The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  Jochen and Sibbe turned on their heels and began to jog back towards the bar.

  ‘What are we going to say to Udo, Sibbe?’

  ‘What do you think? That we caught them and broke their elbows. No one will know any better if neither of us cracks.’

  ‘I won’t crack.’

  ‘Neither will I.’

  ‘Why didn’t we hit them, Sibbe? Why did you let me persuade you?’

  Sibbe shook his head. ‘Because my brother’s a pretty boy too. Just like the younger one of those two. And my mother loves him like crazy. I just couldn’t do it. Not when they turned round and faced us like that. I can do it in the heat of the moment. Or when Udo is watching me. But I can’t do it cold like that. They suddenly became real people. I have a nightmare that we’re going to do my brother and his lot one day. Then what do I do?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sibbe.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Udo smashed the last queer left standing and then gave him a second belting across the hind quarters for good measure. His pickaxe handle was splintered and he was sweating with the effort of fag-bashing. ‘Right. We’re out of here.’ He signalled to Lenzi. ‘Your whistle.’

  Lenzi blew his whistle.

  The LB Sonderkommando pulled back. One man stepped sideways and raised his helve over a crawling man.

  ‘No more bashing, you silly cunt. That’s it.’

  The man lowered his pickaxe handle.

  Once outside they began to run.

  ‘Anybody hurt?’

  ‘No, Udo. We took them completely by surprise. We fucking wrecked them.’

  Those amongst the Leather Bar’s clients who were still conscious groaned and wailed in pain. Legs, arms and hips were broken. Hands had been crushed. Knees shattered. The landlord, who had been caught telephoning, had a smashed ribcage and a fractured femur. Men were dragging themselves around the floor as in the aftermath of a major traffic accident.

  Udo looked at Sibbe.‘Did you get those two who were running away?’

  ‘Yes, Udo. We smashed their phones too.’

  ‘Good. This was an excellent operation. Excellent. You are all getting better. Working like a team for a change.’

  ‘Thank you, Udo.’

  ‘Now you see what we can accomplish when we work together. No one can stand against us.’

  They drove slowly out of town, each in opposite directions. Then they curved back towards the pre-arranged rendezvous, which was at the fourth angle of an imaginary square.

  ‘Pickaxe handles down.’

  The men laid their pickaxe handles in a grid on the ground.

  Udo squirted lighter fuel on them, fired up the matchbox and threw it onto the grid.

  The pickaxe handles burst into flame.

  ‘Take off your over-clothes and masks.’ Udo waited until the handles were well alight. ‘Now dump the clothes on top.’ Udo took the second sachet of lighter fuel and squirted it over the clothes. He threw the empty sachets onto the bonfire. ‘Right. We’re out of here.’

  Udo’s Sonderkommando dispersed back into their vans. Two of the vans started straight off, but Udo waited behind for a moment, watching the bonfire. It reminded him of archive film he had seen of the Brown Shirts on the night of the Burning of the Books in 1933. His grandfather had been present at the Munich burning. In Berlin, forty thousand people had gathered at the Opernplatz to hear Joseph Goebbels’s speech denouncing decadence and moral corruption, and twenty-five thousand un-German books had subsequently been torched.

  ‘This time we will do it right,’ Udo said to his silent audience.

  When he was sure that the bonfire was roaring, he gunned his engine and followed the others.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘The police have been to see my mother and Clive.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’ Hart shrugged his shoulders. ‘As far as Clive is concerned I am still in Central America. As far as my mother is concerned, I may as well be in Greenland. I didn’t disabuse either of them of their notions. I hardly think their phones will be tapped yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, John.’

  Hart gave a long sigh. ‘Why has all this happened? Ever since Syria my life seems to have gone to shit.’

  ‘Sorry to add insult to injury, but the police have been to your flat too.’

  ‘You sent someone along to check?’

