The Templar Prophecy

THE
TEMPLAR
PROPHECY

Mario Reading
is a multi-talented writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His varied life has included selling rare books, teaching riding in Africa, studying dressage in Vienna, running a polo stable in Gloucestershire and maintaining a coffee plantation in Mexico. An acknowledged expert on the prophecies of Nostradamus, Reading is the author of eight non-fiction titles and five novels published in the UK and around the world.

Also by Mario Reading and available from Corvus

The Nostradamus Prophecies
The Mayan Codex
The Third Antichrist

Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2014 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Mario Reading, 2014

The moral right of Mario Reading to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 317 7
OME ISBN: 978 1 78239 385 6
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 319 1

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

For my beloved granddaughter Éloise – Baba's
best little girl in the whole world
.

Contents

One: Homs, Syria

Two: The Saleph River, Cilician Armenia, Southern Turkey

Three

Four

Five

Six: Syrian Air Flight 106 from Damascus

Seven: The Hitlerbunker, Reich Chancellery, Berlin

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen: Calle de Chipilapa, Antigua, Guatemala

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen: Haus Walküre, Bad Wiessee, Bavaria

Eighteen: Rancho La Virgencita, Antigua, Guatemala

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One: Richmond, England

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

I would like to thank Michael Mann for his seemingly innate capacity to steer me towards interesting and esoteric ideas without appearing to do so. Nick Robinson, for advising me to ‘keep it simple' when my fervid brain would have had it otherwise. My agent, Oli Munson of A. M. Heath, for relentlessly guiding me in the direction of my readers rather than towards the rocks. My secret reader, Michèle O'Connell, for her unerring insights into my elusive psyche and her ability to remind me to play to my strengths rather than to my weaknesses. And finally my beloved wife, Claudia, without whose presence in my life this would all be mush anyway.

‘We are awake. Let others sleep. What today is known as history, we will abolish altogether.'

Adolf Hitler

‘Nor can we ever know what visions sweeten the dreams of the crocodile.'

John D. MacDonald,
One Monday We Killed Them All

‘So I ask myself the question: could the religions I study teach us the art of killing the dragons in our flesh? This diabolical presence, buried within us yet constantly surfacing: is this the original sin I was taught as a child?'

François Bizot,
The Gate

ONE

Homs, Syria

16 JULY 2012

The peace demonstration was spiralling out of control. John Hart had been a photojournalist for fifteen years, and he was attuned to outbreaks of negative energy. He could sense when things were about to turn bad. It was why he was still alive.

Hart elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and began taking pictures, switching focus and emphasis as instinctively as he switched cameras. There was a time limit to this one, and he needed to get his material in the can before the mob began to search for scapegoats. He had hidden his Kevlar vest and flak helmet behind a wall, but he still stood out from the pack. He had three different cameras slung around his neck and a separate rucksack for his iPad and lenses. If even one man singled him out for special notice he would need to run. Hart was nearing forty, and he couldn't run as fast as he used to.

Shots rang out. They were single spaced and ordered, as if whoever was firing had a specific agenda – a sniper, or
someone firing a sequence of warning shots. The crowd surged in their direction.

Hart had seen such a thing before. It was a bad sign. It meant that people no longer cared what happened to them. That they were relying on the sheer force of their numbers to protect them.

Hart allowed himself to be swept towards the side of the avenue. He smelt tear gas. He veered down a side street that ran parallel to the main avenue. Almost immediately he found himself running alongside a gang of about thirty young men, their faces covered. Some were talking into mobile phones. There was organization of a sort here, he decided. And intent. He would shadow them and wait to see what happened.

Hart and his companions emerged onto a semi-derelict square. The area had recently been subjected to either a bombardment or a concerted tank attack. Sheet metal and crumbling concrete amplified the moonscape effect. The sun glistened off a field of broken glass.

Hart sidestepped alongside the young men, taking pictures all the time.

A yellow Peugeot 205 breasted the far corner of the square at breakneck speed, struck a lump of concrete and flipped over.

The group changed direction like an animal scenting prey.

A man climbed out of the shattered front door of the Peugeot. Blood masked his features. When he saw the crowd surging towards him he made the most disastrous decision of his life. He took out his pistol.

There was a collective roar. The group turned into a mob. Their focus, once random, became explicit.

The man fired three shots into the air. The mob stuttered a little and then regrouped. It began hurling bricks, stones and lumps of concrete as it ran. Hart realized that no one was in the mood to pay any attention at all to the word PRESS stencilled onto the Peugeot's roof in both English and Arabic.

