The Templar Prophecy (24 page)

FIFTY-FIVE

Lenzi saw the flash from the phone camera just as he was climbing through the shattered door panel. He had no idea what the intruder was photographing, but he knew one thing for certain – thieves didn't take pictures during the course of a robbery.

Each flash lit up the direction he needed to take very nicely. Lenzi hurried forward and hid himself behind a pile of boxes three feet away from the open doorway that whoever was in the warehouse would need to exit through.

He felt in his pocket for his phone. Now was the perfect moment to text Udo, whilst whoever was in the warehouse was busy taking photos. Udo lived twenty minutes away. By the time he got to the factory, Lenzi would have everything under control. Maybe Udo would take him a little more seriously then?

Lenzi slapped at his clothes. Jacket first. Then trousers, front and back. No phone. He must have left it in the car
in his hurry to get to the break-in. Shit. That was typical. Bloody typical.

He flailed around in his head for what to do next.

Should he lock the door and run back to the car and get the phone? No. There might be another exit. Whoever was taking the photographs might slip out through there, and then Udo would use Lenzi's head as a punch bag. An ambush, then? Lenzi grimaced. He didn't even have a weapon. The crash of the broken glass had so excited him that he had left his pickaxe handle in the car.

He stood by the exit and listened for the sound of the intruder's shoes. Maybe if he toppled the boxes over onto them when they came through the door? That would give him the element of surprise, wouldn't it? Then he could overpower them and tie them up. That way he could run back to the car, get his phone and send Udo a fake message, effectively covering his butt.

Amira stepped through the exit before Lenzi had made up his mind whether to topple the boxes over or make a lunge.

Lenzi shouted and made a lunge.

Amira lashed back at him with her Maglite. She heard a satisfying crack as it struck home. Lenzi landed on top of her. She struggled to free herself from Lenzi's dead weight.

The rim of the torch had struck Lenzi on the upper corner of his right eye. Whoever was beneath him wriggled free and sprang to their feet.

Lenzi threw out an arm and tripped them up. His eye was hurting abominably. He hoped it hadn't burst in its socket. He hoped he wasn't blind.

He brought his fist down hard and struck flesh through clothing. Whoever was trying to pull away from him cried out.

It was a woman.

Lenzi grabbed the woman's leg and attacked with renewed vigour. He probably outweighed her two to one. This was going to be easy.

Amira lashed back with her torch a second time. Lenzi caught the blow on his forearm. In the same movement he brought his elbow down hard.

The woman cried out again.

Now Lenzi was on top of her. He knew where her head was. He remembered hitting the Algerian with the brick his father gave him. Remembered how sweet that had felt.

He brought his fist down as hard as he could.

FIFTY-SIX

Hart no longer understood himself. Nor did he care to understand. One part of him was insanely worried about Amira. This part knew that he needed to get through to her – to persist in trying to call her until she had the sense to switch her phone back on and take his warning about Zirkeler and the heightened security at the factory seriously. The other part of Hart had drifted into the habit of making love to Effi at every possible opportunity. On top of tables. Up staircases. Under the shower. In the bath. In Effi's private sauna. Even, on one notable occasion, in Effi's car. This part of Hart felt a distinct sense of entitlement. And even though their shared bedroom might seem a little mundane, the night has its own laws, as Hart had discovered to his delight. And one of those laws was that goodnight sex had become
de rigueur
between him and Effi, given the particular tenor of their relationship.

And Effi knew precisely which of Hart's buttons to press.
Which of his levers to pull. He had become like Punchinello to her doll mistress. Trilby to her Svengali. It took Hart less than the three-second span between the bedroom door and the bed to strip Effi out of her gold lamé dress and bury his head between her legs.

Now, twenty minutes later, the rhythm of Effi's breathing, just a few inches below the level of Hart's chest, seemed at the furthest possible extreme from sleep – and even further from what Hart had originally intended when he had followed Effi up to the bedroom. Hart grasped Effi's hair with one hand and her throat with the crook of his arm, and, using the frame of her body – which was splayed out on all fours in front of him, her rump in the air, her head cradled on the pillow – for support, he ground his hips between her legs until, to any remotely detached observer chancing upon their outline in the dark, there would have been little to tell between them. It was as if Hart wished to crawl inside her skin.

