The Templar Inheritance (20 page)

FORTY-FOUR

‘But what if he comes with many men, as he says? He could surround the place. Bring in helicopters. Seal every road. None of us would stand a chance. He’d just sweep us into his net.’

This was the first time Hart had been alone with Nalan since his return from Solomon’s Prison. Her cousins had dispersed. Her grandmother had grudgingly left for the market without being able to persuade her unmarried granddaughter to accompany her. Hart was meant to be resting in his room. But, glory be to God, Nalan had come in to tell him about her call to Hassif.

‘This area around the volcano cannot be sealed, John. You have seen it. You have been there with Elwand. One road in and one road out. But around it, mountains and plain. Hassif would need a thousand men to secure it.’

‘Still. He has every advantage. We will have none.’

‘We have his greed.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘I remember him.’

‘Three- to five-year-old children, as you were at the time you were imprisoned at Amna Suraka, don’t remember such things.’

‘I remember.’

Hart shook his head. ‘You remember what you have been told since. Or what you imagined when you revisited that place a few years ago.’

‘No. I remember everything. When we were freed by the Peshmerga I was nearly six years old. I remember Hassif drinking whisky while my mother was being raped. And eating
kleicha
and
qatayef
so greedily that the cheese ran down his beard. I remember him pretending to offer me some, and not knowing whether to take it or not, as I was so hungry. I remember my mother weeping in humiliation as he offered them to her, and then weeping more when he raped her himself and wiped his fingers down her face and breasts to clean them. This man is greedy. He wants things for himself. Now he wants me and the scroll.’

Hart could feel the blood draining from his face. When Nalan spoke to him like this, it was as if he was talking to a stranger. She was somewhere else. Somewhere he couldn’t hope to reach her. ‘He wants me too, remember that. Are you sure that the kudos of catching a British spy on Iranian soil – because that’s how he’ll spin it – won’t outweigh the rest? I’ll be bait enough, surely. You have no need to risk yourself.’

Hart’s interjection had allowed Nalan enough time to compose herself. She sat down a few feet away from him on the bed. ‘Elind knows for whom Hassif works in the government. He is not in a strong position there. They will distrust him because of who he is and what he was. They will use him, but they will distrust him. We are offering him a way to get out of the country. A way to get significant money. You are the cream, as you say. You are his security if things go wrong. He will have something to show his bosses. A reason for his apparent misbehaviour. But it is me he really wants. I know this in my bones. He will only agree to come for the two of us.’

‘You know he will not come alone.’

‘This, too, we understand. It is a risk we must take.’

Hart hunched forwards on the side of the bed. He stared at Nalan. ‘This thing with Hassif was always on the agenda, wasn’t it? Even before I met you? You and your family have been waiting all this time, haven’t you, to get your revenge? And the bombing triggered it. It brought him out into the open.’

Nalan shook her head. ‘This is not true. We thought he was dead. We thought someone had killed him when Saddam was brought down, that maybe he was the unknown man who died with Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, at the final shootout. When they were betrayed for the Yankee blood money. The truth is we did not know what to think. Hassif had disappeared into thin air. Now we know he was in Iran all this time. This has changed everything.’

‘But you still think my plan can work?’

‘Only God knows what will work and what will not. God placed us here to make our own decisions. You came here for the Copper Scroll. It was a dead end. Your ancestor misled you. But your presence is a gift to us. To me and my family. You can still say no, John. Still go back to the village. You will be back in Iraq in a couple of days. Back to your old life. As if nothing had happened.’

‘You know why I will never do that.’

‘Do I?’ She looked at him.

Hart raised his hand, intending to cover hers. He ended up by placing it on the bed between them. ‘Yes. For you. I will stay for you.’

FORTY-FIVE

Rahim Hassif was not a man to take risks lightly. His entire life was premised on weighing up the advantage and disadvantage of any action, and basing any future course he chose to take on the outcome of his cogitations. So he had made some calls. Privately. On a newly bought phone that was untraceable. He had used a pseudonym too. He had chosen the name of a Lebanese Christian. He could manage the accent. No Jew would be able to pick it apart.

