The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  ‘What is he?’ said one of the others. ‘Why does he have cameras and not guns?’

  ‘What are you?’ said Lumnije to the tall young man with the golden hair.

  ‘What am I?’

  ‘My friend wants to know what you are doing here. Why you carry the cameras? Why you don’t have a gun?’

  The golden-haired young man looked as if he was about to cry.

  Lumnije took pity on him. ‘Find any clothes you can,’ she told the girls.

  ‘Why do you have clothes and we have not?’ said the first girl. The one who had called her the Captain’s whore.

  ‘Because I am the Captain’s whore. See?’ She lifted up her stained blouse to show the bruises on her stomach. Then she turned to show the stripes on her back from his belt. ‘I am so beautiful he gave me special attention. This is why I have clothes and you have none. Take sheets, coverlets, anything to cover yourselves with. The sun is hot and we are no longer used to it.’ Lumnije squinted at the sunlight outside. ‘Shoes, too, if you can find them. They will be sure to follow us.’

  Some of the girls began to moan again.

  ‘Those who wish to stay, stay. But believe this. They will kill you.’

  She looked at the man.

  ‘Now we go,’ she said in English. ‘Do not fear. They will follow. In their own time. Sure. But they will follow.’

  SEVEN

  Hart led the girls back along the path the boy had taken him. He thought he would remember the first mile. Then maybe he would remember some more, maybe not.

  Three of the girls had decided to join the one who spoke English. The rest elected to stay behind. Hart found this fact almost impossible to grasp. He had tried to persuade the girl they called the Captain’s whore to force her friends to accompany him, but she had looked at him with pity and shaken her head.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Lumnije,’ she said. ‘I told you this back at the house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lumnije. Lumnije Dardan.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘I do not know their names.’

  Hart was tempted to continue with his questioning, but he suspected he would get nowhere. He was still in shock. His hands, when they clutched his cameras for comfort, shook. He took no photographs.

  ‘The soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘The soldiers will come for us. They will kill the other girls and they will come for us.’

  ‘Why will they kill the others?’

  ‘Because they wish to use the house again. It is convenient for them.’

  ‘Why did the soldiers leave?’

  ‘I do not know. But sometimes this happens. There is a call. They all go. Maybe it is to kill a village? To take more girls? That is why they have this house.’

  Hart slowed his pace. Some of the young women were struggling. Two of the three had found no shoes.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said the girl called Lumnije.

  ‘Going?’ said Hart. ‘You are asking me where are we going?’

  ‘Yes. Where are you taking us?’

  Hart felt an unholy calm descend on him. A preternatural tranquillity. As of a murderer who has finally come to terms with the fact of his execution. ‘We are going to a monastery. Called Visoki, I think.’

  Lumnije threw her head back and stared at Hart as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘You mean Visoki Decˇani? But that is a Serb monastery. I know of this place – it is Orthodox Christian. But we are Albanians, Sunni Muslim.’

  ‘The monks are protecting Albanians. I have heard this.’

  ‘And you think the Serb soldiers who have been holding us will value this?’

  ‘I don’t know what they will value.’ Hart shook his head. ‘I don’t even know the way to the monastery.’

  Lumnije looked at him. She saw a young man, not so much older than herself, suddenly responsible for four touched girls. Girls whom the Serbs had destroyed. ‘I know the way to the monastery,’ she said. ‘It is ten kilometres from my village. Up a long valley. I have never been there but I know where it is.’

  ‘You do?’

  She nodded. ‘We must stick to the high ground, away from the roads. So that the Captain can’t use his vehicles.’

  ‘Are you so sure he will follow us?’

  ‘He will follow, yes. It will be a game for him. A change from his usual routine.’

  ‘And the monastery? You agree with me?’

  Lumnije shrugged. ‘Why should the monks care what happens to us?’

  ‘Then why are we going?’

  She looked him directly in the eyes. ‘Because there is nowhere else.’

  EIGHT

  The Captain stood looking at the open door. Then he walked in. The five remaining girls were huddled together near the unused fireplace.

  ‘Where is the one from my room?’ he asked them.

  ‘She went. With him,’ one said.

  ‘Him? Who is him?’

  ‘The golden-haired one.’

  ‘A soldier?’

  ‘No. He had cameras.’

  ‘Cameras?’

  ‘Yes. Many.’

  ‘There were others?’

  ‘No. Only him.’

  ‘And the other ones are with him too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you not go with them?’

  ‘We are naked.’

  The Captain was tempted to laugh. Months ago, one of his men had suggested that they keep the girls naked so that they would not escape. The Captain had thought it was a good joke. He had never expected the plan to work.

  ‘So they are in bare feet?’

  ‘Yes. Except your one and one other. These have shoes.’

  The Captain looked at his corporal. The corporal looked back at him.

  ‘Please let us live,’ said the girl who had been speaking to him. ‘We stayed when we could have gone. Some of us may be pregnant.’

