The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  Then he saw the monastery itself in the valley below him. An island of neatness in a mass of late summer vegetation. The land all around was cleared and planted. The buildings were bright with whitewash. The roof tiles shone in the late afternoon sun. There was a wall surrounding the monastery. Great trees sprang up inside it. Cedars. Poplars. Yews. And a river. It was a crazy place. Like a film set almost. As he watched, the bells in the campanile began to ring. Compline, maybe. It was too early for vespers.

  Hart realized that he did not know which day of the week it was any more.

  There were dark figures in the fields below him. As he watched them, they turned from their chores and headed down towards the abbey.

  He shifted Lumnije to a better position and started down too.

  It took him an hour to reach the monastery gates. He could hear the monks chanting. The first shadows of evening were beginning to fall.

  He dropped Lumnije onto the grass halfway to the abbey entrance. He stumbled onwards. Threw open the abbey doors. Far down the aisle he could see the monks standing in a semicircle. A large congregation attended them. The monks had their backs to the congregation. Serb, he thought. These are Serbs. And I have brought them an Albanian Muslim. Am I insane?

  He shouted once and then turned back. A figure was entering the monastery precincts behind him. A figure in camos. Dragging one leg. The Captain.

  Hart ran towards Lumnije. He had his pistol out now. Held in both hands like they’d taught him in Weapon Familiarization during the Hostile Environment Training course that all war-zone journalists took. He was going to kill the Captain. Have done with it once and for all.

  He felt rather than saw the monks run past him, their black clothing flapping in the wind. One of them stopped him and took the pistol from his hand. Very gently. As you would prise something dangerous away from a child. Others placed themselves between Lumnije and the Captain, their arms held high.

  Civilians. People who had not been inside the abbey but only in the purlieus. They were coming down the steps from the surrounding buildings. Hart watched them. Men, women and children, so many of them, some of the women with headscarves. The monks seemed like black crows in the larger field of colour they made.

  One man, the abbot probably, was standing in front of the Captain. The Captain was talking to him and gesticulating. Pointing to Lumnije, then at Hart.

  The abbot was shaking his head. Hart knew it was the abbot. The man had a long grey beard, forked in the middle, a high black hat whose material fell down his back, a staff with a silver top, a gold pendant on his chest with eight points inlaid with rubies. The abbot raised his staff and pointed it at the Captain.

  Some of the women who had run down from the buildings were already gathering Lumnije up.

  Hart felt infinitely tired. He sank to his knees. The monks were leading the Captain away. The Captain was unwilling. But many of the younger monks seemed vital and strong. Not men to take no for an answer. Their hair hung long behind their heads or was gathered up like a woman’s, in a bun. But these were no women. The Captain had no choice but to go where they led him. Perhaps they would tend to his wounds? Make him strong again so that he could take Lumnije back with him? They were Serbs, after all. On the same side. What had he done?

  Hart saw the abbot coming towards him. He tried to get to his feet but he was unable.

  The abbot fluttered his hand, as if he were drawing attention to something on the path in front of him.

  ‘He’s a bad man,’ said Hart. ‘An evil man. You must protect the woman. He wishes her ill.’

  ‘Evil,’ the abbot said. ‘It is all around us. You are safe now, my son. The woman too. St Stefan will protect you.’

  ‘But she is a Muslim. You are Christian.’

  The abbot shrugged.

  Hart found himself thinking about the end of a film. A Billy Wilder film. When Jack Lemmon takes off his wig and reveals to Joe E. Brown that he is really a man underneath.

  But the abbot didn’t say ‘Nobody’s perfect’. All he did was to make the sign of the cross and motion to two of his monks to take Hart by the arms and help him to his feet.

  Then he turned and indicated all the people who had come running down the steps from the surrounding buildings to help Lumnije, and who were now standing and watching their intercourse. He waved his hand.

