The Templar Salvation

Chapter 38

The hands. They’re all here, all four of them,” Tess grumbled. “Neither one of these is Conrad. He didn’t die here.”

Abdulkerim stared at her with utter confusion. “So why is his name carved into that wall?”

Tess ignored the question and slid down onto her haunches, cupping her face in her hands and blocking the world out for a moment. She wanted it all to go away, all of it. She just wanted to be back home, in New York, with Kim and her mom close by, spending her days filling her laptop’s blank screen with words and her nights curled up with a cool glass of sauvignon blanc, Corinne Bailey Rae’s dreamy swoons in the background, and Reilly by her side. The mundane never felt so attractive, or out of reach, and she wondered if she’d ever enjoy such simple times again.

“Tess? Our friend asked you a question.”

The Iranian’s eerily dispassionate voice yanked her back to the bleakness of the canyon.

She looked up, half-dazed, struggling to order her thoughts. They were both still there, of course, the Iranian looming over her impatiently and the Byzantinist sitting on a wide boulder opposite her.

“Why is Conrad’s name on this wall?” she asked, her tone reeking with exasperation. “How the hell should I know?”

“Think,” the Iranian insisted dryly.

Tess felt the walls of the canyon creeping in on her. She wondered if it was better for her to remain useful to him, very much doubting that he’d actually just let her go if his quest did hit a brick wall, but her brain wasn’t playing ball. No epiphanies were forthcoming.

“I don’t know.”

“Think harder.” The Iranian’s words had an unsettling finality to them.

“I don’t know,” she shot back angrily. “I don’t know any more than you do. I mean, God knows what happened here. We don’t even know if these skeletons are really those of the other Templars.”

“Well, let’s look at both possibilities. What if they are?”

She shrugged. “If they’re really the bones of the knights who went to the monastery with Conrad, then he’s the only one of them left. And if that’s the case, then I’d expect that he was the one who buried his buddies here and carved the names on the wall—including his own.”

“Why would he do that?”

An answer quickly formed in Tess’s mind, and much as she didn’t want to voice it, she didn’t have much of a choice. “To buy himself some peace. To put off anyone who was on his trail.”

“Which makes sense if he’s carrying something important. Something he wants to protect.”

“Maybe,” Tess fumed. “It’s not here, is it? But if he didn’t die here, he could be anywhere … Though I can’t imagine that a one-armed man alone in enemy territory could get too far, even if he was a Templar knight.”

“Unless he found refuge with one of the Christian communities just north of here,” the Iranian speculated.

Just then, something caught her eye. A reaction, small but perceptible, in the Byzantinist’s expression.

The Iranian caught it too. “What?” he asked.

“Me? No, it’s nothing,” Abdulkerim muttered, not very convincingly.

The Iranian’s hand flew out so fast neither Tess nor the Turk saw it coming. The slap hammered the Byzantinist’s jaw, rocking it sideways and sending him flying off his perch and crashing onto the ground in a heavy thud and a plume of dust.

“I won’t ask you again,” the Iranian told him.

Abdulkerim stayed down, trembling. After a moment, he raised his eyes to the Iranian. He looked pulverized by fear. “There might be something,” he stammered. “Not far from here.” He turned to Tess. “Do you know which hand Conrad was missing?”

“The left one. Why?”

Abdulkerim frowned, like he wasn’t sure he should be saying this. “There’s a fresco, in the rock church, in the Zelve Valley. The church is in ruins, like all the other, but … the painting is still there. It shows a man, a warrior. Someone the villager there thought highly of. A protector.”

“What does that have to do with Conrad?” the Iranian asked.

“The warrior was referred to on the mural as ‘the one true hand,’ fighting off the heathen. One of his hand is visible while the other is missing—the left one. I always assumed it was a metaphor, you know, one of those crazy legend from the times of the Crusade.” He paused, then pointedly added, “The man in the fresco is buried in the church’s crypt. I think it could be your Conrad.”

“‘The one true hand,’” the Iranian repeated. He gave Tess a satisfied, “this sounds promising” look. “I think I’d like to see that church.”

