The Temple Mount Code (25 page)

‘Did you murder Lev?’

After a brief hesitation, Von Volker shook his head. ‘No. I wanted him alive. His death was unfortunate. There is another man, a Saudi named Rayan Mufarrij, who caused your friend’s death. Have you heard of him?’

‘No.’ Lourds was glad to be able to tell the truth. His mind had already started summoning awful images of what Von Volker’s men would do to him.

‘He’s a very bad man, a dangerous man.’

‘What does he want?’

‘Presumably what we all want: Mohammad’s Koran, the one given to him from God’s lips.’ Von Volker smiled mockingly.

‘You sound like you don’t believe it exists.’

‘For me to believe that that version of the Koran exists, I’d also have to believe in a God. I don’t. I believe in power. In the unity of the German and Austrian people. And in our destiny to become a powerful nation – a united nation – again. I also believe in me being the head of state of such a country. Anything else is unacceptable.’ Von Volker paused a moment, then studied Lourds. ‘Do you know where Mohammad’s Koran is?’

‘No.’

‘Sadly, I believe you. Torture seems like such an ideal way for us to spend the morning, however.’

Trying to contain his fear, Lourds just stared at the man.

‘You see, it’s easy to believe you don’t know where an imaginary object is. However, I do want to know what this means.’ Von Volker held up the piece of paper Lev had left in the candelabrum.

Lourds shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I was on my way back to Jerusalem to find out.’

‘That’s too bad.’ Von Volker put the piece of paper into his pocket and stood. ‘Because I don’t believe that.’

More afraid now, Lourds took a breath. ‘Under the circumstances, if I knew, I’d tell you. You’ll have to trust me on that.’

Von Volker studied him for a moment. ‘Perhaps.’ He looked at the two men. ‘I’m going to return to Vienna. Give me time to establish an alibi, since it may come out that he’s an old lover of my wife’s, then kill him. Make it painful.’ He turned and walked away, and the click of his heels against the concrete sounded loud and grim.

Schloss Volker

Alice tried to go about her day as if nothing had happened, but that was almost impossible because all she could think about was Thomas. Her body ached in pleasant ways from all the positions she’d found herself in during the course of the night.

She glanced at her watch again. It was after ten. He should have been at the airport already. She’d left six messages on his cell phone. She didn’t know whether to be more afraid that he was deliberately ignoring her or that something had happened to him.

Seated in her office space, she had a clear view of the front gate, so when Klaus’s private car pulled into the circle drive, she saw the vehicle immediately. Panic tightened her stomach, but she made herself breathe.

Leaning against the window, she watched her husband enter the house. She grabbed her keys from the nightstand beside the bed, flung open the window, stepped out of her shoes, picked them up, and scrabbled across the roof.

At the roof’s edge, she hesitated. The drop was only fifteen feet or so, but it looked much farther. She tossed her shoes onto the ground, then lowered herself and hung by her arms. A moment later, she let go and dropped. When she hit the ground, she tumbled back into a yoga roll and came up on her feet.

She stepped into her shoes and ran to the front of her house. Her husband was still inside.

The driver stood outside the luxury vehicle and looked a little surprised to see her. ‘
Herr
Von Volker is inside the house,
Frau
Von Volker.’

Alice casually waved the news away. ‘I’m going into the city. I’ll talk to him later. I suppose the after-rally party ran late last night. Did you just get in from Vienna?’

‘Yes.’

Alice started to continue on her way, then she spotted the hunting jacket in the backseat of the car through the open window. Her heart lurched into a furious beat as she headed for the long garage. She knew Klaus had been to the
jagdschloss
that morning. The last time he’d been out there, he’d left the jacket there. He’d complained about it for a week.

Thomas!

Swallowing her fear, Alice keyed the garage door and entered. She slid behind the wheel of a white Wiesmann two-seater sports car and took out her phone. She hesitated only a moment, then punched in the number for the police patrol around the
jagdschloss.

‘Hello. This is Alice Von Volker.’

