The Templar Inheritance (19 page)

FORTY-TWO

Nalan sat across from Hart at the kitchen table. Around them sat Elwand and five other males of assorted ages and sizes. Three of them were in Kurdish dress, the other two in what passed for Western dress in Iran – short-sleeved shirts and razor-creased trousers. All had glasses of tea in front of them, served by Elwand’s grandmother, who wore a long-sleeved dress in green, with a cardigan over the top, and an off-white hooded snood about her head, tied in place with a red and black tribal bandanna.

Elwand’s grandmother firmly refused to sit with the men, but Nalan had no such reservations. It interested Hart that the men seemed to accord Nalan a respect out of all proportion to her age, her sex and her status. Hart imagined this was because of what she and her parents had endured at the hands of the Iraqi Mukhabarat. It was akin to the respect offered in Europe, say, to someone known to have survived Auschwitz.

Nalan spoke in English first, for Hart’s benefit, and then translated what she had said into Kurdish. First off, after saying how sorry she was that he had not been able to find the Copper Scroll he had been looking for, she introduced Hart to the remainder of her male cousins.

‘Elwand you know. This young one here is Bahoz. This Saman. This Zinar. This Navda. This Elind. All six are my uncle’s sons.’

Hart almost said ‘what a busy man’ out of sheer embarrassment. Looking at the young men around him, he was forced to acknowledge that, despite their shared intimacies at Pank, he really didn’t know anything about Nalan at all. ‘The brother of your father?’

‘Yes. My uncle and aunt brought me up, as I told you when we were hiding in the tank in As Sulaymaniyah. So I do not consider these men my cousins. They are my brothers. Three live in Iran.’ She pointed to Elwand, Navda and Elind. ‘Three in Iraq.’ She waved towards the others. ‘This is normal for Kurdish people. During the Iran/Iraq War we supported Iran against Saddam. This is why he was so angry against us. Why he tried to destroy the Kurds with genocide. Why he used chemicals against Halabja in 1988. Five thousand chemical martyrs dead. Ten thousand injured. Our people are still dying of the effects of the chemicals to this day. Halabja is near As Sulaymaniyah, John. In Halabja the Iranians were innocent, and Chemical Ali and Saddam Hussein were guilty. In As Sulaymaniyah the Iraqis were innocent and the Iranians were guilty. This is why life is so complicated for the Kurdish people.’

‘And Hassif?’

Nalan bowed her head. ‘I talked to him again. On the telephone. This is why I have brought you here. To tell you, before you go back to Iraq, that he hates you very much.’

‘Me?’ Hart rocked back in his chair. ‘Why should he hate me?’

‘Please. Be patient. I will explain.’ Nalan looked at her cousins. ‘Things are not as I once thought them. They are more complicated. I thought Hassif was a civilian. That I could lure him in and that my brothers could seal the trap against him. That we would obtain
qesas
this way.’

‘
Qesas
?’

‘The right to retaliation. This is a legal right in Iran. You are offered the alternative between
diyeh
– which is blood money – or
qesas
.’

‘Ah. The
lex talionis
.’

‘What is this?’

‘It is written in the Bible. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot. Burning for burning. Wound for wound. Stripe for stripe. I believe the Koran has much the same thing.’

‘Yes. This is the way Sharia is seen in Shia countries like Iran. We were hoping for this for Hassif. Even though we are Christians and he is Muslim.’

‘But first you would have to capture him.’ Hart was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that Hassif knew about him, and had, seemingly, marked him out for special attention. But he knew Nalan well enough by now to know
that she would only tell him what she wanted him to hear when the moment suited her. She was performing in this room for the benefit of her cousins, that much was clear. She had an agenda.

‘If Hassif was a civilian, this would be easy. I go to see him. My cousins come. We trap him.’

‘So what’s changed?’

Nalan looked at Elind, who appeared to be the oldest of her cousins. ‘Elind work here for the Iranian government.’

Hart could feel his entire body tense up. Had he walked into a trap? What the hell was going on? He tried not to show his inner turmoil. But it was hard. The palms of his hands began to sweat. So did his head, beneath the turban – he could feel the perspiration trickling down the back of his neck. He was tempted to take the turban off and shake it, but he was worried that this might appear insulting in present company. The last thing he wanted was to alienate his last possible hope of getting out of the country. And he certainly didn’t wish to alienate Elind.

