Knights of the Blood (2 page)

“Mr. Steele–“ Despite the uniform, Sprague refused to call him Commandant. “We’re investigating the death of four young men whom we believe may have had some connection with your organization.”

Sprague slid an envelope containing the morgue photos of the four dead men across Steele’s desk. “We were wondering if you might be able to identify them for us.”

Steele glanced at the envelope on his desk but made no move to touch it.

“Am I, or some member of my staff, under suspicion of having killed anyone?” he asked.

Demitter cleared his throat. “Look, Commandant, what we have here are four dead surfers. The only thing they have in common are some German army tattoos on their arms. We just want to know if you can help us identify them, that’s all.”

“Very well, then.” Steele gave them a very impersonal smile. “I’ll look at your photos.”

Reaching across, Steele scooped up the envelope and dumped its contents out on the desk in front of him.

Sprague grunted. “Not very pretty is it?”

“Neither is the six o’clock news, Detective Sergeant Sprague,” Steele replied without looking up from the photos on his desk.

Carefully Steele arranged the photos on his desk–but not, both Sprague and Demitter noted, in the order in which the victims had been killed. Steele reached into his desk and brought out a magnifying glass and stared intently at each photo for several minutes. Finally, he set down the glass and looked at the two policemen.

“Well, gentlemen, there are only three things I can tell you about these photos.” Steele waited, until finally Sprague spoke.

“Okay. What?”

“First,” Steele held up the index finger of his right hand, “I’ve never laid eyes on any of these guys before. They don’t belong to my organization. Second–“ the two fingers of his right hand made a vee “–I don’t think they’re surfers. These guys are butt—white all over–no tan lines. In fact, they don’t look like they’ve been out in the sun for a long time. Finally, I doubt they’re even Americans.”

Sprague interrupted him. “How do you figure that?”

“Simple,” Steele continued. “None of your victims are circumcised. Here in America, the medical profession is totally dominated by Jews, so virtually all boys are routinely circumcised at birth. In Europe, very few Jews are doctors, so their violation of newborn Aryans does not often occur.”

Sprague and Demitter exchanged sidelong glances, and then Demitter spoke up. “Ah, aside from a shortage of Jewish doctors in Europe, is there anything else you’d care to expound on?”

“No, not really.” Steele smiled his cold smile again, then added, “Except this. These tattoos are the sort that the SS used during the war to identify the blood—type and regiment of their soldiers, in case they were wounded or killed.” He picked up the photo of Number Two and passed it over to the detectives, along with his magnifying glass.

“Now, see that mark that looks like a diamond balanced on the center point of a W? That’s the mark of the
Prinz Eugen
SS Regiment. They were really tough front—line soldiers.” He handed Sprague and Demitter another photo.

“This guy has the tattoo of the Death’s Head Regiment. They were camp guards and special field police. I’d be willing to bet that the other two are probably from different regiments as well.”

Sprague passed the photos and magnifying glass back to Demitter, who had been busily taking notes.

“So you think these men were in the SS?” Sprague asked.

“Of course not. They aren’t old enough to have served in the armed forces of the Reich. I’d guess that their fathers may have been in the SS, and that they probably belong to some sort of SS family association.” Steele was staring at the daggers hanging on the wall.

Setting down the magnifying glass, Demitter broke in. “So who killed them?”

Steele let out a long breath and adopted the tone of voice used to explain things to a young child. “The Jews, of course. That pack of Bolshevik—Zionists down on Fairfax probably found out that they were in town, kidnapped them, and killed them, just as Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac.”

Sprague had a low tolerance for bullshit and had heard just about all he was willing to take from Steele.

“Are you absolutely certain that these men aren’t part of your organization?” His voice was hardedged and cold.

“If they had been my men, Detective Sprague–“ Steele’s voice was detached, but his expression was as hard as Sprague’s “–they’d be alive now, and you’d be carrying around pictures of four dead Kikes.”

