Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars (13 page)

“So we've got his address,” said Lazarus as they rode a tuk-tuk away from Bakshi's and back to the hotel. “What do we do with it now?”

They rode through the stunning chaos of Mumbai streets. Holliday was deep in thought. Seated facing backward, looking at the city scene as it unraveled behind them, Holliday tried to concentrate on a single vehicle and follow its path. It was almost impossible.

“It's a matter of urban camouflage. Unless Raman has eyes in the back of his head, it shouldn't be too hard to follow him around for a few days until we get a feel for him.”

The tuk-tuk reached the hotel and deposited them in front of the main door.

“I can't see how it's possible,” said Lazarus. “A man like him will be in a big car with lots of
bodyguards. We could get stuck in traffic anytime and lose him easily.”

“That would be true. We could try to follow him in a cab or a car or even a tuk-tuk, but what I'm suggesting is a little bit different.”

*   *   *

Rohit Bapat sat in the rear of a workingman's restaurant he owned, eating deep-fried onion balls and a fiery curry, which he scooped up with chunks of naan, occasionally dipping the bread into a bowl of raita to cool off his mouth and tongue. Bobby Dhaliwal, dressed in one of his exotic Bollywood outfits, sat across from his boss, with the plastic mailing tube on his lap. He had a beer in front of him, which he occasionally sipped.

“Is that it?” Bapat asked, curry dripping down his chin and onto the napkin tucked into his shirt.

“Yes, boss. I had to kill him to get it.”

“No matter,” said Bapat. “He was no longer useful anyway.” He dipped his bread into the raita and bit a chunk off, swallowing noisily. Using his hands, he picked up one of the deep-fried onions balls, dipped it into the raita as well and shoved half of it into his mouth, biting down
hard. He dropped what was left of the onion ball onto the side of his plate, belched and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Let me see it,” he ordered.

Dhaliwal uncapped the mailing tube and slid out the scroll. He held it up carefully for Bapat to see.

“It looks like a piece of goat shit,” said Bapat skeptically. “You're telling me this thing is priceless? How can a piece of petrified goat shit be priceless?”

“It is a scroll, boss. It was made by monks almost two thousand years ago. From what I understand, the Vatican would do anything to get their hands on it, if only to keep it away from the Jews.”

“What does this fucking goat turd have to do with the Jews?”

“The Jews own all the Dead Sea Scrolls that were ever discovered—all except this one.”

Bapat turned in his chair and gestured for a beer. A man brought it to him unopened, bowed and placed it on the table. The fat gangster used his thumb to flip it open. He took a long swallow and belched again, then shook his head. “How can these goat turds everyone wants be so valuable?”

“I'm not an expert,” said Dhaliwal, “but I
found a piece of paper in the Frenchman's office offering five hundred million dollars in U.S. funds.”

“Then this is indeed a great goat turd that you have brought me. If what you say is true, you have brought me the single weapon I need to bring down Raman and to fulfill my destiny.” He paused and shook his head again. “Imagine that. Kota Raman and his empire brought down by a goat turd.”

*   *   *

The first thing Holliday and Lazarus did once they had formulated their plan was to go out and purchase the cheapest, most garish, obviously touristy clothes they could.

Their next stop was a garage that sold motorcycles and scooters. Holliday, who was more accustomed to motorcycles, chose an olive green Royal Enfield Bullet that looked as though it might have been driven by a dispatch rider in World War II. Lazarus, having never driven anything besides a car, chose a battered bright red Vespa scooter. Both men bought helmets with heavily tinted visors. Holliday's helmet was a garishly striped red and green, while Lazarus's was robin's egg blue with an amateurish flame job painted on both sides.

“You realize we look like complete bloody idiots,” Lazarus said, looking at Holliday in full gear on the old motorcycle.

“That's the general idea,” answered Holliday, his voice muffled by the visor.

They spent the next three days following Kota Raman's large black Mercedes around the city. His trips were erratic—some short, some long. The locations ranged from tall office buildings to small confectionaries, storefronts to gigantic factories.

There was one thing each day had in common. Toward late afternoon the Mercedes would inevitably drive up the Mumbai peninsula to Shivaji Park, a large green sanctuary full of children's play areas, gardens of peace and meditation for the elderly, and what Raman clearly came for: the cricket fields. It didn't seem to matter who was playing on the large training pitch in the park; Raman seemed to enjoy them all. Without fail, he would set up a folding chair and table and a white-jacketed servant would appear out of nowhere bearing a silver service of tea and biscuits. Raman was never alone, but usually when watching the cricket matches he had only his second in command and one burly bodyguard accompanying him.

