The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

12 Emergency Procedure at the King George

After Sam’s clandestine arrival in Barking, he checked into a small Bed & Breakfast to keep a low profile, even though he was convinced that the leader of the unsavory group of killers could find him if he wished. He’d come by train this time, opting for leaving valuable things like photographic equipment and cars behind in the safety of his home. All he wished to do was to locate the unknown woman for possible leverage, but when Sam arrived at King George Hospital, he was met with staff who behaved curiously, to say the least.

Even upon entering it appeared that the nursing staff and security people recognized him. Sam shrugged uncomfortably as he traversed the lobby toward the stairs to make his way up to the ward where he’d last seen the woman. Strange looks and murmurs lingered among the routinely executed chores and announcements, making him feel as if he had entered behind enemy lines.

“Can I help you, Mr. Cleave?” a man asked firmly as Sam skipped the last step onto the landing of the third floor. He turned, expecting a helpful countenance, but what Sam saw was off kilter on his register of expressions. As an investigative journalist, he had cultivated a flair for telling what was behind the mask of a face.

“Doctor…,” Sam sang, trying to recall the name of the attending physician that day, “Lin—?”

“Lindemann,” the doctor informed him. “Yes, sir. To what do we owe your visit here today?”

Sam frowned. The doctor had encountered him but once, yet he knew who he was and what he was here for, no doubt. “Just the man I was hoping to see, actually,” Sam said confidently.

“How so?” the doctor asked abruptly, slipping his hands into the pockets of his white coat with a ruse of interest.

“The lady I brought in the other day,” Sam started, but the doctor did not care to allow him the rest of his query.

“She has been discharged, son,” he explained. “Now, if there is nothing else, I have patients to attend to.”

“Wait,” Sam commanded, lowering his tone. “I’m not an idiot. Obviously, by now she will have been discharged. All I wanted to know was if she had returned to her family in Barking.”

“To the men who tried to kill her, you mean,” the physician sneered. “That, my friend, is none of your business. You are not even a friend, let alone a family member, so that information is private. Good day.”

“No, no,” Sam protested. “I came a long way to make sure she was okay, Dr. Lindemann, and the least you could do is to assure me that she is safe.”

“I am not her bloody babysitter, Mr. Cleave,” he hissed under his breath, his eyes fixed on Sam’s in what seemed to be fear of discovery. “Please leave now. On your way. I do not keep track of people once they leave this hospital. My job is not to hold their hands out in the big bad world. And if they choose to leave through some sewer leakage in their lives, that is their choice. Now, good day to you.”

Without another word, Dr. Lindemann brushed past Sam’s shoulder and hastened to the nurse’s station to collect a folder from the sister who was waiting for him. “Geez!” Sam said in astonishment as the man walked away from him. “I hope I never get sick around here. Asshole.” What irritated him most about the change in the doctor’s demeanor was how he accentuated certain words to put more disdain behind his sarcasm. But when Sam turned to go down the stairs, the doctor’s intonation of certain words became clear.

A man and a woman came up the stairs, looking by no means cordial. Sam’s keen observation skills led him to see through their charade as a couple. They were holding hands, but their eyes were dead set on him and under their jacket’s Sam saw the unmistakable bulge of a sidearm.

They are strapped? he wondered. What else did the doctor say? What the fuck did he say? Holding hands, and…?’

He pretended to know nothing, passing them on the steps and heading down past the elevators. In the mirrors of the ajar elevator doors, he could see them turn on their heels to follow him. Sam knew that the asshole in the white coat was in fact, trying to protect him. He hastened without being too obvious, electing to steer clear of the lifts so as not to allow his pursuers to trap him inside. Such momentary privacy could prove deadly.

The couple trailed Sam with equal inconspicuousness, still hand-in-hand.

“Hmm, that’s not creepy at all,” Sam muttered as he noticed. Still, he persisted in his mock-ignorance and went for the main reception desk, the one with the busy waiting area. From countless previous experiences, Sam reckoned he would be safe if he stayed in public, amongst many people, with cameras watching. His mind whirled with the words the doctor said all funny to warn him. Something about a shitty exit, he mulled. No wait. It was something to the effect a drain pipe?

He could not remember the exact direction the man’s words took, but while he was in the hub of the busy mid-morning bustle, he could take his time to recall it. Sam did not want to sit down. If he did, the couple tracking him could join him and introduce him to any wicked means of dispatch — a gun barrel under a coat, a switchblade to the kidney, even a well-placed hypodermic with the plunger chasing air into his jugular.