Effi cried out as Hart tightened his grip around her throat. But her cry wasn't fearful. It was full of joy. She wanted him to subjugate her. To force her to submit to his physical will. The sweetness of finally being allowed to give way – of being able to suborn oneself to a more powerful force, whilst at the same time trusting and knowing that that force would not abuse you – would not go beyond the irrational – was, for Effi Rache, the ultimate in sensual delight.

‘Stay in me, Johnny. Stay in me, you bastard. Don't pull out yet.'

‘I won't.'

Effi collapsed beneath him. Hart lay on top of her for the next ten minutes, the sweat drying between them, his hips spasmodically thrusting, as if through the inherited echo of what had passed before – the culmination of a tragically diminished muscle memory. Inevitably, inexorably, he felt himself stirring again.

‘Can I pull out and go one higher?'

‘Just do it. Do anything. Anything you want.'

‘Has anyone done this to you before?'

‘No. Never. Make me do it. Force yourself on me, Johnny. Put all your weight on me. Crush me.'

Hart eased himself out, tucked a pillow beneath Effi's hips, repositioned himself, and started the pair of them on their next ascent. I am an animal, he told himself. I am responding like an animal. Thinking like an animal. Reacting like an animal. There can be no possible harm in this. This woman does something to me. She makes me mad. I cannot help myself. She is a part of me. Has always been a part of me. Will always be a part of me.

He was matching Effi's cries with his own now. Sometimes, at the most extreme moments, his breath caught in his chest and his heart strained in its chamber like a man under torture. You are my sister, he chanted inwardly. My wife. My daughter. My mother. You are all women to me. I want to be in you. Part of you. I want to inhabit you.

Later, when Effi was asleep, Hart dragged himself downstairs to where he knew she kept the Holy Lance. He was exhausted – utterly spent. All he wanted to do was sleep, wake up,
and fuck Effi again. He couldn't see beyond that point. But there was no question of will involved in the action he was undertaking now. It was something he had to do.

He hesitated for a moment, looking at the Lance. Then he picked it up with both hands and held it out in front of him.

The Lance began to thrum, just as it had the first time he had held it – just as he had known it would. But this time the thrumming seemed to resonate at a deeper, more profound level than before. Hart was no longer holding the Lance – the Lance was holding him.

He turned it over in his hands, marvelling at it in the detached way a man might marvel at a work of art. Slowly, despite his doubts, he began to discern that the object he was looking at was not an adjunct to his consciousness, but an aspect of his being. That he might be a part of the Lance. And that this connection was normal. Exactly as it should be.

Without knowing why, Hart set the Lance down on the table in front of him. He looked at it for a very long time. At first, he failed to realize that he was looking at the Lance with his eyes closed. That the image of the Lance was so seared into his consciousness that he no longer saw the reality of it, only the essence.

Steadily, in the invisible gap between his eyelids and his eyes, Hart began to experience random surges of the colour blue. The first manifestation was of a deep, pure blue, billowing out from its central point like diluted ink. This dispersed to reveal a brighter, almost cerulean blue – the blue of sunlit skies and the lost ecstasies of youth. This blue lightened in
turn until it resembled cyan. Then it surged back to pure blue again, via cobalt, ultramarine, lapis lazuli and indigo. Hart watched in wonder, aware, all the time, of the Lance – at the farthest possible reaches of the visible spectrum – hanging, like an anchor, in the disembodied void at the outer edges of his consciousness.

He opened his eyes. As he contemplated the solid manifestation of the article in front of him, he heard a voice, quite clearly, from deep inside his head, saying, ‘Open me.' And then, again, ‘Open me.' It was Effi's voice.

Hart hurried into the kitchen. He selected a knife from Effi's Solingen block, tested its blade with his finger, and then returned the length of the house like a man intent on murder. When he reached the table holding the Lance, he tentatively stretched his hand towards the gold leaf encapsulating the shaft, as if it might burn him. Then, in one fluid movement, he turned the Lance over and levered through the single fold in its gilded carapace with the tip of his knife.

The sleeve parted. Hart slid the Lance from its protective capsule as you would a lobster from its shell. He held the Lance up to the light. A small glass phial, about four inches in length, was trapped inside the wirework securing the spearhead. Hart tapped it with the point of his knife. The phial shifted. Using the knife as a lever, Hart eased the phial past its supporting wire and along the grooved channel the Lance's maker had etched into its surface to prevent unwanted suction when the blade was removed from pierced flesh. The phial popped out of its graith and into his hand.

Hart raised the phial to the light. It was sealed with a wax stopper. The glass had clouded somewhat over time, but it seemed as if there was a manuscript of some kind concealed inside.

