The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  He hesitated for a moment, looking at the Lance. Then he picked it up with both hands and held it out in front of him.

  The Lance began to thrum, just as it had the first time he had held it – just as he had known it would. But this time the thrumming seemed to resonate at a deeper, more profound level than before. Hart was no longer holding the Lance – the Lance was holding him.

  He turned it over in his hands, marvelling at it in the detached way a man might marvel at a work of art. Slowly, despite his doubts, he began to discern that the object he was looking at was not an adjunct to his consciousness, but an aspect of his being. That he might be a part of the Lance. And that this connection was normal. Exactly as it should be.

  Without knowing why, Hart set the Lance down on the table in front of him. He looked at it for a very long time. At first, he failed to realize that he was looking at the Lance with his eyes closed. That the image of the Lance was so seared into his consciousness that he no longer saw the reality of it, only the essence.

  Steadily, in the invisible gap between his eyelids and his eyes, Hart began to experience random surges of the colour blue. The first manifestation was of a deep, pure blue, billowing out from its central point like diluted ink. This dispersed to reveal a brighter, almost cerulean blue – the blue of sunlit skies and the lost ecstasies of youth. This blue lightened in turn until it resembled cyan. Then it surged back to pure blue again, via cobalt, ultramarine, lapis lazuli and indigo. Hart watched in wonder, aware, all the time, of the Lance – at the farthest possible reaches of the visible spectrum – hanging, like an anchor, in the disembodied void at the outer edges of his consciousness.

  He opened his eyes. As he contemplated the solid manifestation of the article in front of him, he heard a voice, quite clearly, from deep inside his head, saying, ‘Open me.’ And then, again, ‘Open me.’ It was Effi’s voice.

  Hart hurried into the kitchen. He selected a knife from Effi’s Solingen block, tested its blade with his finger, and then returned the length of the house like a man intent on murder. When he reached the table holding the Lance, he tentatively stretched his hand towards the gold leaf encapsulating the shaft, as if it might burn him. Then, in one fluid movement, he turned the Lance over and levered through the single fold in its gilded carapace with the tip of his knife.

  The sleeve parted. Hart slid the Lance from its protective capsule as you would a lobster from its shell. He held the Lance up to the light. A small glass phial, about four inches in length, was trapped inside the wirework securing the spearhead. Hart tapped it with the point of his knife. The phial shifted. Using the knife as a lever, Hart eased the phial past its supporting wire and along the grooved channel the Lance’s maker had etched into its surface to prevent unwanted suction when the blade was removed from pierced flesh. The phial popped out of its graith and into his hand.

  Hart raised the phial to the light. It was sealed with a wax stopper. The glass had clouded somewhat over time, but it seemed as if there was a manuscript of some kind concealed inside.

  Hart levered at the wax, which crumbled the moment he touched it. He tapped the base of the phial so that the tiny manuscript fell out onto the palm of his hand. The rolled-up sheet was made of vellum, and still retained something of the spring it must have possessed when originally inserted. He opened the manuscript and pegged it onto the table using an ink pot, a Sellotape dispenser and a stapler. Then he bent down and looked at it.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Hart wound the gilt capsule back around the Lance and returned the object to its velvet-lined box. The Lance looked more or less as it had done before – as long as no one was tempted to pick it up and brandish it, upon which the whole thing would undoubtedly fall apart. Hart promised himself that he would return the phial to its rightful place and restore the Lance’s integrity at his earliest convenience. He was its hereditary guardian, after all – he had a duty of care.

  The vehemence with which he now held this conviction surprised him. A part of him even felt that the Lance might be grooming him in some way. Bending him to its will. And where had that voice come from, ordering him to ‘Open me’? Was he going doolally like his mother? Was his relationship with Effi softening his head?

  Hart keyed in Amira’s number on his phone. He was transferred to her voicemail, just as he had been on his last two attempts. He shook his head, cursing Amira’s notoriously short fuse.

