Paul Christopher - The Templar Legion

Holliday turned on his heel and watched as all four of the armed children guarding them were also struck, each one more than once, the bright white cones appearing in faces, backs, chests and bellies.

The effects of the darts were instantaneous: paralysis, choking, convulsions, a strychnine-like arching of the back, foaming at the mouth and then complete loss of sphincter control followed almost immediately by death.

Holliday, Peggy, Rafi and Eddie were the only people left untouched. Out on the river, the dugout drifted. The boy who had torched the sailboats was draped over the gunwale as two crocodiles fought to pull his corpse into the water.

The sailboats themselves were smoldering hulks, their occupants either burned to death or dragged down to the muddy bottom by the giant reptiles. The whole thing had been silent and from the first dart in Salamango’s eye to the last child’s death had taken only seconds. Not a word had been said; not a shot had been fired.

With her camera Peggy began taking photos of the bizarre killing ground all around them. Suddenly she stopped; her hands were shaking too hard. Holliday followed her stunned gaze. Men began to appear from the jungle, scores of them, all dressed in ornately folded linen loincloths that looked like pleated kilts and sandals, their thongs crisscrossed up to the knee in a familiar design. They carried five- or six-foot-long bamboo tubes in their hands and short quivers on their belts for the long, cone-ended darts.

Some of the men wore crested wooden helmets with leather cheek flaps, the crests made from some kind of stiffened animal-hair bristle, while others wore simple linen coifs to match the kiltlike loincloths. The strangest thing about them was their color-a tanned light brown like heavily creamed coffee. Their hair was dark and straight, their features definitely Caucasian rather than negroid. Most startling of all, Holliday could see that some of the oddly dressed men had blue eyes.

“Umufo omhloshana,” Eddie said quietly.

Holliday nodded. “The Pale Strangers.”

There was a knock on Sir James Matheson’s office door.

“Enter!”

Allen Faulkener stepped into the lavish office and stood in front of Matheson’s desk. “Leonhard Euhler is dead,” he said stiffly.

“Christ!” Matheson said. “How?”

“Some sort of homosexual tryst, as far as the Swiss police are concerned. Love letters, suicide note.”

Matheson sat rigidly behind his desk, palms spread on its smooth empty surface. He thought for a moment, then leaned down, pulled open the humidor drawer of the desk and took out a Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill Robusto.

He closed the drawer carefully, then took a gold Dunhill cutter-punch combination out of his waistcoat pocket and prepared the cigar for smoking. He sat back in his chair and lit the cigar with a matching Dunhill lighter, all the while trying to maintain his composure in front of Faulkener. It didn’t do to let the hired help see the master afraid, and for the first time in a long time that was exactly what Sir James Matheson was-afraid.

Matheson wasn’t much of a believer in luck or happenstance. Whatever evidence the Swiss police had in hand he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that Euhler would pick this particular moment to snuff out his lights for some idiotic love affair. He could sense the first small cracks in his plan, but if his intuition was right, who was responsible, and how did he stop the cracks from getting worse?

“No signs of foul play?”

“Apparently not. Pills, the love letters, as I mentioned. The man who wrote the letters died in a car accident.”

“Recently?”

“Six years ago.”

Why would a man, poof or not, kill himself over the death of a lover six years ago? It was making less and less sense. Everything was pointing to the Kolingba operation.

“I’ll want to see the autopsy report, the police file and any surveillance tapes that were made.”

“I’ve already checked, Sir James. There were no cameras at his residence but there are interior and exterior cameras at the bank.”

“Speak to Herr Gesler personally; tell him that since Euhler was handling some delicate business for us I would very much appreciate receiving copies of the tapes as soon as possible. If he balks, lean on him a little; remind him of the dossier on his personal affairs that is in our possession. Get the tapes for the day before the man’s death and for the day after.” Matheson paused. “He was supposed to get the proxies on the mining company you found; did he do so?”

“Not that I am aware of, Sir James.”

No, of course not; there’d be no point in killing him if the proxies had been exchanged. Someone else was trying to get them. But who? Nagoupande? He didn’t have the brains of a gnat, and Matheson seriously doubted that the man would be able to imagine such a conspiracy, let alone orchestrate it.

Kolingba was probably incapable as well, but his personal Rasputin, this Oliver Gash, might, although he doubted it somehow; Gash’s dossier portrayed him as a criminal with a criminal’s shrewdness and without the real sophistication to manage a massive short-selling stock fraud. It simply wasn’t his thing. He took another puff on the cigar, enjoying its rich, sweet flavor for a few brief seconds. Time to get down to brass tacks. The proxies.

“Find out the position of the proxies. If Euhler did not have them signed you will go to British Columbia yourself and obtain them. I have copies here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have we heard from Harris and Mrs. Sinclair’s hooligans in Africa?”

“No, sir. Not a word.”

“Then presume that he’s been wiped off the slate and that Holliday and his archaeologist friend are still at large. We’re looking at far too much media exposure if they’re allowed to survive. Find someone better than Harris to stop them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much longer for our Austrian friend Lanz?”

“The new moon is next week.”

“His minders are keeping an eye on him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, get me those tapes and find out about the proxies. Without them I might as well be investing in a dustbin full of ashes.”

“Yes, sir.” Faulkener left the room.

Matheson sat back in his chair. He was breaking half the securities and exchange laws in this country and any others where he expected to trade Silver Brand Mining, and if he was caught at it they’d put him behind bars for the rest of his life. His financial crimes made Bernie Madoff look like an amateur. On top of that he could be charged with conspiring to commit murder both before and after the fact, not to mention toppling a foreign head of state and bribing his replacement. To make things worse it now looked like there was some mysterious competitor for Kukuanaland’s spoils.

His smile widened and he pulled heartily on the stubby little Churchill Robusto. He hadn’t been this sick with fear and this excited since he’d lost his virginity to his father’s mistress at the age of fourteen. He took the sweet-tasting cigar out of his mouth and blew a plume of aromatic smoke toward the ornate plaster ceiling of his office. These were the moments a man lived for!

A single figure stepped out of the jungle, his face covered by an ornate wooden mask, its edges trimmed with stiffened gold rattan like a lion’s mane, a round cockerel crest topped with rigid bristle, bloodred like that of a helmet worn by a Roman centurion.

The red wooden eyes of the face bulged and the mouth was a boxy square, wooden bars where the teeth should be, much like a gladiator’s protective head covering. He wore the same white cloth kilt as the others, complete with a short quiver full of darts, but this man’s skin was coal black. His feet were covered in heavy sandals, leather strips crisscrossed almost to his knees.