‘Elind has found out that Hassif now works for an Iranian government agency as well. He is Shia. Like most Iranians. In Iraq he was head of the Northern Mukhabarat – very high in the intelligence services. Here they have made him Deputy Chief Intelligence Officer, Border District. It is a lesser position. But still powerful enough. His office is here. In Bukan.’

‘Here?’ Hart was feeling more hemmed in by the minute. ‘The Iranians must be mad. Why would they employ an Iraqi in such a sensitive position?’

‘This is simple. Because he hates the Kurds.’

‘But I thought you told me that the Kurds sided with the Iranians during the Iran/Iraq War?’

‘They did. But now that the Kurds are more powerful, both inside and outside Iran, the Iranians want to harness them. This is why they employ Hassif. This is why Elind believes Hassif is behind the As Sulaymaniyah car bomb attack. This is why Hassif hates you.’

‘What the heck for? Because I killed the suicide bomber? One of his?’

‘Yes. You were made a hero by the Western press. You humiliated him in front of his masters. This is why he has made it a condition for me, in order to stop him from publicly disrespecting my mother and father, that I betray you to him. That I somehow lure you back to Iraq and betray you to his assassins there.’

‘Is this why you’ve brought me here? To Bukan? Is that what this is all about?’

Hart couldn’t help noticing that Nalan did not translate what he had just said to her cousins. Elwand, who could understand English, half stood up from his chair, and then dropped back again at a sign from Nalan.

‘No. I would never do this. How could you think this of me, John, after what we have been through together?’ Nalan lowered her eyes. ‘The truth is that I had thought not to see you again until I returned to Iraq. That Elwand would return you to the village and that the villagers, grateful to you for what you did for Ronas and Bemo, would guide you back over
the mountain. But when I heard the news of Hassif – that he had a high position here, that he had real power – I thought it only right to tell you face to face of what he said to me. To warn you, before you return to Iraq. Before you return home.’ She fixed Hart with her gaze. ‘Hassif has a long arm. And he is a vengeful man. Listen to me. He will harm you in some way. Maybe not now. Maybe not tomorrow. But some day. When you least expect it. Even in England. You will never be safe.’

‘So you knew he hated me before we entered Iran?’

Nalan shook her head in irritation. ‘I knew this, yes. But I pay it no attention. Hassif wants me too much to care whether I betray you or not. It was purely a bargaining counter to get to me. He knows he can find you himself when the time comes. You are a photojournalist. A man who seeks out dangerous places. There is no man easier to kill than you.’ She half-inclined her head, seemingly aware that Hart was having difficulty following her logic – the logic of a war forever fought within the shifting borders of the mind. ‘No. His plan was to put more pressure on me that way. By seeming to relent about you, he counted on gaining better access to me.’

‘But why? Why this fixation on you?’

‘I am the one he left behind, John. The witness to his barbarities. For him it is personal against my family. He wishes to destroy me, just as he destroyed my father and mother.’

‘You knew this and yet you still came? He might have had you picked up at the border.’

Nalan brushed the thought away with her hand. ‘Such power he does not have. There is chaos at the border. Hundreds pass
through every hour. Trucks, vans, cars, pedestrians, jihadists, refugees from Syria, black marketeers. And I told you already why I come here. We Kurds are tribal. My brothers wish to avenge their uncle and aunt. This is a blood feud with us. And I am the means they can use to approach Hassif. It is my duty to form the bridge they can travel over to take revenge. Even at the cost of my life.’ She stood up. ‘So. Now I have told you what you need to know, Elwand will take you back to the village. In one day, maybe two, new
kulbars
from the village will cross back into Iraq. You will go with them.’

‘What? They’d still travel over despite what happened to Ronas and Bemo?’

‘What happened to Ronas and Bemo happens all the time. It was not because of you. It was not because of anyone. It was the will of God. Others will get through where they failed. The village needs to live. This is how they live. You will pay them one hundred dollars again, just as you did last time.’

Elwand interrupted her. ‘No. He needs not to pay. I talk to the village. He save Bemo. He bring Ronas back for his family to bury. The Britannia does this when he could have run back to Iraq and saved himself. They guide him back as honoured guest to Iraq. No payment.’

Hart was feeling more bewildered by the minute. He had somehow managed to stumble into a culture that appeared to take part of its ethos from the Middle Ages, and part from an equally unfashionable sense of chivalric morality. The result was unsettling in the extreme. It made him feel powerless. And guilt-stricken for his mistake in treating everything as
a sort of game. It was definitely no game for Nalan and her cousins. ‘And Elwand is to take me back to the village now? This minute?’

