The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  And what was he doing now? Playing chess against teenagers.

  It made the Captain want to vomit.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Hart saw the Captain’s car pull up. The man was ridiculously early. Hart had secured a duplicate key to the chess club from the German major, but this was immediately rendered useless by the Captain’s arrival. The Captain, as club secretary, also had a key, and there was only the one main entrance. His plan for hiding out inside the club was effectively scuppered.

  Hart called Amira on his mobile phone.

  ‘The bastard’s arrived early. And I mean really early. I should have known he would. Lumnije used to call him “the superman”. He would think everything through twice as fast as everybody else and outflank them. It was sheer luck that we got the drop on him back then. He couldn’t have foreseen that my telephoto lens would deflect his bullet.’

  ‘John, this is irrelevant. Where are you now?’

  ‘In a coffee shop on the opposite side of the road to the chess club, fuming with anger. I can see the front door clearly. The Captain’s car is parked directly outside.’

  ‘What sort of a car is it?’

  ‘A four-wheel-drive Jeep Renegade. The number plate is half in Arabic, half Western numbers. It looked like 394D36. But I only saw it for a second so I may have got it wrong. The man drives like a psychopath. He even parks aggressively. As if he expects someone to sally out and dispute the space with him. Do you think we ought to abort? I can catch Biljana before she goes inside. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her in there with that maniac without being able to see and hear exactly what is going on.’

  ‘No. We don’t abort. The girl would never forgive you. You’ve watched her building up to this ever since her mother’s death. What are you going to do? Ask the Captain for a bloody rain check?’

  Hart gurned at his reflection in the café window. ‘You’ve got a point.’

  ‘Of course I have. Listen. I’m going to send Rider out to put a tracker on the Captain’s car. Just in case. Is the car locked?’

  ‘How the hell do I know if the car is locked?’

  ‘Well, the emergency lights would have flashed when the Captain left it, John. That’s what usually happens in these cases.’

  Hart smothered a groan. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be grumpy.’ He didn’t often apologize to Amira. He could sense her unbending over the telephone. ‘I don’t know, is the answer. I was too busy monitoring war criminals.’

  ‘That’s okay. I know you wanted to be inside the building, watching things from close by. But I’m sure Biljana can take care of herself. It’s probably safer this way. What if the Captain needed to piss and caught you hiding in there? At least this way you’ll be outside in case anything untoward happens. And with the tracker we’ll have the advantage of being able to follow him wherever he goes. If Biljana gives us the nod, we can take him out easily. Listen to me, though. I’m still tempted to bring the Americans in on this. You know what the French are like when it comes to foreigners interfering in their internal affairs. I call it “ex-colonial power syndrome”. Djibouti was theirs once upon a time. They probably still think they own it.’

  ‘Believe me, Amira. The German major will be quite enough without the Americans. I’ve primed the man. He knows what the Captain has done. And he wants the man’s blood. The Legion, too, doesn’t want any bad publicity. If they are the ones to take him out, they can publicly boast that they protect their own. If the Yanks come in on it, you’ll just be throwing oil onto the fire. The French and the Yanks have a curious relationship. It’s not what you would call close.’

  ‘Okay. So where are we now in terms of the girl?’

  ‘She knows to be here at ten. Alone. She also knows that I’ll be around somewhere. But I have promised her that I am going to keep my snout out of it. The thought of sitting over here without being able to see what is happening makes me sick to my stomach. But I don’t see what else I can do. The bastard is her father. Not mine.’

  There was silence on the line.

  Hart bulldozed on, on the verge of panic. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That maybe we’re playing this whole thing completely wrong? That we ought to intercede before Biljana arrives and have done with it. Scoop the Captain up. She can go and visit her father in the prison stockade. Under vastly more controllable conditions. Okay. Maybe she’ll hate us. But the Captain will be neutralized.’

  ‘John, your needle’s stuck. Weren’t you the one who told me we needed to listen to her and do exactly what she wants? That we owed her that much consideration on account of her mother. Are you seriously intending to change horses midstream?’

  ‘No. No. Of course not. I’m simply getting the collywobbles. The man does something to me. You should have heard some of the stories he told me. It’s hard to believe that any human being could do such things to another human being. It puts what IS are doing in Iraq into grim perspective. The Captain was there first. IS learned their trade, and what they can get away with, from people like him.’

  ‘Men have always done such things to each other.’

  ‘I know. I know. So why are we so different then, you and me? Why don’t we go around raping and killing and mutilating? Why do we have a moral conscience? Answer me that.’

  ‘Because we’ve had the opportunity to be different, John. We’ve had it easy. We’ve inherited the fucking peace dividend. Think what the Russians and the Germans did to each other during the Second World War on the Eastern Front. Think what happened in the concentration camps. We were spared all that because of the actions of our parents and grandparents.’

  ‘Okay. You can lay off with the lecture. I get the point. I’m just trying to make myself feel better.’ He raised his head. ‘Look. I can see Biljana now. She is walking down the street towards the chess club, carrying her shopping from the bazaar. The kid looks like she’s on a Sunday outing to the big city. You wouldn’t think she’s just about to meet the man who raped and abused her mother.’