  ‘All these,’ he said. ‘All these are our guests. These are Muslim too.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Hart saw Lumnije three more times before he left the monastery. On the first two occasions he sat beside her bed and held her hand, while one of the monks acted as chaperone. Which was a neat turnaround, thought Hart. A Christian Serbian monk acting as chaperone to an Albanian Muslim woman who had been repeatedly raped by a Christian Serbian war criminal. It almost gave one hope for the future.

  On these first two occasions, Lumnije had been far too groggy to formally acknowledge his presence. On the second occasion she had, however, managed what passed for a smile, and once, significantly, she had squeezed his hand when he had told her that she was safe from the Captain because – no doubt thanks to the excellence of the monks’ medical ministrations – the man had abandoned his sickbed, stolen the abbot’s car and absconded back to his unit during the night.

  ‘The abbot has promised me, though, that Serbian war units are not allowed within the precincts of the monastery. This rule is strictly upheld by the Serbian high command. At the abbot’s instigation, the army has posted sentries round the entire periphery of the monastery precincts. The abbot had been arguing for such a thing for months, so he is very pleased that they have finally relented. If the Captain or his men were to breach the guard line he would be subject to an immediate court martial. There is no danger of the Captain coming back, therefore. The abbot agrees with me that the man is addicted to danger and to killing. The prospect of losing his commission and his consequent right to bear arms would be too much for the bastard to bear. Still. It might be wise to leave here as soon as you are able. Would you like me to accompany you to Pristina? I may be able to swing things with the British Consulate there to get you a temporary visa to Britain. Asylum seeker seeking refugee status. That sort of thing.’

  Lumnije had shaken her head. Another short squeeze of the hand had followed.

  On the third occasion, Lumnije had been able to talk. Hart had come in to say his final goodbyes, and to try one last time to persuade Lumnije to let him help her. His taxi was waiting outside.

  ‘Yes. And the Captain will be waiting too. Further down the road.’

  ‘What? For me?’ said Hart.

  ‘No. For me.’

  Hart shook his head. ‘But they are sending an escort with me.’

  ‘Then you will get through. If I were to travel with you, the escort would melt away. You are an Anglez and I am an Albanian. The two things are very different. If you were to be assassinated on the way to the airport they would fear bad publicity. With me, no one would care. Just another Muslim who got in the way of a bullet.’

  Hart had shaken his head, unconvinced. ‘You still think the Captain is this superman figure you’ve created for yourself, don’t you? Yet we beat him, Lumnije. We beat him at his own game.’

  ‘But he will win in the end,’ she said. ‘Such men always do.’

  ‘What? Against me?’

  ‘No, John. Against me.’

  Hart had not fully understood then what she had meant. He had put it down to post-traumatic stress. The understandable reaction of a woman who had been brutalized beyond her ability to bear it. Only later, much later, did he come to understand her true meaning.

  Before he left she had asked him one last favour.

  ‘Anything. I’ll agree to anything,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘But this is a hard thing I intend to ask of you.’

  ‘Still. Ask away. It’s
yours. I owe you that much.’

  Lumnije had looked away from him. Out through the window. Her gaze taking in the distant hills as if somewhere far beyond them lay the answer to her question. ‘What I want to ask you is this.’ She hesitated, measuring her words. ‘Never to write about what happened to me. Never to tell about what you know and what you have seen.’

  ‘But my newspaper.’ Hart had shaken his head mournfully. ‘I’ve promised them I will talk to one of their reporters about the rape houses. Blow the lid off what the Serbians are doing to you Muslim women. That way, even without any photographs to show, I’ll be able to do some good.’

  Lumnije placed one hand on her heart. ‘I told you what I would ask you would be difficult.’

  Hart spread his hands out in a final gesture of appeal. ‘But can’t I tell them anything?’

  ‘Yes. Tell them about the Captain. About what he told you he had done. But spare my family name. Never mention me. Or the other girls who escaped with us and whom you knew. Don’t even change their names and think you will protect them that way. It would murder them. And their families. Because it would be known. Inferred. They could never hold their heads up again. No one must know what they did to us.’