On the fourth day Lazarus and Holliday decided to act. They had one of the hotel cars take
them to Shivaji Park an hour ahead of the time Raman usually arrived. There, they waited until he had set himself up with his table and tea, and then they approached him slowly. They were dressed in light business suits, and Lazarus carried the portfolio of items from Devaux's laboratory in Paris. The second in command and the bodyguard reacted quickly. Spotting Holliday and Lazarus approaching their boss, the two men intercepted them when they were still fifty feet away from the cricket pitch.

“My name is Ali Kapoor. Do you have business here?” Kapoor was tall, broad shouldered and looked as though he might have been a wrestler in his prime. He was impeccably dressed in an Armani suit. The bodyguard beside him was much larger and remained silent.

“We have important business with Mr. Raman and we must speak to him immediately.”

“You don't mind if my friend here checks you for weapons, do you?” Kapoor said.

“Not at all,” said Holliday. He lifted his arms and spread his legs slightly.

The bodyguard did a thorough pat-down and then did the same for Lazarus. The bodyguard shook his head. Holliday and Lazarus returned to a normal position.

“Follow me,” said Kapoor.

Kapoor led them over to where Raman was watching the cricket match. The men on the practice field were dressed immaculately in white uniforms.

“These two men say they have business with you, boss,” Kapoor said, stepping to one side.

“And who might these gentlemen be?” Raman asked, squinting up from his chair.

“My name is Colonel John Holliday. I was recently at an archaeological dig in a place called Qumran outside Jerusalem. The words ‘The King of the Jews is dead. The Messiah is risen in the East' were carved into the wall of one of the caves there. The same cave where my cousin and her husband were murdered. Those words also appeared in a scroll that was recently stolen from you by a man named Ranjit Dhaliwal.”

“Should I take your word for this or do you have proof?”

“My name is Peter Lazarus. I'm an agent for Interpol and here is your proof.” He handed the portfolio they had removed from the apartment in Paris over to Raman.

Raman unzipped the portfolio and snapped his fingers. The white-coated servant appeared and cleared off the table beside Raman. He laid the open portfolio on the table and began to go through it page by page. When he was finished,
he closed the portfolio and turned back to Holliday. “How do you know it was Dhaliwal?”

“Because I shot him high in the right arm as he was going out the door and because Mr. Lazarus here used his connections to find out who he was and where he was from.”

“Interesting,” said Raman. He continued speaking. “You gentlemen have done me a great service. Surely there is more than altruism involved here.”

“I wish to know where you got the scroll from originally,” said Holliday.

“Why should that be of interest to you?”

“I would have thought it was obvious,” said Holliday. “When I find out who it was, I intend to kill him just the way my cousin and her husband were killed, not to mention getting revenge for the death of my best friend.”

“You are a believer in revenge, then, Colonel Holliday?”

“At one time I would have said I didn't believe in it, but apparently I'm a changed man.” Holliday's voice was chilly with death.

“This is not the place to discuss such things. You will come to my house for dinner tonight and we will discuss your concerns and my interest in Mr. Dhaliwal and his employer. I am beginning to see that what I thought was a simple transaction goes much deeper than the simple buying and
selling of an artifact. Dismiss your driver and come with me. You will be perfectly safe.”

“Why should we trust you?” Lazarus asked.

“Because unlike Mr. Dhaliwal and his employer, I am a man of honor. If I guarantee your safety, I will die myself to secure it. Now come along.”

*   *   *

A 1956 Ford one-ton pickup, its color scraped off almost to the bare metal, sat at the end of a narrow makeshift airfield. In the rear of the truck a .50 caliber heavy machine gun was mounted. It was manned by a figure wearing a filthy shirt and torn trousers along with a hastily wrapped half turban on his head. The man in the cab of the truck, seated behind the wheel, was heavy-set, muscular and dressed entirely in white, except for his neatly wrapped turban, which was jet black.

The light gray Piper Meridian turboprop appeared out of nowhere, its coloring as vague as the Afghan sky. It hit a tiny runway at the extreme end, its single prop reversing almost immediately. By the time it reached the pickup truck it was rolling slowly. It came to a full stop within thirty feet of the truck. Two men climbed down from the aircraft. One was Ranjit Dhaliwal. The other was Rohit Bapat.

As Bapat's sandaled feet touched solid ground,
he fell to his knees and then to his hands in an attitude of prayer. Bapat, who had foolishly gorged himself before flight, vomited. He was always a nervous flier under the best of circumstances, but having had such a large meal accompanied by at least half a dozen bottles of beer was asking for disaster.