REILLY’S HORSE SLOWED as it reached the ridge that bordered the yayla he had traversed. Patches of wild lavender and wormwood scrub covered the slope, beyond which was a wide plain that spread south all the way to distant mountains. He paused there to get his bearings, his back and thighs aching from the long, saddleless ride. The horse, panting heavily after the uninterrupted journey, was also in bad need of a breather.

The air was still, the valley silent. Reilly sensed movement down his left flank and looked across. An old woman was standing underneath a thicket of almond trees, beating the branches of one of them with her walking stick. Fresh leaves were falling to the ground, where a small flock of sheep were feasting on them. The trees were all stunted after centuries of being struck that way. The old woman felt Reilly’s attention and looked over. She eyed him with little interest, then turned away and carried on with what she was doing.

Reilly pulled out his map and compared it to the landscape laid out before him. The valley was a beige canvas bordered by softly undulating rock formations and dotted by pockets of pine trees, apricot orchards, and vineyards. He focused on the left side of the valley, his eyes roaming across the area that Tess had circled on the map. He could make out the dark cracks of several canyons that had been cleaved into the valley bed, but he saw no signs of life. Just undisturbed nature, stretching for miles—

—then he noticed something.

A disturbance.

A spot of movement, half a mile away, at the edge of one of the canyons.

He pulled out his binoculars.

They were distant, but there was no mistaking the familiar silhouettes. It was them. Tess, the Iranian, and someone else, someone he hadn’t seen before.

He felt like his heart had been released from a bear trap. The sight of her blasted a wave of relief through him. She wasn’t free, or safe—but at least he’d caught up with her.

The three tiny figures reached a thicket of trees where Reilly saw a parked vehicle, a beige SUV that he recognized as a Jeep Cherokee, the smaller, boxy one from a couple of generations back. He turned his attention to the third figure, wondering if it was friend or foe, then watched as all three of them climbed into the car. The new guy was behind the wheel, with Tess next to him and the Iranian in the back. There was nothing in the arrangement that indicated whether the driver was an ally of the Iranian or someone else, maybe someone he was using to drive them around or some kind of a local guide. For the time being, Reilly had to assume the man was an enemy. Not that it really mattered just yet. His gut was already twisting at the thought of what was happening.

Sure enough, they were now driving off, away from him—and he was half a mile away and sitting on a half-dead horse.

He spurred the horse on, kicking and yelling and slapping its rump to get it moving. The tired animal lurched forward hesitantly, clearly reluctant to head down the slope.

“Come on, damn it, let’s go,” Reilly yelled as he tried coaxing it on by squeezing his thighs together and nudging the back of each of the animal’s front legs as it came toward him. The horse grudgingly picked up a bit of speed, whinnying in protest and kicking up dust as it finally clambered down the hill. Reilly tried to keep track of the Jeep’s movements while guiding his ride onward, and saw the SUV bouncing across the plain, heading west. He steered his mount to the right as soon as it hit level ground, putting it on a diagonal trajectory to the Jeep’s motion, but he was still a few hundred yards away from the SUV. Then he saw it reach a small road and turn onto it. It was now heading directly away from him, and his heart shriveled up as he realized there’s wasn’t much he could do to catch up with it.

Still, he kept the pressure on, summoning his inner cowboy and urging the horse on as best he could. The SUV had disappeared from view by the time he reached the road. He guided the horse onto the cracked asphalt, but he knew it was moving too slowly to have any chance of catching up with Tess. He had to find another way to keep going. A car, a truck, a motorcycle, anything motorized—even an old, beat-up pickup truck creaking under the strain of a mountain of watermelons, which was what he got, trundling up the road and honking for him to move aside.

He had little choice.

He steered the horse into the road, then tugged on the reins, forcing it to stop sideways and block the way. The pickup truck slid to a halt just a few feet short of him. Two men were in its cab, the driver jabbing his horn angrily, his passenger leaning out the window, both men yelling and waving for Reilly to get out of the way.

It didn’t take long.

A wave of the handgun did the trick with ruthless efficiency, and a few frantic seconds later, Reilly was on the road again, hurtling after the long-gone Jeep with a truckful of watermelons in tow.