Paul Christopher: Valley of the Templars

“Much better,” sighed the man happily. “Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?”

“Identity papers.”

“ Ja . Any particular type?”

“Passports, driver’s license, birth certificate.”

“Any particular country?”

“Canada. My friend in the Dominican Republic.”

“You have pictures?”

“Yes.” Holliday and Eddie handed over sets of passport photographs they had taken earlier in the day.

“It will be expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Five thousand euros. For each of you.”

“No problem.”

“Half now and your original passports.”

“Fine.” Holliday had already hit the bank machine and withdrawn money from one of the hundreds of accounts in Helder Rodrigues’s secret notebook. Having expected something like this, he took ten five-hundred-euro notes out of his wallet and put them in front of the man. He and Eddie put their real passports on the desk. Hartog swept them up. “ Goed, ” he said. “Come back in three days. Same time.”

They spent the three days sightseeing, going to most of the big museums like the Rijksmuseum, the State Museum, newly renovated, and of the course the world-famous Rembrandt Museum. They watched a diamond being cut and even took a boat ride through the city’s canals. At five past eight, three days after their first meeting, Holliday knocked on Hartog’s door. This time he was wearing a plain dark suit and a Richard Nixon mask. He met them at the door with the famous V for Victory sign the ex-president had given from the door of Marine One before making his long trip into purgatory, and then led them into the back office. There were fresh documents laid out on the desk. Holliday picked up his passport and Eddie picked up his.

“Very nice,” said Holliday.

“They are blanks from a friend I have at the consulate. If anyone ever matches the holograms, your names are on file. I even managed to get you Ontario Health Cards. Unfortunately, although the cards are real they are not in circulation, so if you are breaking your leg you are on your own, ja .” Hartog laughed behind the Nixon mask.

“That only accounts for three photographs; we gave you four. And where are our original passports?”

Hartog snapped his fingers. “I must have left them in the workroom downstairs.” He got to his feet, made the V sign again and disappeared through the rear door of the office.

Eddie frowned. “This has fish in it.” He leaned over the desk and twisted Hartog’s phone around. It had three buttons on it and one of them was lit.

“You’re right.” Holliday nodded, standing up. “It is fishy.” They pocketed their new documents and headed for the rear door of the office.

Behind the door was a small plain foyer lit by a single bulb and a set of heavy plank stairs leading downward. Holliday went first with Eddie right behind him.

The room was low ceilinged, dark, with a makeshift darkroom in one corner, a long table fitted with a laminating machine, a drafting table and a large color Xerox in one corner. Hartog was sitting at the long table talking in Dutch when Holliday and Eddie appeared. There was a fuming pipe in his mouth and a lighter on the table beside him. On seeing them he muttered something into the phone and hung up quickly. He put down the pipe.

“Talking to someone?” Holliday asked.

“My friend.”

“How long before your friend shows up?”

Hartog suddenly pulled out a desk drawer in the table and reached inside. Eddie took one step forward, grabbed the ten-foot-long oak table and overturned it, dumping Hartog off his stool. Holliday stepped over the table, bent down and picked up a compact little automatic pistol off the floor. A Walther PPK, the James Bond gun. He pointed it at Hartog. “The passports and the pictures.”

“In the drawer,” replied the Dutchman. Eddie checked the drawer and came up with the documents.

“Who were you talking to?” Holliday asked, pointing the gun roughly at the center of Hartog’s face, now devoid of its Richard Nixon mask.

“A lawyer.”

“What’s his name?”

“Derlagen.”

“Why?”

“He has contacts.”

“Who is he sending?”

“Some people.”

“How many?”

“Two, three, I don’t know.”

“They’re coming to kill us?”

“Yes.”

“Once upon a time it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do this,” said Holliday. “But people change.” He squeezed the trigger on the Walther and put a bullet into Hartog’s head just above the bridge of his nose.

He looked around the room, found a gallon tin of acetone for cleaning the press and spread it over everything, including Hartog. He dribbled a train of acetone to the bottom of the stairs and then used the lighter to start the fire.

“Come on,” said Holliday. “We better get out of here before the bad guys arrive.” He stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, watching the fire gain strength; then he followed Eddie back to the main floor.

By the time they reached the store itself, Holliday realized they were too late. Someone was rattling at the door. There was a quick, brittle sound of glass breaking and then the door was unlatched. Holliday motioned Eddie to the left as the two men slipped in between the hanging racks of costumes.

Holliday could already smell the smoke from the fire downstairs, and it wouldn’t be long before the whole store was consumed. As the two men approached, he tensed, waiting for the right moment. He had the flat little Walther, but small caliber or not, it still made a lot of noise.

When it came, it came without thinking for both men. As his man passed him by, Eddie stepped out into the aisle, grabbed the man’s right wrist and bent it back toward his shoulder blades, forcing him to drop his weapon, a large-caliber automatic with a suppressor on it. That accomplished, the Cuban kicked the man’s legs out from under him, put a knee in his spine and wrapped an arm around his head, pulling sharply until he heard the bone at the base of the intruder’s skull snap.

Holliday’s man wasn’t much different. Holliday used the butt of the Walther to punch him in the throat, swept his legs out from under him and broke his neck. The smell of smoke was very strong now, and Holliday could see flames behind the glass in the office window. He flipped his man over and checked in his pockets.

“Shit.”

“ Que? ” Eddie asked.

“They’re company men. CIA Philpott’s put a hit out on us.”

“A hit?” Eddie asked. “ Como un golpe en la cabeza? No lo entiendo. ”

“A kill order. We’ve got to get out of Amsterdam, fast.”

They took the six fifty a.m. KLM flight the following day and arrived in Toronto in the late afternoon. Holliday used his new passport and driver’s license to open up an account at the Royal Bank of Canada Airport branch; then he and Eddie took a town car into the city. They booked into the Park Hyatt at Avenue Road and Bloor Street, which was kitty-corner to the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies, had a room service steak and then Eddie bailed out and was asleep on the couch within five minutes. Holliday gathered up his key card and went down to the business center.

Using the account codes he’d long ago learned from the notebook the monk Helder Rodrigues had given him, Holliday transferred one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in U.S funds from the Royal Bank of Canada’s main branch in Nassau in the Bahamas to his newly opened account in Toronto. He booked off the hotel computer, the online fees charged directly to the suite, then went back upstairs, had a quick shot of Scotch from the minibar, listening to Eddie snoring on the couch while he looked out at the lights of the city, then went to bed himself, giving in to the fatigue he’d endured in Ramstein’s hospital and his much more recent jet lag. He was asleep within a minute of his head hitting the pillows.