  ‘She’s her own person, John. You can’t live other people’s lives for them. However tempted you may be to do so. You’re not a magician. You’re an ordinary man.’

  ‘Thank you, Amira. Thank you for reminding me.’ Hart’s tone was heavily ironical. ‘I was, of course – but only for a second there – in sore danger of forgetting that fact. I’m glad I can count on you to always keep me in line.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  This is no Arab, thought the Captain to himself. The girl isn’t even partway brown. She is as white as a lily. Maybe she is some administrator’s daughter? Or a half-breed with more than a little French blood in her veins? The Captain watched her walking towards him through the clubhouse. She was carrying two bags. Maybe she had been to the Souk? It was Sunday after all. The Souk was always packed out on a Sunday.

  He got up and moved towards her. Strange. The girl looked young for sixteen. And she had Slavic cheekbones. Almond-shaped eyes. A strong nose. If he had to guess, now that he could inspect her more closely, he would have marked her down as Bulgarian. Ukrainian maybe. Even Serb. He’d forgotten now what the major had said she was. Maybe he hadn’t asked. Maybe he hadn’t been interested enough. But he was sure as hell interested now.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, in French. ‘Are you the chess genius?’

  ‘I’m your daughter,’ Biljana said, in Serbian. ‘The rape child of Lumnije Dardan.’

  The Captain froze, his eyes wide, his mouth a little open, as if someone had slapped him unexpectedly on the back to cure him of the hiccups.

  Then he ran past Biljana and threw open the street door.

  Hart, who had been half expecting this reaction, watched from his sheltered position in the coffee bar opposite.

  The Captain looked both ways down the street. Then at the building opposite.

  Hart buried himself behind his newspaper.

&nb
sp; The Captain slammed the door and went back inside the clubhouse.

  He strode past Biljana and on into the lavatory area. She could hear him kicking open the cubicle doors one by one. Then he hurried upstairs. She heard his feet drumming on the floor above her head. Part of her wanted to run. She could still do it. Easily. She would be out of the front door before he knew it. But she stood her ground. What was Hart always saying? In for a penny, in for a pound.

  The Captain came downstairs again. He stopped a few yards away from where she was standing and looked her up and down. ‘What age?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What age are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Ah.’ He walked back to the front door and locked it, replacing the key in his pocket.

  Biljana clutched her bags to her chest as though they might protect her from his anger. She had never encountered anyone who exuded anger the way the Captain did. It petrified her. Made her incapable of thinking.

  ‘Sit,’ he said, pointing to a chair.

  Biljana sat, still clutching her bags.

  ‘Fifteen-year-old girls don’t travel alone to Djibouti. Who is with you? Where are they now?’

  ‘My mother is with me,’ said Biljana, although she did not know where the idea to say this had sprung from. What quiet despair had produced it. ‘She is at the hotel.’

  ‘What hotel?’

  Biljana thought quickly. ‘The Sheraton.’

  ‘Is the whore rich all of a sudden? Where does she get the money from to come out here? To stay at the Sheraton? How did she find me? What are you both doing here?’ The Captain’s eyes were wild. Like those of a feral animal caught in a trap. ‘How did you get the major to talk for you? That miserable worm? To arrange this? Does he know who you are? Where does he figure in this? Is it a trap?’

  The Captain was standing a few yards from her, his upper body hunched towards her, his arms hanging down like a gorilla’s arms in front of him, the fingers flexing and unflexing. Spittle flecked the Captain’s lips as though he were suffering from rabies.

  Biljana fell silent. She was incapable of speech. She stared at the Captain as if he was an alien being which had suddenly transmogrified from its human form directly in front of her.

  ‘You’re my daughter, you say?’

  She nodded. Her head felt stiff on her neck. Her right eye had begun to twitch as it sometimes did after she had been crying. She wondered where Hart was. What he was doing. Why he was not intervening. She had never before in her life felt so frightened as she was of the Captain. He was a primal force unleashed.

  The Captain walked up to her and took her face in his hands. Biljana wanted to cry out, but the sound froze in her throat.

  The Captain tilted her face first to the left and then to the right as you would do that of a puppy you were thinking of purchasing. ‘Yes. Could be.’

  Biljana feared for a moment that he was about to force open her mouth and inspect her teeth.

  ‘Why is your mother not here with you?’

  Biljana swallowed. She wished the Captain would let her alone. His hands were hard and calloused. The hands of a man who ignored the niceties of life. ‘She did not want to come to Djibouti, but I persuaded her. She doesn’t want to see you again. Ever. She didn’t want me to see you. She thinks no good will come of it.’

  The Captain gave a single bark of laughter. He was master of the situation now. He understood what he was dealing with. ‘But you wanted to see your daddy? See what he looked like? Is that it?’

  Biljana nodded. She began to cry.

  The Captain freed her face and stepped backwards. ‘Now tell me how you found me. Everything. Hold nothing back, or I shall know.’