‘Yes. What you needed to do here is done.’

‘And how do you intend to get close to Hassif, Nalan? With this new position you tell me he has, he will have bodyguards. Protection. There’s not a chance in hell that you will get near him unless he wants you to.’

‘This is what my brothers and I are deciding now. How I should sacrifice myself to give them access to Hassif.’

‘Sacrifice yourself?’ Hart shook his head in despair. ‘Sacrifice yourself? And you seriously intend going through with this?’

‘I can never forgive this man for what he did. For what he made me watch. For the injury he did to my parents. And for the injury he still intends doing to their memory.’

Hart looked around himself. At the faces of Nalan’s cousins. At her face. At the faces in the family photographs hanging on the wall. He could feel everything he had gone through in the past few weeks needling through his body like the prelude to a particularly pernicious form of blood poisoning. ‘Tell me this much then. Am I right in thinking that Hassif is a greedy man? An ambitious man? A man who will care very much what his new masters think of him? Is this a fair summing up of his character?’

At first Nalan hesitated, as though Hart had gone too far. Then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh yes. Very much. He will care very much what his new masters think of him. This
goes without saying. He will not be strong in this. They will be watching him. Weighing him up.’

‘And he hates me? Wants revenge on me? You’re sure of this?’

Nalan frowned. It was clear that she did not understand why Hart was persisting with his line of questioning. But still she translated everything that Hart was saying for her cousins’ benefit. ‘Yes. This surprised me too. But he hates you for what you did. Made my betrayal of you a condition of whatever we could agree about my family. I told you why.’

Hart laid both hands on the table, as a man will do when he wishes to demonstrate that he holds no concealed weapons. ‘Then I have a plan. A way for me to pay back some little part of what I owe you.’

Nalan shook her head. Her brow cleared, as if everything had been magically explained to her. ‘No, John. It will not be enough for you to sacrifice yourself on my behalf. This will not satisfy him. It is me he wants.’

Hart opened his hands. He looked round the table. ‘Then let’s give him both of us. With a little cream on top for good measure.’

FORTY-THREE

Rahim Hassif watched the prisoner’s hands being tied behind one of his legs, high on the upper thigh. Despite the man’s pleas, he was brusquely upended on the ground and his shoes and socks taken off. A pole, maybe three inches thick, was brought in from outside the room and the man’s bare feet tied to it, their soles facing outwards. The pole was then raised by two guards, one on each end, until the man’s legs were at waist height to the guard holding the rubber piping – the man’s head, too, was forcibly raised off the ground, thanks to the position of his bound arms behind his thigh.

The prisoner was now effectively pinioned, with the main part of his body on the cement floor, and his feet vulnerable. It was a position Hassif had studied scientifically, and which was designed to cause its victim maximum discomfort and apprehension. The guard with the rubber hosepipe stepped back and looked at Hassif. Hassif nodded.

The guard began to beat the man’s feet. The man screamed.
Then screamed again. Soon the screaming and the beating became one. A continuous loop.

Hassif watched for a little while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He turned away from the beating and lit a cigarette. He had missed a trick with the Abuna girl, and he knew it. He had ordered all borders watched for a woman with her name, but no one had paid him any attention. He still had no real clout with the Iranian military hoi polloi – or not remotely what he had had in Iraq. Underlings nodded, said they would do what he asked, and then ignored his requests in favour of their own agendas.

The Abuna girl had actually phoned him from somewhere inside Iran. That much was certain. The telecommunications people nominally under his command were far more effective at gathering intelligence than the border people, who were corrupt worms, more interested in squeezing blood out of a stone than in serving their country. He would hang them all out to dry one day. That much he promised.

The man being beaten stopped shrieking. Hassif walked round the sweating guards to check on the condition of the prisoner’s feet. The guards were sweating because it was hard work holding a pole with a man’s legs attached, and acting at the same time as shock absorbers for the blows he was receiving.

‘Twenty more.’

‘But he is unconscious, Effendi.’

‘Then he won’t notice the extra blows. But he will feel them later when he tries to walk. In this way we will mitigate the advantage he has taken over us in falling unconscious.’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

The beating continued. Hassif thought about Nalan some more. He wanted her now very much. The smell of blood always had this effect on him. It went straight to his crotch. He threw away his cigarette and strode out of the cell.

