The Templar Prophecy (11 page)

TWENTY

Hart called Amira Eisenberger from one of the few remaining payphones at Miami Airport.

‘Ah. The prodigal son returns,' she said. ‘Have you saved any more damsels in distress recently? Leapt in front of any more bullets?'

‘Where are you, Amira?'

‘I'm in London. In bed. With my lovers. Both of them. They have promised to intercede if anyone tries to shoot me again. No bullet will be able to penetrate their muscle-bound bodies, so I am safe at last. Ah, the perils of being a woman. Where are you?'

Hart rolled his eyes. So it was going to be like that? ‘I'm in Miami. Between planes. I thought you'd be on a new assignment by now.'

Amira sighed. ‘Before they send you on a new assignment, John, you have to suggest a story to them. Or have one suggested to you. That's the disadvantage of being an actual
journalist rather than a glorified paparazzo. I am researching four possible stories as we speak. When I find one that suits my editor, she will encourage me to research it in more depth. Then, if I am very lucky, she will buy me a ticket and allocate me some expense money. Only then will I be going anywhere. But I forget. I'm talking to a photojournalist. Someone who hasn't put pen to paper since he left high school. You just aim your thing at them and then you press the trigger, don't you? And then they pay you. Typical man.'

Hart closed his eyes. So Amira was still angry with him? And perfectly capable of hanging up if it suited her mood. He needed to go for the jugular. ‘I've got a story for you. You can junk your other leads. This one is big.'

‘Don't tell me. Boy reunites with father after thirty-five years. That'll guarantee me a double-page byline, won't it? I can see the headlines now.
A tender reunion took place in Central America between photojournalist John Hart and his errant father. Tears were shed and promises exchanged. Hart's father apologized for his many years of mutism: “I am so moved at seeing my son again that I can't find the words to express it.”'

Hart squinted at the phone. Jesus. The situation was worse than he'd imagined. He mustn't lose his temper. That would play straight into Amira's hands. She was the sort of woman who took her own time with everything. Obstinacy was a political statement with her – things were only done and dusted when Amira Eisenberger decided they were done and dusted.

‘How about this for a headline? Photojournalist's father crucified. Lethal spear wound discovered on right of ribcage.
Two further deaths believed connected to the first. Victim's son on the run.'

Amira broke in on his litany. ‘That's not funny. I don't write for the tabloids, remember? I am what passes for a serious journalist. If you want to play those sorts of games, why not chat up Martha Ferret, or whatever her stupid name is. She's just your sort of woman. Winsome, mincing, and the exact age to settle down and raise a family. She writes just the sort of sensationalist tripe you are talking about, too. I don't.'

‘Did you listen to anything I just said?'

‘Unfortunately, yes. I suppose you want me to collect you from Heathrow and save you the taxi fare? Is that why you are calling me? I can't imagine for what other reason.'

Hart counted slowly to five before he answered. ‘No, Amira. I've decided to come in through Paris, not London. After that I'm going to travel as a foot passenger on the ferry from Dunkerque to Dover. There's more chance they won't scan passports that way. I really may be wanted for murder in Guatemala, and via that through Interpol. So I can't afford to take any chances.'

‘Have you gone mad? Cross-channel ferries? Murder? What did they feed you over there in Guatemala? Ayahuasca?'

‘Sorry, Amira. They're just calling my flight. I've got to hurry. Work your way back through the conversation we've just had and think about it. Particularly what I told you about the killings. And you might want to research something called the Holy Lance whilst you're at it – the one that pierced
Jesus's side and possibly my father's. And then link it somehow to Adolf Hitler. When you've done that, drag whatever you find back into the present day. You're good at that sort of thing.
Sayonara
.'

TWENTY-ONE

Richmond, England

26 JULY 2012

Amira picked Hart up near Richmond Hospital. She drove silently for some time and refused to look at him.

‘It's nice to see you too,' said Hart.

Amira swivelled round in the driver's seat. ‘You
are
wanted for murder in Guatemala. You weren't joking.'

‘No. I wasn't joking. But I didn't kill anybody.'

‘Would you like to explain that?'

Hart threw his head back against the headrest. ‘Explain? I wish I could.'

Something flashed across Amira's eyes. She switched into journalistic mode without skipping a beat. Her eyes took on the piercing stare with which a cat will mesmerize its prey. ‘You've lost weight. Have you been ill?'