First he had called the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The one which housed the Dead Sea Scrolls. He had been very cautious. He had talked only generally. But it soon became apparent that the Copper Scroll, if it did indeed hold the secrets of King Solomon’s plans for the new Temple of Jerusalem, and the location of the lost treasures of Solomon – to include the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle and the wherewithal to rebuild the Temple to a preset design – would be cheap at any price. The Jews would mortgage half their state to get their hands on it.

Next he had telephoned Bernhardi, Tauschwitz and Seeligman in New York. During his time as head of the Mukhabarat, Hassif had had occasion to buy certain artefacts for Uday Hussein, who had been an avid collector and hoarder of valuable items. Uday was in the habit of helping himself to articles, too, from the Iraqi National Museums collection, on what might charitably be called a permanent loan basis, and then selling them privately, via amenable dealers, to generate a little ready cash with which to fund his pleasures and his own private collections. BT&S had been Hassif’s first port of call whenever one of these eventualities had happily presented itself.

Nothing had changed. Yussuf Bernhardi recognized his voice immediately. He had shown no surprise at Hassif contacting him from, as it were, beyond the grave.

‘I won’t tell you where I am,’ said Hassif.

‘And I won’t ask you.’

The conversation had gone on from there, taking pretty much the same line as the conversation with the custodian at the Israel Museum had taken. But this time Bernhardi had talked real money, as Hassif had known he would.

‘We would pay ten million dollars.’

‘That does not seem a lot, in the circumstances.’

‘But we would be taking all the risks. These things take time to certify. The item or items will have to be authenticated. Politics will be involved. There will be much publicity. We will be forced to operate in its full glare. Not to speak of the perils of attribution.’

‘There will be no attribution problems. The object will have been found on land I own in the Lebanon. On this land there are caves. It will be found in there.’

‘But your name. . .’

‘Is not on the deeds. Another name is. A name I will be using from the day after tomorrow.’

There was a heavy silence from the New York end of the line. ‘And where will you be based for this transaction?’

‘Bermuda.’

‘Ah. Good choice. An excellent climate. Easy access to the USA.’

‘I will not be going to the USA.’

‘But your representative will?’

‘No. You will be coming to Bermuda.’

‘I see.’

‘And you will be bringing twenty million dollars with you. In bearer bonds.’

‘Twenty million? That is impossible. And bearer bonds are far too dangerous now. Our government has clamped down on them since your time.’

‘I have spoken to the Israel Museum. The Jews will pay anything you ask for this scroll. And there are one hundred million dollars’ worth of bearer bonds still in circulation. It is those or nothing else.’

‘But I’ve told you about the risks.’

‘Then I will phone London. You know exactly who I will call.’

‘No. No. Don’t do that. I’m sure we can come to some accommodation.’

‘Yes. A twenty-million-dollar accommodation.’

The conversation had continued along those lines for some little time. The final sum agreed had been fifteen million. In bearer bonds. Five per cent on delivery. Residue on authentication. Hassif liked dealing with professionals. And he had a track record. Nothing he had ever traded had proved a fake. BT&S must have made a fortune out of him in the past. They would make one again from the scroll. But fifteen million was fifteen million. It was enough, with what he had salted away already, to allow a man to live out his retirement in luxury. And it never did to be too greedy. Leave that to the man you were dealing with.

Hassif made some more phone calls. For a long time now he had been in the habit of weighing up the prisoners who fell into his hands to see if any might, one day, be of service to him. These lucky few, once certain undertakings and safeguards had been put into place, he agreed to let go. It was to these men he now addressed himself. They were the lowest of the low, of course, but they would do the trick. They feared the Iranian state – and they feared the things Hassif had on them. It was the perfect position to be in. And the ultimate beauty was that if things went wrong, the recidivists were guaranteed not to hang about and tell tales out of school. They would disappear into thin air. Back to the sewers they sprang from. Because if the authorities ever got hold of them, and if Hassif was forced to declare all he knew, which was a given, they were all doomed.

