The Templar Salvation

Chapter 35

The miles blew by as the Discovery traveled south along the winding, pockmarked road. The barren landscape only added to the numbness that Tess felt, both in body and soul, a numbness that was only pierced by the painful questions that remained unanswered.

She looked across at her captor. He felt her gaze and glanced over at her.

“We should be at the rendezvous in about ten minutes,” he told her, then filled her in on the cover story they’d be using, the same one he’d used on Sully—the one that had him posing as a university professor called Ali Sharafi.

Tess’s face tightened at his casual use of the dead Iranian historian’s name. “You have no shame, do you,” she said. “Using his name like that. After what you did to him.”

She wasn’t asking, and he didn’t react.

“Why am I here anyway?” she pressed. “What do you need me for? The Turks aren’t going to bargain with you just because you have me. Not after everything you’ve done.”

He shrugged. “You’re not here as a hostage, Tess. You’re here because of your expertise. I can’t do this by myself. And since I had to give up your dear friend Jed, I need you to step into his shoes.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant, whether or not Simmons was now safe. Somehow, given the precedents in Rome, she doubted it. The thought sent a shot of bile up her throat. “And what is it exactly that you can’t do by yourself?”

He glanced sideways at her, looking amused. “Come now, Tess. You read the monk’s confession. You saw the terms he used to describe this … trove. These monks, these gentle, pious servants of God—they actually resorted to murder to keep it hidden. So you tell me, Tess … What do you think I’m after?”

There was no point in playing coy. “The devil’s handiwork? Something that could shake the very rock upon which our world is founded?”

He smiled. “It’s worth finding, don’t you think?”

“Not this way,” she grumbled. “Who are you? What do you want with it?”

He didn’t say anything and just kept his eyes dead ahead. After a moment, he said, “My country and yours … we’ve been fighting a dirty, undeclared war for over fifty years. I’m just a patriot trying to help my side win.”

“Your side being Iran,” she ventured.

He glanced at her and smiled enigmatically.

“We’re not at war with you,” she told him. “And whatever your problems are, we’re not the reason for them.”

That raised a dubious eyebrow on him. “Aren’t you?”

“Hey, we’re not the ones funding terrorists and threatening to wipe other countries off the face of the earth.”

Her words didn’t seem to cause any flutter inside him. Instead, he just coolly asked her, “Do you know about Operation Ajax, Tess?”

She’d never heard of it. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. That’s part of your problem, you see. You people have no appreciation for history. You only have time for tweets and Facebook and who Tiger Woods is fucking. And when it comes to the big stories, to wars that can kill thousands and ruin millions of lives, you never bother to look behind the headlines, you don’t take the time to read about why things are the way they are and look for the truth behind the spin of your politicians or the hysteria of those talking heads on your TV screens.”

Tess scoffed. “That’s just great. I’m being lectured on the subtleties of history and the great failings of our democracy by a man who cut off an innocent woman’s head just to prove a point. There’s so much we can learn from you guys, isn’t there?”

He turned to face her again, only this time there was something deeply unsettling in his look. Something very dark and sinister had been prodded awake. His hand slid sideways and settled on her thigh. It sent a jolt of dread through her. He just let it sit there for a few interminable seconds, saying nothing. Then he squeezed her thigh slightly before giving it a patronizing little tap.

“You’re a very attractive woman, Tess. Attractive, and clever too. But you really need to brush up on your history,” he told her, looking at her while keeping an eye on the road. “Look up Operation Ajax. It’s an important milestone in the history of our two countries. And while you’re at it, find out what happened on the morning of the 3rd of July, in 1988. What really happened that day.” His face darkened further. The mention of the date seemed to stir up a cauldron of hatred deep in his soul. He held her gaze for a beat, then turned his attention back to the road ahead.

Tess’s heart was thudding against her rib cage like an alien wanting out. She fought to keep her composure as she racked her brain for any insight into what he was talking about, and was frustrated at coming up blank. She hated not knowing what he was referring to, and hated not being able to throw his smug assumptions back in his face.

“I think this is it,” he finally announced, then pointed ahead. “And that’s got to be our man. Let’s hope he knows his stuff.”

Tess followed his gaze. Up the road, by a dusty three-way intersection, she saw a ramshackle fruit and vegetable stall next to a small gas station. A man was standing there, by a parked mustard-colored Jeep Cherokee. He seemed to be in his late fifties and looked somewhat incongruous in his cargo pants, denim shirt, and khaki boonie hat. He had to be their contact, Abdulkerim, Sully’s Byzantinist uncle. Confirming it, the man waved as he saw them approach.

The Iranian slowed down, and as he pulled over, he gave Tess a stern look. “This doesn’t have to end badly for you. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Sure,” she nodded, making sure the word was clearly seeping sarcasm, not fear.