  ‘I asked Wesker to sniff around a little. See if you were home. It was clear he thought I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms – that I thought you were cheating on me.’

  ‘Does he still think that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What else did you tell him?’

  ‘Not a lot. Wesker will have worked it all out for himself by now. He doesn’t need me to baby him along.’

  ‘Lovely lot, journalists.’

  ‘They’re your only friends.’

  ‘Only because I’m part of a story.’

  ‘There is that.’

  Hart and Amira looked at each other. The tension between them was palpable.

  ‘Does Wesker know I’m not even seeing you at the moment? Far less anyone on the side?’

  Amira ducked her head as if Hart’s words might leave a scar behind them if they struck her. ‘I got you your fake passport.’ She tossed it onto the table between them. ‘It’s good for most things. But I wouldn’t try travelling to the US if I were you.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of travelling to the US. It’s way too close to Guatemala. Like two thousand miles close.’

  Amira laughed. Hart smiled back. Both were hyper-aware how things stood with them. But neither dared address the underlying issues.

  ‘How did you get it?’

  ‘Through a crypto-anarchist network. I stumbled onto them once during an investigation, and I’ve used them a few times since when I’ve wanted to cover my traces on the internet. Muddle up search patterns. Use what they call cypherspace. It’s a great resource when one encounters copyright problems in the real world. Because in cypherspace no one can hear you cream.’

  ‘That’s a dreadful pun.’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was, Amira.’

  They were both silent.

  ‘I got the passport in exchange for information and immunity, if you really want to know. The cryptos now feel protected because they hold details of your false identity, which they have vowed to give up at the first sign of doubledealing. And we’re protected because they need me to cover their backsides and give them warning in case they are ever investigated by the newspaper. Which I’ve promised to do.’

  ‘That’s comforting. So they don’t know who I actually am, but only my pseudonym? What a relief. I was anticipating blackmail. It would have made such a welcome change from being a murder suspect.’

  ‘Why is everything a source of amusement to you, John? These people aren’t criminals. They really believe in what they are doing.’

  ‘As do you. Obviously.’ Hart tried on a grin, but it was a poor substitute for how he really felt. ‘Tell me, is there any nutcase-anti-statist-anarcho-looney-counter-capitalist-cyberpunk-hacktivist type group out there that you wouldn’t support at a pinch and hand my identity over to?’

  ‘No. There isn’t. And it’s not your identity anyway. Your name is really John Hart and not Johannes von Hartelius, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  A shadow crossed Hart’s face. ‘Actually, it is my real identity. Johannes von Hartelius is the name I would have been born with if my father had known where he truly came from. It’s the oddest feeling. I don’t think I’ve quite come to terms with it yet.’

  ‘Well, you’d better come to terms with it soon. The LB are upping their game. Or at least we think they are. Racist and homophobic attacks are on the increase all around the Munich area. There have been the usual tit-for-tat reprisals from amongst the Turkish community against random whites, and angry street demonstrations by the gay community,
with the equally inevitable backlash from “out of sight, out of mind” Joe Citizen. Which is exactly what the LB wants.’

  ‘What do you think the LB are after in the long term? Is it anarchy, do you think? The same as your friends the cryptos?’

  ‘No. It’s not anarchy they’re after. It’s political power. With the main population as sandwich meat between them and the opposition. It’s exactly what the SA Brown Shirts and the communists did in Germany during the 1920s, when they faced up to each other in the streets. Each side thought they would come out the stronger. That the main mass of the public would attach itself to their bandwagon. And look what came of that. Adolf Hitler. Talk about unintended consequences.’

  ‘But these people are marginal. The situation isn’t comparable, surely?’

  ‘You don’t think so? The LB – or one of their offshoots – are already killers. Killers and maimers. The parallels with how the Nazis went about it is striking. It doesn’t take much to set people off during a Depression. They’re frenetically keying into people’s fears of being swamped by immigrants and gays and Jews.’