Over the next two days, Hassif smuggled all his videos and secret files out of the office. It was easy enough to do. No
one knew they were there. He had not left them in his house because it went without saying that the Iranian Security Services would have conducted a thorough search of his premises at some point during his tenure of office. It was what he would have done himself in similar circumstances. No. Hiding them in his office had been a stroke of genius. The best place to hide something was always in plain sight.

Now he took them all out in a series of journeys and hid them in a Mercedes he had bought privately at the same time as he had bought the unmarked Mercedes his martyrs had hidden their car bomb in. Mercedes were far and away the best receptacles for car bombs, because they were made entirely of metal and not of plastic, and the fuel tank was located behind the rear seat, making for a more concentrated explosion. The fuel tank and the attached air-storage unit for the vacuum pump were also ideal places to hide stuff in if one didn’t wish to be caught with one’s trousers down at unfriendly borders. Hassif was a past master at this sort of engineering. He didn’t get his own hands dirty, of course. But he knew exactly what to ask for from his mechanics, and how to ensure the job was done to his entire satisfaction.

When the car was ready, and loaded with all his necessities, Hassif signed off for the Iranian weekend, which always fell on a Friday. It was a one-day weekend, which was entirely typical of the cheeseparing motherfuckers who ran the country – but it would be more than enough for his purposes.

He did not have far to go. The Abuna girl had received his sample video in Kitakeh. He, in turn, had received
photographic proof of the parchment rescued from the Holy Spear, which clearly spoke of the location of the Copper Scroll. Once again, only a fool would fabricate such an elaborate and unnecessary device for entrapment purposes. The parchment was original. There were enough clues for the trained eye to pick up to confirm that fact. Hassif had not wasted his tenure in Iraq all those years ago. He was something of an expert on ancient artefacts. He thought with nostalgia of some of Uday Hussein’s collections, which he had facilitated, and of what must have happened to them after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Such a waste.

Fifty kilometres outside Bukan, on the road to Shahin Dezh, Hassif stopped at a Kurdish teahouse, sat on one of the raised carpets inside the glass interior, and drank three glasses of tea. He also ate half a dozen potato pancake patties called
kukuye zibzamini
, drenched in Iranian
shahde golha
honey. Most Iranians would have considered pouring honey over such a savoury dish sacrilege. Hassif didn’t care what they thought.

Twenty minutes after his arrival a minivan with six men inside it turned into the gravel parking space. Hassif got up, licked his fingers, and then accepted the bowl of scented water and the towel the owner of the teahouse was holding out to him.

When the man requested payment, Hassif produced his identity card and was gratified when the man bowed and ushered him to the entrance without further ado. Hassif never paid for anything if he could avoid it. It was a habit he had got into years ago in Iraq, and which he had no intention of
changing. Why carry money when you can put the fear of God into people, and earn yourself a free ride instead?

When he left in his Mercedes, closely followed by the minivan, Hassif did not see the owner of the teahouse, who was wearing a red and black turban and traditional Kurdish men’s clothes, run to the telephone to make a call. Three minutes later, the woman who had been posted on the highway to watch in case Hassif’s car came past the teahouse without stopping, also came inside.

‘Six, no?’

‘Six men, yes, Father.’

‘Armed?’

‘I could not tell. But yes. Of course they will be armed.’

‘I have phoned already. Hassif is on his way.’

‘You are sure it was Hassif?’

‘Totally sure. The damned fool even showed me his identity card so that he would not have to pay. The bill was for a few thousand rials. Hardly enough to get his shoes polished. But still he is greedy. What do they say about such men? “May God strike the rich man blind by his own gold.”’

FORTY-SIX

John Hart stood at the base of the slope that led up to Solomon’s Prison and cursed whatever evil cloud had caused him to venture into Iran. Each minute he lingered on Iranian soil made it that much more likely that something would happen to bring him to the attention of the authorities. And maybe it had already happened? Maybe Hassif was gathering his forces together at that very moment to apprehend him?

