The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  Hart looked as if an apple core had lodged in his throat.

  ‘You are playing a dangerous game, John. These are people one should not toy with.’

  ‘I’ve been in some rough places during my career as a photojournalist.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure you have. But this is another animal entirely. This is your animal. Not someone else’s. And you are not here simply to take pictures.’ Frau Erlichmann felt in the pocket of her cardigan. ‘A man came visiting this morning. A fat Englishman with an ugly face who reeked of alcohol and tobacco smoke and looked as if he might have a heart attack at any moment. He asked after you. I told him I did not know what he was talking about. He handed me a letter and said, “Please give this to the person you don’t know I am talking about”. I thought that was very funny for him to do this, so I took the letter. I trust I did the right thing?’

  Hart nodded. ‘Wesker. His name is Wesker. If he’s here, it means the woman I told you about, Amira Eisenberger, is also here. Or on her way over.’

  ‘This is the woman you used to be with?’

  ‘Yes. Used.’ Hart blushed. It was not a condition he was accustomed to. But Frau Erlichmann appeared to have the innate capacity to see through whatever he said to the kernel of truth lurking beneath, and then hold him to account for it. ‘Amira aborted our child without asking me. That’s why we’re no longer together.’ Hart could feel his face tightening up. ‘I don’t know why I just told you that. Nobody knows about that. I don’t know why I said it.’

  ‘To justify yourself? To justify what you are doing with Effi Rache?’

  Hart stood up. He let out a deep breath. ‘Thank you for the coffee, Frau Erlichmann. I’m going somewhere to read this letter. Then I’m going down to visit Effi. I may not be using my bedroom tonight, so you’ll be saving on the maid service once again.’

  Frau Erlichmann bowed her head. ‘You must do as you see fit, John. You are a good man. But you are carving a bitter road for yourself.’

  FORTY

  Hart took the ferry back across the lake from Bad Wiessee to Rottach Egern. He hadn’t gone to visit Effi immediately after leaving the Alpenruh – Wesker’s note had precluded that, as it set down a specific time for their meeting. The same hour every day. On the hour. At the Gasthof zur Post. But he felt the absence of Effi’s physical presence in a way that he had not anticipated.

  Frau Erlichmann’s final warning had unsettled him, despite all his posturing. He liked and respected the old lady, and her good opinion mattered to him. Now he found himself checking everyone coming aboard the ferry in case he was being followed. He would have no problem recognizing Zirkeler again. The man was a true one-off. A grotesque. A human mountain. Pit him against a silverback gorilla, and Zirkeler would be odds on favourite to win. He would also recognize Zirkeler’s two young companions from the Gasthof zur Hirschtal car park. But there might be others he wouldn’t be able to identify so easily.

  Hart wondered for a moment if he wasn’t seeing reds under the beds. Or whatever colours modern-day Nazis had chosen as their own. Browns beneath the eiderdowns? Blacks beneath the tie-racks? Would he really come under suspicion just because he held a British passport? Or was he becoming paranoid?

  He turned things over in his mind as the ferry glided across the lake on its silent electric motor. No. There was no possible way anyone could know that the man who had been killed in Antigua was his father. No way he could be linked to Colel Cimi or Santiago. And Effi must be convinced by now of his bona fides as Johannes von Hartelius, thanks to his grandfather’s prepotent genes, and the photograph she grew up with from childhood.

  He’d been gifted the perfect alibi, too, in the matter of the Hartelius’s ancestral castle. It was absurd to think that he might have a genuine stake in the issue, but he probably had, given his lineage. It could take a year or two to sort out in the courts, though, assuming he wasn’t arrested for murder before the case could be brought to trial. But halfway-true alibis were always the best. And this one was more than halfway true. There was no reason for Effi to question it. He couldn’t see himself contacting the Americans any time soon, however. That would really throw the cat amongst the pigeons.