Hart groaned. Amira was right on the button as usual. He knew just where she was coming from. He'd been on a number of assignments with her as her photographer. There was an art to the give-and-take of asking questions – a necessary
rhythm – that Amira possessed in spades. It was a sort of questioning by numbers. It was accompanied by a hefty dose of professional detachment and an even sharper eye. What had he expected? Sympathy?

‘You remember the malaria I picked up in Sierra Leone?' he said. ‘Well, it came back. The woman and her chauffeur that were killed saw me through the relapse. She was my father's mistress. She told me many things.' Hart faltered. ‘She told me I had a sister, Amira. She was called Carmen. She died when she was seven years old. Of meningitis. Look. This is her picture.' He scrabbled in his jacket pocket. ‘I wish I'd known her. Why didn't my father tell me? I could have travelled to Guatemala and met her. Maybe I could have done something? Helped her in some way? Even just been there?'

Amira stopped the car in a lay-by. She turned to Hart and laid her hand on his arm. But there was caution in her action – as if she might pull back if Hart responded inappropriately to her touch.

She studied the picture. ‘She's beautiful. And she does look a bit like you. But I'm sorry. You can't go on like this. Go to the police. Explain things. It will soon become clear to them that you are innocent.'

Hart slid the photograph back inside its protective cover and put it into his holdall. His expression turned to granite. ‘Do the UK and Guatemala have an extradition treaty? Come on. I know you'll have done your homework.'

Amira reached into her handbag and fished out a cigarette. She lit it, cracked open the window, and wafted the smoke out
with one hand. ‘Yes. They do. Since the thirteenth of January 1883. For the Mutual Surrender of Fugitive Criminals.'

‘Great.'

‘But you didn't kill anybody.'

‘We're talking about Guatemala, Amira, not the European Union. Everything points to me. I even left my shoes at the scene of the crime. There are prints from my bloodstained feet all over the ranch. My DNA will be everywhere. Over the beds. In the bathroom. In the kitchen. The police chief will be beside himself with joy thinking of all the extra income he will earn in bribes. He simply can't afford to let this one pass.'

‘DNA? In Guatemala? You must be kidding.'

‘There were three murders, Amira. Three.'

‘In a country of thirteen million people? Which boasted 5681 murders last year, with scarcely a single killer brought to justice? You see? I have done my homework. Have you ever tried to find an ant in a bowl of wild rice? That's what it'll seem like to whoever inherits this case. Your father was dead before you even arrived in the country. They can't pin his murder on you unless you dropped in by balloon.'

‘They'll still contact Interpol. They'll still flash my name up on their Most Wanted list as a possible suspect in the final two killings. I left by plane and in a hurry. My name appears in black and white on the passenger list. My taxi driver will be able to identify me and testify that I spent three-quarters of an hour in a house containing two dead people and then tipped him fifty bucks to speed me to the airport.'

‘Then go to the police first. Before they come to you.'

Hart shook his head. ‘No. I won't do that. I'm going to pursue these people myself. To the grave, if necessary. I owe that much to Colel Cimi. I owe that much to Santiago. And in a curious sort of a way, I owe it to my father, too.' Hart stared out of the window. His face was bleak. ‘What else did you discover?'

‘About what?'

‘About the Holy Lance, Amira. And all the other stuff I asked you to check out. Don't kid a kidder.'

Amira gave a long sigh. ‘This isn't the right place for it. We'll use my flat as yours is probably surrounded by a SWAT team. The actual debriefing had better wait, though. You're jet-lagged, post-malarial, and probably still in shock. When did you last eat?'

‘I don't need food. I need answers. And quickly.' Hart cast her a sidelong glance. ‘Are you sure you want to risk having a possible murderer on your premises? Becoming an accessory after the fact? It could mean the end of your career.'

Amira laughed. ‘You must know me better than that by now, John.' She crashed the gears as she changed up. ‘It could mean a story.'

TWENTY-TWO

Amira sat across from Hart in the kitchen area of her flat and watched him not eating. Instead he drank coffee. Mug after mug of coffee. Until his hands shook from the caffeine, and his eyes stared out of red-rimmed shells.

She tried to put herself in his shoes, but she found it impossible. Hart was the most tender-minded man she had ever met, and she was a tough-minded woman who detested ‘niceness'. It was a disastrous combination. Her decision to abort their child hung between the two of them like a rotting corpse.

