The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  Hart stared at her. ‘What? The guy who just tried to kill me up there on the ridge?’

  She nodded. ‘He was only doing his duty. He thought you were attacking his client. We cannot leave him. He may be injured.’

  Hart glanced at Amira. Then at Rider. Then at their park guard.

  When he was through with his inspection, he raised an eyebrow and sighed. ‘I’m relieved someone here apart from me still has a moral conscience.’

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Hart switched to four-wheel drive and aimed the Renegade at the top of the hill on which he’d cold-cocked the Captain. They didn’t have a lot of time. But Biljana was right. They couldn’t leave the guard alone out there. The man might be badly injured. There were lions living in the National Park, and Ethiopian wolves. Even baboons were known to relish a diet of flesh when they could get hold of it.

  ‘Look. There he is.’

  Gersem was stumbling towards them. His face was bloody. He was holding his right arm tightly against his body.

  Rider groaned. ‘This is going to be a tight fit.’

  ‘Get a grip, Rider. You climb in front with Biljana. Amira knows first aid. She can see to Gersem while we put a bit of distance between ourselves and the Captain.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll follow us?’ said Rider.

  ‘Yes I do. He’s an angry man. He’s killed once already. He’ll kill again. He’s used to this, remember. Human life means nothing to him. Back in Kosovo, Lumnije and the other women he kept in the rape house used to call him “the superman”. Because the bastard never gives up. Because he never loses.’

  ‘I don’t buy it,’ said Rider. ‘If he has any sense he’ll get out of the park by the way he came in. Before we have a chance to report him.’

  ‘He knows we’re not going to report him.’ Hart glanced back at Gersem and the other park guard. ‘We’ve already had far too much collateral damage since Djibouti. He’s got a second rifle now, with four slugs in it. And a pistol. If we bring in the authorities there will be a bloodbath. He’ll make sure of that. No. I’ve made my decision and I’m sticking to it. The rest of you can do whatever you want.’ He hitched his chin at Amira. ‘Is Gersem okay?’

  ‘He’ll live,’ she said. ‘The Captain sucker-punched him when he was expecting a pat on the back. Then our hero kicked him in the side for good measure. Gersem’s arm might be fractured. But that’s the full extent of the damage.’

  Hart fought back a sudden attack of the guilts. The Captain had only done to Gersem what Hart had done to him. The physical parallels were too close for comfort. ‘Gersem, listen to me. We can’t risk bringing in the local police about this. Do you understand? If the police try to stop the man who struck you, there will be much killing. And the authorities will more than likely take us in too. On principle. Before we are able to explain how we came to be involved. The Captain is a very bad man indeed.’

  ‘He is an evil man, yes,’ said Gersem. He looked at Biljana. ‘He and the other man were keeping you prisoner, weren’t they? You kept quiet to protect me?’

  ‘They would have killed you,’ said Biljana. ‘I knew this for certain. That is why I stayed silent.’

  Gersem nodded slowly. ‘Then I made a very bad mistake. My soul told me something, but I did not listen to it. I should not have shot at your friend.’

  ‘No,’ said Biljana. ‘You did the right thing. You did what you had to do. We owe you a great deal.’

  Hart checked his wing mirrors for any sign of pursuit. After having been the pursuer for so long, he didn’t like the switchback feeling of being pursued. Especially not as the man behind him possessed a rifle capable of killing someone at more than a mile, together with the will to do it. ‘Gersem. I need to ask you and your companion something. A favour. A big favour.’

  Gersem looked up. Amira had bandaged his head. She had also fashioned a sling for him out of the Mexican rebozo she had been wearing. It gave him a devil-may-care air. Like a latter-day pirate. ‘I am listening to you.’

  ‘If we drop you off before we reach the park exit. In a nearby village, say. Will you give us a little time before you call in what has happened? Time to entice the Captain away from the park? To ensure that no more innocent people are drawn into this?’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  Hart glanced at the others. ‘I intend to lure him as far away from civilization as I possibly can. Well outside the National Park area, anyway. Up into the mountains somewhere. Along the way I’m going to drop these three off. Somewhere safe. Where they can rest up.’

