The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

28 Dragon’s Breath

Nina was surprised that her captors carried on as if she were just another housemate, although the structure they were housed in wasn’t quite a house. She knew it had to be somewhere in the UK, mainly because of the British broadcasts on the radio and some trash she saw in the kitchen being English brands.

They hardly looked at her, nor did the insult or attempt to harm her in any way. She’d now been with them for several days, still sleeping on the covered stone slab she’d awoken on that first night and having only two meals a day. Toast, bacon and tomato in the morning and usually some deli foods at night. Although the men of the Militum wore casual clothes, Nina could see that they had all had some training in tactics, as well as some sort of theological background. What baffled her still, was that even with the indoctrination of the latter they showed no practice of Christianity.

“Ayer,” she peeked around the doorway of the chambers where she was allowed to roam freely. He was on the phone with someone, holding up an open hand for her to wait. Nina’s propriety prompted her to give him his privacy and she retracted. In the dark corridor there were strong lights overhead, as there was no daylight to come in, but she could find no switches.

The lair had to be a centrally controlled base, so there had to be a communications room or some office from where the lights and the water usage was monitored. She was told that she could shower, but only if one of their men escorted her, so alternatively Nina had been taking sponge baths in her room for the last three nights and had the dreaded use of a chamber pot.

“Dr. Gould,” Ayer called from his room, beckoning her back. “What is it?”

“Well, I just wanted to ask you the things you would expect to be asked by someone you are holding,” she started.

“Like, are we going to kill you?” he asked quickly, polishing his Doc Martins.

“Um, aye. I suppose that is important to know,” she shrugged, her arms folded over her chest as she leaned in the doorway. “But I wonder also, why you are so lenient on me?”

“Would you prefer we lock you up like a prisoner? Because we would have no problem doing that,” he replied nonchalantly.

“No, I just don’t understand. If you’re going to let me walk around here, eat with you, and join in your conversations, why am I even here at all? Can’t you just let me go home?” she asked evenly.

“You’re joking, right?” Gille said behind her, lurching over her small frame like a shadow. Frightened at his sudden, hard voice, Nina winced and drew away from him. “You know who we are. You know what we are and… and, ultimately, you know what happened at the morgue — you know that we exist, Dr. Gould. You can rain a world of hell on our little sect, smaller now, because of that journalist and his friend running down our brothers like stray dogs in the street to save that bitch Toshana!”

Nina’s heart pounded. “Sam,” she whimpered.

“Sam Cleave, the hero. You must be really special, Dr. Gould,” Ayer smiled as the strokes of the shoe brush coughed rhythmically under his motions. “That very woman he saved from us? He is going to betray her trust in cold blood to trade her for you.”

“Aw, that’s sweet, isn’t it? How long have you been banging him, luv?” Gille teased, but Nina did not appreciate his humor. She summarily backhanded him across the face. He did not even budge, but his face instantly wore proof of her rage. Red welts formed where the back of her right hand had connected, and a trickle of blood appeared under his nose, decorating his pursing mouth. Gille’s eyes were wide with anger, but Ayer’s words dissuaded him from doing anything about it.

“You did ask for it, brother,” the leader chuckled as Gille wiped his face, painting his fat cheek with scarlet. “Go get cleaned up.” Ayer looked at Nina. Her face was distorted in defeat, her whole body quivering in anger and her dark eyes were shimmering with tears. “I cannot tell you why yet, Dr. Gould, but you are very fortunate that we are not allowed to leave even a bruise on you. It would compromise our deal. And that is why you are being treated so well, unharmed, and fed.”

“I see,” she said softly. “May I ask one more thing?”

“Of course, Dr. Gould. Anything,” he replied. He set his shoes neatly together on a toolbox and waited for her to speak.

“That awful smell,” she sniffed, wiping roughly at her teary eyes. “What is it?”

He looked up, sighing. “Why do you insist on knowing about the bad things, Nina? Can’t you just wait and keep busy until you’re delivered?”

“It’s a bit hard to ignore,” she said, frowning. “Doesn’t it make you lads sick to the stomach to breathe in that stench?”

“You get used to it, I suppose,” he admitted. “Not something to be proud of, certainly. We all have homes all over Europe, North Africa, and Scandinavia, but when things go wrong within our sect, like the loss of the crown from its monstrance, then we come down here and congregate so that the problem can be solved, you see? We don’t always live on take away fish & chips, Dr. Gould, nor shower in cement bathrooms with no hot water.”

He walked towards her, ushering her with his arm. Ayer led Nina by his hand on her back, softly steering her down the main hallway of the colossal dystopian bunker that reminded her of an abandoned Russian reactor. Their conversation echoed like hymns as they strolled. “Normally we live in lavishness and comfort, so please do not think this is who we are.”

“Do you have normal occupations when you are — home?” she asked.

“Heavens, no,” he laughed. “Occasionally we take jobs consulting.”

“Consulting on?” she pried relentlessly, secretly amazed that Ayer allowed her to badger him with questions.

“Tactics, weapons training, and so on,” he answered. “Sometimes we act as…” he hesitated, looking almost ashamed, “assassins, you know, mercenaries for hire. But that is rare. Why would we need to? We are independently rich, each one of us.”

“So you just do other jobs because you’re bored?” she asked, raising her eyebrow in surprise. “Is that why you came out for the crown you lost?”