In ten minutes he was back at his office, sorting through his videos of Nalan’s mother being raped. He slid one into the machine and ran it. He began to masturbate. Then his phone rang.

Hassif almost didn’t take the call. But it might be his boss, inquiring after the prisoner being beaten. The man had insulted a senior official in some way. His boss had asked Hassif, as a personal favour, to humiliate the man, and cause him to be punished. Hassif hadn’t hesitated. The senior official in question had serious clout. Hassif never ignored men who had clout. It was the way he had made it to the top in Iraq. Why shouldn’t the same work here?

‘It is I. Nalan Abuna.’

Hassif sat up in his chair. It was a long time since anyone had spoken Kurdish to him. He was almost tempted to do up his trousers, but some perverse streak caused him to leave them open. ‘I was hoping to hear from you. I am looking at a video of your mother right now. I am sorry the sound is muted, or I would play it to you over the phone. But for this I would need to stand up and go over to the player. And I cannot be bothered.’

The truth was that Hassif was still not sure of the people working for him in the anteroom situated directly outside his
office. He assumed that half of them had been ordered to spy on him – this much was a given. It simply wouldn’t do for him to be heard watching the equivalent of loud porn videos in his office during working hours. The truth was that he hid his whisky drinking, also, and used a powerful fan to mitigate the scent of his Havana cigars. These Iranian cocksuckers were up their own arses when it came to religious practice. Until he was more secure in his position, it behove Hassif to at least seem to toe the line in terms of the Five Pillars.

‘I know you are in Iran,’ Hassif continued, still in Kurdish. At least his use of the language might make any eavesdropping that much more difficult. ‘So I also know you have decided to come to see me, as I requested. There is no danger for you. I merely wish to show you certain things pertaining to your parents. Have you the Britannia for me? Or have you thought of a way to discredit him? Perhaps if you accused him of rape? This would be satisfactory. English people seem to take rape very seriously. Far more seriously than your mother or father took it. I am looking at your mother now being raped. It makes me very nostalgic. I am sorry she is dead. She was such an accommodating woman. I caused her to believe that if she volunteered herself, we would spare you, her daughter, from a similar fate. She found this difficult in the extreme. But she managed it. I have the proof here in front of me. I would very much like to share it with you. In fact I would like to share it with the world. But I realize that this may seem unreasonable from your perspective. So. Do we have an accommodation like the one
I entered into with your mother? Your father, I fear, never appreciated the value of compromise. It was a shame. He studied in the same university as me, you know? We were fellow students. It hurt me very much, all that he did.’

Hassif waited. He could pick up the tension at the other end of the line. He was good at picking up tension. It was his stock-in-trade.

‘John Hart is in Iran.’

Hassif set the video player to pause. The action he was watching was distracting in the extreme. How strange to be talking to the daughter while watching the mother being raped. And more than twenty years after the event had happened. Hassif felt absurdly pleased with himself. He had engineered this whole process from the beginning. It was outrageously beguiling. Just the sort of situation he most relished – one in which he enjoyed all the power, and his victim had none.

‘In Iran, you say?’

‘Yes. He is here in pursuit of something of great value.’

Hassif’s ears pricked up. ‘What, of great value, could a Britannia hope to find here? Except his death, of course.’

‘If I tell you this, and cause you to secure this object, together with the Britannia, will you agree to hand over to me all the material you hold in your possession concerning my mother, my father and me?’

Ah. Barter. Hassif understood this so well. Barter was at the essence of being Arab. He could feel the blood pulsing through him again. This time in different directions.

‘How valuable is this object the Britannia wants?’

‘So valuable that the Jews would pay nearly anything for it.’

‘The Jews?’

‘Yes. The Jews.’

Hassif did some quick mental calculations. Deputy Chief Intelligence Officer, Border District, was all very well. The bribes were good, although the pay was non-existent. But it was not the sort of sinecure he had become used to in Iraq. No. He would never reach those heady heights again. He was sure of it.

‘The Jews would buy this thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it is easily portable?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the Britannia has it?’

‘No. Not yet. But he knows where to find it. It is for this reason alone that he has entered Iran illegally. And I know when and how he will go to where it can be found.’

‘And you wish to tell me this?’

‘Only if we can come to an accommodation.’