It took all of Sprague’s self—control to walk out of the Nazi headquarters without leaving two maimed and dying “supermen” lying on the beer—stained carpet. At the car, his anger was such that he tossed Demitter the keys.

“You drive, dammit. I’m too pissed off to get behind the wheel.”

They were halfway to the Hollenbeck Precinct station when Demitter broke the silence. “Nazi Surfers From Hell. Sounds more like a movie than a lead.”

Sprague just grunted and stared out at Los Angeles.

THE HOLY LAND, 1291

A PLUME
of dust followed the riders across the desert floor, slowly settling as they thundered into the small oasis village of Wadi—al—Hifra and quickly dispersed among its buildings. From a vantage point on a hillock nearly a mile away, Henri de Beq and his armored men watched the operation with predatory interest. They had been hunting this quarry for weeks.

“Water for the horses, then for yourselves,” de Beq ordered. “We’ll give them time to get involved before we attack.”

He was lean and grizzled, with a short—clipped salt—and—pepper beard and pale eyes permanently crinkled at the corners by more than two decades squinting under harsh desert suns. He swung down off his small Arabian mare without a wasted motion and loosened her girth, then unbuckled the chinstrap of his helmet and removed it, slinging it over the pommel of his saddle. Prom a goatskin bag he poured warm water into the helmet, holding it under the mare’s nose so she could drink. Around him the other men were doing the same. The desert sun beat down on his mail coif, with its arming cap of padded cotton beneath, and he pulled up the hood of his white linen mantle for shade.

De Beq’s horse shoved against him with her head, demanding more, but when he grabbed a handful of skin on the mare’s neck and let it go, the skin oozed smoothly back into place. The horse wasn’t dehydrated, so de Beq felt no qualms about denying her another drink.

He
must drink, though. Reaching back to the water—skin looped over the cantle of his saddle, he splashed more water into his helmet and forced himself to down several large swallows. It was brackish and rancid—smelling, and despite a quarter century in the desert, de Beq was unable to make himself gag down any more of it.

His horse had no such compunctions, and headbutted him in an attempt to get at the water. Reflexively, de Beq hit the horse as hard as he could on the neck with his fist. Then, having shown the mare who was master, he let her finish the water in his helmet.

The men around him were finishing. Leaving the mare with a serjeant, de Beq walked over to a small outcropping of rock that provided an unbroken panorama of the desert below. William of Etton, his second in command, was already standing there, gazing grimly at the oasis shimmering through the heat waves. As a shrill keening drifted upward on the breeze and the first puffs of white smoke began rising from the roofs of the houses in the village, de Beq tried to put out of mind what he knew was happening down there–and what he must
let
happen, to ensure that his quarry was sufficiently distracted not to notice the knights’ threat until it was too late.

The oasis was known as Wadi—al—Hifra, home to nearly a hundred Christian Saracens and site of the chapel of Chalice Well. Legend had it that here the cup of Christ had been brought after the Crucifixion, and here a small shrine had been built long before the Frankish host had come to free the Holy Land. De Beq didn’t know whether the part about the cup was true or not.

True it was that King Baldwin of Jerusalem had made a pilgrimage to the shrine at Chalice Well, accompanied by representatives of the Holy Father in Rome. The king had spent less than ten minutes in the small mud—and—wattle chapel, and the emissaries from Rome hadn’t even bothered to enter. Bishop Tancred had pronounced the shrine “worse than a sty”; and when the hermit who functioned as keeper of the relic produced the so—called “chalice,” the bishop dismissed it as nothing more than a common cup, made of horn and set round with brass–surely not the golden grail from which the Lord drank at the Last Supper. Dismissively, the bishop had remounted his mule and ridden out of the village, along with the king. A week later he was dead of dysentery, though that had caused little enough mourning among the Frankish host.