Hart levered at the wax, which crumbled the moment he touched it. He tapped the base of the phial so that the tiny manuscript fell out onto the palm of his hand. The rolled-up sheet was made of vellum, and still retained something of the spring it must have possessed when originally inserted. He opened the manuscript and pegged it onto the table using an ink pot, a Sellotape dispenser and a stapler. Then he bent down and looked at it.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Hart wound the gilt capsule back around the Lance and returned the object to its velvet-lined box. The Lance looked more or less as it had done before – as long as no one was tempted to pick it up and brandish it, upon which the whole thing would undoubtedly fall apart. Hart promised himself that he would return the phial to its rightful place and restore the Lance's integrity at his earliest convenience. He was its hereditary guardian, after all – he had a duty of care.

The vehemence with which he now held this conviction surprised him. A part of him even felt that the Lance might be grooming him in some way. Bending him to its will. And where had that voice come from, ordering him to ‘Open me'? Was he going doolally like his mother? Was his relationship with Effi softening his head?

Hart keyed in Amira's number on his phone. He was transferred to her voicemail, just as he had been on his last two
attempts. He shook his head, cursing Amira's notoriously short fuse.

He returned to the bedroom and bent low over Effi to check that she was sleeping. She was obviously in a brief cycle of REM sleep, her eyeballs dancing behind her lids. Hart knew that such a passage, especially early on in the night, was often followed by a lighter, less intense quality of sleep. He collected up his jeans as silently as he could, added a double layer of sweatshirts and his battered leather jacket, and hurried downstairs to dress. Then he wadded some tissue around the phial containing the miniature manuscript and slipped the package into his jacket pocket.

Once dressed, he tapped the exit code into the automatic security system and left the house by the back door, having first checked his surroundings for watchers. When he was satisfied that none of Zirkeler's men were posted within the vicinity of the house, he walked the two hundred yards up the main track towards the Alpenruh. The moon was up and he could see almost as clearly as day. He consulted his watch. Two fifteen.

When he reached the Alpenruh's terrace, he cut round the side towards where he knew Frau Erlichmann's ground-floor apartment was situated, passing the spot where Wesker's body had been found. The chalk marks were still visible in the moonlight. Looking at the outline of Wesker's body, with the blood marks seemingly sketched in like memorials to the placement of his internal organs, Hart experienced the same sense of semi-apprehensive, semi-exhilarating expectation he
always got when venturing into a war zone – the unsettling recognition that he was approaching a point of no return.

He tapped on Frau Erlichmann's window, waited for a moment, and then tapped again. ‘Frau Erlichmann. It's me. John Hart.'

Hart heard shuffling from inside the sitting room abutting Frau Erlichmann's bedroom. The curtains parted. Frau Erlichmann squinted at him through the glass.

‘Please don't be alarmed. But I'm worried about Amira. I think she may be in danger. May I come in?'

Frau Erlichmann unlocked the double-glazed door and ushered Hart inside.

‘I'm truly sorry…'

‘You've already apologized once, Baron. There is no need to do so a second time. I am a light sleeper. You are depriving me of nothing I particularly value. Please sit down whilst I fetch my housecoat.'

Hart sat down. The full significance of Amira's unlikely silence was only gradually dawning on him. He recalled Amira's comments about the unlikelihood of Wesker ever switching off his phone. The same thing applied to her, surely? She was a journalist. And a good one. She would remain contactable under virtually all circumstances. All he could hope for was that she had switched off her phone because she was staking out the factory and didn't want to give the game away. But why would she be staking the place out in the middle of the night? He knew Amira. She was not a passive investigator. She believed in getting her hands dirty. He was
a fool not to have thought all this through before. A fool for having allowed himself to be sidetracked, yet again, by Effi's overwhelming sexuality.

Frau Erlichmann sat down in front of him. She had brushed her hair and plumped her cheeks, and now she settled a shawl over the shoulders of her housecoat to counteract the night's chill. She gave a small inclination of the head, encouraging Hart to begin.

Hart let the retained breath hiss from between his lips. ‘This may seem like a crazy question to ask you, especially at this time of the night, but do you have access to a car?'

‘A car?'