  The Captain looked round the room. At the accumulated filth on the surfaces. The blood on the floor and on the walls. He took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it. He looked at it in the palm of his hand. ‘You are lucky. You live. Now clean up here. My men will bring you water and bleach and whitewash. When I get back I want this place sparkling. You understand me?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. We understand.’

  The Captain walked outside with his corporal. He nodded back towards the house. ‘When they have finished cleaning, kill them. Kill them all.’

  The corporal nodded.

  ‘We close this place. I want no record here of what this was.’

  ‘In case the other ones get through? Them and the man with his cameras?’

  ‘They will not get through,’ said the Captain.

  NINE

  Two hours into their trek Hart shared his water and his remaining sandwich with the girls. None of them would come near him, so Lumnije took the bottles round and split up the sandwich into four parts. She also took Hart’s penknife and made rough shoes out of the sheets the girls had draped themselves with.

  ‘Why won’t they come near me?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘But I have not done them any harm.’

  ‘You are a man.’

  Hart sat with his hands in his lap and stared back at the path down which they had travelled. ‘Then why do you? Why do you come near me?’

  ‘Because I am different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I cannot tell you. Do not ask me.’

  Hart nodded. He wanted to appear wise, but he was out of his depth. ‘Thank you for talking to the others and persuading them.’

  ‘It would have been better if they had not come.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. They will slow us
down. It would have been better if they had stayed behind.’

  ‘But I had to bring them.’

  ‘Yes. You had to. You did the right thing. But we will suffer for it.’

  Hart stared at her. ‘Do you always tell the truth like this?’

  ‘No. Before, I did not do this. But I have had much time to think in these past few weeks.’

  Hart swallowed. He looked at the prison pallor on Lumnije’s face. At her bruises and her cuts. He remembered the terrible flash of her wounds as she revealed her stomach and her back for the other women. ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘Pain?’ said Lumnije. ‘The Captain killed my mother and my father and my brother. This is pain. I have no pain. Just…’ She searched for words. ‘Numb.’

  An hour later they reached a thin river, trickling through a wide, empty bed. In winter it would be a torrent. But now it scarcely qualified as anything waterborne. More like a rivulet.

  Hart absented himself while the women washed themselves and drank. Later, he filled the empty water bottles.

  Lumnije came back with berries and they all ate.

  ‘How long have we got?’ he asked her.

  ‘Until the soldiers come back from whatever they are doing. If we are lucky we have until nightfall. We must keep walking through the night.’

  ‘But these women need sleep,’ said Hart.

  ‘They have done nothing but sleep for two weeks. That and the rest. Now they can walk.’

  ‘Why are you so hard on them?’

  ‘Because I want to survive.’

  ‘What? To bear witness to what the soldiers have done to you?’

  ‘No. That I will never say.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Lumnije shook her head. ‘If you do not know I cannot tell you.’

  TEN

  ‘They are going high, Captain. Up in the hills where our vehicles cannot follow them.’

  ‘Then we will follow them on foot.’

  The corporal pointed at the ground. ‘Look. They stopped here for a while to rest. There are pieces of torn sheet.’

  The Captain inspected the remnants of cloth. ‘They have been making themselves shoes. How many are we looking for again?’

  ‘Three. Plus the one from your quarters. Plus the man.’

  ‘We will soon have them. We can walk twice as fast as them.’

  ‘Yes, Captain. We will soon have them.’

  The Captain glanced up the track ahead. ‘You know this country. Where are they going?’

  The corporal shrugged. ‘There is nowhere for them to go. Everything is Serb-held here. Maybe there is a village. But most have been cleared. I think maybe they cross over into Albania. Or maybe Montenegro. We would be rid of them then.’

  The Captain thought back to the girl. The daughter of Burim Dardan. She was no peasant like the others. That was why he had chosen her to be his own. That, and the fact that she was beautiful. And unsullied. ‘We will never be rid of them. These females have tongues. And the man is a journalist.’

  ‘How can you know this?’

  ‘What of his cameras? You heard the description. Who walks around with cameras in these hills?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Captain. ‘He will have photographs. Of the house. Of the girls. Perhaps of us.’ He paused for thought. ‘Radio back. Tell Markovic´ not to kill the whores after all. The men can keep them. Later, maybe, when it is safe, we will set them free. That way their deaths cannot come back to haunt us.’

  ‘Do we stay on at the house?’

  ‘No. That is dead. This bastard may have a phone.’

  ‘But there is no reception in these hills.’

  ‘A satellite phone then.’

  ‘Is that likely?’

  The Captain shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out. We cut the man’s heart out and see if he is connected.’

  The corporal burst out laughing. The Captain laughed too. Both men enjoyed the chase. Enjoyed the focus accorded by having an enemy in common. The Captain was a professional soldier, in the army since just after puberty. In civilian life the corporal had been a car mechanic. Both relished the power they had been given to do anything they wanted to the enemy. Each understood the other. It was the closest of all bonds. The bond of shared guilt.

  ‘Shall I call for more men?’