  ‘But he has Fikre’s rifle. He will kill you from a distance.’

  ‘There’s an automatic weapon hidden in the back of this vehicle,’ said Hart. ‘What they call an assault rifle. I’ve seen it. And a sawn-off shotgun. I also pocketed back his pistol. That’s more than enough artillery for what I need to do.’

  ‘And what will you do?’ said Gersem.

  ‘I’m going to set up an ambush.’

  ‘And you are going to kill him,’ said Biljana. ‘You are going to kill my father.’

  Hart reached across to her, but Biljana turned away from him.

  ‘Biljana, I have no choice,’ he said. ‘You must understand this. You’ve seen what he’s capable of. Look what he just did to Danko. What if I promise to try and take him alive if I can? If he’ll let me?’ Hart glanced up from his driving, but Biljana wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Hart switched his attention from Biljana to Gersem. He could see Gersem’s face in his rear-view mirror. The man exuded an acute intelligence. As different from the other guard beside him as it was possible to be.

  ‘Have you heard of a place called Debre Damo?’ said Gersem.

  Hart shook his head. He glanced at the others. They shook their heads too.

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘This is the sort of place you must lead him to. If you are sure he will follow. I can guide you there.’

  ‘You? Guide us? Why would you do that?’ said Hart.

  Gersem lowered his gaze. But not before Hart saw him looking at Biljana. There was gratitude in his eyes. Gersem knew that the girl had been trying to protect him. To save his life at the risk of her own.

  ‘What is Debre Damo, Gersem?’

  ‘It is a monastery. An ancient monastery.’ Gersem crossed himself. ‘High on a hillside near the Eritrean border. The only way up is by a rawhide rope. A monk holds one end of the rope in a hut fifty metres high, jutting from the wall of the hill. The climbing man holds the other part. You scramble up a sheer cliff. There is no other way up or down.’

  ‘What’s up there when you’ve done the climb?’ said Hart.

  ‘An ancient church. Many cells in which the monks live.’ Gersem’s gaze turned inwards, as if he were picturing the monastery in his mind’s eye. ‘There is good cover. Few people. No woman has ever been allowed on top of the mountain since the monastery was built by Abuna Aregawi fifteen hundred years ago. So the Captain cannot take hostages. The monks, for themselves, will not mind to die. They are close to God anyway.’

  ‘Why there, Gersem?’ said Hart. ‘Why there in particular?’

  Gersem half inclined his head. ‘My brother is a monk at Debre Damo. If we climb to the top, we can talk to him. I may be injured but it might be possible to pull me up, with the rope beneath my arms. When I tell my brother about the Captain, he will arrange it so the Captain can climb up too. Then we will have him. It will be impossible for him to escape. How can he climb up with a rifle on his back? And with both hands occupied, how will he be able to defend himself?’

  Hart shrugged. But he could feel hope burgeoning inside him. ‘The monks will hardly let me climb up with an assault rifle on my back either.’

  ‘But a pistol?’ said Gersem. ‘This they will not see. And if I am drawn up behind you? With the shotgun concealed in m
y gabi?’

  Hart laughed. ‘Your brother will never forgive you.’

  Gersem grinned. ‘My brother is a pragmatic man. As are all monks. When he sees what the Captain has done to me, he will soon forgive and forget.’

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  They dropped Fikre off at a village on the edge of the National Park. Gersem had spoken to him at length in Amharic. By the end of the conversation, Gersem assured them that Fikre would hold his tongue just so long as they promised him his rifle back, together with the four cartridges the park authorities had allocated him to protect his tourists. He feared for his job otherwise. He had a large family to support. And he had no other source of income. As far as the dead man was concerned, he had seen and heard nothing.

  When Amira gave him fifty dollars with which to tide himself over, Fikre put both hands up to his eyes and saluted her.

