The Templar Cross (15 page)

“George Bush wasn’t a terrorist. He was the president of the United States,” answered Holliday.

“Your patriotism is exemplary, Colonel, but Bush the younger terrorized his own people and used Homeland Security to do it, much like Hitler used the Gestapo. The Fuhrer had Himmler. Bush Jr. had Dick Cheney.

“A little simplistic, don’t you think?” Holliday asked. Come on now; a philosophical argument about what constitutes a terrorist while sitting in a camel-skin tent in the middle of the Sahara Desert? It was insane.

“We could go on with this argument forever,” said Rafi. “But it’s got nothing to do with Peggy.”

“Miss Blackstock went on at length about her relationship with you and yours with her. It was touching. I’m sorry to have caused undue anxiety.”

“What have you done with her?” Holliday asked.

“She’s quite safe, at least for the moment,” said Alhazred. “Unlike her companions, all of whom have gone to meet their maker, I’m afraid.”

“You murdered a bunch of priests?” Holliday said.

“I defended myself,” answered Alhazred. “And they were no more priests than I am a colonel.”

“Then who were they?”

“Brother Charles-Étienne Brasseur, the leader of the expedition, was a longtime operative for La Sapinière, French Vatican Intelligence. He was the only real archaeologist in the group. Even Miss Blackstock was suspicious of that; there wasn’t even a graduate student on the so-called team.”

“Then who were they and what were they doing with Brasseur?” Rafi said.

“They were mercenaries hired from the ranks of true believers, like the men of Propaganda Due or Opus Dei. They all had previous military experience.”

“How do you know that?” Holliday asked.

“Well, in the first place they were armed,” responded Alhazred. “When we eventually made contact they opened fire on us with automatic weapons, mostly Beretta AR-70s. They killed three of my men before they had a chance to return fire.” He paused. “Hardly the pious behavior of priests.” Alhazred pulled a crumpled package of Marlboros out of his back pocket, tapped one out and lit it with a paper match. He blew a plume of smoke up at the roof of the tent. “Later we found out that they had all been in the Département protection sécurité, the storm trooper arm of the National Front Party in France and the First ‘Draghi’ desert unit of the Italian R.A.O., the Reggimento Ricognizione e Acquisizione Obiettivi—in other words, commandos.”

“You’re saying they were on a military mission?” Holliday asked.

“Thieves in the night, Colonel. They came for
Your Heart’s Desire
and the gold it contained; Imhotep’s tomb was just an excuse for the expedition.”

“What about Brasseur’s theory?”

“Bogus; Brasseur was a medievalist. He was interested in the Templars’ role at Damietta certainly, but the Imhotep theory was an invention of Centro d’informazione pro Deo, Vatican Intelligence in Rome. Brasseur discovered the wartime journals of a man named Father Andrew Felix Morion. He was the one who set up the removal of the gold for Rauff in 1944.”

“You seem to know a lot about the Catholic Church,” said Rafi.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Alhazred said, smiling coldly. “I was raised in it.”

“You’re not a Muslim?” Rafi asked, surprised.

“I’ve never heard of a Catholic terrorist, either,” said Holliday.

“A terrorist is as a terrorist does. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. My father was native Lebanese, my mother was French Canadian of Lebanese descent. They were both doctors. They were working at Nabatieh, a Palestinian refugee camp, in July of 1974 when the Israelis bombed it to rubble.” He looked across the tent at Rafi. “Your people, Dr. Wanounou. They murdered my parents for no reason. I was two years old at the time. I have no memory of my parents. I know them only from a few photos and the stories my uncle told me. They were stolen from me the way Walter Rauff stole the Jewish gold on that plane, the way they would have stolen it from me if they’d had the opportunity. As I said, a terrorist is as a terrorist does. I’m no terrorist, gentlemen. I’m just a man taking his revenge.”

“No political motivation at all?” Holliday asked.

“Only the politics of thievery, other people taking other people’s things. My Tuareg friends here having their land stolen away for lunatic projects, their cultural history stolen just as surely. Did you know that the Germa site has never been excavated by Libyan archaeologists? French, American, British, yes, colonial powers all. But Libyans? Not on your life.”

Alhazred finished his cigarette, then turned and stepped out of the tent for a second, grinding out the butt into the sand at his feet. He stepped back inside the tent.