  Udo Zirkeler was another matter entirely. He had taken an instant dislike to the man when they had been introduced in the Gasthof zur Hirschtal car park. The repulsion had been a chemical one, as though the two of them were linked by past actions neither could possibly know about. Hart shook his head angrily. Was there such a thing as inherited cell memory? Of course there bloody wasn’t. The concept was absurd. That Zirkeler’s family and his own family had been connected in the past was simply a sick coincidence. No more than that. The fact remained, though, that Zirkeler was just the sort of brute who would kill three innocent people. And then lie to Effi about where he found the Holy Lance. Hart had seen the look on Zirkeler’s face as he had come running at him in the car park. If the women hadn’t vouched for him so swiftly, he’d have been dead meat.

  Effi, Hart felt, had been telling him the truth about how the Lance had come into her possession. All he would need to do to be absolutely sure that she hadn’t been involved with the murders was to sneak a look at her passport, just as Zirkeler had sneaked a look at his. Hart remembered from his own passport, now safely back at home with his mother in England, that the Guatemala migracion entry and exit stamps took up close on a full page all by themselves. There was no way to expunge them, short of razoring the page out and burning it. And that left traces. Sneaking a look at Zirkeler’s passport would be another matter entirely, and could prove conclusive. But that, Hart knew, would never happen.

  Hart threw open the Gasthof zur Post doors and looked around for Wesker. He walked up and down the booths, and then checked his watch. Ten past the hour. Maybe the bastard had gone back to his lair? But Wesker would never knowingly pass up the chance for a drink. He’d need to be levered out of a place that could boast its very own brewery a mere two kilometres away.

  Hart sat down to wait. He ordered a beer. He’d give Wesker half an hour and then head back to see Effi. She’d promised to cook him geschnetzeltes for dinner, with a cream and mushroom sauce and spätzle. Hart already knew what he would request for dessert.

  Amira tapped him on the shoulder.

  Hart sprang up, nearly oversetting the table. ‘Christ. I thought you were Zirkeler.’

  Amira kissed him on both cheeks, and then once, lightly, on the mouth. When Hart didn’t respond as she expected, she gave him a searching glance, then sat down opposite him in the booth. ‘So you’ve met Udo Zirkeler, then?’

  Hart flagged the waitress down to mask his agitation. ‘Yes. Effi introduced us.’

  ‘Oh. So it’s Effi now?’

  Hart went through the motions of ordering Amira a drink. Then he began to feel around in his pockets, for a pencil or a notebook or something. If a total stranger had offered him a cigarette at that precise moment he would have taken it, just to be able to have something to do with his hands.

  ‘I’m a trained journalist, remember? Nothing escapes me.’ Amira flashed him an artificial smile. She waited patiently for Hart to look up from what he was doing and meet her eyes again. ‘I’ve checked Miss Rache out on Google Images. A Marlene Dietrich clone without either the charm or the talent.’

  Hart knew where this was going. Amira and Frau Erlichmann would get on very well, despite the fifty-year age gap. ‘That’s why I’m over here. To cultivate Effi. That’s what we agreed I would do when we last spoke in London. So I don’t see what’s so surprising about it. And I’m hardly likely to call her Elfriede, now, am I?’ He wasn’t getting anywhere. Amira knew him far too well. ‘Where’s Wesker, by the way?’

  ‘I sent him in ahead of me to check out whether you were here. You were daydreaming about something, so he didn’t disturb you but came straight back to the house to fetch me. We’re just round the corner from here: 134 Bergstrasse. You could do worse than remember that address. You may need it one day. If
you’re really as thick in with those two as you pretend to be.’

  ‘I suppose the house is being paid for by the newspaper?’

  ‘Yes. We’re onto the story big time. Committed. Everyone’s fired up about what Golden Dawn are doing in Greece – blood banks for true Greeks, the targeting of restaurant owners to employ only locals, and so forth. But we think the danger’s much nearer home. We think it’s here, in fact. Racist violence and terror attacks on immigrants and gay people have increased tenfold in Bavaria over the past few months. And the recession only aggravates it. People who wouldn’t normally dream of joining a far-right party are jumping onto the bandwagon. Remember what happened in Germany between 1923 and 1933? Well, it’s happening all over again. Fear and resentment breed exclusion. But I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, aren’t I? You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’ve seen what happens. Remember Syria?’

