Paul Christopher - The Templar Legion

“That’s right.”

“Did you do any business there?”

“None to speak of. I made a few contacts.”

“And one of them suggested you visit us? Anyone in particular?”

“A man named Ives,” said Lanz, throwing his line into the water. “Archibald Ives.” There was no reaction from Saint-Sylvestre other than a brief note he jotted on a pad close to his right hand. The ballpoint he used was a Montblanc-his own, or booty from an unwary foreigner who’d passed through the bleak little room that was Saint-Sylvestre’s fiefdom?

“And are you bringing any of these weapons into the country?” Saint-Sylvestre asked, nodding toward the single suitcase Lanz carried.

“Just the catalogs,” Lanz answered.

“The suitcase,” said Saint-Sylvestre, indicating the examination table. Lanz lifted the case and spun it around. The guard standing beside Saint-Sylvestre ran the zipper around the edges of the case and threw back the top. Saint-Sylvestre glanced inside. Toiletries, neatly packed summer-weight clothing and a half dozen thick catalogs: Armament Technology Incorporated of Canada, Browning, Bushmaster, the Czech Republic’s eska Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod, China’s Norinco, Russia’s Rosvoorouzhenie.

Captain Saint-Sylvestre picked up a catalog at random and leafed through it, then dropped it onto the table. Using the Montblanc, he turned over the clothes in the suitcase. He found only a library-edition copy of Carl Hiaasen’s most recent novel. He picked it up. “What is this?”

“A very funny book about the cult of celebrity in the United States.”

“You don’t have this cult in Canada?”

“It’s hard to tell.” Lanz shrugged. “There are no celebrities in Canada. They all go to the U.S.”

“The book is funny?”

“Very.”

“The author is a celebrity?”

“I suppose,” said Lanz.

“Then he ridicules himself?”

“I don’t really care.” Lanz sighed. He was getting bored with the man’s convoluted interrogation. “I bought it to read on the plane.”

Saint-Sylvestre dropped the book back into the suitcase and changed gears again. “Empty your pockets, please.”

Lanz did so. Saint-Sylvestre picked up his wallet. He examined all the credit cards and counted the cash. There was four thousand dollars in U.S. hundred-dollar bills.

“A great deal of money.”

“I’m a great believer in cash.”

“So am I,” said Saint-Sylvestre. He counted out ten hundred-dollar bills, folded them and slipped the money into the breast pocket of his uniform. He looked up at Lanz and smiled.

“Tax,” he explained.

“That’s what I thought.” Lanz nodded.

“No cell phone?”

Lanz shrugged. “Would I get a signal?”

“No camera?”

“I didn’t come here to take pictures.”

“It is a very beautiful country,” said Saint-Sylvestre. “There are many attractions for the visitor. Many colorful birds and exotic animals.”

“I’m sure.”

“Although the jungle can be very dangerous. Sometimes fatal,” said Saint-Sylvestre. “I strongly advise you to stay in Fourandao. For your own safety.”

“Of course,” said Lanz. Now, what was that all about?

“You may go,” said Saint-Sylvestre. Lanz nodded, repacked his suitcase and put everything back in his pockets, including his wallet.

“Perhaps you could recommend a hotel,” said Lanz.

“There is only one. The Trianon.”

Lanz nodded. The guard at the exit door stepped aside. Lanz picked up his suitcase and left. Saint-Sylvestre watched him go. Finally he spoke to the guard beside him in rapid-fire Sango.

“Tondo ni wande,” he instructed. Keep watch over the foreigner.

“En, Kapita,” said the guard. He followed Lanz out the door.

Michael Pierce Harris sat in his room at the Khartoum Hilton and listened to the distant satellite-echoing voice of his boss.

“What’s the present situation?” Major Allen Faulkener asked from his London office.

“They’re getting ready for some sort of expedition, that’s for sure,” answered Harris. “They’ve been picking up everything from bug spray and hammocks to machetes and malaria pills.”

“The pilot, Osman?”

“Stripping down the engines on the Catalina.”

“Do you have any idea about their ETD?”

“Tomorrow, maybe the day after. Osman’s filed a flight plan for Umm Rawq.”

There was a brief silence. Finally Faulkener spoke. “There’s a Matheson twin Otter at the civilian airport in Khartoum. Take it down to Wau, on the border, in the morning. I’ll have a half dozen men on standby. That should be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Harris asked.

“They’re following in Ives’s footsteps,” said Faulkener, his voice rising and falling spectrally on the carrier wave. “Make sure they stumble and fall. Fatally.”

Returning from his regular afternoon stroll through town, Konrad Lanz stepped into the Bar Marie-Antoinette at the Trianon Palace Hotel and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The long, narrow space off the lobby was empty except for Marcel Boganda, the bartender. Late sunlight leaked weakly through the partially opened louvers on the window that looked out onto the Trianon’s colonial-style veranda.

The room was straight out of Rudyard Kipling, complete with a gently rotating wooden fan whickering overhead, a few old, cracked brown leather banquettes and club chairs scattered randomly. The centerpiece, the bar itself, was forty feet of art deco, deep red burled bubinga hardwood, the slab surface of the bar top as dense as marble. The bar was Marcel’s pride and joy; every drink was served with a coaster and every condensation ring was wiped up almost before it had a chance to form.

Marcel was in his fifties, round faced and short haired. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and dressed in evening clothes from the time the bar opened at noon to closing time at midnight. He was a formal, distant man and rarely spoke unless he was spoken to. It was only by accident that Lanz had discovered from a waiter in the dining room on the far side of the lobby that Marcel actually owned the Trianon.

Crossing the room Lanz took a seat on one of the tall, high-backed leather-covered bar stools at the veranda end of the room. He put his Carl Hiaasen book down on the bar and waited. It took a moment or two but eventually Marcel wandered down and took Lanz’s order: a chilled green-and-yellow bottle of Congolese Ngok beer with its lurid crocodile logo. Marcel poured the pale, corn-colored lager into a tall glass, letting the short head rise, just so. Lanz took a sip and sighed happily.

“Hot out there,” said Lanz.

“Most usually is, sir,” said Marcel. “It is a hot country.”

“Lived here all your life?” Lanz asked.

“I went away to school, sir. To France. The Sorbonne.”

“And you came back here?” Lanz asked, surprised.

“This is my home,” said the bartender simply, shrugging his shoulders.

“Kukuanaland?”

“Fourandao, sir.”

“What do you think about Kolingba?”

“I try not to,” answered Marcel. Lanz wasn’t entirely sure but he thought he caught a tinge of irony in the man’s voice.

“Does he ever come here?”

“No, sir. Our president is not a drinker.”

“How about his second in command, this Gash fellow?”

“Chocolate bourbon on the rocks from time to time,” said Marcel. “Why do you ask me so many questions, sir?”

“I’ll be honest with you, Marcel. I need an in to the president.”

“In my experience, sir, people who preface a conversation with ‘let me be honest’ are anything but, and what precisely do you mean by an ‘in’?”