“So my companions in the Brotherhood decided that we would make money out of it all at least, which is how things started. I was toiling as a field-worker at the Zinchechra site, stealing small artifacts and selling them to smugglers. That’s how I met the estimable Mr. Tidyman. We had much in common. He was an expatriate and so was I; we had a shared, partial Canadian heritage. Blood brothers if you will. That led to a whole chain of connections up the smugglers’ network, to Cairo, Alexandria, Tripoli, Tobruk, Tunis, Marseille, a lot of places.”

“Valador and his fishing boat. The tugboat in Alexandria,” said Holliday.

“That’s right, the
Khamsin
.” The handsome Lebanese man smiled. “Then I found the tomb and everything changed.”

“Imhotep?” Rafi asked.

“Himself,” confirmed Alhazred. “I was looking for a place to cache artifacts I’d taken from the main dig when I stumbled on it. The site at Zinchechra is enormous. As well as the old town ruins and the Garamathes’ fortress there are also hundreds of beehive tombs from the earlier group who occupied the oasis. I shouldn’t have been surprised; the tombs look like miniature truncated pyramids, much like the step pyramid at Saqqara built by Imhotep for King Djoser in 2600 B.C. It’s clear now that’s where the design came from; Imhotep simply enlarged the scale.”

“He was buried in one?” Rafi asked.

“Hidden would be a better description. Like Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter.’ I believe the term is ‘hidden in plain sight,’ ” said Alhazred. “In most of the tombs the occupant was buried upright; that’s what I expected to find in the one I opened. A tiny space but big enough for what I had in mind. Instead there was a shaft and a passage leading to quite a large underground chamber.”

“The tomb,” offered Holliday.

“Yes,” said Alhazred.

“Sealed?” Rafi said.

“Sealed and with Imhotep’s cartouche pressed into the plaster when it was still wet.”

“What did you see when you opened it?” Rafi’s eyes were like saucers. Alhazred was describing every archaeologist’s fondest dream; their heart’s desire, in fact.

“Wonderful things,” said Alhazred wistfully, remembering. “Not the tomb of a king, like Tutankhamen, but the tomb of a thinking man, an architect, an engineer, an inventor, a doctor and a mathematician. Architectural models, intact clay and wax tablets, wall paintings, small sculptures, a great deal of jewelry. All authentic Third Dynasty. Worth millions.”

“If you’d gone public with the find it would have made your reputation,” said Rafi.

“Who discovered King Tut’s tomb?” Alhazred sneered.

“Howard Carter,” said Rafi promptly.

“Not so,” said Alhazred. “It was his foreman, Ahmed Rais, an illiterate Egyptian. Carter could have kept digging for the rest of his life and never found it.”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t have gotten credit for the find?” Holliday said.

“Not in a million years. I got my doctorate at the American University in Beirut. The head of the Germa dig was a postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford. Do you know anything about the politics of academia in the archaeology field, Colonel Holliday?”

“Nothing,” admitted Holliday.

“I do,” said Rafi.

“What luck would I have had getting credit for an enormous find like that?”

“Not a chance in hell,” agreed Rafi with a sigh.

“Exactly.” Alhazred nodded and lit another cigarette. “So I kept it quiet.”

“You and your friends started smuggling artifacts from the tomb,” said Holliday. Rafi winced, knowing the historical loss that came from that kind of destructive, unscientific looting. Movies like Clive Cussler’s
Sahara
, the modern
Mummy
series, and worst of all the
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
films extolled the worst kind of archaeology. At least Indiana Jones wasn’t in it for the money.

“That’s precisely what we did, and we were getting rich doing it, Emil and I. Then Emil tripped over
Your Heart’s Desire
while he was taking a load of booty from the tomb back to Siwa. We knew we were in trouble right from the start.”

“I’d hardly call finding a billion dollars in bullion trouble,” said Rafi.

“Really?” Alhazred gave a mocking laugh. “A billion dollars that isn’t yours in a country ruled by a lunatic dictator crazier than Saddam Hussein? It was trouble, believe me. As soon as we started trickling the gold out a few bars at a time the people at the far end of the smugglers’ chain of command started asking questions. Bad people. So we invented the Brotherhood of Isis and became political. It made us more dangerous to the big-time criminals we had to deal with. It also got us friends and a few accommodations about traveling in the revolutionary zones in Niger and Chad. My Tuaregs loved it. Calling themselves the Brotherhood reminded them of their warrior past and gave them status among the other tribes. Problems still exist. We are well hidden here, and remote, but far too many people know about the gold now. Eventually the trouble will come to a head. I would like to act before that happens.”