William touched de Beq’s elbow–the plume of smoke was thickening–and de Beq recalled himself to the prospect at hand. Below, in the village, the Turkish devil known as Ibn—al—Hassad was proceeding with the methodical slaughter of the hapless inhabitants. For months he had been making lightning raids into the edges of the Principality of Galilee, killing entire villages and then vanishing into the desert before the Christian forces could muster to attack. When Hassad and his men had first struck in the northern bailiwick of the Order of the Sword, their Grand Master dutifully ordered his knights out to bring the Turk to justice.

Sire Henri de Beq, commanding the preceptory of Noire Garde, had been among those who tried. Dashing out with a column from the castle entrusted to him by the Order, he had spent two weeks of fruitless searching before returning, with his men exhausted and two of his precious horses down with colic. At no time had they gotten closer than three days behind Hassad’s trail.

De Beq screwed his eyes shut against the glare of the desert sun and pulled his hood farther forward. The rising pillar of smoke from the village below brought back memories of that first encounter with Ibn—al—Hassad. Neither his men nor their mounts had recovered from their first foray when word had come from a Saracen ally that a village a mere two day’s ride to the east had been destroyed by Hassad.

Exhausted, and mounted on foot—sore horses, de Beq had led his men to an oasis village much like the one now before him. The ride to that village had taken its toll on the horses, with two of de Beq’s mounted men—at—arms returning to the castle on foot before the end of the first day’s march. By the time they had reached the collapsing walls of that oasis, all of the men were leading their mounts, and a few, like de Beq, were carrying their saddles as well.

Half a dozen men had squatted in the shade of their fleet desert ponies, clad in the black desert robes and
keffiyeh
favored by their tribe. At the approach of de Beq and his men they stood up, and their leader stepped forward. A light breeze gusted from across the hard—baked pan of the desert floor, lifting the green—and—red silk banner in salute to the approaching Christians. De Beq recognized the banner, as well as the figure of the slender, bearded man who walked out to greet him, black desert robes billowing in the breeze.

“Sharif!” de Beq called as he approached, handing off his helmet to one of his men.

Sharif Salim ibn—Faisal bowed gracefully, his right hand touching his chest, lips, and forehead in traditional Moslem greeting. In like manner, de Beq returned the salute.

“May Allah hold you dear,” de Beq said formally, in Arabic only slightly tinged with a European accent.

“And may the Great Prophet always guide you,” replied the Sharif, in tones that conveyed conviction in his statement.

The two men shook hands, then turned to move out of ear—shot of their troops.

“It is very bad,
el Beq.
This is a Moslem village, and all within have been killed.” The sharif shaded his eyes from the sun. “I have seen inside the walls. The men who did this were not believers. They follow not the way of the Prophet
or
the way of the Christ. I have seen inside the walls,
el Beq,
and it is very bad.”

“You called me here to see it,” de Beq said, “so you’d better show me.”

Declining further comment, Sharif Salim led the way around to the wooden gates of the oasis village. The breeze had come up again, but this time from another direction, bringing with it the stench of slaughter. De Beq had to grit his teeth to hold back the sudden flood of bile rising in the back of his throat, but he put a mail—clad shoulder to the gate and shoved, moving it back just far enough to let a man pass through. But as he made to enter the village, the sharif grabbed him by the arm.

“I warn you, my friend. I do not think you have seen anything like this before.”

De Beq looked at the Saracen in surprise. “Does my friend not accompany me, then?” he asked.

“No, I will come with you,” Salim said. “But this is something of which you may not have experience.”

De Beq tried to imagine what horror of war he had not experienced–he had seen men killed in more ways than he cared to count–but it was clear that the sharif did not desire to go into greater detail. Setting his teeth in grim anticipation, de Beq turned and shoved through the narrow opening in the gates, Salim following with obvious uneasiness.