Dhaliwal left his boss for a minute and climbed back into the plane. He returned a moment later with a bottle of water. He helped his boss to his feet and handed him the bottle. Bapat accepted it gratefully, and he took a long swig, filling his mouth, then spit it out onto the dusty ground. He took another long draw of the water, swallowing it this time, then handed the rest back to Dhaliwal. Dhaliwal recapped the bottle and slipped it into the pocket of his light linen jacket. Bapat delicately stepped around the pool of vomit and headed toward the pickup truck, the twin barrels of the .50 caliber machine gun following him as he moved. Behind them the single-engine turboprop turned and went hurtling down the runway. It rose into the late-afternoon sky, disappearing in the haze. Bapat reached the passenger side of the truck and pulled open the stiff, resistant door. He sat down beside the driver.

“Your friend rides in the back,” said the man in the black turban.

“There's room enough for him beside me,” said Bapat.

“He rides in the back,” repeated the black-turbaned man.

Bapat turned to Dhaliwal and shrugged.

Without a word Dhaliwal went to the rear of the truck, boosted himself over the transom and sat down on a bench directly behind the machine gunner. Without another word the man in the black turban turned on the engine and threw the old truck into gear, and they turned away from the small airfield.

Three hundred yards away they found a two-lane highway and followed it for about an hour. A side road to the right presented itself and the truck turned, heading toward a low range of hills in the distance. Turning off the side road, they followed a pair of rutted tracks for perhaps fifteen miles before eventually reaching a small compound that looked completely abandoned. They turned in through the gate in the wall and quickly parked.

“Get out,” said the man in the black turban. Bapat did so. He went to the rear of the truck and told Dhaliwal to join him. The truck moved toward the smaller of the two buildings. The smaller building was fitted with two large doors. As the truck approached, the black-turbaned man honked
his horn. Immediately the two doors of the building opened and the truck drove in.

“We must get inside at once,” said the man in the turban. “The drone is due to pass over us in five minutes.”

He pushed Bapat and Dhaliwal toward the simple wooden door. He knocked twice and the door was opened by what appeared to be a low-level servant. The three men stepped inside and the door was closed behind them.

“Take off your shoes,” the turbaned man said. He led them down a carpeted passageway to a small room. There was a single man in it. He was on his knees, moving up and down and muttering prayers under his breath while he touched his chest, lips and closed eyes with his bare hands. He did this for a few moments and then stood.

Bapat bowed deeply and then stood up again and smiled.

It was the man he'd come to see, the most infamous Taliban terrorist in the world and without a doubt the most powerful man in Afghanistan, a man who owned almost one hundred percent of the opium crop in the country and who, despite his power, was almost certainly certifiably insane.

“Mullah Omar,” said Bapat, smiling at the tall bearded man with his right eye sown shut.

Holliday and Lazarus sat in Raman's dining room. It was a simple enough place, a long table made of teak and chairs upholstered in dark blue silk. A breeze blew through the ornately carved shutters and a single stick of sandalwood incense burned on a sideboard on the far side of the room. Above them a pair of four-bladed fans turned gently.

The food was as simple as the room and was brought to the table by several white-jacketed servants. There was rice, dal, pakora, cauliflower mixed with exotic spices, chapatis, a main dish of curried lamb and a jug of mango lassi. For dessert there was cardamom barfi, a rich, sweet confection made from condensed milk.

“You lay an excellent table, Mr. Raman,” said Peter Lazarus.

Holliday smiled. “I don't know much about Indian food at all, but this was really good. It
was kind of you to offer us dinner at such notice.”

“It was my pleasure, Colonel Holliday. In my business I rarely meet with people I can have a decent conversation with.”

“Eventually we're going to have to get down to brass tacks, however,” said Lazarus.

“Allow me a moment or two to pretend that I'm not what I am.” Raman smiled wistfully. “You know, I am the only man in my family to have graduated university. I managed to get quite a good first in history at Oxford. My father wanted me to become something more elevated than head of a criminal empire. That was to be for my older brother, Nadir. Unfortunately, Nadir was both impetuous and stupid. Not a useful combination. He died in a knife fight over the affections of a girl in a nightclub. As the second son it was required of me to take his place.”

“And if that hadn't happened?” Holliday asked.

Raman shrugged. “In India we believe that everything is foretold and that you cannot escape the fate assigned to you. Had Nadir not died that night, he would have been killed eventually for some useless reason. Before I left for Oxford I knew that I would be returning and I think my father did as well. I think my father was very sad
for me that day because he wanted me to be so much more.”

“Why not simply stop?” Holliday asked.

“Because I have sisters, cousins, hundreds of people under my employ whose families depend on me. Because I am at the center of a horde of people, a horde of people I must take care of. I am father to them all.”