  He returned to the bedroom and bent low over Effi to check that she was sleeping. She was obviously in a brief cycle of REM sleep, her eyeballs dancing behind her lids. Hart knew that such a passage, especially early on in the night, was often followed by a lighter, less intense quality of sleep. He collected up his jeans as silently as he could, added a double layer of sweatshirts and his battered leather jacket, and hurried downstairs to dress. Then he wadded some tissue around the phial containing the miniature manuscript and slipped the package into his jacket pocket.

  Once dressed, he tapped the exit code into the automatic security system and left the house by the back door, having first checked his surroundings for watchers. When he was satisfied that none of Zirkeler’s men were posted within the vicinity of the house, he walked the two hundred yards up the main track towards the Alpenruh. The moon was up and he could see almost as clearly as day. He consulted his watch. Two fifteen.

  When he reached the Alpenruh’s terrace, he cut round the side towards where he knew Frau Erlichmann’s ground-floor apartment was situated, passing the spot where Wesker’s body had been found. The chalk marks were still visible in the moonlight. Looking at the outline of Wesker’s body, with the blood marks seemingly sketched in like memorials to the placement of his internal organs, Hart experienced the same sense of semi-apprehensive, semi-exhilarating expectation he always got when venturing into a war zone – the unsettling recognition that he was approaching a point of no return.

  He tapped on Frau Erlichmann’s window, waited for a moment, and then tapped again. ‘Frau Erlichmann. It’s me. John Hart.’

  Hart heard shuffling from inside the sitting room abutting Frau Erlichmann’s bedroom. The curtains parted. Frau Erlichmann squinted at him through the glass.

  ‘Please don’t be alarmed. But I’m worried about Amira. I think she may be in danger. May I come in?’

  Frau Erlichmann unlocked the double-glazed door and ushered Hart inside.

  ‘I’m truly sorry…’

  ‘You’ve already apologized once, Baron. There is no need to do so a second time. I am a light sleeper. You are depriving me of nothing I particularly value. Please sit down whilst I fetch my housecoat.’

  Hart sat down. The full significance of Amira’s unlikely silence was only gradually dawning on him. He recalled Amira’s comments about the unlikelihood of Wesker ever switching off his phone. The same thing applied to her, surely? She was a journalist. And a good one. She would remain contactable under virtually all circumstances. All he could hope for was that she had switched off her phone because she was staking out the factory and didn’t want to give the game away. But why would she be staking the place out in the middle of the night? He knew Amira. She was not a passive investigator. She believed in getting her hands dirty. He was a fool not to have thought all this through before. A fool for having allowed himself to be sidetracked, yet again, by Effi’s overwhelming sexuality.

  Frau Erlichmann sat down in front of him. She had brushed her hair and plumped her cheeks, and now she settled a shawl over the shoulders of her housecoat to counteract the night’s chill. She gave a small inclination of the head, encouraging Hart to begin.

  Hart let the retained breath hiss from between his lips. ‘This may seem like a crazy question to ask you, especially at this time of the night, but do you have access to a car?’

  ‘A car?’

  Hart nodded. ‘I believe Amira may have gone to investigate Effi Rache’s factory in Gmund. You remember what was written in the letter you translated for me? About Hitler’s final superweap
on? What he called his wunderwaffe? Amira believes that Udo Zirkeler may be using the factory to try and recreate the Tabun clone – Trilon 380 – that Hitler’s scientists succeeded in distilling in the final moments of the war. That a formula for Trilon accompanied the letter I found in Effi’s strongbox, and that Zirkeler somehow got hold of it.’

  Frau Erlichmann gave Hart an old-fashioned look. ‘And Fräulein Rache has nothing whatsoever to do with this? You are certain of this fact? Even though the factory is hers? And even though the original letter was addressed to her grandfather?’

