The Templar Prophecy (7 page)

Inge banked left in the direction of the Havel River. As she did so, languid tracers arced towards them, fizzing past the Storch's wing towers like streamers fired from a shotgun. If just one round struck the overload fuel tank underneath
the fuselage, the plane would brew up like a tank struck by a white phosphorous shell.

‘My God.' Eberhard was gazing out of the window, his eyes wide with shock. ‘This is a tragedy beyond all imagining.'

Hartelius, who had already seen the devastation on the flight in, gazed fixedly at Eberhard. When the sergeant major bent forward to obtain a better view of the carnage, he struck.

But Eberhard was a street fighter and a former SS boxing champion. It had been Eberhard's prowess in the ring, rather than any intellectual acumen or leadership skills, that had led to him being promoted master sergeant. And he had been fighting, in one way or another, ever since the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. He had been expecting Hartelius to make a move – even hoping for it.

As Hartelius attempted to ram Eberhard's head against the metal surround of the window, Eberhard raised the cocked Luger he had been surreptitiously concealing beneath his greatcoat and shot Hartelius through the neck. The shot severed Hartelius's spine and he died instantly.

Inge von Hartelius reacted from pure instinct. She swung the steel lunchbox containing the two vacuum flasks backwards over her seat. The lunchbox struck Eberhard on the temple. He fell to the floor of the aircraft and lay still. Inge hammered and hammered at his supine body with the lunchbox, but the position of her seat in relation to the seats behind her made any formal attempt at accuracy impossible. Every time she struck out at Eberhard she screamed her husband's name. But he did not answer.

The Storch dipped to one side and then swung back across its own wake in a jerky arc. Inge let the lunchbox fall. She knew that she had to regain control of the aeroplane or she would never get her husband to a hospital. The Storch had performed a near perfect semi-circle during the fracas and was now heading directly back towards the Charlottenburg flak towers. Another sixty seconds' flying time would see her and the plane ripped to shreds.

She levelled the Storch and took it down to just above roof height. For the next five minutes Inge flew by prayers and adrenalin alone, until she felt that they were safely out of the danger zone. Only then did she crane her head back over the seat and look down into the cabin's semi-darkness.

Hartelius lay in an impossible position, his head at right angles to his body. No one still living was capable of such an unfeasible contortion. Inge began to wail.

The next fifteen minutes were lost to her. Somehow she continued to fly the plane, but it was not through any effort of will. Speed and direction appeared to have no meaning for her. Tears and mucus flowed unchecked down her face. She was as unaware of her flight position as she was of the Russian soldiers below her, targeting the Storch with their rifles, submachine guns and, in one case, a plundered Panzerfaust.

Instinctively, intuitively, when Inge first caught sight of the moon reflecting off Schwielow Lake, muscle memory caused her to ease back on the control stick and gain a little height.

Five minutes passed, during which her hearing slowly returned. She ripped off her flying goggles and mopped at
her face with her sleeve. When she could see properly again, she set her course along the luminous strip of the Havel River, which she knew would carry her eastwards towards the American lines. Rumour had it that the US Ninth Army had reached Tangermünde. That's where she would make for.

As a German woman, Inge knew that she could expect no mercy from the Russians. But the Americans were a different matter.

Now, with her husband dead, her country raped, and all her former allegiances null and void, Inge had nothing left to lose.

TWELVE

Eberhard regained consciousness just over an hour into the flight. This coincided exactly with the Storch's crossing of the Elbe River into US-held territory. Eberhard, however, was aware of little more than that they were still flying in the dark – that his vision had in some way been impaired – and that a significant amount of time had elapsed between his execution of Hartelius and his return to full awareness.

He lay still and endeavoured to work out just how badly he was injured. It would be pointless to rear up in search of his pistol only to find that his limbs were not functioning correctly – or that he wasn't able to see what he was looking for. The madwoman flying the Storch would hit him again with her metal lunchbox. And this he could not tolerate.

He needed the bitch alive, unfortunately, as he had not the remotest idea how to fly a plane by himself. Plus she was his now. He intended to take her at his leisure and inflict the maximum possible humiliation on her in the greatest
possible time span. He might even fuck her on top of her dead husband's body. There. That would be something to see, now, wouldn't it?

The only thing Eberhard could not fathom about his condition was why he kept on hearing voices. Was he hallucinating? He began to probe around himself for the pistol. Slowly. Steadily. His fingers acting as feelers. It was an impossibility that the woman could have struggled across from the front seat whilst the Storch was still in motion and retrieved the weapon herself. The cabin was not designed for that sort of in-flight movement. Once the pilot was strapped into the bucket seat, that was the end of it – they were in there for the duration.

Eberhard muttered under his breath as he searched for the weapon on the cabin floor, but the muttering was lost in the Storch's engine clatter.