  Hart saw his story disappearing before his eyes. If you couldn’t give examples – mention real people in a newspaper feature – mine direct quotes – you might as well piss into the wind and have done with it. ‘Okay. I promise.’ The words stuck in his craw.

  ‘I am sorry, John. Sorry to ask this of you.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he lied. ‘I blew the whole fucking thing right from the beginning when I didn’t take any pictures. I was dead in the water then.’

  She met his gaze. And she knew he was lying. And he knew she knew.

  But he kept to his word.

  It was one of the few times in his life when a human relationship impinged on his ability to tell the objective truth.

  If he ever met Lumnije again, though, he would be able to look her directly in the eye. At least there was that.

  But he never did. And he couldn’t.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tal Afar, Iraq

  16 June 2014

  Back in Iraq. Back in the shit.

  John Hart squinted down his viewfinder. IS troops dressed in black, with black balaclavas and face shrouds, were moving through the fields a hundred metres ahead. Some of them were wearing white sports trainers on their feet, which gave them an almost comical air, like prancing ponies at a school gymkhana. They were ushering a group of camo-clad prisoners ahead of them.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this. I don’t fucking like the look of this.’

  Hart carried on filming without paying any attention to his companion. Rider always complained. It was a nervous tic. His words simply washed over them all and dispersed in the surrounding ether.

  Amira Eisenberger, Hart’s ex-girlfriend, crawled towards him along the drainage canal.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I got through. With the last of my battery I got through.’

  ‘I suppose they’re going to send in the SAS for us? Or a helicopter gunship? Maybe a battalion of tanks?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You surprise me.’

  Amira eased herself up beside him and looked out at the prisoners being shepherded ahead of them. ‘They’re going to kill them, aren’t they?’

  ‘I suspect so. They’ve done it with all the others.’ He glanced across at her. ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They say we must get ourselves into Kurdistan. As far as Dohuk. They’ll have someone waiting there to get us out.’

  ‘I like Dohuk. Good food. Great nightlife. Shame it’s forty kilometres away. Through IS-held territory.’

  ‘We only have ourselves to blame.’

  ‘Well, there is that.’ Hart collected all his cameras together and eased himself into a more comfortable position, so that his legs and back were supported against the banked-up sides of the canal, and his head was no longer visible to a sniper. He looked at the four other journalists surrounding him. Two France-Presse boys, Amira and bloody Rider. What a gang to be caught out in no-man’s-land with. Amira was the only one he really knew. She’d made a stab at dressing herself up as a man, but she wouldn’t pass muster for two minutes if anyone took a close look at her.

  ‘We’ll need a car,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps you can go into Tal Afar and hire one for us? Don’t forget to put me on as named driver.’

  ‘Ha ha. Very funny.’

  The firing began again from a little way in front of them.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Amira. ‘They are killing them.’

  All the journalists fell silent, listening. Rider was the oldest, at forty-five. One of the France-Presse boys was about thirty, the other a year or so older. They’d all of them seen and heard this sort of thing before. Between them, Amira and Hart had spent upwards of forty years in the field. He was forty-one and she was a couple of years younger than him. Or maybe the same age. Or maybe older. He’d never really been able to work it out. Either way, the chances of their reaching their next birthday seemed a little remote.

  Hart cocked his head at the others. ‘We’ll wait until nightfall. I’ll go and film the carnage those bastards have left. Then we’ll dump the helmets and body armour and try and walk out of here. Steal a car if we can. Do you think the Kurds will have secured the border?’

  ‘Yes. It’ll have been the first thing they did. If they’ve got any sense, the Peshmerga will use this chaos to grab as much land as they can before IS get their hands on it. They’ve got a standing army. They’re weaponed-up. This is their big chance.’

  Hart hadn’t smoked for ten years. But watching Amira light up and take a long drag on her cigarette was almost too much to bear. ‘We’ll never get through the border in the normal way. IS will be patrolling the roads. They’ll have checkpoints everywhere.’