He glanced across at Elwand. Elwand looked as sick as a dog. He gazed at Nalan. She looked poised and decisive. Excited even. Hart forced a smile onto his face. He slipped out his pocket Leica and took a few shots. His battery was close to zero.

Elwand nodded to him and pointed to the rope. Hart heaved it out of the boot of the car and he and Elwand looped it about their arms and began the ascent. Nalan followed along behind, talking all the while on her mobile phone, whether in Farsi or Kurdish, Hart could not tell.

‘Hassif is coming,’ she said to him at last, in English. ‘With six armed men. They left the Darvish Teahouse ten minutes ago.’

‘Six armed men?’ said Hart. ‘How can we deal with six armed men? Hadn’t we better get out of here while we still can?’

‘It’s too late for that. The teahouse is only twenty minutes’ drive from here along a single-carriage road. We are committed.’

‘Where the hell are your other cousins then? I thought they were coming here to protect us?’

‘Where they must be. Do not worry, John.’

‘Worry? Me?’ Hart shifted his end of the rope to his other arm. It weighed as much as a dead man. He stared up the slope ahead of him. Solomon’s Prison was the last place on earth that he wanted to revisit at that particular moment. In fact it was the last place on earth he would ever want to revisit. ‘Perish the thought.’

‘Britannia. Look.’ Elwand was pointing away into the middle distance.

Hart squinted. He could just make out a trail of dust on the road leading in from the main Bukan highway.

‘This is them. Two cars.’ Elwand held up two fingers.

‘Two. Yes,’ said Hart, for want of anything better to say. He felt like dropping the rope and legging it round the mountain to the safety of the other side. He looked down at Nalan behind him. She was making light going of the climb. To look at her, he decided, you would think that she was setting out on
a bracing after-breakfast walk in a comfortable old democracy like Switzerland – not an assignation in an alien totalitarian state with the man who had tortured and brutalized her parents.

Three hundred metres up the slope Hart began cursing the weight of the rope. Then he cursed Hassif. When he was through doing that he cursed his ancestor, Johannes von Hartelius, and then he cursed the stupid Copper Scroll and his gullibility in believing the thousand-year-old message that had caused him to come all this way looking for it. Now he was merely the bait in someone else’s trap. The jam in their sandwich. And what if these very same people decided that the odds against them were no longer worth the candle? He would be dangling by his neck off an Iranian cargo crane before he knew what hit him. Bloody, bloody fool.

Soon, he and Elwand were up near the lip of the volcano again, just as they had been two days previously. Hart could see the hole through which they had sieved the rope the last time they had visited the ill-begotten spot. He remembered the nightmarish climb down inside the funnel, and the even more nightmarish climb back up again. What crazy brainwave had caused him to suggest this location to Nalan in the first place? He had vowed never to come back here. Not for a thousand Copper Scrolls. And yet here he was. With the Deputy Chief Intelligence Officer, Border District, following half a kilometre behind him, and with a vanload of armed men in his train. Christ, maybe the Iranians would send in helicopters? What was to stop them doing that? Elwand and
his buddies would be okay. They knew where to go. Where to disperse. But he and Nalan would be sitting ducks.

Elwand eased his way out over the rock face and started to swing one end of the rope back and forth. ‘Catch it, Britannia. Just like you did the last time.’

Nalan drew in her breath as she peered over the lip of the volcano. ‘This is a terrible place. Your description did not do it justice, John.’

Nalan’s horror at the prospect below her pleased Hart. He had started to feel isolated in his reaction to the place. ‘You can’t describe places like this. You can only feel them. It’s like a tomb down there. Believe me. A living, open tomb.’ He caught the rope Elwand threw him and slid it through the gap in the rock.

This time Elwand had brought a steel crowbar with him. He climbed down from the rock and attached the rope to the crowbar with two half hitches, then jammed the crowbar against the base of the hole. They had no intention of using the rope, of course, and were simply going through the motions in case anyone was watching them through binoculars, or, God forbid, via a drone. This, at least, was what Elwand had assured him back in Bukan. Now Hart was not sure.