“Good morning, sir,” the receptionist greeted. Sam smiled, but he looked more like a mental patient with diarrhea, his brow glowing with beads of sweat in the daylight that was filtering in. “Can I help you?”

Sam was a bit pissed off at the manner in which the lady offered to help. Clearly she thought that he was admitting himself for some reason, because she sounded downright sympathetic. He forced out a desperate sentence. “I am looking for a patient.”

“Oh!” she replied, thoroughly surprised that the handsome man in front of her was not in horrendous pain, as his face suggested. “Name?”

Sam had no idea who Patient #1312 was registered as, but he used the sliding doors behind the receptionist to keep an eye on the two people chasing after him. He had to think quickly. “Um, my wife. I am looking for my wife. They called to say she had been admitted.”

The amicable receptionist nodded slowly, exercising great patience with him. “Alright? And what is her name, sir?”

Sam hesitated, preoccupied with the image in the reflection of the glass. “Sir?” she said again. A strong smell of perfume enveloped them as the woman of the couple approached with a wide grin.

“Maybe I can help,” she said to the receptionist, slipping her arm around Sam’s bicep with charming will. “This is my brother, Miss. He is a bit shocked, you see,” she explained. Her voice became soft and pitiful as she explained to the lady behind the desk, “His wife passed away this morning and I think he cannot process the disbelief yet. I’m sure you understand.”

Sam gaped at her as she sold the lie effortlessly. “Oh, but of course I do. I am so sorry for your loss,” the receptionist sympathized.

Sam had to think. He had to do it right and he had to do it fast.

“Where is your men’s room, please? I have to piss like a donkey,” he asked, adding his crass remark to make himself seem more unstable.

“I’ll take him, Sonya,” the woman’s partner butted in, looking just as convincing as she was. “And then we have to get going, alright?”

“Absolutely,” she agreed and gave the reception clerk a tap on the hand to assert her role. “I’ll wait here,” she said, looking right at Sam, grasping the object under her jacket, “with this kind lady until you both come back.”

It was a message Sam got loud and clear, but he honestly did not want to take responsibility for the safety of the staff as well. Unlike his usual protectiveness and sacrifice, Sam felt that this time would be the last time if he did not start looking out for himself. His plan was simple. In the men’s restroom, he would overpower the hitman and escape. How, he did not know yet.

“Come on, then,” he complained with a sneer. “I haven’t got all goddamn day.”

Approaching the sterile white stench of the restrooms with the eager assassin breathing down his neck, the doctor’s words came to Sam at once. Sewer leakage! And now it made sense. Just to the right of the toilet cubicles a door was cordoned off with plastic hazard tape, accompanied by a small printed sign, roughly typed out by one of the administration staff members.

Sam made sure that his malignant guard did not see him scrutinizing the parameters of the room, measuring the distance to the off-limits door.

“Smart move, Cleave,” the man told Sam in a heavy accent Sam could not place at all. “But you’ve already wasted too much of our time this morning.”

As predicted, he tugged at the sidearm at his short rib, giving Sam the green light to strike. The scarred and muscled journalist was surprisingly tough opponent for the trained combatant, but ultimately Sam did not have the training and precision of the meticulous killer. At the sight of the man’s weapon Sam instinctively did what Purdue’s former bodyguard, Calisto, taught him once. He did not try to take the gun from his assailant, but instead he delivered a hefty jab to the man’s gun-wielding forearm, fracturing his radius effectively.

“Jesus!” the man cried as his hand opened up to inadvertently let go of the gun. With his other hand, he grabbed at his forearm, a reflex he came to regret. In momentary response to his injury, he bent forward where Sam’s right knee came up under his chin. As the assassin staggered back, Sam grabbed his firearm and went straight for the door. But the attacker was upon him before he could reach the doorknob, striking Sam hard with a fist to the spine. With a yelp, Sam hit the floor, unable to move his left leg from the nerve damage sustained on impact. This man was not someone Sam could fight hand to hand, he realized.

The firearm was like nothing he had ever used, or even seen, before. It had no safety catch and no trigger.

“What the fu…?” Sam groaned.

“Don’t play with toys you can’t handle, Cleave,” the attacker growled as he drew a small device from his pocket. Sam had no idea what the deal with the gun was, only that an inscription on its butt spelled out Baphomet X in what looked like crude ivory. That was all Sam could see before the item exploded in his hand, plummeting him into a tumultuous hell of heat and oblivion.