“How did you find out we were coming for Peggy?” Rafi asked.

“She said you would,” explained Alhazred. “Both of you. I thought it was bluff and bluster, but then Fusani’s body floated up and I knew you were coming.” He smiled. “I guess neither of you was a Boy Scout; your knots weren’t tight enough.”

“Fusani?” Rafi frowned.

“The engineer on the
Khamsin
,” suggested Holliday.

“Quite so,” said Alhazred.

“At which point you set us up with Tidyman,” Holliday said.

Again Alhazred nodded.

“Yes. It was logical that without papers to cross the border at Sollum you would find your way to Siwa. After that it was easy.”

“It’s a great story,” said Holliday. “But it doesn’t get us any closer to Peggy.”

“Nor will it, not for the moment.”

“Not for the moment?” Holliday said.

“How do we know she’s even alive?” Rafi asked bluntly.

“You don’t,” said Alhazred. “But I can assure you that she is.”

“What do you want from us?” Holliday asked.

“I’d like your opinion about something,” said Alhazred. “Yours from a military perspective, Colonel Holliday, and yours from an archaeologist’s point of view, Dr. Wanounou. Do that for me tomorrow and I’ll be happy to tell you where Peggy is.” He gave a curt little nod. “We’ll head for the tomb tomorrow evening, less chance of being seen. Until then feel free to wander about the camp. Try to escape and Miss Blackstock will be killed within the hour. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Holliday. Rafi was silent.

“Good,” said Alhazred. He turned on his heel and threw back the tent flap, then disappeared outside.

“Illuminating,” said Holliday, leaning back on the pillows, staring thoughtfully at the entrance to the tent.

“How much of that do you believe?” Rafi asked.

“All of it. None of it. Who knows?” Holliday shrugged. “All I
do
know is that guy talks too much and there’s something creepy about him. Something missing.”

“Is Peggy alive?” Rafi asked, his voice cracking.

“If she’s not I guarantee you
sayyed
Alhazred is a dead man,” vowed Holliday grimly.

They awakened with the rest of the camp at dawn the following day. Holliday knew there was a guard outside the tent throughout the night because he heard him singing softly to himself. The songs were all quiet dirges, like memories of the enormous desert they had just crossed. Sleep didn’t come easily and his thoughts inevitably turned to Peggy and her whereabouts. He’d told Rafi that Alhazred would die if he’d harmed her in any way, but privately on his own restless voyage through the night, Holliday also promised himself that the man’s death would not come either quickly or easily.

Breakfast was strong black coffee and
taguella
, a thick crepelike bread made from millet flour and goat’s milk but without sugar. A Tuareg brought them the overnight bags they’d brought with them from Siwa and they changed into fresh clothes. After that, just as Alhazred had promised, they were given the run of the camp. Holliday was the first to decipher the site’s design.

“It’s a Roman castra,” he said after a few minutes of walking through the camp. “A square inside a sand rampart and a dry ditch. About three hundred by three hundred and all the tents laid out in rows. That big tent in the middle is probably Alhazred’s. It’s a military formation. The first real attempt at urban planning.” They climbed up the sandy hill at the south side of the camp. A Tuareg guard patrolling the top of the rampart with a rifle slung across his back eyed them speculatively. Like targets. Or prey.

“New weapon from the looks of it,” said Rafi as they reached the summit of the sandy wall. “Alhazred equips his people well.”

“It’s a C7 assault rifle,” said Holliday. “Knockoff of the U.S. Army M-18. Canadian again.”

“Tidyman was raised in Canada and Alhazred’s mother was Canadian as well; they must have lots of connections there. I know they have a big Lebanese immigrant population; it’s been that way for a long time.”

“Canada, the terrorist’s Switzerland,” replied Holliday, looking down at the camp. “Easy to get into on a visitor’s visa and the border is a four-thousand-mile sieve. You can walk through a wheat field in Saskatchewan and not even know you’d crossed into Montana.” He shook his head wearily. Holliday knew a few Homeland Security types who’d told him that between terrorists and high-grade marijuana, the Canadian border needed a fence even more than Mexico. “During the Vietnam War they said more Russian spies crossed into New York State at Niagara Falls than anywhere else. Couldn’t go on a tour bus without running into some guy in a Hawaiian shirt named Vladimir.”