He positioned himself on a pyramid of shattered concrete and began taking photos. He knew better than to involve himself in what was happening. He was a veteran of the siege of Sarajevo. Of the troubles in Sierra Leone and Chechnya. Of the war in Afghanistan. Photographers didn't make history – they recorded it. That was set in stone. You kept your nose the hell out.

It was then that the woman stumbled into view and overturned all his certainties. She had been sitting in the back seat of the Peugeot typing copy onto her iPad, which she was clutching to her chest like a talisman. Hart recognized her despite the Kevlar vest and the padded helmet with her blood group stencilled onto the front in indelible white ink. It was journalist Amira Eisenberger.

Hart had known Amira for ten years. They had slept together in Abidjan, in Cairo and in Baghdad. Once they had even shared a fortnight's leave on the Kenyan island of Lamu, following which Amira had briefly fallen pregnant. The on/off nature of the affair had suited them both. No ties. No commitments. Falling in love in wartime is painless. The hard part was to pull it off when peace broke out again.

Hart shifted his cameras onto his back and sprinted towards the mob, shouting. The driver was dead. The mob was focusing all its attention on the woman.

One youth made a grab for Amira's iPad. She tried to hold onto it, but the boy cuffed her across the face with the back of his hand and sprinted off with his prize. He loosed a kick at the battered body of the driver as he ran past.

Another man, slightly older than the others, picked up the driver's pistol. He forced Amira onto her knees, threw off her helmet and put the pistol to her temple.

‘No!' shouted Hart. ‘She is a journalist. She is on your side.'

The mob turned towards him as one.

Hart waved his Press Pass above his head. He spoke in halting Arabic. ‘She is not responsible for what her driver did. She supports your revolution. I know this woman.' He was counting on the fact that some of the men would have seen him shadowing them and taking pictures. That they might be used to him by now. Might sense that he didn't work for Assad or the CIA. ‘I know her.'

They made Hart kneel beside Amira. Then they took his cameras and equipment bag.

Hart knew better than to argue. Three cameras and an iPad weren't worth a life. He would buy them back on the black market when things quieted down again. That was the way these things were managed.

‘You are spies dressed as journalists. We shoot you.'

‘We are not spies,' said Amira, also in Arabic. ‘What this man says is true. We support your revolution.'

Amira's use of their language wrong-footed the men.

‘Show us your Press Card.'

Amira felt in her breast pocket and took out her pass.

The older man raised his glasses and held the pass so close to his eyes that it was clear that he suffered from extreme myopia. ‘It says here your name is Eisenberger. This is a Jewish name. You are a Jew.'

‘My first name is Amira. My father is Arab.'

‘But your mother is a Jew. You have chosen to carry her name. You are a Zionist. You are an Israeli spy.'

Hart knew that he and Amira were doomed. Nothing could save them. The man holding the pistol had a thin mullah's beard and was an acknowledged leader. As Hart watched, he cocked the pistol.

The snap and fizz of incoming machine-gun fire echoed around the square. The crowd unfolded in all directions like a flower in the wind.

Hart threw himself onto Amira just as the man with the pistol took aim. Why did he do it? Instinct? Knight errantry? Because Amira had briefly – ever so briefly – carried his child? The bullet would probably pass through his unprotected body and kill Amira anyway. What a stupid way for both of them to die.

The pistol clicked on an empty chamber. The man with the beard called on Allah to witness the uselessness of the dead driver's gun.

Hart turned round and looked at him.

The two men locked gazes.

Hart stood up and approached the man.

The man put the pistol to Hart's forehead and pulled the trigger a second time.

Nothing happened. The magazine had contained only three bullets, and the dead driver had exhausted them with his warning shots.

Hart put his hands round the man's neck and began to squeeze. Amira told him later that he had been shouting, but he had no memory of this. He only knew that a red mist descended on him and that his gaze turned inwards, like a man on the verge of death. Like a dead man living.

Syrian government soldiers dragged the two men apart a few moments later. At this point the man who had tried to kill both him and Amira was still very much alive.

Afterwards, when he and Amira passed through the square again on their way to the airport following their formal ejection by the Syrian authorities, they saw the man's body crumpled against a wall as if he had been washed there in the aftermath of a tsunami. When they asked the military driver what had happened, he told them that the man had tried to escape and had been inadvertently crushed to death by a lorry.

Hart sat back against the side of the van and closed his eyes. What is this madness? he asked himself. Why am I here? Why am I still alive?

When Amira reached across to touch his arm, Hart shook his head.