  ‘I believe not. No. I believe it’s been Zirkeler all the way down the line. Amira’s assistant back in London – and a stringer her paper sometimes uses in Germany – has done some serious background research on him. We now know that his grandfather was a sergeant major in the SS – and that this man committed suicide on the final day of the war, just a few hours after he heard that Germany was about to surrender. We also know that his son – Zirkeler’s father – was in bed with some extreme right-wing groups from about the mid-1960s until his death. Also that he was briefly imprisoned for GBH against a Turkish immigrant, who he claimed had insulted him, but that he was subsequently let out of jail on a technicality and the charge expunged from his record. Who knows what that sort of background does to a man? That sort of bottled-up resentment?’

  ‘And Effi Rache? What did her background do to her?’

  Hart stiffened. ‘She’s been extraordinarily open with me, Frau Erlichmann, even to the extent of showing me the Holy Lance and allowing me free access to it. These are not the actions of someone who is out to recreate a wunderwaffe nerve agent. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘We’ll put that aside for the time being, Baron. Please, go on. There is more you have to tell me. It is written all over your face.’

  Hart laughed. Frau Erlichmann might suffer from detached retinas, but she didn’t miss much. ‘A little over an hour ago, some instinct drove me to slit open the protective gilding on the Holy Lance. Please don’t ask me where the instinct came from, because I couldn’t tell you. But I did discover a small phial containing a manuscript hidden inside the shell. The text is written on vellum, and, technically speaking, quite legible. But I am unable to make out any of the words. I can’t tell whether they are in German or Latin or Double Dutch, as the Gothic script is entirely unfamiliar to me.’

  ‘What has this to do with what Fräulein Amira is doing?’

  ‘Nothing. And everything. I don’t know yet.’

  ‘And you need the car to drive to the factory and check up on Fräulein Amira?’

  ‘Yes. Either that, or I was going to ask if you could call me a taxi?’

  Frau Erlichmann sat up straighter in her chair. ‘At two thirty in the morning? Bad Wiessee is hardly Munich, Baron. And Fräulein Rache’s laboratory is in an isolated location. There would be questions.’

  Hart no longer knew what to say. He had the overwhelming impression that he had somehow succeeded in botching everything he had ever set his mind to. Frau Erlichmann must think him mad. Because here he was again, following up Amira on the one hand, and a probably illegible scrap of vellum on the other, with Effi Rache steaming up from behind to challenge for the lead. He was like a jumbled-up bag of fireworks someone had inadvertently ignited with a discarded cigarette.

  Frau Erlichmann felt in the pocket of her housecoat and brought out a pistol.

  Hart reared back. For one horrifying moment he thought that she might be about to shoot him.

  Frau Erlichmann placed the pistol firmly on the table between them. ‘I think the time has come when you may need this. It was my father’s. It is a Roth-Steyr model from 1907. I must warn you that it is a little rusty, and has probably not been used in my lifetime. My father carried it through the Great War, however, and it saw good service. The magazine is in the handle, I believe. I don’t know how many bullets there are left. Nor where my father kept his spare ammunition. But I want you to take it with you anyway. It might serve to frighten the sheep.’

  Hart picked up the pistol. He released the magazine with some difficulty and checked the load. There were three bullets left. The retaining spring was rusted solid. ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. It will probably explode if I fire it.’

  Frau Erlichmann pretended not to hear him. ‘There is an Auto Union in the downstairs garage. I cannot guarantee the battery, but the car is facing outwards. If you open the garage doors as wide as possible, you should be able to jump-start the car down the hill. A male friend of mine uses it to drive me to the doctor, dentist, oculist or hearing specialist whenever needed. All the things that generally beset people of my age and make our lives so interesting. The keys are hanging on a hook at the back of the garage, near the rear entrance you will use from the house. Take them. When you have located Fräulein Amira, bring her back here. I shall have translated your message by then. All I need you to do now, Baron, is to hand me my Latin dictionary and my magnifying glass.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The car was an Auto Union 1000 saloon. It was painted a sickly green colour. At first glance it reminded Hart of an upturned bowl of mushy peas. When he got over his initial shock, he estimated that the vehicle dated back to around 1960, give or take a few years. But the bodywork and trim were intact, and the engine, when he tried the ignition, turned over sweetly, once he had remembered to use the choke.