  ‘Three days,’ he said. ‘I will be silent for three days. Is this sufficient?’

  ‘If it isn’t, we’re in serious trouble,’ said Rider.

  ‘Aren’t we forgetting something?’ said Amira. ‘What about Danko’s body?’

  ‘If I know the Captain,’ said Hart, ‘he will have settled that little matter for us. He’s hardly likely to leave a man’s carcase around if it might remotely lead the authorities back to him. I know there wasn’t much left of Danko’s face. But do you remember? They photocopied all our passports at the border crossing before they gave us our visas. I’m sorry to seem morbid, but I’m pretty sure there was enough left of Danko for a positive description.’ He flashed a glance at Biljana in the rear-view mirror to see how she was taking his words. ‘No. By now Danko is pushing up the daisies somewhere. Or his corpse is feeding a pack of baboons. I can’t pretend I’m mourning him. God alone knows how many people he raped and killed during the Kosovo War. Backdated remorse is all very well, but it doesn’t mend bullet holes and broken hearts.’

  Rider cleared his throat. ‘So what do we do about my tracker?’ He pointed under the seat. ‘The Captain has inherited my laptop. If he’s halfway computer literate he’ll be able to follow us just as we followed him.’

  ‘That’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ said Hart, turning to Biljana. He was still treating her with kid gloves. Her relationship with her father was a psychological minefield. ‘Just how did the Captain manage to overlook our tracker?’

  ‘I stuck it down my pants,’ she said.

  Amira burst out laughing.

  Biljana surprised them all by grinning in return. ‘He’d already searched me. So I pretended I was bawling my eyes out and hid the tracker. Then when he ransacked the car he couldn’t find it. He thought you’d all been incredibly clever and hidden one in Danko’s car instead.’

  ‘Credit where credit’s due,’ said Amira. ‘That was a moment of pure genius, Biljana.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Hart.

  Rider shook his head. ‘Genius or no genius, all I know is that when the Captain finds out the tracker’s still switched on, he’s not going to take long to twig that we want him to follow us. We’ve underestimated him before. Once bitten twice shy, I say.’

  Hart grunted in affirmation. ‘What else can we do? We can’t bear down on him head on. He’s got a rifle. All we can do is lead him away and hope that he’s so pissed off he will decide to follow us.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t?’ said Rider.

  ‘Then we’ve lost him. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’ Hart grinned. ‘But we have Biljana back. Which means that we’re already ahead of the game. Why not look on the bright side for a change, Eeyore?’ Hart fixed Rider with a gimlet eye. ‘If the man gives up and goes off in a huff, we might even manage to make it out of this country with our necks intact.’

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  The Captain dragged Danko’s body into the defile. He spent a moment looking at what was left of Danko’s face. Then he reached across for a stone and pounded the remainder of the face into pulp. When he was finished, he blocked up the entrance to the defile with rocks, leaving just enough room for an animal the size of a fox, or maybe of a small baboon, to squeeze through and luck into a free meal.

  The Captain found a bottle of water in Hart’s car and rinsed his hands. Then he wrapped a towel around his fist and smashed out what remained of the windscreen. He drank some of the water and checked the state of his armaments. Four rifle bullets. Four. Whose sorry idea was that? What sort of an asshole gives you four bullets in a magazine that should take a dozen? He could have been killed. Still. Four were better than nothing when push came to shove.

  The Captain checked Danko’s Beretta. Thirteen Parabellum rounds in that one. Unlucky for some. The Beretta 92SB semi-automatic pistol used to be issued to US marines before they switched to the 92FS. You couldn’t buy it in gun shops any more but it was easily available on the black market if you knew where to look. The Captain was more than capable of a ten-shot, three-inch grouping at fifty metres. Not as good as Danko’s numbers, but good nonetheless. And Danko sure as hell wouldn’t be taking his marksmanship skills with him to wherever he was going next.

  The Captain stared down at his right arm. It was damaged, that much was for sure. How bad was hard to say. Hart had kicked him hard in the scapula as he was going down. Now the whole of the arm was numb. Painful and numb. Although you would have thought that the two things were contraindicatory.

