful Taliban leader in Afghanistan. There’s even word of him being offered the presidency of the country once the Americans have gone for good.”

  “Do you know how he got that way?” Raman asked.