  ‘Jews? In Germany? After all that’s gone before? You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Yes, the Jewish thing is still up and running. It always is. And always will be.’

  ‘But I thought you sat astride that particular argument? Being half Jew and half Arab? Last I heard you were pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist.’

  ‘Anti-Zionist doesn’t mean anti-Semitic. I may be against a Jewish state built on someone else’s land, but I’m Jew enough to resent being singled out because I am Jewish, and Arab enough to resent being singled out because I am Arab.’

  ‘Bloody heck.’

  ‘It’s not funny, John.’

  ‘You’re always telling me things aren’t funny. But laughter is sometimes the only possible answer when one bumps up against mass insanity.’

  Amira shook her head. ‘For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.’

  ‘Where does that come from?’

  ‘Ecclesiastes. I think it hits the mark, don’t you?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘The lads are getting better, Effi. All except Sibbe and the new boy, Jochen.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They lied to me yesterday, at the gay bashing.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘They told me they smashed up two queers who ran away from the car park as we arrived.’

  ‘How do you know they didn’t?’

  ‘When they handed me their pickaxe handles to burn there wasn’t any blood on them. All the other pickaxes were dripping with it. Split and shattered. I could have sold theirs brand new.’

  ‘Do you think they’re undercover?’

  ‘No. I think they’re scared. And squeamish. I think they should be put on special duties.’

  Effi looked at him. ‘You know what that means?’

  ‘One’s an orphan, the other might as well be. His brother is queer. I know that for a fact. I think that’s why he held back.’

  ‘It’s not his fault his brother is queer.’

  ‘But it’s his fault he held back.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘Special duties?’

  ‘Yes. Tell them they’ve been chosen out of all the others because you’re so impressed by their commitment.’

  ‘They’ll like being postmen. Foreign travel and all that.’

  ‘Jochen will have to let his hair grow out a bit.’

  ‘We’ve got time. They’ll need training.’

  ‘When’s your next outing?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Who is it this time?’

  ‘We won’t know until the actual night. It’s better that way.’

  ‘You enjoy all this, don’t you, Udo?’

  ‘No. It’s not about enjoyment for me. It’s about setting the record straight.’

  THIRTY

  Hart was slowly getting to grips with the basics of the German language. He was studying for up to six hours every day. He was studying so much his brain hurt.

  Amira was still not inviting him into her bed. And he wasn’t pushing for it. He couldn’t quite understand why.

  Sometimes he went out, heavily disguised in a trilby that Amira’s Egyptian father, Nassif, used to wear in a bid to appear more conventional when he went to visit his wife’s Jewish relatives in Swiss Cottage. It hadn’t worked. According to Amira, her mother’s family had viewed being a Coptic Christian as akin to being a golem. In their view, the New Testament was an abhorrence, and those who believed in it abhorrent in turn. Such people – Catholics, Protestants, Copts, Russian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, etc. – were behind every evil thing that had happened to the Jews in the twenty centuries that had elapsed since the Crucifixion. Nassif hadn’t dared argue.

  In an effort to exact compensation of sorts, Amira’s grandparents had pressurized Nassif into agreeing to Amira carrying their surname, arguing that in the Jewish tradition descent was guaranteed by the female line. The ever-tolerant Nassif had gone along with it in a doomed attempt to keep the peace and be accepted by his wife’s family – which was something that a less gullible man might have realized was never going to happen. Amira had abominated ‘niceness’ ever since.

  No wonder she’s so mixed up, thought Hart. Being part of a family like that must have been worse than being brought up in a convent. Religion had a lot to answer for, he decided, and those who hid behind it as an excuse not to think for themselves were the worst offenders. Wasn’t there enough strife in the world without adding to it by default?