  The Captain’s head, too, was damaged. The back of his neck felt tender. Swollen and tender. And he had a splitting headache. Heads do that if you pelt them with heavy stones.

  He searched out the woman’s suitcase. Yes. Here were some Advil. You could always count on women to have strong painkillers somewhere around.

  The Captain took four and chugged the rest of the water alongside them.

  He would enjoy taking his revenge on Hart. The man had the luck of the devil. He had an uncanny knack of getting himself into the right spot at the right time. But he’d never once faced up to the Captain man to man. That would have a very different outcome. Take away the luck and Hart was just a sorry journalist with no skills beyond camera-clicking. The Captain had spent the past twenty years hard-training his body and working on his frame of mind. No contest.

  The Captain powered up the laptop. It didn’t take him long to find out that it belonged to someone called Leo Percival Rider. And that Rider must have been online when Hart had told him to leave his laptop alone and get into the huddle the Captain had found the trio in a few minutes before he’d shot Danko through the ear. With a few taps of his finger, the Captain ordered Rider’s computer to remember its new password, just in case the laptop powered down unexpectedly.

  Another five minutes online and the Captain was following Rider’s tracker programme.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the Captain. ‘How the hell did she do that?’

  The tracker in the Renegade was still in situ and communicating. And yet he had gone over the vehicle with a fine toothcomb. He was near to one hundred per cent certain that he hadn’t missed anything. The only possible way for him to have missed the tracker was if Biljana had been concealing it about her person. Hmmm. What had Sherlock Holmes said? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

  So that’s what must have happened.

  The Captain smiled. Maybe Biljana was a chip off the old block after all?

  Now that he was on the road again, the Captain found the wind buffeting through the smashed windscreen bracing, to say the least. And when he passed the occasional car travelling in the opposite direction, the dust swirled and jigged around the cabin as if he had stumbled into the eye of a sandstorm. The prospect of a sudden rain squall didn’t bear thinking about.

  Two hours of such self-imposed hell was enough. The Captain had just passed through Mile when he saw the nearly new Mazda CX-9 by the side of the road. He pulled over onto the hard
shoulder. He sat in the car for a moment staring at the Mazda. Why shouldn’t he steal it and make straight for the Eritrean border? And to hell with Hart, Biljana and the rest of them. He had close on sixteen thousand dollars rainy-day cash with him, tucked away inside a money belt. And when that was gone he could steal some more.

  But would Hart and the others leave him be? Hardly likely at this late stage in the game.

  The Captain watched the Mazda as if it might tell him something.

  Biljana. His daughter. What of her?

  Well. When it came down to it, he could take her or leave her. Blood didn’t mean a damned thing to him. If it had been more convenient to kill her at any stage over the past few days, he would undoubtedly have done so. Was he angry in retrospect about her tricking him over the tracker? Hardly. In her eyes she’d been doing the right thing. But he was detached. Yes. That was the way he felt. Detached.

  So it came back to Hart. As it always did. The man had dogged him all those years ago, and he was dogging him again now. It was Hart who had forced him to leave the Legion. Hart who had made him shoot Danko. Okay. Danko may not have been much to write home about, but he had been the Captain’s creature. And Hart had forced him to turn on the one man he owed loyalty to. A fellow Serb. A man he had history with. The Captain found he minded. Considerably.

  The Captain watched the Mazda some more. Pretty soon the owners would come back. Then he would need to decide. He’d let it come down to a mathematical equation. Simple as that.

  He heard their voices first, through his smashed windscreen. American voices. First a man’s, then a woman’s. Next, a foreign voice, speaking broken English. Probably the Ethiopian park guard. Then the first man’s voice again. A man, a woman, and the park guard. The maths didn’t add up.

  Then he saw the second man. Walking a few yards behind the first three. Taking photos. Stopping every now and then to frame something using his thumbs and forefingers. Pretentious bastard. Just like that idiot Hart.