“I've heard that rationale before,” said Holliday. “Michael Corleone used it over and over and over to justify his actions. He could have simply walked away from it all right from the start, turned his back with his beautiful bride-to-be and never returned.”

“Yet you, Colonel Holliday, search out the people who killed your cousin. You're as much a hypocrite as Corleone or myself, whatever you think. At the end of your life your family is everything.”

“Who did you purchase the scroll from?” Holliday asked, a bitter tone in his voice.

“From a thief who offered it to me.”

“What would the thief's name be?”

“He never told me his name, only that the scroll could be very valuable in my negotiations with an important man I hope to deal with in Afghanistan.”

At that moment Ali Kapoor entered the room and whispered in Raman's ear. Raman thought for a moment and replied to Kapoor concisely. Kapoor left the room and Raman turned back to his guests.

Raman smiled pleasantly. “It looks like our good friends Mr. Bapat and Mr. Dhaliwal have stolen the march on us.”

“How so?” asked Holliday.

“Apparently Mr. Bapat and Mr. Dhaliwal flew into Afghanistan today and met with the very man I had hoped to do business with. I'm afraid Mr. Bapat's intention is the same as mine, to offer the man in Afghanistan the scroll for what he has to offer.”

“Who is he?” asked Lazarus.

“His name is Mullah Omar. I'm sure you've heard of him, Colonel Holliday.”

“Yes, I've heard of him. He's the most powerful Taliban leader in Afghanistan. There's even word of him being offered the presidency of the country once the Americans have gone for good.”

“Do you know how he got that way?” Raman asked.

“He gained popularity during the Russian occupation and he was even backed by the CIA to foment as much sabotage and discontent as he
could. They paid him a great deal of money to do it.”

“That's only part of the story,” said Raman. “Most of the money wasn't spent the way the CIA intended. Opium has been cultivated in Afghanistan since 300 BC and it is so fundamental to the Afghan economy that the country would fall apart without it. Regardless of American attempts to eradicate the opium crop, Afghanistan is now the largest manufacturer of opium in the world.”

“You're saying that's where Mullah Omar spent the money?” Holliday said.

“Certainly,” said Raman. “He went from village to village buying their opium crop and was seen as being a patriot for supporting hundreds of small villages that would have suffered first under the Russians and then under the Americans. The more opium he purchased, the more he sold. The more he sold, the richer he got. The richer he got, the more opium he could buy. Omar now owns at least half the entire opium crop in Afghanistan and pays the individual growers in advance. Now that's political and economic clout for you.”

“And that was your plan? To buy all this opium from Omar?”

“Yes, but not the same way Bapat is planning to do it. Bapat will buy as much opium as he can
and sell it immediately on the wholesale market, making a quick profit. My intention was twofold. First, I would purchase as much of Omar's crop as possible. And secondly, rather than selling it at once, I would warehouse it and wait for the market to rise.”

“Which it would inevitably do as the sources dried up,” said Lazarus.

“Precisely,” said Raman. “Eventually I would put Omar out of business.”

“How would such a plan put him out of business?” Lazarus asked.

“Because if I hold three-quarters of his crop and the people in the world of drug trading know it, he will have no one else to sell to. This does two things: I become the benefactor of the Afghan farmers, and as a result the Taliban's power is impotent. Imagine how appreciative your government will be about that, Colonel Holliday. They will let me market my opium anywhere I want, except in the United States. A perfectly equitable deal, as far as I'm concerned.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” said Holliday. “Do you really think the United States government would agree to all of that?”

Raman smiled. “They already have.”

“You've got it all worked out, don't you?”

“Most of it.”

“Except for the fact that you don't have the scroll. Bapat does.”

“Bapat is a pig but he is a cunning pig,” said Raman. “He will not have taken the scroll with him on this journey—only some small evidence that it exists and that it is in his possession.”

“So what do you do now?”

“Take it back from him.”

*   *   *

Cardinal Secretary of State Arturo Ruffino sat at the edge of Bruno Orsini's swimming pool at his villa in Tuscany. Beside the cardinal there was a table loaded down with assorted fruits and cheeses and two tall sweating glasses of lemonade. Ruffino had been watching Orsini swim laps for almost fifteen minutes now. According to his wife, this was some sort of midafternoon ritual.

With his exercise finally ended, the man climbed out of the pool. Orsini was of medium height with a potbelly and so much body hair that it was almost obscene. The burly man rubbed his hair with a towel, threw on a robe that was lying at the edge of the pool and draped himself in it. He sat down across the table from Ruffino, stabbed a slab of Asiago cheese and popped it into his mouth.

