The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

29 Evil Deeds with Good Intentions

Purdue followed last, keeping an eye on the military guards he’d bribed to allow them into the Al-Aqsa mosque. Father Harper led the way, with Sam close at his side to help muscle in should they need to fight their way through anyone who tried to tell on them. Both Sam and Father Harper, being dark of eye and crown, passed seamlessly through the groups of Muslim men, but Purdue’s neatly trimmed white hair and pale blue eyes drew unwanted attention.

“Hurry, please,” he whispered at Father Harper.

“If we hurry more, we’ll be running, Purdue,” Sam answered, amused. “You don’t want to be running through a forbidden place with your Scandinavian features, do you?”

Father Harper chuckled, unable to keep a straight face at the image painted by Sam. “I would have passed better as a woman, had I the right attire,” Purdue mumbled, trying to lessen his panic with silliness. “I should have escorted the ladies, rather.”

With subdued smiles on their faces, the three men gradually made their way toward a semicircular niche in the wall of the mosque, walking with heads slightly bowed. Father Harper stopped to survey their surroundings. “This is the mihrab we have to enter by,” he said in a low voice. “This is the mihrab of Zecheria, and here,” he pointed to the mosaic wall that bore the beautiful shrine-like feature, “are the Templar symbols, disguised as tiled art. See that?”

“Whoa,” Sam gasped. “Very shrewd, sir.”

Purdue was fascinated, as always, by the beauty of the structure and its gilded arches and marble columns standing stately in perfect symmetry. Where Father Harper placed his hand upon an artwork of a Templar cross with its rose, the wall dented away. The red, even-armed cross on the white flower was ingeniously laid in between the laurel-shaped images of the wall.

Purdue and Sam stared as they watched the big priest casually split two identical panels, allowing them to pass into the small entrance while the second panel maintained the artwork for bystanders not to discover the ruse. It was dark on the other side of the panel, and had been left mostly abandoned over the past few years.

“Fucking hell! What is that smell?” Sam coughed as Father Harper slid the first panel shut behind them.

“Sulfur,” he answered in the darkness.

Purdue’s tablet suddenly lit up the place, startling his friends. In the sharp illumination they could see his grin of achievement and proceeded to mutter about how they appreciate his genius at times like these.

“Oh, come now, lads, enough,” he smiled to dismiss their teasing.

“No, really, Purdue. Well done. Who needs to sneak around with petty flashlights to avoid detection when you can clone the light of the sun and harness it in here, hey?” Sam persisted in his boyish jesting.

“That odor of sulfur,” Father Harper said quietly without whispering. “The Militum, as well as older orders from the Templar sect, used these troughs of sulfur to light up the chambers down here.”

The masonry was built along the entire length of the old, gray stone walls to hold the brimstone compound. It was a bit unnerving for Purdue to see all the arcane things his new friend and former rescuer knew about, but he was invaluable to Purdue’s small excursion.

“Oh my God, the crown!” Purdue blurted out suddenly. His companions stopped in their tracks to see what he was talking about, but Purdue only shrugged. With a sincere look of confusion he admitted, “I don’t know why, but only just then did I remember that I was actually down here to look for a crown. Sounds daft, I know.”

Father Harper and Sam exchanged looks. Father Harper gave Sam a nod. It was time to inform Purdue of Nina’s plight. While the big priest waited for the women to show up from the side tunnel that met this one in a T-junction, Sam told Purdue everything.

“Do you remember the awkward meeting between your Countess and I?” he asked.

Purdue gave a scoff. “It was hardly easy to miss, old boy.”

“That’s because we’d already met, her and I, when I saved her from attackers in England about two weeks back. Purdue, she is bad news, and she has you…” Don’t say it! Sam’s common sense begged, but as usual, he ignored good advice. “…under a spell.”

“A spell?” Purdue replied at the absurdity.

“Tell me, where is Nina?” Sam asked his friend. Purdue shrugged, “You said she could not make it.”

“And when I spoke to you on Skype?” Sam pressed, peering into the genuinely bewildered eyes of his friend. “Did you hear what I said about Nina?”

Purdue ran his elegant, long fingers through his soft hair, trying to remember.

“I do remember. Sam, I do, I just… Jesus, I remember you talking about her and… I really do, but I swear to God I cannot tell you what you said about her,” he stammered, his voice cracking at the realization that his mind has been clouded all this time, thinking it was clear. Only his distance from Toshana aided in the clearing of his thoughts and he could not deny it. Sam knew it. So did the priest.

That was Sam’s cue to fill Purdue in on the rest of the events that had since transpired, before their meeting in Jerusalem. In a brief discussion, Sam told him about the attempted hit on his life, the message from the Militum, which brought on the tiff with Nina and why she left that day. Then came the discovery of the bodies’ strange tattoos and why Nina got involved in what was coincidentally to become both her and Sam’s joint predicament, only from two different angles.