  ‘What do you suggest then? That we stand up and come clean? Admit that we’re here? That we’ve allowed ourselves to be cornered in a war zone and would now like to get out, with our pictures and our stories intact, please?’

  ‘It wasn’t a war zone when we entered it.’

  ‘They never are.’

  Amira ground out her cigarette before it was finished. It was her way of limiting her smoking. ‘IS are targeting old mosques and temples. Blowing them up.’

  Hart eased his legs into a more comfortable position. ‘It’s a grand old tradition. I visited an early Assyrian site once. Not far from here. Wall carvings, fifty feet high. Four thousand years old. Saddam Hussein’s troops shot them to pieces with their AK47s. Now IS are calling Saddam a martyr. What did Adolf Hitler say? What today is known as history, we will abolish altogether. IS are just rearranging history. They’ll get to the Yazidi shrines and the Christian churches next and finish demolishing the pre-Islamic world. The Kurds have the right idea. Seal yourselves off. Fortress Kurdistan. If I were them I’d attack Mosul. Take that before it’s too late. Then declare themselves an independent country. The West will fall over itself recognizing them.’

  Amira was lighting another cigarette. ‘One good field doesn’t make a harvest.’

  ‘But it’s a start. When it comes down to it, a country is only as good as the quality of life it affords its people.’

  Amira crinkled up her nose and smiled at him. ‘You’re a philosopher at heart. I always suspected it.’ She glanced across at the two Frenchmen. Then at Rider. ‘Do you think they’ll want to work together as a team? Or go their own way?’

  Hart followed the line of her glance. ‘We’ll stick together. Those guys aren’t under any illusions. There’s safety in numbers. If we get taken, we’ll have a better chance the more of us there are.’

  ‘I don’t think IS will kill us.’ Amira’s face had taken on a fa
raway look.

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. We’ll be worth far too much to them as collateral.’

  Hart shook his head. ‘One look at my film and they’ll know what we’ve seen. These guys like to manipulate their own propaganda. They don’t want freelance stuff getting out. Or stuff they can’t control.’

  ‘Then destroy your film.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did I know you’d say that?’

  ‘Because you’re the same as me, Amira. You’d swallow a story and shit it out later if you had to, just to keep a hold on it.’

  ‘Not a pretty image, but I can’t fault you for accuracy.’ Amira ground out that cigarette too. It was her sixth in ten minutes.

  ‘Is something bothering you by any chance?’ Hart said. ‘I mean something other than the prospect of being beheaded.’

  Amira sighed.

  ‘Come on then. Spit it out. There’ll never be a better place to do it. The clock is ticking.’

  Amira looked at him. Her eyes seemed preternaturally large. Like those of some night-time prey animal on the lookout for predators. ‘I want us to begin again.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘No. Listen to me, John.’

  ‘I am listening. I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m a captive audience. My only out is to run screaming towards the enemy, imploring them to take me in.’

  ‘You just aren’t funny. You’re not funny.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s my nerves. I always crack stupid jokes when the odds are stacked against me.’

  ‘Why won’t you?’

  ‘Why won’t I what?’

  ‘Try again?’

  ‘Do you want the full director’s cut? Or the expurgated version?’

  Amira threw some dirt at him and slithered off to talk to Rider.

  Hart didn’t feel proud of himself. But, truth be told, he was scared of Amira. She didn’t take prisoners. They’d been on and off with each other for years. Until, three years before, she’d aborted their child without telling him. This had tipped him over the edge. He’d left her. And he’d had a number of affairs since then. Even fancied himself in love. He assumed Amira had too. Their emotional cat’s cradle was now too complicated ever to untangle. At least as far as he was concerned. He knew he didn’t have the energy even to attempt it. Not to mention the will. If Amira had been the sort of woman you could have had a casual affair with, no strings attached, he would have taken up her offer with alacrity. But she wasn’t. And that was that.