  Hart leant back in the booth, his hands thrust in his pockets. ‘Are you sure you still want me to help you, Amira? You and Wesker? The team? You both still think I’ve got a part to play in this? That I might be of some use to you? I remember what happened last time I stepped in where I wasn’t wanted.’ Hart tried to inject a little irony into his voice, but he was far too wound up to pull it off. He knew he was babbling.

  ‘That all depends on how committed you are.’

  Hart swayed forward. He took his hands out of his pockets and gripped the table. ‘I’m committed, Amira. You’d better believe that. I’m not going to stop until I find out who killed my father and his people. I saw them dead. All three of them. It’s something I’ll never forget.’

  ‘I know that, John. I know that.’

  ‘I’ve already got an ally in the old woman who runs the Alpenruh. She hates the Raches. She believes Effi’s grandfather had her parents sent to Dachau, where they both died. It’s through her and her grandson that I’ve managed to make friends with Effi. Effi believes I’m over here to wrest my family castle back from the Americans. They’ve been using the place as an army barracks for the past seventy years. That bit just fell into my lap, actually.’ Hart wanted to bite his tongue off the minute the words came out.

  ‘It fell into your lap?’ Amira sat back in the booth. ‘From my reading of Effi Rache, she doesn’t seem like the sort of woman who just makes friends. Are you fucking her? Has she fallen into your lap as well?’

  Hart could feel himself colouring up. This was absurd. He wasn’t a teenage girl. And he had nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about. Despite this fact, he could think of nothing constructive to say.

  ‘You are fucking her, aren’t you? It’s written all over your face. You couldn’t even bring yourself to kiss me when I came in. Well, I suppose I should have expected it.’ Something flashed across Amira’s face, but whatever the emotion behind it had been, it was gone in an instant. ‘And has your fucking of the main suspect in your father’s death allowed you to come to any conclusions?’

  Hart closed his eyes. ‘Effi did not kill my father. Or Santiago. Or Colel Cimi. I can guarantee you that. And tonight I’m going to prove it. I’m going to check her passport.’

  ‘Quite the Sherlock Holmes. You fuck her rigid, then you sneak into her study and rifle her drawers.’

  ‘Amira, don’t.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? Pat you on the shoulder and say well done? I told you I loved you in London…’

  Hart held up his hand. ‘And that you couldn’t live with me.’

  ‘But I said I loved you. Do you know how much it cost me to admit that?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t cheated on me in the ten years we’ve known each other, Amira. Don’t tell me you’re as pure as the driven snow.’

  Amira slapped the table between them. Two nearby drinkers took up their glasses and moved to a table a little further away. Amira ignored them. ‘Why have you never asked me that before? Why only now? Because it would be convenient for you? Salve your conscience?’

  Hart shook his head. He didn’t know why he’d asked her either.

  ‘Actually, I haven’t.’

  Hart felt the walls begin to close in on him. ‘You haven’t what? Slept with anyone else?’

  ‘No. I haven’t. I thought we had an understanding. That we were both mature individuals who chose to be together from time to time, but understood that any long-term plans had to be put on hold because of our careers. But that we still needed to cherish each other and build up some sort of trust. That included giving each other the freedom to be free if we wanted to. And because you gave me that freedom – gave it willingly, I should add – I didn’t use it. Because right from the beginning I knew that you were the only man for me. So I didn’t want anybody else, even though there were a good few who tried, believe me. I still don’t.’

  Hart met her eyes. ‘I didn’t know, Amira. I really didn’t know.’

  ‘And that’s our tragedy, isn’t it, John? Because you don’t really know anything.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Udo looked across at Jochen and Sibbe. The half-hearted ones he and Effi had decided to allocate as postmen because they were useless as storm troopers. Udo wondered for a moment whether this was a good idea. But the two of them were entirely disposable. If things went wrong, there would be no comeback. Jochen was an orphan – the perfect patsy. No mother or father to kick up a stink if something happened to him. And Sibbe was a faltering neo-Nazi with a gay younger brother who deserved whatever he got. In the war, Udo would have had them both shot for recalcitrance.