Hassif thought for a moment. But it was only a moment. He had not achieved all he had in this world without knowing when to take risks. When to plunge. He could happily leave the Iranian government out of this. Hire himself some thugs – he knew just where to find those. Secure the Britannia and whatever he was looking for. Or, more likely, already had. Then dispose of the Britannia and the Abuna girl as and how he saw fit. And if the object was as valuable as the
Abuna girl declared, he could negotiate with the Jews and get them to fill up his foreign bank accounts for him. Then he could show Iran and the fucking Iranians a clean set of heels, have his face and passport fixed, and live a new life. In South America maybe. Or the Caribbean. Some place where everything can be bought, if you know how power works, and if you are sensible enough to keep the bulk of your money tied up safely elsewhere.

‘What is this object?’

Nalan told him.

At first Hassif was tempted to laugh. But something halted him. This idea of the Copper Scroll, and how the truth of its location was found – the Holy Spear, the concealed parchment – all this was far too outlandish to be a trick. Nobody would think this nonsense up and expect a man like him to be gulled by it. Hassif was a trained interrogator. When people made up stories, they made up stories they thought you would believe. As Nalan spoke to him he fiddled with his mouse and did some furtive checking on the computer. The facts he found tallied with what the Abuna girl was saying. If it was a honey trap, it was a very elaborate one.

‘And you can prove that this is what he is after? And that he knows exactly where to find it? And then you can give him to me?’ Hassif could feel the laughter urge beginning to overwhelm him, but still he forced it back. How naive this silly little girl was to think that she could trick him. Copper Scroll or no Copper Scroll, he would emerge the victor from this trade he was about to undertake with her. Revenge.
Riches. They were all the same in the end. They weighed up similarly in the great scales. Both were equally sweet.

‘Yes.’

‘You will come here to my office, of course. With the requisite proof.’

‘I cannot do that. You know I cannot do that.’

‘Then I will release film of your mother and father on the Internet.’

‘I don’t think you will. I know of your position now in the Iranian government hierarchy. I think we are both after different things. But we both need to protect our backs. I want what you have. You want what I have.’

‘But I do not know what you have.’

‘If I cause the Britannia to be held? And for you to come and see him?’

This time Hassif did laugh.

‘Then what?’ said Nalan. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘Where is he coming to collect this scroll? And when? This is what I need to know.’

‘Do we have a deal?’

Hassif made a fluttering motion with his hand, which of course Nalan could not see. He was enjoying this process immensely. ‘You know I will come with many people. You know that he will have no chance of escape.’

‘I know that. Of course I know that. But I need bona fides.’

‘What?’

‘I need proof that you will do what you promised.’

‘Give you what I have, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. I tell you what. I will put some videos in the post to you. By courier. You will get them later today.’

‘You are joking.’

Hassif shrieked with laughter. Then he remembered the people outside his office. It wouldn’t do to sound as if he was enjoying something outside of official matters. Someone might start asking questions. These Iranians had no sense of humour. ‘Yes. I am joking. I am testing you. To see how stupid you are. But you are oh so clever. Like your mother. She knew what to do. Who was boss.’

‘You are the boss. I know it.’

Hassif nodded his head. ‘Good. This is an improvement. Now we are getting somewhere.’ He thought quickly. Maybe someone was taping this call. Maybe all his calls were being taped and he didn’t know it. He was receiving this on a personal pay-as-you-go mobile phone. One not associated with his office. But still. He had already prejudiced himself by asking the border area guards to look out for the Abuna girl. In his opinion it had been a risk worth taking. The request had been buried amongst a dozen others. Which was why those lazy corrupt bastards had not prioritized it. But the communications people were a different matter entirely from the border guards. They were hardline servants of the state. He had made one call to the Abuna girl on his office phone. Just one, before he had been able to pass her his mobile number. Maybe this had been a mistake and maybe not. It was too soon to tell.

‘I will send a man. In a car. One man. To Kitakeh. He will leave a parcel. Wherever you want. A present from me. Then you will phone. Tell me where the Britannia is going. You will be there too. This is essential for me. I have things I need to show you. You will be in no danger. I am a kind man. Although you may not think so. But much has changed. I knew your father well. I liked him so much before he betrayed me.’ Hassif stopped. He listened hard for any sounds at the other end of the line. Maybe he had gone too far. Maybe he had curdled the milk with his lies.

‘We will both be there. If what you show me has any value to me, that is.’

‘Oh yes. Believe me. It has value to you. Much value. And value to me. I am a sentimental man. I honour the past. It will cost me much to part with it. Do we have a deal?’

Nalan held her silence for the count of five. Now Hassif was doing the asking. This was how it should be. ‘Yes, Hassif. We have a deal.’