“So, Your Eminence, what brings you so far from your holy roost in Rome?”

“We have a serious problem, Signore Orsini.”

“And what can P2 do to help?” Orsini replied.

“P2” stood for Propaganda Due, a semifascist Masonic Lodge springing from Mussolini and his jackbooted Blackshirts. Even after Italy fell to the Americans, the British P2 continued to stockpile weapons of all kinds for what they assumed would be a new revolutionary battle for Italy. They became deeply involved with the CIA, and in the early fifties and sixties there were even plans for a CIA-backed coup of the communist government then in power. After being banned in 1976, Propaganda Due went underground once again. Since that time its activities were mainly criminal, although still closely associated with the Vatican.

Orsini picked up a ripe peach and bit into it, the juice running down his chin. He chewed and swallowed, then wiped his face and lips with a napkin.

“Usually when you come to us these days it's to kill someone who's causing you scandals and problems.”

“I'm afraid it's not that simple this time,” said Ruffino. He took a small sip of the lemonade. “This time Propaganda Due may well be the cause of the problem at hand.”

“You came all this way just to insult me?” Orsini said coldly.

“It is hardly an insult, my dear Orsini. As I understand it, your organization purchases more opium than anyone else in Europe. You ship that opium from Italy to Marseille, where it is then turned into heroin. The bulk of that heroin winds up in the United States, with a small portion going to England.”

“What does that have to do with you or your church?” The anger was clear in Orsini's voice now.

“It has everything to do with the Church and your association with it. The Holy See is being blackmailed. Either we underwrite your purchases of opium in much larger quantities than you now purchase or an artifact will be made public that would almost certainly destroy the Holy Church's credibility around the world.”

“Why does that involve us? Nobody's trying to blackmail Propaganda Due.”

“What your criminal organization does is of little interest to me,” said Ruffino. “But now we have been tied together in a relationship almost as bad as the blackmail we now find ourselves fighting.”

“I still don't see what you want me to do,” said Orsini.

“I want you and your thugs to do what they do best. I want them to find the blackmailer, find
the scroll, find anybody else involved and wipe them off the face of the earth.”

*   *   *

The young lieutenant sitting at the video screen was named Martin Rooney. He was five foot nine, had large feet and barely possessed the physical qualifications necessary to be in the American armed forces. He was, however, an excellent video game player and had shelves of trophies in a small apartment in Indian Springs, Nevada, to prove it.

He sat in front of a screen showing the view looking downward from a Predator 2 drone flying dangerously close to the Pakistan border. The drone had been covering the same spot for almost two hours. It was a small compound with a house and a single outbuilding, most likely a garage. The area beneath the drone looked completely unoccupied and there had been no movement for the entire time Rooney had been watching. Rooney's acute eyesight had picked up fresh tire tracks with a wheelbase that probably meant a truck had been there. The tracks led directly to the outbuilding. It was late morning in Nevada, but the sun was setting over the compound in Afghanistan. Rooney was bored. Every now and again he'd take a bite from his Subway cold cut
combo and a slurp from his long-melted extralarge grape Frosty.

“An army of one, my ass,” Rooney muttered under his breath. The forty other young men in the darkened room were probably all of the same opinion. Sometimes it was extremely hard to concentrate on something you knew was taking place halfway around the world. The concentration was made even more difficult by the fact that nothing ever seemed to happen.

*   *   *

Covert ops chief Doug Kitchen sat beside a screen operator in the Afghan desk office on the second floor of CIA headquarters. He'd asked to be pinged when any resources were called up for relay to Russell Smart, which was exactly what he was watching now. The name of the man sitting at the screen was Koppel. He was a nobody in the CIA, just like most of the Company's staff. But little nothings like Koppel helped to gather up the bits and pieces of the puzzle for important people like Kitchen to analyze.

“Mr. Smart ordered the predator run this morning. We're watching it now,” said Koppel.

“What's the relay?” Kitchen asked.

“An unregistered safe house in Arlington.”

“Is there any chatter?” Kitchen asked.

“Yes, sir, quite a bit. Computer and satellite telephone.”

“Who's getting the chatter and where is it being sent?” Kitchen asked.

Koppel checked a second screen on his left. “It looks like Bombay.”

“I want details on my desk within two hours,” said Kitchen. “Every damn word that goes in and out of that place in Arlington.”

“Yes, sir,” said Koppel.

Kitchen stood up, patted the man's shoulder the way you would an obedient dog and went back to his solitary office on the fifth floor to think about what all this meant. He was getting a cold feeling in his fingertips.

Something was going on in the Company—something he wasn't privy to—and that would not do.