“She was kidnapped by these brutes, Purdue. And they want Toshana, if we don’t give her to them we’ll never see Nina again. Do you understand? And that is where Father Harper got involved,” Sam said.

“Only for the abduction, Father?” Purdue asked the priest.

“No, David. I used to belong to this sect, branched off from the Templars by blood or honor. We’re not on good terms since I left them — rather hurriedly and blood-drenched — many years ago,” Father Harper recounted as he sat down on the edge of the rocky trough. “All I could do as a Templar was to remain in the service of the church. It was both my sanctuary from the Militum and my prison for religion — both of which I’ve now been sprung from by revealing my identity.”

“No wonder you know all these hallways and beacons so well,” Purdue mused in admiration. “The Temple Mount, where the great King Solomon’s temple ruins sleep. The former headquarters of the Templar Knights! My God, what a phenomenal revelation!”

“It’s not as romantic as the books relay, David. Templar Knights were as brutal as they were pious, and they served whatever master benefitted them best, clutching their crosses,” Father Harper sighed. Failing him, his words came weakly. “They still do. They still do.”

“The Militum, however, do not serve the church, right?” Sam asked the priest.

He looked at Sam with a face that told him that there was simply too much to explain. “They do not,” he said. “Nor do they serve Christ. But nothing is that simple, my friend. We had reason to protect the crown, and we had good reason to kill to uphold its secret location. Lieutenant Hermanus had no good intentions when she took it from the hiding place her father secured it in, and we had to stop her at all costs, you see. That doesn’t make the Militum evil. No man is pure, Sam. Not one!” His face was wet with perspiration as he stared into the darkness ahead. “She was a modest Scottish pilot in Her Majesty’s Air Force, but she was greedy for power. And the power she sought was too big for this world. We stopped her,” he whispered, pointing into the dusky part of the hallway where Purdue’s light started to fade, “right about there.”

“That is where you left the relic?” Purdue asked.

The priest rose to his feet, his mannerism suddenly serenely hostile towards Purdue. “I will never tell you.”

“Excuse me?” Purdue frowned.

“Father?” Sam prompted.

“Why do you think,” Father Harper asked Purdue, “your new lady companion was being murdered in broad daylight by the Militum?”

Purdue gave it some thought, but he could find no answer. Sam became agitated, but he did not act yet as the priest’s enormous frame stalked the confounded billionaire explorer.

“They would not have been stoning her with rocks from the Temple Mount, if she was not already in possession of the crown, David,” he sneered. “You have been played, my friend. Whatever reason Toshana Baldwin had to engage you, I regret to inform you that it was not for your good looks or to elicit your help in finding some bewitched relic for her.”

Sam and Purdue stood perplexed in the barren halls under the Al-Aqsa mosque. Their feet rested on the earth where Solomon had walked, where blood had been spilled over gods and power for centuries. Whatever was ensuing was far too great for their capacity as humans.

“She has the crown, Purdue,” Father Harper revealed. “That is why the Militum wants her. To restore the relic to a place where no man or woman can defile its power, and I fear she will have to sacrifice a lot more when we give her back to them. The Sacrifice of Baphomet is an ugly business for the one who steals its head, the crown of the idol.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sam asked, his heart racing.

“The Templars who were reputed to worship Baphomet, those burned for consorting with the devil,” he started, “were discovered during a ritual that looked like a ceremony of worship. But what the church did not understand — what they perpetually neglect to fathom — is that not every ritual is for the sake of religion or worship. They were discovered doing exactly what the Militum will do if they do not get what they want. The restoration of the crown can only be achieved by means of the Sacrifice of Baphomet, a ritual. Simple as that.”

“We have to deliver Toshana before they run out of patience,” Sam told Purdue and the priest. “They will not wait much longer, and Nina will suffer for it.”

“I agree,” the priest said.

Purdue laughed. Shaking his head, he looked at them in disbelief and fear. “Are you out of your minds?” he chuckled, but his laughter was filled with betrayal. “My own friends! She was right! You are all just using me. Now you have used me to trap my beloved Toshana in a subterranean snare so that you can give her back to a bunch of killers?”

“Purdue,” Sam tried, but Purdue pulled out one of his defense devices, a pen shaped mechanism that directed a deadly laser. The beam was invisible, unless there was smoke present to detect it, but Purdue had the favor of clear darkness as he pointed the end at Father Harper. Spittle foamed at his mouth, his eyes wide with fearful defense.

“You are not taking Toshana. I swear to Christ, I will slice you both in half!”