At one point during his fingertip search, Eberhard glanced up at Hartelius's dead body. The colonel's cadaver loomed over him like the Hindenburg Zeppelin. A bullseye, straight through the neck. Eberhard had participated in the execution of hundreds of men as part of an SS Einsatzgruppe in Russia, and he knew exactly how it needed to be done. The last thing you wanted was for your victim to come back at you when they had nothing left to lose. So if they weren't completely dead, you wanted them at the very least quadriplegic. So that your assistant could give them the
coup de grâce
without any slithering around on the victim's part.

Eberhard's hand closed gently around the barrel of the
Luger. He allowed his fingers to palpate it, as though he were measuring the firmness of his own penis.

Power. Weapons gave you power. All his life Eberhard had sought to exercise power over others, just as his father had exercised power over him. That was the only way you could keep the bastards off. The only way you could stop the nightmares from returning to haunt you. He remembered his victims tumbling into the waiting slit trench like an endless rank of dominoes. He remembered the buzz it gave him. The total sense of control. It had been the highlight of his life. The meaning of his life.

Eberhard jerked to his knees and wrenched himself upwards, using the back of the pilot's seat for leverage. What he saw when he straightened up stopped him dead.

Inge von Hartelius threw the Storch into a nosedive.

Eberhard was thrown backwards, the Luger skittering from his hand.

Incensed by her idiocy, and as good as blind, Eberhard lunged forward, using gravity as his aid. He got his hands round Inge's neck. He was screaming incoherently, no longer rational.

Inge tried to force his hands away from her throat, but Eberhard both outweighed and outmatched her. She kicked wildly at the rudder-control pedals in an attempt to gain some traction, but she was unable to break Eberhard's hold.

The Storch continued its nosedive.

Fifty feet from the ground, Inge managed to grab the joystick and wrench it backwards, forcing the plane into a vertical stall. It banked sideways, and then began to helicopter down,
turning onto its side at the very last moment and ploughing into a field of corn.

Inge and Eberhard were catapulted through the windscreen. Inge was decapitated by the final turn of the propeller; Eberhard was speared through the chest by the port-side wing strut, which had shattered on landing.

Two and a half hours later, when a group of American GIs located the burnt-out wreckage, all they found alive was a six-year-old boy with a badly broken arm and three shattered ribs. He was clutching a battered leather suitcase and a set of Max and Moritz marionettes to his chest. The boy kept repeating that his name was Johannes von Hartelius, and that his mother and father were on the plane.

When one of the GIs made as if to lead the boy away, the boy refused to let go of either the suitcase or the marionettes. He kept on repeating his name – Johannes von Hartelius – just as his mother had told him he must do if he ever became separated from her.

The GI shook his head and let the boy keep the suitcase and the puppets. What the hell? He had seen the bodies in and around the wreckage. The boy's escape, with so little obvious injury, was nothing short of a miracle. His parents and their mystery companion were no longer recognizable as human beings – the three of them had been fried when the overload tanks blew. All that remained to show that they had once been alive was a shattered wristwatch and a barely functioning Luger, shy one bullet, that had somehow been thrown clear. The rest was ashes.

‘Johannes von Hartelius, Johannes von Hartelius,' cried the boy.

The GI pretended to cuff him round the ear. ‘From now on, son, you speak English. We're through with this Johannes von Hartelius shit. I got a new name for you.' The GI hesitated. ‘James. Not Johannes. James. James Hart. Now how about that? That's close enough, isn't it? That's not so hard to remember?' The GI pointed to his chest. ‘My name is Abe. Abe Mann. A good American name, see? None of this foreign garbage I been telling you about.'

THIRTEEN

Calle de Chipilapa, Antigua, Guatemala

19 JULY 2012

James Hart's house was surrounded on all sides by churches. San Pedro. Santa Clara. San Francisco. La Concepción. The house itself sat back a little from the road, as if it had broken ranks from the other houses and decided to go its own way. John Hart approached it through an untended garden, under an unruly trellis of dog roses, tiger flowers and Heliconias.

Hart had flown in that morning via Miami to Guatemala City, and then taken the forty-minute cab ride on to Antigua. The difference between the two places was stark. Guatemala City was modern, grimy and lovelorn, whilst colonial Antigua seemed a throwback to a gentler, more idealistic age of faith, calm and spirituality. Hart could see why his father had chosen it. But why, in that case, had he felt the need to change his name to the quasi-iconoclastic Roger Pope? In a city which was home to the most frenzied Holy Week celebrations in all the Americas? And in a house surrounded by churches? It just didn't make sense.

