The Sword of the Templars (34 page)

Holliday got to his feet, still hanging on to the sword. The glass in the battery-powered lamp was broken, but enough light was coming down from above to light their way. Peggy abandoned the lamp, and clutching the shotgun, she and Holliday managed to get Rodrigues up. They stumbled forward toward the light. Holliday felt a few splashes of rain on his face, and above them thunder roared. A moment later they reached the ragged end of the lava tube exit and stepped out onto the rugged surface of the ancient crater and into the teeth of a biting wind and a growing storm. A bolt of spiked lightning flashed across the gray-black clouds roiling overhead.

“The badger comes out of his lair,” said a voice. “A little the worse for wear, it would seem.”

Axel Kellerman. He was dressed like the quintessential British country squire in a tweed suit with a waistcoat, walking boots, and a rabbit-skin trilby hat. He sat perched on a flat ledge of broken stone a few feet from the entrance to the lava tunnel. In the distance, almost half a mile away between the two volcanic lakes, Holliday could see Rodrigues’s isolated cottage. More rain began to spatter down. Above them the storm was breaking, the winds pulling at their clothes. Thunder rolled.

Seeing Kellerman standing there dressed like that and in those circumstances, Holliday suddenly realized just how insane the SS officer’s son really was, living out some Goethe-like
Sturm und Drang
aristocratic fantasy. Kellerman wasn’t alone; one of his blond thugs stood close to him, machine pistol held to the neck of Manuel Rivero Tavares, the captain of the
San Pedro
.

Between Peggy and Holliday, Rodrigues sagged to the ground.

“Put the shotgun down, Miss Blackstock,” said Kellerman, smiling. “You can keep the sword for now, Dr. Holliday. It suits you.”

Peggy carefully did as she was told.

Holliday kept his eyes firmly on Kellerman.

“I’m very sorry,
Doutor
,” said Tavares, his eyes pleading. “I could not help it.”

“A few simple threats,” said Kellerman. “Apparently the good captain has grandchildren. Little girls.”

He looked past them down the ragged hole in the ground.

“I gather from the noise a few moments ago that some of my employees fell afoul of some sort of IED.” Kellerman grimaced. “That’s more lives you owe me, Dr. Holliday, although they served their purpose. Now at least I know where my legacy is hidden. It only remains for me to retrieve it.”

“The legacy isn’t yours any more than it was your father’s,” said Holliday. He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly in his hand. “It doesn’t belong to any one man.”

“It belongs to anyone who takes it,” spat Kellerman, getting to his feet and stepping closer. “The world has always been that way. Victory to the strong.” He sneered down at the curled still figure of Rodrigues. “Defeat to the weak.”

“We’ve all heard that filth before,” said Holliday. “ ‘
Arbeit macht frei
,’ ‘
Kraft durch Freude
,’ ‘
Drang nach Osten
,’ and in the end none of it came to pass.” He shook his head. “You’re nothing more than a dirty joke gone wrong, Kellerman, just like your father before you.”

Light flashed in the New World Nazi’s eyes. He surged forward, fumbling beneath his tightly buttoned jacket, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. There was a blinding flash of lightning and an enormous thunderclap. The heavens opened.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

“
Vai-te foder!”
Tavares said furiously. He brought his foot down hard on the blond thug’s instep and threw himself wildly to one side. Reacting instantly, Peggy dropped to the ground, swept up the shotgun, and pulled both triggers. The heavy gun jumped in her hands, the butt thumping back into her shoulder. The thug made a grunting sound and sat down on the ground abruptly, staring down at the plate-sized bleeding hole in his belly as the torrential rainfall began.

Kellerman had his weapon out, a flat little Walther PPK. He kept coming, lifting the pistol in his hand.

Holliday didn’t even think twice. The sword came up, and he took one step forward, setting his leg with the knee slightly bent and his elbow locked. Unable to stop his forward momentum Kellerman ran onto the blade, unblooded for more than seven hundred years. It sliced through the thick tweed of his waistcoat, his shirt and the flesh just beneath the xiphoid process of his diaphragm. Still going forward, the broad wedge of Damascus steel thrust through both the right ventricle and left atrium of his heart before it finally ground against his spine. The furious light went out in the madman’s eyes, and Kellerman died, skewered.

