The Last Templar

Chapter 66

Reilly stared back along the track, listening intently. There was no sound other than birdsong, which in the present circumstances felt strangely disconcerting. They'd gone eight or nine miles before the encroaching darkness had forced them to make plans for the night. Reilly had chosen to veer off the dirt road and follow a side trail that brought them to a small clearing by a stream. They'd have to rough it out until daybreak before making a run for the coast.

He was pretty sure that the big Land Cruiser had been crippled by Vance's spirited charge. On foot, whoever had attacked them would still be hours away; in a vehicle, they could at least be heard approaching. As he watched the last glints of sunlight melt away behind the mountains, Reilly hoped the descending darkness would provide them with some measure of cover. There would be no campfires tonight.

He'd left Vance by die side of the pickup, having tied his hands behind his back. The rope was secured to the truck. A quick search of the pickup had uncovered no hidden weapons, providing some basic comforts instead, in the form of a small gas cooker and some canned food. They found no clothes to change into. He and Tess would have to stay in their wetsuits for the time being.

Reilly joined Tess at the water's edge, kneeling down for a much needed drink before settling onto a large rock next to her. His mind was a jumble of concerns and fears, all jostling for attention. He had accomplished what he had set out to do; he just had to bring Vance safely back to the United States to face justice. There was little chance his prisoner could be spirited out of the country quietly. Local crimes had been committed, people had been killed. Reilly thought ahead, irked by the prospect of inevitably messy extradition proceedings with the Turkish authorities. More pressingly, he had to get them all off the mountain and back to the coast safely. Whoever had shot at them was clearly in a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later frame of mind, while they were unarmed, had no radio, and were out of cell-phone range.

As salient as those concerns were, they quickly took a backseat to the bigger issue that was hounding him. And from the uncertain look on her face, he could see that Tess was gripped by the same concerns.

"I always wondered how Howard Carter must have felt when he found King Tut's tomb," she finally said, somberly.

"I'm guessing he had a better time."

"I'm not so sure. He did have a curse to contend with, remember?" A faint smile crossed her features as she brightened up a bit, momentarily lifting his spirits. But it was still there. That pile of bricks pressing down on the pit of his stomach. It wasn't about to go away, and he couldn't ignore it anymore. He had to understand more clearly what they had gotten themselves into.

Steeling himself, he got up and walked over to Vance. Tess followed, close by. He knelt down by the tied man, checking the rope around his wrists. Vance just stared at him quietly. He seemed oddly at peace with his situation. Reilly frowned inwardly as he debated whether or not to go into it, but decided he couldn't avoid it.

"I need to know something," he ventured tersely. "When you said 'the truth about this fairy tale' . . .

what were you talking about? What do you think they hid on the Falcon Templet"

Vance lifted his head, his gray eyes piercing with clarity. "I'm not entirely sure, but whatever it is, I suspect it's something that might not be too easy for you to accept."

"Let me worry about that," Reilly shot back.

Vance seemed to consider his words carefully. "The problem is that like most true believers, you've never stopped to think of the difference between faith and fact, the difference between the Jesus Christ of faith and the factual Jesus of history, between truth . . . and fiction."

Reilly was unmoved by the mocking he thought he detected in Vance's tone. "I'm not sure I've ever needed to."

"And yet you're happy to believe everything that's in the Bible, right? I mean, you do believe in all that stuff, don't you? The miracles, the fact that He walked on water, that He cured a blind man . . .

that He came back from the dead?"

"Of course, I do."

A faint smile crossed Vance's lips. "Okay. So let me ask you this. How much do you know about the origin of what you're reading? Do you know who actually wrote the Bible—the one you're familiar with, the New Testament?"

Reilly was far from certain. "You're talking about the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?"

"Yes. How did they come about? Let's start with something basic. When they were written, for instance?"

Reilly felt an invisible weight pressing down on him. "I don't know . . . they were His disciples, so I guess shortly after His death?"

Vance glanced at Tess and let out a demeaning chortle. His discomforting gaze settled on Reilly again. "I shouldn't really be surprised, but it's amazing, isn't it? Over a billion people out there, worshipping these writings, accepting every word as God's own wisdom, slaughtering each other over them, and all of it without having die vaguest notion of where these scriptures really come from."

Reilly felt a rising anger. Vance's haughty tone wasn't helping either. "It's the Bible. It's been around long enough ..."

Vance pursed his lips and shook his head gently, quickly dismissing it. "And I suppose that makes it all true, then, does it?" He leaned back, his eyes wandering off into the distance. "I was like you, once. I didn't question things. I took them on as a matter of . . . faith. I can tell you, though . . . once you start digging for the truth ..." His gaze settled onto Reilly again, darkening visibly. "It's not a pretty picture."