Paul Christopher - The Templar Legion

“General?”

There was a long pause.

“Have you come to murder me in my bed, Gash?”

“No, sir.”

“I can see in the dark like a cat. I would kill you first.”

“Yes, sir, I know that.” From Rwanda to Banqui to Baltimore to here; it really was a long and winding road.

“I am uSathane-umufo , a devil man. I know your thoughts,” said Kolingba out of the darkness.

“I know this, too, General, and I would never have disturbed your sleep without the most important of reasons.”

The heavy curtains on the side of the bed facing Gash were thrust aside and Kolingba appeared out of the gloom, throwing back the black satin sheet that covered his huge body. He swung his legs over the bed, planting them wide apart like a Sumo wrestler. In his right hand the silver-plated pistol glinted. Kolingba lifted one giant buttock and broke wind explosively.

“Speak,” said the dictator, yawning.

“There are several things, Your Highness. Together they point to a single conclusion.”

“What things?”

“Saint-Sylvestre has disappeared.”

“The policeman?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I care about a policeman disappearing? This is not enough to wake me from my dreams, Gash. My dreams are prophecies. They guide me as I guide my country.”

Oh, jeez.

“He disappeared while he was following a man he believed was a mercenary, Your Highness.”

“What sort of mercenary?”

“He was traveling on a Canadian passport, but Saint-Sylvestre was sure he was German.”

“Why would a mercenary come here?”

“Saint-Sylvestre thought there was a good chance that he was reconnoitering Fourandao.”

“Reconnoitering? Why would anyone want to do that, Gash?”

“For a coup-d’etat, Your Majesty.” Gash waited for the reaction. There was none except for Kolingba’s fingers tightening a little around the big automatic in his hand.

“That is impossible,” said Kolingba. “My enemies are gone. My people love me.”

“Perhaps, Your Majesty, but there have been reports of a mining engineer who showed an interest in the area around the Kazaba Falls.”

“There is nothing there. Only swamp and jungle.”

Gash summoned up his courage and spoke. “Limbani has been seen.”

“Don’t be foolish,” scoffed Kolingba. “Limbani is isipokwe , a ghost.”

“I’m afraid Limbani is no ghost, Your Highness. He has been seen at the first cataract talking to a group of white men. He is very much alive.”

Kolingba bolted up out of the bed, eyes bulging in the semidarkness, a yellow mountain of flesh waving an automatic pistol, screaming. “Then find him! Find him! I will have him, Gash! Do you understand me!? You must kill him! I must kill him! He is a scourge! An infestation! Kill him!”

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the anger vanished. Kolingba threw the pistol on his night table. “What are you going to do?” Kolingba asked.

“I thought we could take one of the helicopters and look for any signs of him upriver. It is clear that any attempt on Fourandao will come from the east-we would have heard about it long ago if it was coming from Banqui.”

“My dreams tell me that the danger comes from the west. Perhaps from Banqui, or even farther.”

“You could go yourself and see,” replied Gash, knowing what the reply would be.

“You know I will not fly in one of those things, Gash,” said the general petulantly. “Go for me.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. I have your full authority in this, I presume?”

“Of course, of course!”

“In writing?” Gash asked. If there was to be a coup Gash would have to be the one who prepared against it.

“Yes! Yes!” Kolingba said, waving Gash from the room, his face twisted angrily. Gash had to stop himself from laughing as he suddenly understood Kolingba’s urgency-he was desperate to get to the chamber pot beneath the bed.

Gash backed toward the door; the pistol was only a foot or two away from Kolingba’s hand. “And have my breakfast sent here today, would you. I must think about all of this,” the general added.

“Right away.” Gash nodded. He found the door at his back and slipped quickly from the room. As he headed to the kitchens he found himself thinking about the cash hidden behind the wall in Kolingba’s office and how it could be accessed quickly if it became necessary. As he made his way down the stairs he began to whistle the theme music from the old A-Team series, his favorite back in Baltimore. He smiled broadly as he reached the ground floor of the main compound building. He really did love it when a plan came together.

Sir James Matheson, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, maintained two official residences in England. One was Huntington Hall, the enormous seventeenth-century ancestral estate in Derbyshire. The other was a magnificent seven-bedroom apartment in Albert Hall Mansions located between Albert Hall and the Royal Geographical Society on Kensington Gore overlooking the Albert Memorial and Kensington Gardens.

The earl and his wife, the Countess Edwina, formerly Lady Edwina Talbot, had a long-standing marital agreement that neither party would arrive at the other’s residence without an invitation and at least twenty-four hours’ notice. The twins, Justin and Jonathan, had been packed away to Barlborough Hall School since their fifth birthday and still had another six years to go before being packed away once more to Oxford or Cambridge, and thus presented no particular problem to either parent.

Neither Sir James nor Countess Edwina professed the slightest interest in what the other was doing and each left the other alone, except for formal occasions such as Royal Garden Parties, the Grand National and Royal Ascot. For the most part, Huntington Hall was the countess’s fiefdom and London belonged to Sir James.

Like most titled people in England with reputations to sustain, both the countess and Sir James had their various appropriate charities, and those charities required fund-raising. On the advice of his accountants, Sir James Matheson’s cultural charity was the Royal College of Music-even though he was known to have a tin ear that had difficulty getting the tune for even “God Save the Queen” right. He sponsored several dinners, concerts and cocktail parties for the college each year to raise money.

Unfortunately the date for one of those parties fell just forty-eight hours before the dark of the moon in Fourandao, Kukuanaland, and the launch of Matheson’s private invasion of that country. Even more unfortunate was the fact that these cocktail parties invariably took place at his apartment in Albert Hall Mansions.

Matheson’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a five-and-a-half-story building, and dwarfed both the Royal Geographical Society and Albert Hall itself. Matheson’s father, the eighth earl, either through great good fortune or liberal applications of money, had managed to purchase one of the center apartments, which had an arched, recessed balcony that stretched the width of the entire apartment and could be used in inclement weather.

A large black-and-white-tiled entrance hall led to a thirty-by-forty-foot reception room on the right. Kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and a sitting room were on the left. The first reception room led to a second reception room, which led out to the arched balcony; beside the reception room was a master bedroom that Matheson had renovated into a study-library, also leading out to the arched balcony. At the last tax evaluation, the apartment had been valued at eight million, two hundred thousand pounds.

At the present moment it was crammed with well over a hundred people grazing on several thousand pounds’ worth of mini Parmesan baskets filled with cauliflower puree, wild-strawberry-and-cucumber jam on toast, wild mushroom palmiers with creamed goat cheese, dragachelio baby quail egg Florentine with pink pepper hollandaise and, last but not least, the eight-pounds-a-mouthful seared miso-infused tuna. On top of that were forty strategically placed crystal vases of cut flowers spread through the entrance hall, the two reception halls and the three bathrooms designated for guest use that evening, not to mention the endless spigot of expensive French, German and Italian wines and the full bar, all of it serviced by more than two dozen waitstaff, bartenders, presenters and a ten-person cleanup crew for after the party.