No one answered the door when Hart knocked. And there was no possible way round the house. Hart retreated a few paces and stared up at the frontage, trying to discern signs of life through the partially shuttered windows. He had telephoned ahead a number of times, but on each occasion he had been met by an engaged tone. Was this some gigantic con trick, he wondered? His father's idea of a practical joke? You don't see your son for thirty-six years, and then you call him out of the blue and invite him out on a wild goose chase to the other side of the world whilst you leave for a holiday in Europe, from where you summoned him in the first place? A post-Freudian variation on the game of vice versa, perhaps?

Hart stepped out into the street. The house on the right had been turned into a Casa de Huespedes for tourists – he could see people taking coffee in the morning room and preparing for their day's sightseeing. The house on the left was still a private dwelling, however. He knocked on the door. An old woman answered. Before he had time to utter a word she pointed her fist at him and burst out laughing.

‘Ah.
El hijo del
Señor Pope.'

Hart summoned up his best schoolboy Spanish. ‘Yes. I am Señor Pope's son. Is it so obvious?'

‘Oh, yes. There is no mistaking. He is expecting you.'

‘Could you please speak slower?'

‘He is expecting your visit. He knows you are coming.'

‘He asked me to come, yes. But he is not answering his door.'

‘But I have seen him.' The old woman thought for a moment. ‘Yesterday. He was with a friend. A close friend.
They entered the house arm-in-arm. This was in the morning. Since then, no sign.'

‘I'll try once again then, shall I? He may be having a siesta.'

‘This is possible. He is an elderly man. Though not nearly so old as I. I shall come with you, Señor Pope, if you will allow. There is a spare key. I know where it is hidden.'

Hart accompanied the old woman back to his father's house. When they reached the front door she stretched out her hands and shrugged. They were paralysed with arthritis. Hart inclined his head. He knocked five times. They waited. There was no answer.

‘The spare key is here.' The old woman pointed downwards, using her hand and arm in concert, as if they were fused. ‘My daughter cleans for Señor Pope once a week. She also does his laundry and cooks when he has guests. But most of the time he…' She stopped, looking forlorn.

‘He what?'

‘The key is under the stone, Señor. See? I cannot pick it. Please raise it yourself.'

Hart lifted the stone and retrieved the key. ‘Are you sure he won't mind me entering the house without his permission?'

‘You are his son. Why should he mind?'

‘I am his son. Yes. But we have never spoken to one another.'

‘I am sorry?'

‘We don't know each other, Señora. My father left home when I was three years old. I celebrated my thirty-ninth birthday three months ago. I am thirty-nine years old, Señora.' Hart thumped his chest like a child. He was astonished to find
himself on the verge of tears. ‘This is the first occasion he has been in contact with me in all that time.'

‘Dios mio
. And still you came?'

Hart could see the pistol pointing at his head in the square at Homs. He could hear the click of the trigger as it fell on an empty chamber. Twice this had happened. Twice someone had tried to kill him and failed. What else did he have to do with his life but afford his errant father the courtesy of a hearing? For what other purpose had God decided to spare him? He didn't have a wife. His mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. And the woman who had aborted his child, and whose life he had just saved, was more interested in where her next scoop was coming from than in maintaining any sort of a relationship with a washed-out photojournalist with a death wish.

‘Yes. Still I came.'

Hart turned the key in the lock and entered the building. The stench was overwhelming. It made his eyes smart and his gorge clench in panic. It was an odour he was entirely familiar with. The odour of death and decomposition.

Hart crooked his forearm across his mouth. ‘Señora. Please wait outside.'

The old lady crossed herself. But still she came on in.

Hart's ears were hissing with tension. It felt as if his head was being stuffed full of cotton wool and chloroform. He threw open the door to the first room and looked inside.

The old lady swept past him and down the corridor. She knew exactly where she was going. The pervasive stench
didn't seem to bother her at all. ‘Come, Señor Pope. Come with me. This is your father's room. This is where he will be. This is where he always comes.'

She led Hart towards the far end of the house. She stepped back from a door and bade him enter, almost formally, as if she was already familiar with what might lie on the other side. But her eyes belied her certainty.

Hart hesitated. He felt like a drunken man on the lip of a precipice. One false step and he would pitch forward into boundless space and be lost for eternity.

He turned the handle of the door and allowed it to swing open ahead of him. He was sweating, and his heart was pulsing inside his chest. The room was in intense gloom. Hart tried the light switch. Nothing. He could hear the buzzing of a thousand angry flies in the darkness.

Hart clamped a handkerchief to his nose. He felt his way towards the solitary crack of light that was revealing itself via an interior shutter. The room had no access at all to the outside world. The interior shutter simply opened into another, marginally more enlightened, room. Hart tripped the latch and threw the slats aside.

The old woman let out a stifled groan and began to pray.

Hart turned round.

His father was nailed to the wall, stark naked, in the style of the crucifixion.