‘They call their association the
Lanzen Brüderschaft
– the Brotherhood of the Lance. Despite its name, their leader is a woman. Elfriede Rache. She's the thirty-three-year-old granddaughter of Heinrich Rache, who was one of Adolf Hitler's first lieutenants. Rache began in the SA under Ernst Röhm, then betrayed Röhm to Hitler on the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Röhm was a true revolutionary – meaning he
wanted a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. Rache and Hitler were as far from revolutionaries as you could get. Hitler because he understood that power and loyalty needed to be bought and paid for, and Rache because he was a multi-millionaire by inheritance and despised homosexuals, which Röhm was.'

‘No more Mr Nice Guy, then.'

Amira ignored him. ‘The Raches were Bavarian industrialists. They still own a small chemical factory in Gmund that makes spa products, but most of their holdings were bought out in the 1960s. Rache Junior then went on to found the LB in 1970, subsidizing it out of his newfound wealth. Rache Senior had left him a mansion and extensive landholdings in Bad Wiessee and the surrounding area, which his granddaughter has now inherited following her father's death, together with all their accumulated loot elsewhere. And there's a lot of it, believe me. Grandfather Rache was entertaining some of Röhm's cronies in the same house when Hitler came calling on the Night of the Long Knives. The whole thing was pre-planned. A trap. After that he was Hitler's man until the end. The Americans inherited him, but for some reason his name was never put forward for the Nuremberg Trials. Which probably means he collaborated with his American interrogators and named names. Whatever. For some reason he was allowed to hold on to both his fortune and his landholdings after the war and pass them on to his son.'

‘And these people have the Holy Lance?'

‘Yes. It's clear they don't know about you, or you would already be dead. I don't know what happened, but there was
a reason for the gap between the murders. My own suspicion is that they did not at first know about Colel Cimi's role in your father's life. When they found out about it, they acted. But you slipped between the cracks.'

‘So they're publicizing their possession of the Lance?'

‘They've been looking for it for years. Now they've got it they intend to use it as a symbol. It's all over the internet like a rash. They are claiming one of their number dug it up in a field whilst metal detecting. The field belongs to the Raches, of course. Under Germany's law of Treasure Trove, half belongs to the finder, half to the owner of the field. Convenient.'

‘Aren't the LB illegal? I know how strict Germany is on Nazi revisionism.'

‘Far from it. The LB is a bona fide political party. Effi Rache, as she popularly styles herself, is its figurehead. She's blonde and beautiful and magnetic. In public, she disdains her grandfather's Nazi past and points to her father, Hans Rache, who was a Christian Democrat MP and a major philanthropist. In private, those in the know suspect she's a chip off the old block. That her father's philanthropy and moderation were just a cover for far more sinister goings-on. But no one can prove it. She's fast becoming a major political force. But it's clear to anyone with even a modicum of sense that she's much further to the right than even Marine Le Pen in France. She's against all immigration. She supports the death penalty. She's Eurosceptic. She believes in traditional culture and in raising incentives for homemakers. You
remember Hitler's KKK mantra for women?
Kinder, Küche, Kirche?
Children, kitchen, church? Well, Effi's one hundred per cent for it. Except not in her particular case, of course. The LB are fielding four candidates for the next round of European Parliamentary elections. Effi Rache is one of them.'

‘Neat.'

‘Yes. She's all about normalizing the LB. De-enclaving it. Making it electable.'

‘But in private?'

‘Nobody knows for sure.'

‘But she interests you?'

‘I think she stinks. I think she needs bringing down. I believe she ordered the murder of your father, his mistress and her chauffeur in order to get hold of the Holy Lance. She's the sort of woman who'll stop at nothing to get what she wants.'

Hart was tempted to say, ‘it takes one to know one', but didn't. ‘Did you just come to all this? Magically? Thanks to me?'

‘No. I've been monitoring her for years. Looking for a way to crack her armour. Just like I monitor all leaders of extreme right-wing parties in Europe. The Front National in France. The British National Party. The Freedom Party in the Netherlands. The Progress Party in Norway. The Northern League in Italy. The True Finns in Finland. The Golden Dawn in Greece. España 2000 in Spain. There are reams of the bastards. But until now, I've never found a way in.'

‘And now you've got one?'

Amira hesitated. Then she shook her head. ‘No. I don't think I have. Everything you've told me about your father is unprovable. We've just got your word for it. I believe you, but the police won't. When they find you they'll simply arrest you for murder and go through the usual processes. If you give yourself up voluntarily there will be considerable publicity and some of it will stick. I'll make sure of that. But it won't be enough to bring Effi Rache down, or to change the minds of the idiots who follow her. I still can't see any way to get to her and put the LB out of business.'

‘I can.' Hart put down his coffee cup. ‘I've thought of a way.'