The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

21 The Enemy of my Enemy

“Listen, just give me a week, Harris,” Sam said, “and I will deliver Toshana.”

He was feeling like a zombie after being revived by Dr. Hooper, but he tried to hide his desperate worry from everyone. On top of everything that had happened to him in the past week alone, the summit of the dread was Nina’s taking, and he did not need unwanted attention from anyone outside his inner sanctum right now.

“Why? Why can’t you take me now?” Harris asked with her hand on her side, looking as if she expected to be shafted. Sam could not tell her the truth — or could he? If he came clean, and if he presented Harris with a good enough reward, perhaps she would understand. Maybe, just maybe, the greedy bitch would muster some decency and hold off on exposing him to the authorities until he got Nina back. It was worth a shot, he figured.

Sam tried to look more pitiful than he felt, for good measure, and softly replied, “I don’t know where Toshana is, Harris.”

“Excuse me?” she shrieked. With a look from Sam, camera man Steve knew it was time to take a walk outside and left the office.

“Listen, you assumed I knew where she was, just like that barbaric goddamn Arab you are in cahoots with,” Sam seethed, abandoning his need for pity. “I never claimed to have her with me until you started blackmailing me. Jesus Christ, Harris, how low will you go to destroy me?” Before she could respond, Sam introduced her to a side of him she did not know. “And Nina is my friend. My best friend, in fact, and I swear to God, if any harm comes to her I will kill everyone involved!” he barked, his dark eyes swimming in the welling water of his lids. He was livid, and terrified. For once, Jan Harris elected to shut her mouth and listen. “And you,” he sneered with a violently pointing finger, “you will have to watch your back for the rest of your life, Harris, because you will have been the one who helped that group of insolent bastards to corner me!”

Dr. Hooper and his staff huddled at the old reception counter, listening to the verbal altercation. They could hear Sam Cleave’s promise to waste Jan Harris and the men responsible for Nina’s abduction with the eloquence of a tempestuous warlord. “I know they were the ones who took her, and I promise you, Harris, if you expose my involvement at all, I am coming for you. I will tell Amir that you know where Toshana is, that you are holding out on him to get a story from Toshana, that you deliberately kept her from them after I told you where to find her.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop! Just fucking stop, Sam!” she finally interrupted his rant of fury with an unexpectedly mild response. Her hands were up, yielding to his spitting attack. Gradually, she dared drop them to Sam’s shoulders. “Hold on,” she said. “You have to relax or you will have a heart attack, Cleave.”

Panting wildly, the over-exerted journalist rocked on his feet. Anyone could see that he was on the edge of a breakdown. “Sit. Sit down,” she advised, helping Sam to the chair of Dr. Victor in the adjoining office. “I understand.”

“Sure you do,” Sam sneered in distrust. His eyes were narrowed and filled with defeat and anger, but Jan Harris was used to being cast such grimaces. She knew very well how hated she was by most people she engaged and she had learned to be thick-skinned to a point where even being spat at didn’t even spoil her lunch anymore.

“No, listen to me,” she insisted. “Can we get him some water, please?” she cried to the staff at reception. Dr. Hooper sent his assistant to get Sam a cup of water, while in his pocket, his hand fumbled at something he’d collected while Sam was out cold on the floor.

He had asked the man on the telephone to jot down the address and join the exhausted journalist, if only for moral support. Dr. Hooper also took the liberty of enlightening the priest on Nina’s abduction, when Father Harper informed him that he was already on his way to Barking. Hearing the scuffle during Nina’s assault, he had left soon after, redirecting calls to the church to his personal cell phone en route. All Dr. Hooper was waiting for, was for Sam to settle his tiff with the annoying reporter so that he could give him the notes Nina had left behind — the few notes her kidnappers had neglected.

Back in Dr. Victor’s office, Jan Harris was talking Sam down from the ledge, ironically.

“Listen, Cleave, I’ll amend our deal,” she started, but Sam’s bloodshot eyes pierced her with instant odium. “No, no, hear me out,” she carried on, passing him the water one of the ladies brought in. “I will hold off on the exposé, but you know I have to have some sort of scoop from this. Remember, Sam, had it not been for me, you would never even have known about this morgue, or that Nina had been kidnapped, right? Right?”

Sam nodded, too tired to swing a hook at her statement, especially since she was right this time.

“So, in the meantime, I will hold the story of the hit-and-run until you have figured out what you want to do. What I suggest is that you get in touch with Amir and tell him the truth. I will still have a story, if we play our cards right.” Jan Harris dramatized her tag line with imaginative wording for Sam. “The abduction of prominent historian in the wake of immigrants killed. Suspects flee with eight corpses during kidnapping. My God, Sam, it makes for a very controversial piece.”

