Paul Christopher - The Templar Cross

"Very funny," said Holliday.

"I thought you'd appreciate the irony," said Tidyman. He pulled the truck to a stop a dozen yards from the wreckage. "The crew must have bailed out somewhere to the north; there was no sign of any bodies in the aircraft itself. The plane flew on until it ran out of gas and bellied into the sand."

"What does this have to do with anything?" Rafi asked, the anger clear in his voice. "We didn't pay you to take us on a nostalgic tour."

"I think I know," said Holliday calmly, looking out the windshield at the remains of the old bomber.

"There were maps dated 1945 for Libya and what they once called French Equatorial Africa, part of which they now call Niger. A place called Madama was circled along with the words 'Festung' and 'Benzin' written in grease pencil.

"The map was in German. Festung is German for fortress and Benzin means fuel. They were going to refuel there."

"I don't get it," said Rafi. "The plane has American markings."

"It was called KG200," explained Holliday. "Battle Group 200. They flew captured aircraft, English and American. This plane was probably part of their First Squadron; they were completely run by the SS. This is the plane that was used to ferry out Walter Rauff's booty."

"Quite right," said Tidyman. "Four thousand kilograms of gold; almost five tons." He turned to Holliday and Rafi. "Come and take a closer look." Without waiting for a reply the Egyptian climbed out of the Goat and walked toward the wreckage.

"He knows about the gold," whispered Rafi.

"Apparently," said Holliday.

"But how?"

"I think we'd better find out." Holliday opened his door and followed Tidyman toward Your Heart's Desire.

The tailplane had torn off the rest of the fuselage just behind the waist gun positions, offering the only easy access into the aircraft. Sand had drifted into the opening but the interior was clearly visible.

"Interesting," commented Holliday, coming up beside Tidyman. Holliday had once toured an intact B-17 named Fuddy Duddy on a visit to the National Warplane Museum in Elmira, New York, and he could see that Your Heart's Desire had been completely stripped. The waist gun positions had been removed, as had the bulkheads between the gun positions and the bomb bay. There was an odd collection of empty wooden pigeonholes retrofitted against the fuselage walls and it took Holliday a minute to figure it out.

"Storage for the gold bars arranged so that the weight would be equalized," he said finally. "Hell to fly, I'd guess."

"I suspect so," Tidyman said and nodded. "When it was discovered, there was a set of auxiliary fuel tanks in the bomb bay made from fifty-gallon drums. An extra five hundred gallons, which must have stretched their weight to the limit."

Rafi appeared beside them.

"You seem to know a great deal about it," said Holliday to the Egyptian.

"Indeed I do," answered Tidyman. "Not surprising since I was the one who discovered her."

"So you removed the gold, hid it away," said Holliday. As casually as he could he slipped his right hand into the pocket of his jacket.

"Oh, dear me, no." Tidyman laughed. "I'm nothing more than a toiler in the fields, a journeyman smuggling cigarettes and a few guns from time to time. A billion and a half dollars in gold would be a death sentence for a man like me. That sort of greed gets your throat cut in a Cairo back alley or the Bouhadema slums in Benghazi. No, no, Colonel Holliday, I put the bullion in much safer hands."

"You knew who we were right from the start, didn't you?" Holliday said.

"Of course, just as I know that you have a small pistol in the right-hand pocket of your jacket. Be so good as to remove it with your thumb and forefinger. Then drop it on the ground." Tidyman's own weapon, an old Helwan 9mm, appeared in his left hand and he put the muzzle up to Rafi's temple. "You have until the count of three before I blow your young friend's brains all over the nice clean sand."

"You traitorous son of a bitch," breathed Rafi hotly, his voice shaking with anger. "I never trusted you, not from the very beginning."

"The wise man doesn't insult he who has a gun to his head," said Tidyman. His eyes on Rafi, the Egyptian began to count aloud. "One… two…"

Holliday brought the palm-sized Hawg.45 out of his pocket and dropped it at his feet.

"Now kick it away," instructed Tidyman.

Holliday did as he was told. Tidyman stepped back three paces, well out of range of any foolish attack, the pistol in his hand still raised.

"So whose safe hands did you put the gold into?" Holliday asked.

Tidyman tilted his head to the left.

"Theirs," he said.

Holliday and Rafi turned to look.

A hundred feet away half a dozen men sat perched on camels. They were dressed in full Tuareg costume, long indigo robes, almost black robes, indigo turbans and veils worn like masks over the bottom half of their faces. Five of the men carried Chinese Norinco Type 86S automatic rifles, a Bullpup variant of the Russian AK-47. The sixth man carried a Norinco rocket-propelled grenade launcher strapped across his back. A long tether made from braided leather was snubbed around the high horn of his saddle, leading back to three pack camels behind them. Chain bridles were threaded through their wide nostrils to keep them in check. The camels had a uniformly sour expression on their faces, as though they were all chewing something foul-tasting.

"My brothers from the Brotherhood of the Temple of Isis, the men who kidnapped your friend."

Tidyman drove the Goat into the lee of the spine of rock, pulling it in as close to the sandstone wall as he could. It was easy enough to see why. The rock promontory ran almost exactly north-south. Left where it was, the sun rising over the length of rock in the morning would cast an enormous shadow running away from the truck and easily visible from an air patrol passing overhead.

The men in Tuareg dress spoke briefly to Tidyman, then gave him a bundle of robes from one of the pack camels. Fifteen minutes later the Egyptian, Holliday and Rafi, now dressed exactly like the six armed men, were aboard the trailing camels and moving west, away from the wreckage of the B-17. Ten minutes after that Your Heart's Desire had been swallowed up by the endless sand. To a distant observer on the ground or in the air, they would look no more ominous than a plodding caravan of nomads.

They rode for twelve long days, heading deeper and deeper into the Great Sand Sea. At night the camels would be rope hobbled and tied to simple picket lines to keep them from wandering off and the men would set up simple leather tents over bended "withies," skeletal supports of thin twigs. Tea was boiled on simple stoves made out of galvanized bowls placed over tin cans filled with dried camel dung. Meals usually consisted of goat meat jerky or nocturnal desert rat, fennec fox, and even surprisingly succulent sand vipers the men sometimes hunted in the late evenings.

At night Holliday and Rafi were inevitably bound with ropes and guarded by at least one of the men with automatic rifles. From the moment they had been captured, Tidyman kept well away from the two men, sleeping in his own tent. During the long, tedious days Tidyman rode the last pack animal, while Holliday rode the first. An armed guard rode in the rear.

Holliday had no idea where they were going. All he knew was that they were traveling south-west, the sun setting ahead of them and well away to his right-hand side. They were headed roughly in the direction of the Niger border, the same route that Your Heart's Desire had been taking when some long-ago disaster struck; perhaps a multiple engine failure, a control malfunction, or maybe a fuel leak. It didn't matter; whatever the problem, it had been enough to precipitate the desperate act of bailing out over the desert.