Hart nodded. ‘I believe Amira may have gone to investigate Effi Rache's factory in Gmund. You remember what was written in the letter you translated for me? About Hitler's final superweapon? What he called his
wunderwaffe
? Amira believes that Udo Zirkeler may be using the factory to try and recreate the Tabun clone – Trilon 380 – that Hitler's scientists succeeded in distilling in the final moments of the war. That a formula for Trilon accompanied the letter I found in Effi's strongbox, and that Zirkeler somehow got hold of it.'

Frau Erlichmann gave Hart an old-fashioned look. ‘And Fräulein Rache has nothing whatsoever to do with this? You are certain of this fact? Even though the factory is hers? And even though the original letter was addressed to her grandfather?'

‘I believe not. No. I believe it's been Zirkeler all the way down the line. Amira's assistant back in London – and a stringer her
paper sometimes uses in Germany – has done some serious background research on him. We now know that his grandfather was a sergeant major in the SS – and that this man committed suicide on the final day of the war, just a few hours after he heard that Germany was about to surrender. We also know that his son – Zirkeler's father – was in bed with some extreme right-wing groups from about the mid-1960s until his death. Also that he was briefly imprisoned for GBH against a Turkish immigrant, who he claimed had insulted him, but that he was subsequently let out of jail on a technicality and the charge expunged from his record. Who knows what that sort of background does to a man? That sort of bottled-up resentment?'

‘And Effi Rache? What did her background do to her?'

Hart stiffened. ‘She's been extraordinarily open with me, Frau Erlichmann, even to the extent of showing me the Holy Lance and allowing me free access to it. These are not the actions of someone who is out to recreate a
wunderwaffe
nerve agent. Wouldn't you agree?'

‘We'll put that aside for the time being, Baron. Please, go on. There is more you have to tell me. It is written all over your face.'

Hart laughed. Frau Erlichmann might suffer from detached retinas, but she didn't miss much. ‘A little over an hour ago, some instinct drove me to slit open the protective gilding on the Holy Lance. Please don't ask me where the instinct came from, because I couldn't tell you. But I did discover a small phial containing a manuscript hidden inside the shell. The text is written on vellum, and, technically speaking, quite
legible. But I am unable to make out any of the words. I can't tell whether they are in German or Latin or Double Dutch, as the Gothic script is entirely unfamiliar to me.'

‘What has this to do with what Fräulein Amira is doing?'

‘Nothing. And everything. I don't know yet.'

‘And you need the car to drive to the factory and check up on Fräulein Amira?'

‘Yes. Either that, or I was going to ask if you could call me a taxi?'

Frau Erlichmann sat up straighter in her chair. ‘At two thirty in the morning? Bad Wiessee is hardly Munich, Baron. And Fräulein Rache's laboratory is in an isolated location. There would be questions.'

Hart no longer knew what to say. He had the overwhelming impression that he had somehow succeeded in botching everything he had ever set his mind to. Frau Erlichmann must think him mad. Because here he was again, following up Amira on the one hand, and a probably illegible scrap of vellum on the other, with Effi Rache steaming up from behind to challenge for the lead. He was like a jumbled-up bag of fireworks someone had inadvertently ignited with a discarded cigarette.

Frau Erlichmann felt in the pocket of her housecoat and brought out a pistol.

Hart reared back. For one horrifying moment he thought that she might be about to shoot him.

Frau Erlichmann placed the pistol firmly on the table between them. ‘I think the time has come when you may
need this. It was my father's. It is a Roth-Steyr model from 1907. I must warn you that it is a little rusty, and has probably not been used in my lifetime. My father carried it through the Great War, however, and it saw good service. The magazine is in the handle, I believe. I don't know how many bullets there are left. Nor where my father kept his spare ammunition. But I want you to take it with you anyway. It might serve to frighten the sheep.'

Hart picked up the pistol. He released the magazine with some difficulty and checked the load. There were three bullets left. The retaining spring was rusted solid. ‘I'd rather not, if you don't mind. It will probably explode if I fire it.'

Frau Erlichmann pretended not to hear him. ‘There is an Auto Union in the downstairs garage. I cannot guarantee the battery, but the car is facing outwards. If you open the garage doors as wide as possible, you should be able to jump-start the car down the hill. A male friend of mine uses it to drive me to the doctor, dentist, oculist or hearing specialist whenever needed. All the things that generally beset people of my age and make our lives so interesting. The keys are hanging on a hook at the back of the garage, near the rear entrance you will use from the house. Take them. When you have located Fräulein Amira, bring her back here. I shall have translated your message by then. All I need you to do now, Baron, is to hand me my Latin dictionary and my magnifying glass.'