The man at the other end of the connection responded immediately, obviously impressed with the name. ‘Ah,
Frau
Von Volker. How may I help you?’

‘Yes, I think so. Could you have someone check on my husband’s
jagdschloss
? I drove by there only a few minutes ago and saw a strange car parked out front.’

‘Of course. We’ll get someone out there immediately.’

‘Thank you.’ Alice turned the phone off and dropped it on the passenger seat. She keyed the ignition and triggered the electronic garage door opener. Engaging the transmission, she shot out of the garage and roared toward the front gates.

The wrought-iron barrier pulled back just in time to allow her passage. She never looked in her rearview mirror to see if her husband had come out of the house or if anyone was in pursuit.

She had only one thought on her mind as she drove toward the
jagdschloss.

Please don’t be dead, Thomas.

32

Jagdschloss Volker

Outside Vienna, Austria

August 8, 2011

Thankfully, it was hot in the
jagdschloss
kill room. It hadn’t taken long for Lourds to work up a sweat while shifting in the chair. The men watching over him didn’t care that he occupied himself with trying to get away. The chair was bolted to the floor, suggesting it had been used for nefarious purposes before.

Bored, the men went to one of the other rooms. Every time they came to check on him, Lourds felt the air-conditioning in the other room invade the kill room for a moment and the noise of a television. Their visits had become more and more infrequent. Either the program they were watching was very good, or they didn’t care if he was in need of a bathroom. The thought that he might escape probably hadn’t crossed their minds.

Perspiration streaming down his neck and tickling his ears, Lourds leaned forward into the leather straps. Dampness from his sodden shirt had turned the leather a darker color. More importantly, the wetness had loosened the leather strap holding his arms to his sides and his hands behind his back.

In his studies, Lourds knew that American Indians and Mongols – both roving, nomadic peoples – had depended on leather to make their weapons. When they’d tied spearheads to shafts or made bows, warriors had first soaked the leather strands and tied them tightly, knowing the strands would draw up even more as they dried.

Of course, the reverse was true as well.

The door opened, and one of the guards stuck his head in. He surveyed Lourds, then flashed him a mocking smile and dangled a beer bottle from his fingertips. ‘You miss party.’ His English was heavy and accented.

‘Is that an invitation?’ Lourds smiled hopefully.

‘No. We’re going to kill you. No reason to waste beer.’ The man laughed at him, then went to tell his partner what a fine joke he’d just played on the American professor and how stupid the man was.

Lourds heard the man braying his story even over the television. For a moment, he gave in to despair, but then he forced himself to focus again on his efforts. He was making headway with the leather. Because of the sweat he’d worked into the material, he could already tell it was stretching out, loosening.

He worked solidly, concentrating on each effort, grinding his sweat into the straps. Finally, it felt looser, and the leather around his wrists no longer felt as tight.

He dropped his left shoulder and raised his right, repeating the motion again and again. Gradually, the leather strap worked up past his shoulder. Long minutes later, it was past the point of no return because any visitation on the part of his guards would give away his game, and they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Finally, though, his shoulder slid free of the strap. His flesh felt abraded and raw, and he knew he’d be sore from the chafing, but if his luck held, he wouldn’t be dead.

He tucked his head into his shoulder, emulating a move he’d read that Harry Houdini used to escape straitjackets. A few moves later, his head was free, too. When he stood, he walked to the sink, turned around, and carefully felt for the tap. He turned it on just enough for a trickle, then held his bound wrists under the flow. The leather binding him grew even looser. He stretched and pulled and applied pressure a dozen different ways.

After a few moments, his left hand slid free. He scooped his hat up from the counter, slid his wallet and phone back into his pants pockets, and started for the back door.

Footsteps sounded out in the hall, coming closer. ‘I’m getting another beer. Want one?’

‘Yeah. And check on the professor. He should be begging for his life right now.’

‘Maybe I should slap him around a little. Provide a little encouragement.’

The other man laughed.