“It was taken from a safe place where Chaplain Hermanus’ daughter hid it in the 1980s. Her father shared the location of the Templar Crown with her on his death bed, but the whole family heard the confession,” he recounted. He led Nina into another maze-like tunnel that was a precise duplicate of the first. Here the walls reeked of death more strongly than before.

“So she stole it?” Nina asked.

He nodded affirmatively. “Her family tried to reason with her, tried to convince her to leave the thing in the column of the mosque on the Temple Mount. But she had to know the secrets. She just had to,” he hissed through clenched teeth, frustrated at the turn of events, “had to know. Just like you, she just had to know everything.”

Nina felt the coldness like a breath of emotion, his resentment clear enough to scare her. Don’t worry, they’re not allowed to hurt you, she reminded herself as Ayer’s words provoked her concern. They can’t touch you until they’ve delivered you to Sam. Nina wanted to smile. Sam.

“Did she find out what she wanted to know?” Nina asked.

“She found death. We are the guardians of the Crown of the Templars and we do not negotiate. You goddamn women. Always women!” Nina refrained from engaging in a gender debate this time. “Hermanus’ daughter took the relic down into the vaults under the Al-Aqsa Mosque at night, where we killed her.”

“How?” Nina’s question came without passing her brain first and she blurted it out from sheer curiosity. She felt that her prying was a mistake when Ayer stopped in his tracks to regard her face to face, but his answer was unashamed and honest.

“We stoned her to death with stones from Solomon’s Temple — the Temple Mount,” he said without any hesitation. “She was a member of the Nazi order that had been challenging us for decades, Dr. Gould, and we could not let her have the crown, the knowledge, or the power. Hell no.”

“Wait, she was a Nazi?” she frowned. “Black Sun?”

“Now you’re catching on,” he smiled. “You see, we are monsters, but we stop bigger monsters from taking over the world. Anyone who has ownership of the Templar Crown –

the Head made by Pope Sylvester — has access to Baphomet, has access to all knowledge and enlightenment.”

“Illumination,” she said to herself.

“Yes, Dr. Gould,” he affirmed. “Imagine the wisdom of Baphomet, the duality of all existence, in the hands of the Order of the Black Sun. This is why I did not have Sam Cleave killed for murdering my brothers. He belongs to allies of ours.”

“The Brigade Apostate,” she whispered.

“Right,” Ayer nodded. “But he rescued another snake of the Black Sun in the process, while we were executing her for stealing the Templar Crown.

“Toshana belongs to the Order of the Black Sun,” Nina said. “She had the crown, then.”

“But she refused to tell us where she had hidden it,” he lamented. “Now that Sam is working with us to surrender her to us, we will be able to find it again.”

They entered a pitch-dark hall. Nina could tell the size of the place by the change in acoustics. Ayer’s voice sounded like a battle horn when they entered the hot, dark place that smelled like burning flesh. “Oh my God. This is how I’ve always imagined Hell,” Nina remarked, listening to her own voice get lost in the space hidden by darkness.

“You’re not wrong,” Ayer chuckled, trying to sound reassuring. “This is what you wanted to know. You women and your inexhaustible need to know the secrets of men.”

Nina’s heart raced. She tried not to throw up from the sweet stench that wafted over her like the foul breath of the devil. Holding her hand over her mouth and nose, she coughed at the overwhelming heat.

“This is where we held the funeral for our brothers,” Ayer told Nina as he reached for what she thought was a light switch, but it was the switch to a gas line. His finger flicked it upward, releasing gas through the wall-mounted pipes of the massive hall.

What Nina saw frightened her to death, but she knew she had to keep calm. Her legs numbed, her knees buckled, as she realized that she was, in reality, in the belly of the beast. The four walls, each measuring approximately ninety feet in height, appeared out of the darkness bearing the thin gas pipes. All the piping ran to the main wall in front of Nina and Ayer, where they culminated in an enormous shape, a symbol well known to be wary of.

Fire ignited the symbol, and a terrified Nina Gould played witness to a burning inverted pentagram, enclosed in a double border circle. Inside the circle she recognized the arcane Hebrew characters.

“Baphomet,” she whispered through a dry mouth and burning throat.

“That’s right,” Ayer said proudly. Nina wanted to keep asking questions to still the screams in her head. As long as she sympathized, or played along, Ayer’s mind would hopefully remain occupied.

“Um, what are the characters inside the border for? It is Hebrew, correct?” she remarked, as the horrific image inside the pipelines became a visible, painting on the wall. A goat’s head, fitted snugly inside the inverted star, grinned at her.

“Oui, Dr. Gould,” he smiled, impressed. He pointed them each out as he revealed them one by one. “It spells, counterclockwise, ‘LVTHN’,” he informed her in the heat of the fire. “Leviathan.”

“The Devil,” she murmured.

Ayer gave her a long hard look while Nina regarded the atrocious sight of eight charred bodies, hung upside down. “You wanted to know, Nina.”

“Like Saint Peter,” she said, as the flame reflections tinted her dark eyes with blazing orange and yellow. “Like the Hanged Man of the Tarot.”

At once Nina realized that the monstrous roar of blowing wind she had heard that first night was the spewing pipes inducing a hellish fire. She swallowed saliva that was not there and whispered, “Like dragon’s breath.”