The Templar Heresy

10

Khaled was sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep staring through the windscreen at the collection of canvas tents that formed the archaeological camp, looking for any signs of movement.

But that wasn’t all he was watching for. He was alternating his gaze between the camp and the road in front of the vehicle, waiting for a suitable location to initiate the next part of his plan.

And then he saw a steadily rising line of dunes on his left-hand side, and gestured for the driver to slow down. As soon the vehicle moved below the crest of the highest dune, he ordered the vehicle to stop, and the moment it did so Farooq and the other armed man in the rear seat opened their doors and climbed out on to the dusty track, pushing the doors closed as silently as possible behind them. The moment they were clear of the jeep, the driver accelerated away, so that if their progress had been observed, it would not be apparent that the vehicle had even stopped.

Farooq and his companion were still wearing sand-coloured camouflage clothing, which made them virtually invisible against the dunes, at least until they moved, so their approach to the encampment was slow and careful, taking advantage of every scrap of cover that they could find.

They stopped behind the sparse shelter afforded by a stunted bush growing near the base of a dune, and for a few minutes just stared at the rows of tents about half a mile in front of them. Even through the low-power binoculars Farooq was carrying, the camp looked almost exactly the same as it had when they’d left a few hours earlier.

But there was something different about the place that he couldn’t immediately identify. Something had changed. Something that was niggling at his subconscious, either something that he’d noticed during the killings that morning or something that now seemed out of place.

He squinted into the brightness of the sky above as a faint motion attracted his attention.

And then he realized what that something was and a broad smile creased his swarthy face. He handed the binoculars to his companion and gestured towards the tents.

‘Someone is there,’ he said confidently. ‘Or at least somebody has been there.’

‘I don’t see anybody,’ the other man replied after a few moments, as he stared through the binoculars. ‘What did you spot that I didn’t?’

‘It’s not in the camp,’ Farooq said. ‘It’s above the camp. The vultures are circling and that could mean they’ve been driven away from the meals we kindly left them, but actually it doesn’t. It’s much simpler. They can’t feed on any of the carrion for the moment because somebody has covered up the bodies. It must be the woman. Either she was hiding somewhere when we arrived this morning or she’s arrived at the camp since we left. We’re too far out for anyone to have just stumbled across this by chance.’

He took out his walkie-talkie, passed on what he had seen to Khaled, and then the two men continued their stealthy approach through the dunes, Kalashnikovs held ready in both hands, and their eyes scanning the camp in front of them, alert for the first sign of any movement.