Paul Christopher - The Templar throne

"You know who we are, obviously," said Holliday. "Who are you?"

"Are you enjoying your breakfast?"

"It's fine. Who are you?"

"My name is Quince, like the jelly. Nathan Quince." The man smiled. "I'm sure my mother had a fantasy that I'd grow up to be a gay English professor at a little college in some place like Nebraska. Perhaps write a book of poetry or two. Something low-stress. Alas, her dream hasn't come true."

"So what are you then?" Holliday went on, eating his omelet. "If you're not a poet from Nebraska?"

"I'm a facilitator. I make things happen. I give history a nudge now and again, that's all. You're a historian. I'm sure you can see the value in that."

"And we're in the way of a nudge, is that it?"

"Not necessarily," said Quince. He plucked a slice of toast from the rack and tore it in half. He loaded a piece of omelet onto one of the toast halves and put it in his mouth. He chewed, looking across the table at Holliday. He swallowed and spoke again. "We're just keeping an eye on you."

"Is that why you kidnapped us?"

"It's a stormy world out there, Colonel Holliday. Sometimes it's best to come in out of the rain."

"I didn't feel any rain."

"You would have," said Quince. "There are a great many parties interested in your little quest."

"Including you."

"Including us," Quince said and nodded. He took a sip of coffee. Outside on the lake the water-skiing boat was back.

"So who is us?"

"An interested party."

"One of the three- letter boys, CIA, DEA, NSA, or one of the new crop that's sprung up over the past ten years?"

"Not federal at all," said Quince. "The world has changed. Think globally. Corporately."

"You're private then, whoever you are."

"Contract employees. As I said, facilitators. Problems arise; we solve them."

"Thugs," said Holliday, sipping his coffee.

"Certainly," said Quince pleasantly. "If thugs are necessary."

"But why us?" Holliday asked.

"According to my information you and the good sister are looking for something called the True Ark. To some people this relic has certain symbolic value well in excess of its monetary worth. It is our task to ensure that this True Ark-if it exists at all-not fall into the wrong hands."

"What constitutes the wrong hands?" Holliday asked.

"Any hands other than my client's."

"And who is your client?"

"I can't say. Security reasons."

"Logjam," Holliday said. He picked up a piece of toast and started spreading it with preserves from a little pot beside the toast rack. The pot had a small paper label: Moira's Plum Jam. He bit into the toast. Moira was to be congratulated.

"Why kidnap us?" Meg said, speaking for the first time.

"To my sure knowledge you have five separate police agencies and the Vatican Intelligence Service looking for you. You've left a litter of bodies in your wake. We're just trying to differentiate ourselves from the crowd, so to speak. Our sources tell us that your friends from the Vatican were getting very close. We decided to remove you from the playing field for a while. For your own safety and for the safety of your undertaking."

"So you're on our side?" Holliday asked.

"Until I'm told differently by my client."

"So for you it's about the job. No loyalties to anyone. It's all about the money."

"Don't be naive, Colonel. It's always all about the money. Wars are fought for all sorts of reasons by all sorts of people, but inevitably it is the people who sell the warriors their bullets who get rich. Life, Colonel Holliday, is a retail event, just like Christmas."

The water- skiing boat was visible now, no more than fifty feet off the dock below them. The skis of the man being towed behind the boat slapped the water noisily and the roar of a pair of big twin engines was enough to drown out conversation at the kitchen table. Everyone looked toward the lake, including the guard on the deck. There were four people in the speeding towboat, all wearing black life jackets. Directly in front of the dock the man being towed suddenly let go of the tow-rope and the boat throttled back to almost nothing. The four men on the boat turned toward the shore.

Who the hell wore black life jackets?

Not life jackets. Bulletproof vests.

"Get down!" Holliday yelled. He grabbed Meg by the arm and dragged her off the chair and onto the floor. The big window looking out onto the lake shattered, and the kitchen erupted in a hail of silent lead. The man on the deck was torn to ribbons by automatic fire even before he had a chance to stand up.

More fire came from the trees around the cottage. The water-ski boat had just been a distraction. They were coming from all sides. Quince was on the floor, facedown, arms spread, his right forefinger still hooked into the delicate handle of the ornate china cup he'd been drinking his coffee from. Most of the back of his head was missing. Moira's plum jam was everywhere. The gunfire muffled by silencers continued in an unbroken stream.

"Who's shooting at us!?" Meg screamed.

"Quince's competition!" Holliday yelled back. Still hanging on to Meg's arm, he crabbed across the floor, dragging Meg along. He huddled under the stairs. It was probably the safest place in the house. They found their knapsacks tossed into the little alcove, probably searched while they were knocked out then cast aside.

"What are we going to do?" Meg asked. Her voice was a frightened panting sound. Holliday was in the groove. This was combat. Familiar territory. The rule book said always attack from the higher ground, but going up onto the second floor of the cottage would be suicide. The rule book also said that with insurmountable odds the best option was to make an orderly withdrawal-army talk for retreat. But they were in George Armstrong Custer territory now, surrounded on all sides.

"Grab your pack and put it on," instructed Holliday, more to keep her occupied than anything else. He needed to think and she was on the verge of losing it, which wouldn't do anyone any good.

Meg lifted her pack off the floor and slipped it on while Holliday peeked around the corner of the stairway. The guard outside was bleeding all over the Adirondack chair and the men in the black life jackets were coming up the steps. Six of them, armed with various brands of riot guns and automatic weapons. They had thirty seconds at the outside.

Holliday felt Meg tugging at his sleeve. He turned to her, irritated.

"Not now!"

"Look," she insisted. She'd swept his knapsack aside. Outlined on the floor he could see a trapdoor or a hatch. It made sense. A crawl space. The cottage was built on a slab of bedrock so all the plumbing would be under the floor. There'd have to be some way of getting at it for maintenance. Not that it mattered. It was the only option now.

Holliday shrugged on his own pack and pulled on the brass ring inset into the floor. The hatch pulled upward, revealing three roughly made steps. He smelled stone and cedar. Gunfire exploded around them, chewing into the wood of the stairs behind them. Windows exploded and fist-sized holes appeared in the walls. Even silenced, that much ordnance was making a racket outside. Eventually someone was going to call 911, but it would almost certainly be too little, too late; a myopic summertime cottage cop with maybe a.38 on his hip.

"I'll go first," said Holliday.

Meg nodded, eyes like saucers, wincing and jerking as each bullet struck the walls around them. He went down the steps. There was barely enough room between the floor joists and the ground to duckwalk forward.

He looked around. It was impossible to move to the back of the cottage; the rock sloped away toward the deck and the crawl space narrowed to barely a foot-high crack. Most of the fire seemed to be coming from the steps leading down to the dock.