  He drove out of the garage towards the main road. The streets were deserted. Whatever passed for nightlife in Bad Wiessee had put itself to bed long ago. Frau Erlichmann had given him detailed instructions on how to reach the factory, so he turned down by the new casino and northwards along the lake’s edge. The moon was at its fullest, and its glow shadowed the car like a wartime searchlight as he headed towards Gmund.

  Fifteen minutes took him to the large farmhouse, Gut Kaltenbrunn, that Frau Erlichmann had given him as a marker. The turnoff to Effi Rache’s factory was less than a kilometre down the road. Hart pulled down a track about half a kilometre short of where he estimated the factory to be and turned the Auto Union round to face the road. It was a useless precaution. At nought to sixty in around a minute and a half, he suspected that he wouldn’t be going anywhere fast – even if the hounds of hell were on his trail.

  He switched off the headlights and got out of the car. Looking around, he soon realized that he would have no need of the torch Frau Erlichmann had lent him – thanks to the full moon, everything was lit up with a ghostly white light as if in the aftermath of an unexpected snowfall. Hart elected to take the torch with him anyway, just for the added sense of security it gave him to be holding something in his hands. He tapped the pocket holding the pistol superstitiously. The damned thing looked like a fancy cigar lighter. If he ever got to aim it at someone, they would probably burst out laughing.

  He set off for the factory on foot. Three hundred metres down the road he came upon a hire car, parked in a lay-by. He tried the doors. Locked. He switched on the torch and looked inside. Nothing. The car was as clean as the moment it had been picked up from the rental agency. Hart had little doubt that it was the hire car Amira had told him about. He switched off his torch and hurried onwards.

  When he found himself approaching the factory turning, he broke away from the road and cut through a small plantation of pines that led down towards the lake edge. As he dodged through the trees, he felt a burgeoning sense of urgency, as if some primeval instinct was cutting in and taking over.

  Hart sensed the factory before he saw it. The building was lit up like an oil refinery, the glow from a series of arc lights reflecting back off the trees in front of him like the aftereffects of a forest fire. He sank to his knees and crawled to the edge of the treeline. Spotlights reflected off the half-dozen assorted vans and cars parked in a fan formation near the front entrance.

  Hart cursed beneath his breath. Was Amira still hidden up here on the periphery somewhere, watching what was happening? Or was she down near the lion’s den? Har
t wished he had a long-lens camera with him so that he could photograph the cars and their number plates. But he had not even thought to bring a pen and a notebook. And his pay-asyou-go phone would be less than useless at this distance for taking snaps. Maybe if he got closer?

  The factory had been built tight up against the lakeside, so Hart was forced to make a complete semi-circle, keeping well out of the light bath emanating from the security lamps. No sign of Amira. One part of him had been half expecting her to call out from whatever hiding place she had chosen for herself. Another part of him acknowledged that the chances of her still being out here on the hillside were a thousand to one.

  He checked his watch. Three thirty. He had maybe four hours leeway before Effi woke up and began to wonder where he had gone.

  Hart looked around for guards, or a watchman, or someone coming out to relieve himself. But the outside area was clear. Whoever had arrived in the cars was inside the factory.

  Hart chose his approach carefully. He would come in from the direction of the lake. A raised walkway ran down from the factory towards a boathouse. A sailing boat with a shipped mast floated a little way out, attached to a mooring buoy. An electro-boat was tethered on one side of the jetty, and a wooden rowing boat on the other. The boathouse gates were shut and locked, so Hart had no idea what might be inside. There was no wind to speak of, and the lake was as flat as glass.

  Hart crept down to the shoreline and eased himself in amongst the reeds. Within seconds he was up to his knees in mud. He tried to flatten himself on top of the mud and crawl, but it soon became clear that he must either sink into the morass or swim. Hart acknowledged force majeure and allowed the lake to carry him away from the reed bed. Once he was out into the open channel, he struck for the jetty, keeping his head just above the surface of the water. The night was warm and the water was temperate. He would dry out eventually.