  The upside was that if they could get away with it once, they could get away with it again. Udo couldn’t afford to lose any of his more committed ‘apostles’. He needed to keep up – even increase – the race attacks. They were happening once a week now, and they were having an outstanding effect. Extreme right-wing parties from all over Europe were emulating his methods. It was all so simple. Isolate people, marginalize them, and you were home dry. Sheep always follow the flock.

  ‘You are to take these two suitcases to where I tell you. You will be allocated first-class tickets, spending money, a cover story and a clothes allowance. You need to look neat and unexceptionable. Which shouldn’t be difficult for either of you. You will each be going to different cities. You will not – I repeat not – be travelling together.’

  ‘What is in the suitcases, Udo?’

  ‘That is none of your concern. You are merely couriers.’

  ‘It’s not a bomb, is it?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. We are not Jihadists. We don’t expect people to blow themselves up in futile gestures. No.’ Udo appeared to hesitate, as if he was making up his mind about something. In fact, he was adhering to a prepared script. ‘You will be transporting jelly.’

  ‘Jelly?’

  ‘Jelly. Yes. Fruit and vegetable jelly. Made from bones, bovine hides and pig skins. And some other crap I can’t remember.’

  Sibbe and Jochen looked at each other.

  ‘Does that answer your question?’

  ‘What are we to say if our suitcases are searched?’

  ‘That you like jelly, you fool. That you need jelly. That you have a stomach condition – we shall provide you with a doctor’s certificate to prove this – which necessitates that you eat only jelly. And that you fear you cannot get it in the country concerned, so you are taking along your own supplies for added security. It’s all perfectly legal.’

  ‘But jelly is a liquid. It wobbles. They’ll take it off us.’

  ‘No. You mix it with liquid to make it wobble, but it is not a liquid per se. And you will be carrying it in your hold baggage, not in your hand. No one will be interested in it, I can promise you that.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a bomb?’

  ‘It’s gelatine, not gelignite. And how can jelly be a bomb? It’s transparent, you idiot.’ Udo forced himself to calm down. He was used to dealing with cretins. Most of his ‘apostles’ were cretins. How else could one hope to get people to do whatever one asked
of them if one didn’t filter and categorize them correctly in the first place? Cretins and sheep. Breed the two together, and that was how you constructed an effective nation. ‘Are you going to follow orders? Or shall I give the task to someone more deserving? It will mean a considerable number of trips for both of you. Always in first class. Always with different airlines. In each city you visit you will leave the sealed containers of jelly – undiluted and unopened – in a particular location in a particular apartment. When that is done, you will go sightseeing. Visit museums. Frequent brothels. I don’t care what you do. But you will stay three days in each place in a hotel of our choosing. Then you will come home. Rest for a day or two. Then go out again. This is the task you have been chosen for. This is the task you were born for. Are you both comfortable with this?’

  The two boys looked at each other again.

  ‘It’s a test. To get them used to us. The jelly is entirely innocent. This way, when we want to transport something that looks similar, but is very different indeed in constitution, they won’t bother to check us. I repeat, are you both comfortable with this?’

  ‘Yes, Udo.’

  They really were as stupid as he suspected. ‘Excellent. I knew I could count on you. You are hereby forgiven for botching your gay-bashing the other week, and letting the two queers escape.’

  ‘You knew about that?’

  ‘I know about everything.’

  FORTY-TWO

  Udo wasn’t sleeping well. The thought of the English baron making out with Effi was too much to bear. So he had taken to teaming up with Lenzi and Frischl, two of his keener ‘apostles’, and going out on the town. This involved travelling to areas they hadn’t already hit and looking for random Turks to bash. If you wore a long overcoat with feel-through pockets, it was an easy thing to conceal a pickaxe handle inside the skirts. You just had to make sure you didn’t give yourself away going through the narrow doorways of kebab houses.