“You do know that if it goes awry, you will be killed by the men you were supposed to reel me in for? Nina will have her fucking head cut off and I will surely be quartered as well,” Sam said, clarifying the big picture for her. “Are you sure this isn’t a story you’d rather just pass up? Pretend you were never involved?”

“Not me,” she said confidently. “You know me better. I’ll go to great lengths to get my scoop. Take me with you every step of the way. I’ll cut Steve loose for this one and take my own camera. Sam, give me this exposé and I will help you get Nina back.”

Sam shook his head in disbelief. “You are a fool.”

“Maybe, but I know where I’m going,” she retorted.

“Straight into one of those little fridges, Harris,” Sam smirked, pointing lazily to the morgue. “That’s the only cool cut you’re going to get.”

Harris ignored Sam’s perpetual disregard for her passion. “Well, it’s either my deal or we’re back to square one. I oust you to Amir and his animals while I broadcast your killing spree on national television and incriminate you publicly. The choice is yours.”

Sam would’ve normally aimed for her throat by now, but he had to admit that Jan Harris had him monumentally by the balls. Had he the emotional fortitude for her gloating, he may even have congratulated her on a fine chess game, but he wisely elected to refrain from praising her for the effort.

“You know how to get in touch with Amir, right?” Sam asked. She nodded, “I do.”

From the door, accompanied by Dr. Hooper, Father Harper appeared. “His name is not Amir.”

Sam’s face lit up at the sight of the huge priest who’d come to aid him. Jan Harris heard the pronouncement behind her and turned to set the man straight, but when she saw the attractive clergyman, she choked on what would have been a sharp riposte. Flustered, she shifted in her chair to better see the big priest, unfazed by his collar. “Excuse me?” she said, fluttering her eyelids.

“His name is not Amir. Who told you that, Sam?” Father Harper asked.

“I did, as a matter of fact,” Harris said, insisting on conversing even when she wasn’t being addressed. “As a matter of fact, I am the only one in touch with him.” Her attempt at significance was not appreciated by Father Harper, who continued to address Sam directly. He shook Sam’s hand and sat down on the edge of the desk. “His name is Ayer, not Amir. He’s a French soldier from a clandestine organization you do not want to mess with.”

“Too late,” Sam replied. “I messed with them. Big time.”

“Excuse me,” Harris interrupted. “May I ask who you are?”

“This is Father Harper from the St. Columbanus Church in Oban. Father,” Sam introduced the annoying female with visible apathy, “this is Janet Harris, a mostly freelance television reporter for British broadcasters. She has been contacted by Amir… uh…”

“Ayer,” Father Harper corrected patiently.

“Ayer,” Sam continued, “to facilitate a deal that could mean the end of me, on so many levels.”

“That is correct, Father,” Harris nodded. For the first time, the priest acknowledged her presence there, meeting eyes with her. “So, then, how is it that you know these sordid characters?” She tried to insinuate some unsavory collaboration. Sam took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was not allowed to snap her neck, at least not yet. But Father Harper was not a regular man, and her passive aggression did not bother him.

“My business is the business of sordid characters, is it not? Am I not the spokesperson for the lost and wicked, when they displease the Lord?” he asked her. “I know Lucifer, as do you. Would you grant that makes us as sordid as he?”

Sam chuckled in amusement, feeling better already. Even just the awkward expression on Miss Know-It-All’s face was enough to fuel him. Especially the fact that she was literally sitting with an open mouth, waiting in vain for words her brain could not articulate — that was the best reward Sam could ask for.

“So, tell me more about the man that has Nina, Father,” Sam said, rescuing the deluded woman from the clergyman’s debate. After all, he had to garner as much information as quickly as possible so that he could call Purdue and ask for help in finding her. “Why have they not called Harris with some sort of ransom command?”

“Because they did not take Nina for ransom,” Father Harper elucidated. “They took her because she was here. She was conveniently here, speaking to me, when they broke in to reclaim the corpses of their brothers. You see, they have to inter their own, but they could not very well arrive on the doorstep and prove kinship. These people, for all intensive purposes, do not exist.”

Jan Harris gasped. Sam had expected that, because he also realized how Pulitzer-worthy such a story would be. But right now he had to get Nina back before getting everyone killed. Awards and career boosters were hardly important here.

“They took Nina because she was speaking to you?” Harris asked the same question Sam was going to. “Then they know you?”

Father Harper sighed, his face laden with distress. He looked at Sam and nodded slowly before shifting his gaze to the nosy female journalist. “I was not always a priest.”