The Templar Salvation

Chapter 24

With the setting sun turning his rearview mirror into a blazing lava lamp, Mansoor Zahed settled into the stream of evening traffic that was leaving the city and concentrated on the road ahead.

He glanced to his side. Simmons was sitting there, in the passenger seat, his head slightly slumped, the now familiar half-vacant stare in his eyes, the tranquilizer having once again sapped his vibrancy and turned him into a docile, subservient pet. Zahed knew he’d need to keep him sedated for a while. They had a long drive ahead of them, far longer than the one they had completed earlier that day.

Zahed wasn’t thrilled to be on the road again. He wasn’t one to dawdle, especially not after what he’d done at the Vatican. He would have preferred to fly to Kayceri, just as he’d have preferred to fly straight from Italy to an airfield close to Istanbul. Steyl had kiboshed that idea, though they were both well aware of the fact that the Turkish military kept a tight grip on all the country’s airfields. Steyl had reminded Zahed that the risks, after Rome, were too high, and Zahed hadn’t questioned his judgment. He knew that when it came to flying in and out of countries without drawing too much attention to whatever illicit cargo he had on board, Steyl knew exactly what was doable, and what wasn’t. You could count on him to fly any payload into pretty much anywhere and get it past the airport checks unchallenged—but you could also count on him not to land you in hot water, metaphorically speaking. And so they’d flown slightly north instead, to Bulgaria, and landed in Primorsko, a small resort town on the country’s Black Sea coast. It had a small, civilian airfield—not a military one—the kind where exactly who was on what small plane wasn’t the first thing on the local officials’ mind. It was also less than twenty miles from the Turkish border, making the drive from the airfield to Istanbul a not-too-taxing five-hour stint.

This drive would be more than twice as long, but there was no other option. Zahed hadn’t particularly enjoyed negotiating the never-ending traffic nightmare that was evening-rush-hour Istanbul. The chaotic free-for-all had reminded him of the less attractive aspects of Isfahan, his home-town back in Iran, another arena of outstanding architectural beauty that was marred by its drivers’ demented jousting. But in contrast to his earlier outing that day, when evading Reilly, he’d exercised careful restraint while driving out of the city and avoided getting into any dick-measuring contests with the aggressive taxi and dolmu drivers, allowing them to barge through instead, knowing that the smallest fender bender could have dire consequences given that he was driving a stolen car and transporting a heavily drugged captive.

As the highway snaked through some fast, sweeping bends and rose into a series of gentle hills, Zahed was finding it hard to relax. He’d never seen as many trucks and buses, big, overloaded mastodons that were hurtling down the Istanbul-Ankara otoyol, as the six-lane highway was known, oblivious to its often hazardously patchy road surface and ignoring its 120-kilometer-per-hour speed limit. Turkey had one of the worst accident rates in the world, and the car Zahed had been given, a black Land Rover Discovery, while ideal for any off-road sections of his journey, was definitely too tall for cruising comfortably down a highway. Like a light sailboat caught in a storm, it was constantly getting buffeted by the passing heavyweights, forcing Zahed to correct his heading repeatedly by banking into the turbulent air to keep the car facing forward.

As he always did after each step in the course of an assignment, Zahed ran through a quick mental assessment of his mission’s status. So far, he had no major quibbles with how it was working out. He’d made it into Turkey undetected. He’d gotten the information he needed from the Patriarchate. He’d evaded Reilly, who, somehow, had managed to track him down with unsettling efficiency. He reeled his attention back to the previous day’s events, at the Vatican, triggering a pleasing cascade of images in his mind’s eye. A deep-seated feeling of delight swept over him as he relived the rush he’d felt when he’d watched the coverage of his actions on the televised news and all over the day’s newspapers. More would follow, no doubt, after his brief visit to the Patiarchate. He thought about his quest and took great solace in the fact that, even if he weren’t able to find what Sharafi had unearthed, or if it turned out to be worthless, his venture had already turned out to be more than a worthwhile undertaking. This was better than anything he had achieved in Beirut, or in Iraq. Far better. It had given him the opportunity to attack his enemies at the very heart of their faith. Their news-hungry media would keep milking it for days, searing it into the minds of his target audience. The financial markets were already doing their bit to add to the pain, plummeting as expected, wiping out billions of dollars from the enemies’ coffers. No, his act would not be soon forgotten, of that he was certain. And with a bit of luck it would only be the beginning, he thought, imagining how it could awaken a thousand other warriors and show them what could be done.

His mind wandered back to another beginning, to another time, and the faces of his younger brothers and his sister swam into view. He could hear them, running around, playing around the house back in Isfahan, his parents never far from sight. His thoughts migrated to his parents, and he thought of how proud they would have been of him right now—had they been alive to witness it. Memories of that cursed day came raging back and stoked the flames of the fury that had consumed him ever since—memories of that Sunday, the 3rd of July, 1988, a torridly humid day, the day on which his family was blown out of the sky, the day on which his fourteen-year-old world was incinerated, the day that sparked his rebirth. Not even the merest hint of an apology, he thought, thinking back to the empty caskets they had buried, an upwelling of bile scorching his throat. Nothing. Just some blood money for him and for all the others who had also lost loved ones. And medals, he seethed. Medals—including the Legion of Merit, no less—for the ship’s commander and for the rest of the Godless perpetrators of that mass murder.

He stifled his anger and took in a deep breath, and let his mind settle. There was no need to lament what had happened or, as his countrymen were fond of telling him, what had been willed to happen. After all, he kept hearing, everything was written. He chortled inwardly at the backward, naive thought. What he had come to believe, though, was that the lives of his parents and siblings weren’t lost in vain. His life, after all, had taken on a far greater purpose than it otherwise would have had. He just needed to make sure he achieved everything he’d set out to do. To do any less would dishonor their memories and was simply not an option.

He thought ahead and knew he’d have to stop in a few hours. He didn’t want to be driving through the night, when traffic would be sparse and when police roadblocks might pop up. He couldn’t chance staying in any hotels either. A motel would have been doable, but Europe had never embraced the concept or the anonymity such places afforded. No, he and Simmons would be spending the night in the SUV. In a few hundred miles or so, at around the halfway point of his journey, he’d pull into a lay-by, tuck in between some eighteen-wheelers, and, after giving Simmons a knockout dose, wait for morning. Then he’d be on his way again, bright and early, riding the otoyol east to Ankara and on to Aksaray before taking the ancient silk road toward Kayceri and to the prize he so desperately sought.