The village was small–not much more than eight or ten mud huts, a pen for a few goats, a fair—sized shed for storing dates, and the all—important well. There were no streets, just spaces between the huts wide enough for a few goats or a person to pass. The entire village was surrounded by a low wall no more than three or four feet high. Its purpose seemed more to keep the goats in rather than to keep anyone out, and in one or two places the stones had toppled over, dropping the wall height to not much more than a foot or so.

De Beq paused just inside the gates to get his bearings, studying the layout of the enclosure. His view of the well in the center of the oasis was blocked by one corner of the date shed. He looked cautiously to either side, his hand instinctively tightening on the grip of his sword, already aware in some deep—seated part of him that something was very wrong here. From far off he could hear one of the horses nicker softly, but other than that one sound, the entire village was blanketed in silence.

With his back to the village wall and Salim to his right, de Beq slowly began to circle to his left, hoping for a better view down the goat tracks that separated the huts. As he moved, he realized that he was becoming light—headed from the sun.

With his left hand, he reached over his shoulder and grabbed the brim of the straw hat hanging on his back, pulling it onto his head and tugging it down to shield his eyes from the midday glare. A deep breath of the air at midday scorched the back of his throat and reminded him to keep moving. He did so, always keeping his back to the wall, until his foot unexpectedly struck something soft on the ground.

At first he didn’t recognize what it was. It was vaguely round, about the size and color of a coconut, but fleshy and bloated like a rotten date. He nudged it again with his boot, and it rolled over. De Beq took one look at the bashed—in face of the infant’s head and all but retched.

“It gets worse, my friend,” the sharif warned. “Much worse.”

Closing his eyes briefly to regain his detachment, de Beq took another deep breath and continued on. As they came abreast of a wider passage leading toward the center of the village and its well, the sharif extended his arm in a gesture of invitation.

There were ten of them, men and women, dumped in a heap by the side of the well. They were bound hand and foot, with their heads cocked back at grotesque angles, and all of them bore the same jagged, dark purple wounds at their throats.

Instinctively, De Beq eased his sword from its sheath as he stepped into the small clearing around the well, using the point of the sword to prod cautiously at the nearest body. It was ripe from days under the desert sun, and kites had been at the eyes, but it didn’t look that different from thousands of others de Beq had seen during a score of years in the Holy Land. Neither infidels nor Christians held any sort of monopoly on savage cruelty, and it was all too common practice to slaughter entire villages during times of war. Men, women, children–all suffered the same fate if their village was in the way of a hostile army.

The binding of hands and feet
was
a little odd, though; and the identical throat wounds ...

Inexplicably uneasy, de Beq glanced at Sharif Salim. The Saracen prince was watching him patiently, as if waiting for him to say something. When de Beq did not, Salim gestured toward the date shed. They had just started in that direction when a scraping sound came from within. De Beq might have ascribed it to an animal, or even the wind, but Salim instantly dropped into a crouch and drew his scimitar, dark eyes searching the front of the shed suspiciously.

Following his example, de Beq also crouched down, instinctively bringing his sword up in front of him, his right hand tight on the grip while his left moved instinctively to the pommel, enabling him to use the sword two—handed if needed.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Softly, the sharif shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s something in there that you need to see, but nothing should be moving.”

Cocking his head toward the shed, de Beq strained to hear any further sound that might come from it. Nothing. Not even the buzzing of flies.

The realization sent a chill shiver through de Beq’s body. Where were the flies? The desert was thick with flies; everywhere there were flies. Everywhere but here.

The sound scraped again. It sounded like a broom on a stone floor. De Beq forgot about the flies and concentrated all of his attention on the date shed. Sweat poured down his forehead, stinging his eyes and dripping from the end of his patrician nose, and he pushed the straw hat back off his head with an impatient gesture.

Scraape.
Softly, seductively, the sound beckoned them toward the date shed. He could see the sharif’s dark hands shifting on the hilt of his scimitar, and he really began to worry. If Salim ibn—Faisal was anxious–