  ‘No. We do this ourselves. We are armed; they are not. What is the one with the cameras going to do? Ambush us? Pelt us with females?’ The Captain stood up. ‘When did the girls last eat?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘They will be weak then. Short of water.’

  ‘There is a stream.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘One hour north of here. We will cross it on this track.’

  ‘We make for the stream then. Maybe we catch them there.’

  ELEVEN

  The first of the girls dropped out just before dark. Like the boy who had been guiding Hart, she just disappeared.

  ‘We have to find her.’

  Lumnije shook her head. ‘No. She knows where she is going. Her village may be near here. She will go back.’

  ‘Why don’t we all go there?’

  ‘Because there will be nothing. The Captain has cleared all the Albanians out of the villages in this area. Only Serbs left. They will give us in.’

  ‘Won’t they give her in?’

  ‘No. She will go quietly. Secretly. Take a few things. Whatever the looters have left behind them. Photographs, maybe. Of the people who have been killed. Then she will cross the border.’

  Hart shook his head. What insanity was this? ‘Shouldn’t we cross the border too?’

  Lumnije looked at the two remaining girls. Then at herself. She thought of the Serb police. The stories she had heard. About them picking out the prettiest of the refugees at the border crossings and taking them away to be raped. Then handing them back, ruined, to their families. ‘No. We go to the monastery.’

  ‘But I thought you said…’

  ‘I know what I said. We go to the monastery.’

  Hart watched Lumnije as she strode ahead of him up the track. Compared to the two other girls who followed on behind, she was relatively fit and healthy. And yet he had seen her cowering in that room. Seen what the man they called ‘the Captain’ had done to her. The rest was easy to imagine.

  Each man on earth held within him the capacity for doing what the Serbs were doing. Why was he any different? Why should Lumnije see him as different from them? And yet he knew in the deepest part of his soul that under no circumstances could he ever give himself up to the sort of bestiality that these girls had encountered. Where had this decency sprung from? Or was it just common humanity? And what was happening in Kosovo was a freak show, like the Bosnian ethnic cleansing that preceded it, in which even the churches and the mosques bore the brunt of the people’s rancour?

  ‘Why are you here, Anglez?’

  Hart looked up. Lumnije had fallen back towards him and was walking by his side.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ she said again.

  ‘To take photos.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘To record things. Things that would otherwise not be recorded.’

  ‘And yet you have not taken photos of us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do not know much, do you?’

  Hart tried to shrug but failed. The movement he succeeded in making looked more like a nervous tic. ‘I’m learning.’

  ‘You better learn fast. When the Captain catches up to us he will kill you first. Then us. And that will be the end of your life. No more learning.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Some things one is sure of in this world.’
/>   Hart raised the tempo of his walking. But soon he had to lower it again, as the two non-English-speaking girls were finding it hard to keep up, despite the strips of sheet they had wrapped around their feet.

  ‘We must hide,’ said Hart. ‘The soldiers will catch up and ambush us otherwise. Maybe if we cut off this track and lie up somewhere? Find ourselves a cave?’

  ‘The Captain will trail us and kill us.’

  ‘He’s not a bloody superman.’

  Lumnije looked back at the two young women following them. She lowered her voice, even though she knew the girls would not be able to understand her. ‘Compared to us? As we are now? Yes, he is. I don’t think you understand. For weeks these girls have been constantly raped. By anybody who felt like raping them. Ten, twenty times a day. Then hardly fed. Porridge, maybe. A little stale bread. I hear it all the time, what goes on. Through the walls. I am the lucky one. Only the Captain touch me. He make me his own. He say he do not like to share. Do not like to get disease.’

  Hart shook his head as if he wished to rid it of a tinnitus.

  ‘Listen to me, Anglez. You need to know this. Before the rapes these girls see their family killed. Or sent away to starve. So already they are…’ She searched for the right phrase in English. ‘They are touched. Destroyed. The world…’ She stopped, as if lost for words. Then she continued, each sentence breaking free from the other, as if it were a train, unhitching. ‘The world has changed for them. No time for thinking. No time for mourning. Only live for the next minute. The next hour. So the Captain. Yes. He is Superman. He is force. He is…’ She hesitated again. ‘Inevitable.’ Her face had taken on a haunted look in the dusk’s half-light.

  ‘You talk as if we might as well lie down in the middle of the road and give ourselves up.’

  ‘Not lie down. No. But we will never make it to the monastery. The soldiers will be very close to us now.’

  ‘Why are you so sure they will follow us?’

  Lumnije pointed at Hart’s cameras. ‘Because you wear these.’

  Hart looked down. He started to take the cameras from around his neck.

  ‘No. It is too late for that now. Later, if we are still alive, maybe you take pictures then. For your newspapers. Maybe I talk to you. Tell you things for you to write. Maybe I don’t. For me, there is no close family left to shame. The Captain. He killed them all. Just like I described.’ Lumnije’s face, always so contained, so tightly held under control, seemed to break into a thousand pieces. To become malleable all of a sudden, like melting rubber.