The Templar Cross

9

After discharging Faraj, they took the midnight train from Alexandria to Mersa Matruh by way of El Alamein, the small Egyptian seaside town where Montgomery held the line against Rommel's tanks and began the drive to the west that eventually pushed the German general out of Africa altogether.

The terrain, what little they saw of it, was a mixture of dreary, splintered desert, raw, low dunes and scrubby patches of dusty green farmland trying to survive in an arid ocean of sand. In the distance, on the right-hand side of the train, with the dawn light creeping up behind them, the ocean appeared like an enormous mirage of the water the desert could see but never vanquish.

By the time they'd boarded the train in Alexandria there were no sleeping compartments available so they'd spent the night in the surprisingly elegant wood-paneled bar car, drinking from fat silver cans of Luxor Beer and discussing their situation. By dawn, still awake, they were alone in the car except for the bartender, asleep on his stool in the far corner. The cold fury of the sunrise turned the sky around them a thousand shades of pink and gold and the wheels chattered monotonously over the endless track beneath their feet.

"Tell me everything you know about this German, Walter Rauff. There must be some clue in his history in North Africa that could help us track down the gold."

"Find out where the gold came from and we find Peggy?" Rafi said.

"Something like that."

Rafi thought about it for a long moment, assembling his thoughts. At the far end of the car the bartender woke up briefly, saw that he wasn't needed and instantly was asleep again.

"I don't know if this is completely accurate, but as I recall he was in the navy and got thrown out over some sex scandal-sleeping with an admiral's wife, or daughter or maybe both. Anyway, he managed to get into the SS, the death's-head battalion in charge of the camps. He figured out a scheme of gassing people using mobile extermination units and on the basis of that he was sent to North Africa with Rommel. His job was to come in behind Rommel's units exterminating North African Jews from Morocco to Palestine. He was also in charge of sweeping up their assets-the source of all the gold. In 1942 and 1943 Rommel got stopped in El Alamein, right around here actually." Rafi glanced out the window at the barren landscape.

"Anyway, he fell back to Tunisia to round up the Jews with his Einsatzkommando Tunis for a while, then beat it out of Africa altogether. Italy, I think. That was 1944. After the war he was captured by the Americans, escaped and used Bishop Hudal's 'ratline' to escape via the Vatican, first to Syria for a while, then to Chile." Rafi shrugged. "He ran a crab-packing plant for several years, then started working in intelligence for the Chilean government. He used to travel back to Germany all the time but he was never caught."

"Did this Rauff have any contingency plan for escaping if Rommel was killed or captured?" Holliday asked.

"Most of the SS units had secret plans for escape if they started losing the war. The Vatican had their whole ratline system set up as far back as 1942, taking SS men first to Syria, then to South America."

"Any alternate routes?" Holliday asked.

Rafi nodded, then took a last swig from his warm can of beer.

"Down through Libya by air to a desert air base in Vichy-controlled Niger, then across the ocean to Brazil or Chile."

"This is beginning to make a little sense now," said Holliday. He took a large-scale folded map of Egypt and Libya from the little overnight bag on the seat beside him. He spread the map out on the table. "Any idea where the air base in Libya was?"

"The name Al-Jaghbub sticks in my head, but I'm not positive."

Holliday found it on the map.

"There's an oasis town called Al-Jaghbub halfway down the map."

"Wait a minute," said Rafi, excited now. "Didn't Ducos mention it when we were talking to him?"

"I can't remember," said Holliday, "but it fits. It would make a perfect staging base for a long-distance flight to Niger."

"So the Nazis get freaked out by Rommel losing and put the gold on a plane for Brazil?"

"And it gets lost somewhere between point A and point B," Holliday said, nodding.

"And that fits, too," said Rafi. "Hudal was a bishop with connections and insiders both in the SS and at the Vatican."

Holliday sat back in his seat.

"Now I see," he said. "The monk from Biblical Archaeology School in Jerusalem, this Brother Brasseur or whatever his name is, he wasn't searching for Templar texts in the Archives; he was trying to find Hudal's records. They were looking for the SS gold right from the beginning."

They arrived in Mersa Matruh at six thirty in the morning. It was a city of two hundred thousand or so, a miniature Alexandria, the sea masked by a line of hotels and resorts along the Corniche, all new and all modern, with the old city of its real Berber inhabitants behind the high-rise facade, selling the produce grown on the little desert farms they'd seen from the train. They booked into the Beausite, a moderately priced five-story hotel with its own sand beach. A single phone call to the concierge presented them with an insurmountable problem. They took their complimentary continental breakfast out onto the balcony of their narrow room to discuss the situation.

"We're screwed," said Rafi abjectly, looking out over the ultramarine ocean in front of the hotel. He tore off a corner of his croissant and buttered it. "It'll take you weeks to get a visa for Libya with an American passport and I probably couldn't get one at all."

"So then we do it without visas," said Holliday, sipping his strong coffee.

"How do we manage that?" Rafi asked.

"Look on the map," said Holliday. "The closest place on the Egyptian side is Siwa Oasis. That's only a couple of hundred miles from here. Siwa is less than fifty miles from Jaghbub."

"Across an impenetrable border," grunted Rafi. "They've got something like two million land mines planted. Fences, cameras, the whole deal. Egypt and Libya were at war back in the seventies."

"That's LRDG territory," said Holliday. "I guarantee it's like a sieve."