Seven hundred metres below them the two cars carrying Hassif and his men pulled into the parking lot beside Elwand’s car. Six men piled out of the minivan, and a single stout figure climbed out of the accompanying Mercedes. Hassif. Hart noted that the men surrounding him weren’t carrying any obvious weapons.

There was a lot of shouting and gesticulating, followed by much pointing up the hillside. Then Hassif barked out some orders. Hart suspected that Hassif had simply been ensuring that no casual visitors to the site were to be seen, because the six men now threw open the back of his Mercedes and helped themselves to the automatic weapons secreted there.

‘Shit. Look at that. He’s got an armoury in there. I hope they don’t open up on us.’

‘We are not yet within range,’ said Elwand.

‘Well, that’s a comfort,’ said Hart. He watched the six men begin their climb up the hillside towards them, with Hassif puffing along behind. ‘Maybe he’ll have a heart attack?’

‘God is far too just to let someone like Hassif die of a mere heart attack,’ said Nalan. ‘Come. We need to move round the lip of the volcano to the eastern rim.’

‘I really hope you know what you are doing,’ said Hart.

‘My cousins know what they are doing,’ said Nalan. ‘We are the bait, remember. You must look as if you are running now.’

Hart found that bit the easiest to mimic. He broke into a run, alongside Elwand and Nalan, just as if they had found themselves surprised by Hassif and his men and were trying to get away.

‘Go on. Faster. Run ahead of us. He must think you feel that I betrayed you.’

There were a few scattered shots from the hillside below them. Hart could hear the spent bullets fizzing through the air above him. One or two ricocheted off the rocks below. Hart
heard a distant shriek, which he assumed was Hassif telling his men to cool it, and not risk hitting anyone valuable.

‘Quickly, quickly,’ said Nalan.

Hart had little idea of what plan, if any, Nalan had hatched with her cousins. Everything had been conducted in far too much haste, in his opinion, and there had even come a point, early on in the proceedings, when Nalan had given up translating everything for him and had simply left him to stew in his own juices. Elwand had attempted to take up the slack in terms of Hart’s understanding of the situation, but his efforts had fallen largely by the wayside. It had been extremely humiliating. As if they had purposely left him out of the loop.

Hart was astonished, therefore, to see close on a dozen men, armed with assault rifles and telescopic sights, emerge like ghosts from the cover in front of him.

‘Now we get down. Here. Behind these rocks.’

Hart spreadeagled himself beside Nalan in the lee of a jagged outcropping of rock. His new position gave him a superb view of the six now struggling men accompanying Hassif, a hundred and fifty metres below them down the hillside. He began to understand why, throughout the entire history of warfare, enlightened combatants had always sought to defend and hold the upper ground.

The trap had been well sprung – the outcome a foregone conclusion. Hassif’s six armed men were caught way out in the open, already exhausted from sprinting up the hillside, and therefore sickeningly vulnerable. The dozen rested men who passed him by, and amongst whom he recognized Nalan’s five
remaining cousins, dispersed themselves behind the ample cover at the top of the hill. Hart expected someone to call out to Hassif’s men to give themselves up, but this did not happen.

What followed was as close to a clinical execution as Hart had ever witnessed. Hassif’s men were systematically picked off by men occupying the higher ground and benefiting from the immense advantage of telescopic sights. It was a massacre. Each approaching man was targeted by at least two shooters. If he tried to fire back, he stood no real chance of hitting anything because of the upward arc forced upon him by the contour of the volcano. It was all over in under a minute.

Hassif was left standing alone on the hillside, his hands at his sides, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. As Hart watched, Hassif dropped to his knees and fumbled for his mobile phone. Or it might have been a pistol.

Nalan stood up from where she was sheltering and shouted down to him.

Hassif raised his hands above his head and waved them to show that he was not holding anything. Then he sat back in the dirt like a child in a sandpit. Hart felt almost sorry for him.

Nalan’s cousins dispersed like chamois down the hillside. Ignoring Hassif, they set about collecting the dead men scattered around him. When this was done, they carted them the remaining distance to the edge of the volcano and tumbled them over the lip.