ABDULKERIM DEFINITELY KNEW HIS STUFF.

The pointers mentioned in the inquisitor’s journal had been sketchy, referring to natural landmarks that time—more than seven hundred years’ worth—could well have eroded, if not erased altogether. But the man was not only intimately familiar with the region and with its unique geographic features, he also had a thorough understanding of its history. This allowed him to put the writings in their proper historical context—what the main towns were at the time, where the trading routes were, which valleys were populated and which ones weren’t—and stay on the inquisitor’s trail.

They were advancing off-road, all three of them riding in Abdulkerim’s Jeep. The Byzantinist’s suggestion to that effect had suited Zahed perfectly, allowing him to ditch the stolen, flagged Discovery, which he tucked away out of sight behind the gas station. The early start had allowed them to cover a lot of ground and still have plenty of daylight left, and Abdulkerim was really putting the Cherokee through its paces. They bounced across plateaus and climbed up and down ridges on the trail of their seven-hundred-year-old ghost, stopping at a couple of locations and hiking around to confirm their bearings before piling back into the Jeep and continuing on.

The sun was almost at its zenith in the perfect, unblemished sky when Abdulkerim pulled over by a steep ridge and switched off the Jeep’s engine. They all downed some mineral water and lahmacun flat bread, then he led Tess and Zahed down a long, narrow trail that ran through some oddly shaped rock spires and led to the valley floor—the beginning of the canyon that, the Byzantinist suspected, held the Templars’ tombs.

The canyon widened and narrowed as it undulated south. On either side of them, the cliff face rose more than two hundred feet, a drama of soft, bleached stone carved out of the earth by long-gone rivers. The canyon floor itself was dry and dusty given the time of year, but tufts of green bushes and rich clusters of poplars and willows helped soften its barren, rugged feel.

“These valley weren’t populated the way the ones further north were,” Abdulkerim explained. He had a peculiar way of talking; he spoke English fluently, considering it wasn’t his mother tongue, except for one little quirk: he had this peculiar habit of often, and quite randomly, forgetting to add an “s” to plurals. “They’re too far south, too close to the mountain passes that Muslim raiding party were using. You won’t find lots of rock church or underground cities here—which is why you don’t get many tourist trekking around. They’re all up around Goreme and Zelve, which are also, without a doubt, much more dramatic to look at.”

“So we’ve heard,” Zahed said, surveying the savagely beautiful landscape surrounding him. “But if the Templars were trying to reach the coast without getting spotted by Ghazi raiders, it made sense for them to stick to these canyons?”

“Absolutely. Some of these canyon are over ten miles long. That’s a lot of miles of great cover—but they’re also a great place for an ambush.”

They split up, Zahed sticking with Tess, Abdulkerim on the opposite side of the canyon from them, and moved slowly, combing both rock faces, looking for the markings the inquisitor had referred to. The sun was baking now, its heat weighing heavily on them and making each step more of a chore. They took turns working the shaded side of the canyon when there was any shade to be had, but even that wasn’t much of a respite from the heat.

After a couple of hours, the going got easier as the sun dropped out of view and the canyon was plunged into shade. Over the next mile or two, they came across a couple of small rock chapels—single cells that had been carved out of the soft volcanic tufa centuries ago, the simple frescoes painted directly on their walls and ceilings barely visible now—but little else. Until the Byzantinist called out to them.

“Over here,” he bellowed across the canyon.

Tess and Zahed rushed over to join him.

He was bent down, scrutinizing the rock face at the base of the cliff, brushing it softly with a gloved hand. At first, what had snagged his interest wasn’t obvious—then it came into view: faint markings, chiseled into the smooth rock, their rough edges eroded by the passage of centuries.

The carving Abdulkerim was dusting off was about ten inches square. Though crudely executed, it was still easily recognizable as a cross, which wasn’t surprising, given the huge Christian presence in the region in the first thousand years or so of the faith. Crosses were scattered across the landscape in abundance. But its location was unusual—at the base of the cliff, with no rock church in sight—as was its shape. This wasn’t just any cross. Its arms were wider at their extremities than at their base, a distinctive feature of the croix pattee that was used by several groups throughout history—including the Templars.

“This could be it,” the historian said, visibly excited by the possibility. He kept brushing the surface around and below the cross. More carvings appeared, barely discernible at first, but clearer with every stroke of his glove.

They were letters. Nothing intricate, not the work of a master crafts-man. They looked like they’d been fashioned hastily, using whatever tools were available. But they were there, and they were legible.

Tess leaned down beside the historian, her eyes locked on the rock face. Her skin quivered with anticipation as the letters bloomed into clarity. And as she read out the words they formed—there were three of them, arranged one underneath the other—her mind raced ahead, churning over their significance.

“Hector … Miguel … and”—she looked up at her abductor—”Conrad.”