  In the end they both agreed that Hart should wait at least another week before travelling to Bavaria, by which time any interest the British police had in him might have dwindled. The Holy Lance was being endlessly talked about on the internet, and there was much toing and froing of experts opining on this and that. Germany’s leading dendroarchaeologist had agreed to travel to Bavaria and pronounce on the newly discovered Lance’s possible age, and then compare it in detail to pictures taken of the original Vienna Lance before it fell into Hitler’s hands. The LB’s claim that the Holy Lance at present held in the Hofburg Imperial Palace Treasure Chamber in Vienna was actually one of Hitler’s forgeries – and that General Patton had been fooled into assuming it was the original one – had thrown the cat amongst the proverbial pigeons.

  It would no longer seem so surprising, therefore, if Hart, in his von Hartelius guise, heard about it and came calling. The LB were busy claiming that ‘manifold destiny’ intended them to have the Holy Lance, which is why it had been dug up on their leader’s land. Insane as it all sounded, there were many people out there both willing and able to swallow the lie.

  ‘And what is your plan after that, John? After you go knocking on Effi Rache’s door saying, “Look, it’s me!”?’

  ‘There is no plan after that. I’m going to wing it until I discover what I need to know.’

  ‘I see. Good thinking. And I just sit here and play backstop to your forward?’

  ‘I’ll pass you on any information I find out.’

  ‘That’s big of you. I hope you’ve got your backstory down pat, or they’ll skin you alive.’

  ‘Why are you always so pissed off at me? You only have to look at me to become aggressive.’

  ‘I’m not aggressive.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  Amira scowled at him. ‘I don’t like to be owned.’

  ‘Owned? How can I possibly own you? I don’t even get to fuck you any more.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what it is? Fucking? Not even making love. Just fucking.’

  ‘I would be scared to make love to you in your present state. You might think I was trying to own you.’ Hart ducked the tea towel Amira threw at his head. ‘Amira, why do you always make life so bloody complicated?’

  ‘Because it is complicated.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If you do
n’t know, I can’t tell you.’

  Hart hunched forward. He folded the tea towel and laid it carefully on the table between them like a peace offering. ‘Maybe you should have an affair with Wesker? He’s an alcoholic. That would complicate matters nicely, wouldn’t it?’ He raised an eyebrow to show that he wasn’t being serious. Wesker looked like a cross between a gurnard and a bullmastiff, and he didn’t want to risk Amira launching the teapot at him. ‘Where is the great man, by the way? I have a funny feeling we haven’t heard the last of him.’

  ‘He’s in Bavaria.’

  ‘Ah. Poodling around for you again?’

  ‘Yes. Poodling around arranging a safe house for us in Rottach Egern. Wesker and I have agreed to collaborate on the LB story.’

  ‘Cosy. And where’s Rottach Egern?’

  ‘Across Lake Tegernsee from Bad Wiessee. Which is where Effi Rache lives, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  Hart sat back in his chair. ‘So you’re serious about all this? You’re really going for the big story? You’re not going to cut me loose and move on to the next thing?’

  ‘No. I’m not going to cut you loose.’ Amira looked down at her hands. ‘I love you, John. That admission may surprise you, because you have me down as such a cold fish, obsessed with my career and my politics to the exclusion of all else. But I love you so much it hurts.’ She raised a hand to prevent him interrupting. She refused to look him in the eye. ‘My heart flutters like a teenager’s when you enter the room. When you make love to me I feel like I am dying and have gone to heaven. I love the look of you. I love the smell of you. I love the sound of your voice.’

  ‘So where’s our problem, then?’

  ‘I love you but I can’t live with you.’

  ‘That’s crazy, Amira.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I can’t live with you because I know that part of you still wants me to knuckle down and become a sort of glorified hausfrau, whilst you go off gallivanting around the world. Oh, you wouldn’t want me to grind completely to a halt. You’d like me to go on writing a few articles for the girlie bits in the magazines – get myself a picture byline and an audience gleaned from the Daily Telegraph culture pages. Live in a cottage in the country. Raise a brood. But I’m better than that.’