  Biljana swallowed her tears. She could feel the imprint of the Captain’s fingers on her cheeks as though he was still gripping hold of her. ‘Maria told us. The woman who serves the monks at Visoki Decˇani. We discovered she was your relative. Your great-aunt. That she keeps you informed about your family. She told us you were out here. That you were in the Legion. I persuaded Majka to bring me out. We looked for you.’

  ‘And the major? Where does he come into all this?’

  ‘Nowhere. Not really. My mother spoke to him. Persuaded him of who I was. She thought an officer in the Legion would know of any Serbs in its ranks. And he did.’

  ‘Did she tell him everything? About how you were conceived, for instance?’

  Biljana had the sudden, inescapable conviction that she was arguing for her life. That if she told him anything resembling the real truth, the Captain would kill her. Instantly. With no discernible emotion. And to hell with the fact that she was his daughter. ‘No. No, of course not. She just said we wanted to find you. That you might want to see me. It has been many years. My mother feels differently about things now. I feel differently. We mean you no harm. I just wanted to meet you. This was the only way.’ Biljana prayed that the Captain would not see through her lame fabrications.

  The Captain stared at her. Biljana felt as if his eyes were eating her up. She realized, with a sudden, shocking insight, that she and this man were of one blood. She had always expected to recognize him in some way. Feel some familiarity with him. Some conjunction. But this? This blood curse? With a man who tortured, raped and murdered at will?

  ‘Are you Christian?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘You are my daughter. So are you Christian?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I am Muslim. Like my mother.’

  ‘That will be changed.’

  Biljana felt the hand of fate descend upon her. The Captain’s gaze was unwavering. Unholy. His eyes were ice cold.

  ‘What does it matter what I am?’ she yelled. ‘Why should it matter to you? You raped my mother. How can you expect me to take the religion of a man capable of doing something like that?’

  The Captain slapped her. The movement was so sudden, and the pain so intense, that Biljana had no time to respond. She fell sideways off the chair onto the floor.

  The Captain kicked her in the side.

  Biljana rolled herself into a ball and covered her head with her hands. She was no longer thinking. Only reacting. She felt something break inside her heart.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  The Captain grabbed her by the throat and began to squeeze.

  Biljana’s eyes filled with tears. She felt a long way away from herself. She could hear her mother calling, in exactly the tone of voice she would use when ordering Biljana inside the house as a child. From where had she summoned her mother like this? And why had her mother chosen just this moment to come to her, after depriving her daughter of her presence so categorically via the cowardice of suicide? And why had she said what she had said to the Captain? There was no sense to any of it.

  A profound sadness suffused her. The sort of sadness a child might feel when parted from someone to whom she was deeply attached.

  She closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.

  The Captain stepped away from Biljana’s body. He walked across to the bar and ran some water into the basin. He washed his hands roughly, and then his face. He caught sight of himself in the bar mirror and looked away.

  If Lumnije Dardan was here in Djibouti, he was doomed. The woman he remembered would not hesitate to hand him over to the authorities. And there was no way that same woman would have allowed her daughter to come and see him alone. No. Biljana must have been lying when she said that. She must have run off on her own accord. Slipped the tether.

  But by gifting herself to him in that way, Biljana had inadvertently gifted him a priceless handle over her mother. Maybe the whore would not be so keen to turn him in when she knew he had her daughter in his hands?

  He walked over to where Biljana was lying and prodded her with his foot. She was still out cold. Well. All the better.


  He dragged her as far as the front door. Then he went back into the clubhouse, collected her shopping bags and dumped them into one of the trash bins in the utility room. He walked back to the front door of the chess club and unlocked it. He stepped out into the street. The heat hit him like a solid force. He looked to his left and to his right and stepped across the pavement to his car. He opened the front door and left it hanging.

  He lit a cigarette. The chess club was situated in a quiet cul-de-sac. Apart from the café opposite, there was nothing here to attract passing trade. He waited five minutes until there was no one within fifty yards of him, then he flicked away the cigarette and hurried back inside the clubhouse. He swept Biljana into his arms and lumbered out to the car with her. He dropped her into the passenger well at the rear of the car and slammed the door. Then he got into the front.

  He engaged Drive and forced his way out into the traffic without caring about other cars. A horn honked behind him. Someone doing a U-turn. He opened his window and raised his fist. The horn fell silent.

  This was it, he thought to himself. The Great Change. He had been expecting it for years and it had finally arrived. Well. He would visit Lumnije Dardan at the Sheraton Hotel and tell her exactly what he would do to her daughter if she grassed him up to the War Crimes Commission. Then he would call the corporal at Camp Lemonnier and tell him the moment had come to gather together certain items they would be needing over the next few days. Civilian clothes. False passports. Guns. Emergency cash. Stuff like that. Stuff he had been hoarding against just such an eventuality.

  The Ethiopian border was two hours away by road. About a hundred kilometres, if you travelled via Ali Sabieh and the RN5 to Dewele. It was Sunday morning. The corporal could follow him out in his own car. They could meet at the border post. He and the corporal would be long gone before the Legion, or the police, were any the wiser.