The Templar Salvation

Chapter 36

The Iranian nodded, his brow knotted with concentration as he stared at the carvings. “So,” he finally said, “our Templar is buried here.”

Abdulkerim’s face was beaming with excitement. “Not just one. Three of them. They could all be buried here, under our feet.” He took a couple of steps back and dropped his gaze, studying the soil at the base of the cliff. There was a slight rise in the ground that was otherwise pretty uniformly flat. He glanced up and down the valley, then looked up at the sheer bluff face towering protectively over them. “This is marvelous. We could be standing over the tomb of three Templar knight, here, in an area where there’s never been any record of a Templar presence.”

Tess wasn’t paying attention to him. She was busy processing what their find meant, and a furtive glance at the Iranian told her he was doing the same thing.

The Byzantinist’s expression changed to one of bewilderment at the lack of euphoria—and the evident tension—coming back at him from his clients. “This is what you were looking for, isn’t it?”

She ignored him. “If he’s buried here,” she told her abductor, “then that’s the end of the trail, isn’t it?” She hesitated, not sure if her conclusion boded well for her and the Turk, then added, “We’re done, aren’t we?”

The Iranian didn’t seem convinced. “Who buried them? We know three knights left the monastery. They had it with them. What happened to them here? How did they die? And who buried them? Who carved their names out?”

“Does it matter?” Tess replied.

“Of course it does. Because that’s where the trail continues. Someone walked away from whatever took place here. We need to find out who that was.”

Abdulkerim was clearly confused. “What do you mean, they had ‘it’ with them? What are you talking about? I thought we were just looking for these tomb. What more do you know about these knight?”

Tess ignored him again and stayed on her abductor. “How can we possibly do that? They died seven hundred years ago. All we have are the markings on this wall. That’s it. There isn’t anything more to go on. Not in the Templar Registry, not in the inquisitor’s journal. It’s the end of the road.”

The Iranian scowled, mulling her conclusion. “It’s not the end of the road. We don’t know what’s buried here. And until we do, we haven’t taken this search to its limit.” He fixed her with a resolute stare and said, “We need to dig them up. For all we know, it could be buried here with them.”

Tess’s heart sank at the suggestion. The man wasn’t giving up.

The Byzantinist’s eyes went wide too. “‘Dig them up’? Us?”

Zahed turned to him. “You have a problem with that?”

The hard stare threw the Turk. “No, of course not, it’ll have to be done. But there’s a procedure to follow. We’ll need to apply for permission from the ministry, it’s a very complicated process and I’m not even sure they’ll—”

“Forget about getting permission,” the Iranian interrupted. “We’re going to do it ourselves. Right now.”

Abdulkerim’s jaw dropped an inch. “Now? You want to … You can’t do that. We have very strict laws in this area. You can’t just dig things up.”

Zahed shrugged, nonchalantly reached into his rucksack, and pulled out a graphite gray automatic. He chambered a round and swung his arm out so the weapon was leveled right at the Byzantinist’s face. “I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

He held the gun barrel there, hovering millimeters from Abdulkerim’s eyes. Droplets of sweat multiplied on the Turk’s forehead like someone had turned on a sprinkler inside his skull. He raised his hands to his sides instinctively and took a tentative step back, but the Iranian inched forward and jammed the gun barrel against the man’s forehead.

“We dig. We have a look. We leave. No harm done. Okay?” Zahed told him, his tone easy and calm.

Abdulkerim nodded nervously.

“Good,” the Iranian said, pulling back. “Now, the sooner we start, the sooner we can all get out of here.” He tucked the gun into his waistband, reached into his pack, and pulled out a dark green canvas cover. He flipped it open and took out a compact, folding camping tool that had a shovel on one side and a pick on the other.

He extended the tool’s handle and snapped its heads into position, then held it out to Tess. “You’re the expert, right?”

She scowled at him, then, grudgingly, she took it. “This could take a while,” she said, giving the small tool a sardonic glance.

“Not necessarily. You’ve got an able assistant just dying to help you out,” Zahed smiled. He turned to the Byzantinist and opened his palm out in an inviting gesture. Abdulkerim nodded and joined Tess.

They got down on their knees and stared at the ground as the inevitability of their task settled in, then they got to work.

TESS USED THE PICK to loosen the top layer of soil, which was dry and compacted. Abdulkerim cleared the clumps of dried mud she was breaking off, chucking them into a pile away from the wall. It didn’t take that long for them to clear an area around six feet square, then Tess started to dig deeper.