Lourds tried the back door, but it was locked. Obviously, Von Volker had made certain his ‘guests’ couldn’t escape under any circumstances. Frantic, he looked around for a weapon, then spied a heavy iron frying pan on a woodburning stove. He hefted it and discovered it weighed several pounds. Moving swiftly, he positioned himself by the door and drew back the pan.

His knees trembled slightly as he thought about what he was going to do. He would have preferred to run. He was not a fighter. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time to think or dread.

The man stepped through the doorway and Lourds swung with all the strength in his arms. The frying pan hammered the guard in the face, but the sound was much duller than Lourds had anticipated, more like a thump than a bang.

Knocked out or dead, Lourds wasn’t sure, but there was enough blood from the nose and mouth that it could have gone either way, the guard dropped like a stone. The empty bottles he carried shattered against the stone floor.

‘Walter?’ The television sound muted immediately. ‘Walter?’

Lourds thought briefly of searching the fallen man for a weapon more serviceable than the frying pan, but the flight instinct in him was strongest of all. The ring of keys on the man’s belt made his choice obvious. Grabbing them, he abandoned the frying pan and tackled the back door again. It took him a moment to fumble through the lock.

‘Walter!’ Footsteps pounded toward the kill room.

Lourds got the door open just as the second guard stuck his pistol into the room and followed it around the corner. Just as Lourds charged through the door, two bullets smashed through the glass panes in it. Flying glass shards chased Lourds out into the woodlands behind the
jagdschloss.

Aware the gunman could shoot him in the back if he stayed on a straight line, Lourds grabbed the first tree trunk he came to and veered to the left. The bark ripped free and tore at his palm, but he kept his feet under him and lengthened his stride.

In the distance, a road cut through the tree line nearly two hundred yards away at the bottom of the steep incline. Gnarled roots and the rocky soil challenged his footing as he raced down it.

The gunman pursued him, firing periodically. Every instinct Lourds possessed screamed at him to dive for cover somewhere along the way, but he knew that would only delay the inevitable. He was in shape. There was a lot of real estate in front of him. He had a chance to get away if he just kept running.

And don’t break your neck
.

An unseen rock rolled under his right foot. He tried to keep his foot straight, hoped he hadn’t turned his ankle, and stumbled in the direction he almost fell in order to keep his feet under him. His rhythm was thrown off for a moment, and he crashed against a tree trunk, the impact driving his right elbow into his side and knocking the breath from his lungs.

Off-balance and in pain, he fell and rolled down the incline. The gunman fired a handful of rounds that kicked up fist-sized clods of earth around him. Still falling and rolling, Lourds managed to get back up on his feet while tumbling. Soccer games had taught him to fight for control and get back up as soon as possible if a whistle hadn’t blown.

There was no whistle while he was running for his life.

Hoping to become a harder target, Lourds charged through the brush. Once, when he suddenly found a downed tree in front of him, and there was no way he could stop or change directions successfully, he stepped up the pace and leaped. Branches and bushes whipped at him, and he couldn’t see what he was going to be landing in when he came down.

On the other side of the fallen tree, the incline plunged ten feet almost straight down. Lourds flailed his arms and tried to pick his landing spot, but he came down in a twisting, flailing fall that rolled him head over heels. As he got to his feet, banged up and sporting new bruises, he reflexively grabbed his hat and ran again.

He’d lost sight of the road, but he marked his passage by landmarks he’d chosen along the way.

The gunman had closed the distance, drawing to within twenty feet. He was still running, too, gaining steadily.

Why couldn’t I have been held by couch potatoes with guns?
Lourds ran as hard as he could, but he knew he was outmatched. He was going to die out here in this forlorn wilderness, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Then the forest melted away in front of him, and the road was there. He ran out across it without hesitation, hoping to get across the narrow two-lane before the gunman had a clear shot at him. Gunshots echoed around him and bullets ricocheted from the road.

A car topped the hill and nearly ran him down. He threw himself forward and got clear. The gunman wasn’t so lucky. He’d come out of the tree line totally focused on Lourds and hadn’t seen the car until it was on top of him.