Holliday stepped back, pulling the sword out of the man’s body with a light twisting movement to break the inevitable suction. There was a ghastly sucking sound as the blade slid out of Kellerman’s chest. The dead man slithered to the ground. Holliday dropped the sword and turned, trying to wipe the rain out of his eyes.

Peggy was on her knees, one hand cradling her bruised shoulder, staring at the corpse of the blond thug, the blood from his wound diluted by the rain into a spreading pink puddle on the rocky ground.

“Are you all right?” Holliday asked, bending over her.

“Just fine,” she said quietly, staring vacantly at the man she’d just blown out of his socks. “Peachy.”

Tavares sat on the ground, cradling Rodrigues’s head in his lap, the steady rain soaking them both. Holliday knelt beside them.

“He is my friend,” whispered Tavares, weeping, the words catching wetly in his throat. He stroked Rodrigues’s forehead soothingly. “My dear, dear friend for all these years. I cannot let him die.”

Rodrigues opened his eyes, blinking them hard against the rain.

“We all die, Emmanuel,” murmured the ex-priest.

He made a small sighing noise, managing to lift his hand and grip Tavares’s broad, hairy wrist. He turned his head slightly so that he could see Holliday above him.

“Keep Manuel close. He is brother to my soul and knows about everything. He has been my eyes and ears in the world of men for a long time.”

“I will,” promised Holliday, feeling his own eyes dampen, trying to tell himself it was the rain.

“Kellerman is dead?”

“Very,” nodded Holliday.

“Good enough,” murmured Rodrigues. “Good enough.” He sighed again. “Then the torch is passed.
Iacta alea est
.
Vale, amici
.” The ex-priest lifted his head from Tavares’s lap. His eyes stared up at the dark sky, seeing nothing now. “Too many secrets,” he whispered. “Too many secrets.” He made one last, small sound, closed his eyes, and died.

The rain crashed down in long, weeping curtains all around them in the bowl of the island crater.

Peggy rose, turned away from the two dead men, and put her hand on Holliday’s shoulder.

“We never really knew him,” she said sadly, looking down at Rodrigues.

“And now we never will.”

“What was that he said at the end?”

“
Iacta alea est
. It’s what Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon and entered Roman territory, defying the Senate and starting civil war.”

“What does it mean?”

“ ‘The die is cast.’ There’s no way to turn back from destiny now. He meant for you and for me.”

“And the last ‘
Vale, amici
’?”

“ ‘Farewell, friends,’ ” said Holliday softly.

Two hours later they sat in the snug cabin of the
San Pedro
, wrapped in blankets, a kettle whistling on the small gas stove. Peggy got up from the little table and began making tea. With Holliday and Peggy in the
San Pedro
bobbing gently at anchor in the tiny harbor, Tavares was dealing with the embarrassment of dead bodies back at Rodrigues’s little cottage. The rain still thundered down, hammering on the cabin roof of the old Chris-Craft, and, according to Tavares at least, making his job much easier. They would stay aboard the
San Pedro
tonight, and tomorrow the rotund captain would take them across the narrow strait to Flores and a flight back to civilization.

Holliday sat at the table, leafing through the fat little notebook Rodrigues had insisted he take from his pocket.
Aos
, Sword of the East, cleaned and dried, lay on a folded towel in front of him. Peggy put two mugs of hot sweet tea on the table and slid down the upholstered bench beside Holliday. Rain streaked against the cabin window behind her, and she snuggled down into the blanket, pulling it around her more tightly. She shivered and took a sip of the tea.

“What’s in the book?”

“Names and addresses,” said Holliday. “Hundreds of them. People all over the world. Something called the Phoenix Foundation and some sort of special prefix number I’ve never seen before. Figures and letter codes that look like they might be bank accounts.”

“Is Raffi in the book?”

“No.” He smiled. “I haven’t seen it so far.”

“But you checked, didn’t you, Doc?”

“Of course.” He grinned.

“Still suspicious?” Peggy asked.

“Always,” said Holliday.