Nalan and Elwand started down towards Hassif. Hart followed them. Bahoz, Saman and another man, whom Hart did not recognize, moved across to meet them.

Only now was Hart able to see Hassif clearly for the first time. The man was unutterably nondescript. Hart had been expecting a monster. A man with the wages of sin stamped across his features. Instead he saw an elderly, overweight man, with dyed hair and a dyed beard, sucking air in through his teeth and close to hyperventilating.

The five of them accompanied Hassif to the top of the hill. The remainder of Nalan’s cousins and kinsmen came to join them.

Nalan was the first to speak. She pointed to the lip of the volcano, and then down at Hassif’s car. Hassif answered her. Nalan spoke again.

Hart edged his way towards Elwand. ‘What is she saying?’

Elwand leaned towards him. ‘She is asking if he has brought all the film with him in his car, as agreed. If he has not, she will throw him personally into Solomon’s Prison after his men.’

Hassif was nodding vehemently now. Throwing his arms around. Selling himself dearly, thought Hart. Trying to cut a late deal.

Bahoz, the youngest of Nalan’s cousins, broke away from the others and sprinted down the hillside. Everyone watched him. When he reached a patch of scree he began a skiing motion with his feet, negotiating the broken rock as if he were surfing on snow. In five minutes he was at the bottom of the hill.

He disappeared inside Hassif’s car.

He emerged after two minutes and squinted up towards them. Nalan’s phone rang. They could all see Bahoz talking
into his phone, and hear Nalan replying to him nearby. Bahoz was making the universal symbol of empty-handedness.

Hassif said something to Nalan, and Bahoz disappeared back inside the car.

Hassif was grinning and smiling now, his expression that of a man who feels he will soon have fulfilled his part of the bargain, and who is confidently expecting his competitors to fulfil theirs. If it wasn’t for the neat pile of weapons stacked about thirty yards down the slope, thought Hart, it would be impossible to believe that a gun battle had taken place here a mere ten minutes before. Or that anything untoward had happened. Maybe Hassif really did have the measure of it after all?

Bahoz re-emerged from the Mercedes far below them and a further conversation took place by phone. At the end of the conversation Nalan nodded at two of the men waiting beside her. These were men Hart did recognize. Hart assumed that everyone would now make their way down the hillside and clear the area, and that these men had simply been detailed to collect up the fallen weapons. But no. The men came towards him, smiling. Hart smiled back.

The two men caught him by the arms and wrenched them behind his back. Hart cried out, but another man he had not noticed slipped in behind him and gagged him before he could speak.

Hart tried to struggle but it was impossible. The three men were bearing down on him with all their weight. His arms were soon secured and his pocket camera taken. One
of the men took out the camera’s memory card and crushed it beneath his heel. Then he tossed the shattered SIM card over the lip of the volcano, after the dead men. He slipped the now useless camera into his side pocket.

Hart was forced back against a rock and left there, half sitting and half lying. Hassif clapped his hands together. He was sweating and smiling at the same time. Even though things suddenly appeared to be going his way again, he still looked sick.

Hart tried to bypass the gag with his tongue but it was impossible. How could this be happening? He had offered himself as bait alongside Nalan to trap Hassif. Were her people now about to hand him over to Hassif in exchange for the film of her parents that Nalan wanted destroyed?

Hassif indicated Hart with both hands, and made as if he intended to start down the hillside back towards his car. He was clearly expecting some of the men present to drag Hart to his feet and accompany him.

Something closed down in John Hart’s chest. Had this been on the cards all the time? Had he simply been the most perfect sort of patsy imaginable? He could feel the sense of outrage consuming him. He had even, God forbid, travelled into Iran under his own steam, risking none of Nalan’s family in the process. What an ass. What a consummate ass he had been. He lurched to his feet and aimed a kick at the man nearest to him, but he only succeeded in twisting round on the spot and falling down again. He lay on the ground and waited for what was about to happen to him. One thing he knew. He
would sell himself dearly from here on in. He wouldn’t go to his fate like a lamb to the slaughter. They’d have a fight on their hands.