The pick struck stone—nothing too big, just a bowling ball-sized rock. She cleared the soil around it and Abdulkerim helped her pull it out. There were other rocks tucked in around it, and more underneath, two tightly packed layers of them blanketing whatever was buried below.

“These rocks weren’t here naturally,” Tess said. “Look at how they’re arranged. Someone put them there.” She hesitated, then added, “To keep wild animals from getting at the bodies.”

Zahed nodded. “Good. Then the bones should still be in one place.”

He gave her a look that prodded her on, and she got back to work, prying the stones loose and handing them to Abdulkerim, who would then throw them clear behind them. They worked in tandem, moving in parallel, and got a good rhythm going until something interrupted the flow.

A look, from the Turk—a questioning, worried look.

He’d noticed the bomb belt and its padlock under Tess’s loose shirt.

She flashed him an intense, staying look, with a barely perceptible shake of the head, signaling him not to ask about it and unsure about whether or not their captor had spotted the Turk’s reaction. If he had noticed it, he didn’t say anything. She saw Abdulkerim’s jawbone tighten as he gave her a tiny nod back before carrying on.

Before long, the rocks were gone and her pick was biting into loose soil again, less than two feet from the surface. And then the first bone appeared. A femur. Smaller bones, phalanges from what appeared to be a left hand, lay scattered around it.

She was using her fingers now, clearing the soil carefully.

The rest of the skeleton soon came into view.

Its bones were a sickly brown, infused with the earth it had been lying in for centuries. And even though the soil of the region didn’t suffer from high acidity, Tess hadn’t expected to find much else. There wasn’t a lot that could survive seven hundred years of burial. Armies of maggots and worms would see to that. Her fingers stumbled upon some copper-alloy buckles, the only remnants of a belt and some boots whose leather had long been eaten away, but she saw nothing else. It wasn’t immediately obvious whether she was staring at the remains of a man or a woman, but judging from the length and the girth of the main leg and arm bones, she thought it was more than likely that it had been a man.

“There’s nothing here to tell us who this was,” she remarked as she stood up and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She was exhausted, the arduous effort having drained what little strength she’d had left after the sleepless night at the mountain stakeout. Adding to her discomfort, the bomb belt had been straining against her ribs and digging into her with every move, bruising the edge of her rib cage, but she knew there wasn’t anything she could do about that.

The Iranian stood next to her, eyeing the remains. He checked his watch, then said, “Okay, good work. Let’s keep going.”

Tess shook her head with disdain and despair, and drank some water from the canteen Abdulkerim had given her. Then she got back down on her knees and kept going.

An hour or so later, she and the Byzantinist had uncovered the remains of one more corpse.

One more—not two.

Tess dug small exploratory holes on either side of the communal grave, but came up blank. There were no layers of rocks there either, confirming that no one else had been buried there, not close to the two skeletons anyway.

Which meant the trail wasn’t dead.

Which also meant her ordeal wasn’t over.

She got up, drenched in sweat, and leaned back against the rock face, taking in deep breaths to slow her heart rate down. Abdulkerim rummaged in his backpack and shared the last of his honey cakes with her. She chewed on the soft, gooey pastry slowly, relishing the taste, feeling their effect suffuse her body, and tried to give her mind a break from wondering what their find meant.

“Two bodies, not three … And yet, there are three names on the grave,” the Iranian announced, clearly pleased with the outcome. “Which raises so many questions, wouldn’t you say?”

He fixed her with a curious, slightly amused gaze.

She was too worn out to play games—but she had to try something. She replied, “Such as, which two are they, right? Well, hey, you want to play CSI and come up with an answer for that one, be my guest.”

He kept staring at her with the same bemused smirk on his face. “Really, Tess? That’s the best you can do?”

Abdulkerim spoke up, stepping in to defend Tess. “They’re seven-hundred-year-old skeletons. How can we possibly know who they were?”

The Iranian gave her a “come, now” dubious look. “Tess?”

He said it like he knew already. A spasm of dread shot through Tess as she considered the consequences of being found out—again.

She relented, wondering how much Jed had told the Iranian. “I don’t think either of these is Conrad.”

“Why not?” Abdulkerim asked.

She looked at the Iranian. He nodded his approval. “These skeletons … they’re complete. Both of them.”

The Byzantinist seemed lost. “And … ?”

“Conrad was hurt at the battle of Acre. Badly.” A sense of doom flooded her face, her spirits drowning at the thought of not finding closure in the grave she’d just opened up. “This isn’t him.”