“I’m going to see him when we get out of here,” she said, a little defensively. “See how he’s doing in the hospital. See if he could use some help.”

“Bring him a box of candies?”

“Maybe even flowers.” She smiled. “Guys never get flowers.”

“Give him my best,” said Holliday. “I mean that.”

“Thanks, I’ll tell him.”

There was a long pause. They sipped their tea and listened to the raindrops rattling on the cabin roof, both wondering how they’d come from here to there and back again, wondering what was coming next. Finally, Peggy spoke.

“It’s not over yet, is it, Doc?”

Holliday glanced at the gleaming sword on the table, bright steel forged an eon ago in the desert sun of Damascus, reaching across time to slay its enemy.

“No,” he answered, flipping the pages of the little book. “I don’t think it’s over, not for us, not by a long shot.”

It was late September now. There was a chill in the air, and Holliday had laid kindling in the little tiled hearth of the fireplace in his living room. It was blazing well, the flames making flickering shadows dance across the book-lined walls. Time to add a log or two and then relax after a long day of teaching.

The reinforced FedEx box from José de Braga’s shop in Quebec City was leaning up against the armchair by the fire. A glass of Ardbeg Lord of the Isles single malt stood waiting for him on the side table. But he wasn’t ready for either the box or the drink just yet.

Holliday went to the window at the front of the room and stared out into the gathering night. Through the trees and down the hill he could see the modern brick bulk of Eisenhower Hall. Beyond it the Hudson River wound its dark way toward Manhattan and the sea.

A thousand miles or so farther were the Azores, where Rodrigues and Kellerman had both died and where his life and Peggy’s had changed forever. After Peggy had gone back to Jerusalem to be with Raffi, Holliday had returned here to West Point.

Everything seemed as it should be. A thousand fresh-faced and earnest plebes, triumphant survivors of Beast Barracks, back from six weeks of basic-training hell and willing to learn—even if it was just history. A thousand ring-thumpers who were sure they knew everything, but who really didn’t know anything at all about what waited for them in the real world. And him, Lieutenant Colonel John “Doc” Holliday, who was starting to think that he’d fought one too many battles and seen one too many good people die for no good reason.
Gung ho!
and
Huah!
were Hollywood, but it would take these kids a long time to learn that. Too long for some of them, and some wouldn’t have time to learn at all.

He let out a long breath and turned away from the window. He went back to the armchair and tore open the heavy box. He drew out the restored weapon from the famous swordsmith’s shop and examined it in the glimmering light of the fire.

De Braga had done a wonderful job; the gold wire with its coded message had been perfectly rewound over the tang, and the silky, iridescent sheen of the yard-long Damascus blade had been polished to an almost magical brilliance. Somewhere, four thousand miles and almost a thousand years away, a dead knight smiled in his grave.
Hesperios
, the Sword of the West.

Holding it carefully in both hands Holliday took the sword to the fireplace and eased it onto the slotted wooden pegs that awaited it above the mantel. He stood back. It looked as though it belonged. But for how long?

“Sword of the Templars,” said Holliday to the empty room. What had Rodrigues said? “Too many secrets”? He’d told Peggy that he didn’t think the story had ended for them, and now he was even surer of it. Something was coming, something dark and forbidding. He stared up at the gleaming sword, its purity and perfection suddenly nothing more than a shallow arc of malevolent steel.

“Now what?” he asked.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Brent Howard and Claire Zion at NAL for giving me the idea, the entrancing and spiffy looking Leora, the best nurse in the world, and her fiancé, the real Raffi Wanounou, for letting me steal his wonderful name. Mazel tov to both of you.

ALSO BY PAUL CHRISTOPHER

Michelangelo’s Notebook
The Lucifer Gospel
Rembrandt’s Ghost
The Aztec Heresy

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The research contained in
The Sword of the Templars
is accurate. Saladin really did offer Richard the Lionheart terms on the fall of Jerusalem that were refused, resulting in great slaughter.

A hoard of Phoenician coins really was discovered during the building of Castle Pelerin (Pilgrim Castle) by the Templars in A.D. 1213. Exactly the same type of coins were discovered on the remote island of Corvo in the Portuguese Azores in the mid-1800s, more than six hundred years later.