Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

“Maybe you should tell me why the sword is so important to you,” said Holliday from the backseat. He tried the door handle. Kellerman had locked it remotely. “I know you’re crazy, but even a crazy man doesn’t kill over a piece of memorabilia.”

“I assume you’re trying to irritate me,” said Kellerman as he drove the big car along the dark road. “A rather juvenile tactic. Frankly, I had expected more from a man like you.”

“I’m stressed at the moment,” answered Holliday dryly.

“The sword belongs to me,” said Kellerman. “It is my family legacy.”

“It’s just a sword. Not even a very good one,” responded Holliday. “They’re not hard to come by. Try eBay next time instead of murdering innocent people.”

“Derek Carr-Harris was hardly innocent,” laughed Kellerman, the sound hollow and utterly without humor. “He was a cold-blooded murderer, as was your uncle.”

“That’s a lie!” Peggy said hotly.

“My uncle was a medieval historian,” said Holliday. “During World War Two he was attached to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Branch. It was an extension of the Roberts Commission set up by FDR. Their job was to protect objects of cultural value from plundering and destruction. Even German ones.”

“True,” said Kellerman, “but the MFAA was also a cover for a variety of independent, intelligence-related actions by the British and the Americans at the end of the war.” Kellerman paused. A truck swept by in a rush of sound, washing the interior of the car for a moment with the beams from its headlights. “You’re something of a military historian, Doctor. Have you ever heard of something called Operation Werewolf by any chance?”

“Sure,” said Holliday. “It was a last-ditch defense plan organized by Himmler and run by an SS-Obergruppenfьhrer named Prutzmann. It was a left-behind partisan organization.”

“Oddly, very much like the so-called Tribulation Force described in a series of popular Christian novels in your country,” nodded Kellerman. “But the Operation Werewolf I am referring to was a joint operation devised by a number of high-ranking intelligence officials in both America and the United Kingdom. It was jokingly referred to by Winston Churchill as the Kammerjдger Brigade. Do you know what a Kammerjдger is, Doctor?”

“I can guess.”

“It means vermin exterminator, Doctor Holliday. The Kammerjдger Brigade’s mandate was to find, hunt down, or otherwise discover the locations of names on a list of various high ranking SS officers and other important members of the Reich, and having found them their further instructions were to assassinate them.” Kellerman paused, and then spoke again. “ ‘What we do in life will echo in eternity,’ ” he quoted. “You know those words, Herr Doktor Holliday?”

Who was this guy?

“Russell Crowe in the movie Gladiator.”

“Good words, Doctor, and true ones. Your uncle and his English friend wrote them in blood in the spring and summer of 1945. My father was one of the names on Churchill’s death list, Doctor, and both your uncle and Derek Carr-Harris were killers in the Kammerjдger Brigade. To my sure knowledge they were responsible for the assassinations of more than two dozen good men in Germany, Austria, and in Rome. They very nearly caught my father, and if they had, they would have killed him on the spot.”

“You’re a liar!” Peggy snarled. “Grandpa never killed anyone!”

The road ahead was completely dark. There was forest on either side of them. No traffic, not even distant headlights. There was no way to tell how long it would be before they reached their destination.

Now or never.

Holliday leaned forward slightly. The guard in the front seat tensed, his hand going toward his holstered weapon.

“Kellerman?”

“Yes?”

Holliday whispered in his ear.

“Fick’ dich selber, du Arschloch.”

He let the pencil he’d palmed from Drabeck’s pocket in the parking lot drop down his sleeve and into his right hand. He swept his arm up back-handed across Peggy’s front, plunging the sharpened point of the pencil into Stefan’s right eye and deep into the frontal portion of his brain, killing him instantly. A single shriek died half-stillborn in Stefan’s throat. Fluid from the burst eyeball drained down his cheek.

Leaving the pencil in place, Holliday dropped his hand into the dead man’s lap, prying the big automatic from his nerveless fingers. He thumbed down the safety, and, twisting his body while leaning over Peggy, covering her, he fired repeatedly into the rear of the front seat.

Upholstery exploded and the bullets took the security guard in the groin and belly, the concussions from each shot filling the interior of the car with a sound like raging thunder. The man twisted and jerked, screaming as he flopped back against the dashboard. Lifting the heavy pistol above the back of the seat, Holliday fired twice more, hitting the security guard in the throat and face. There was a humpty-dumpty instant as the man’s head burst open, spraying the front seat and the windshield with blood, brains, and bone chips. Kellerman swerved, tires squealing as the car almost went off the road. Holliday jammed the muzzle of the pistol under Kellerman’s collar.

“Pull over,” he ordered. “Now.”

Silently, Kellerman did as he was told, guiding the big car onto the gravel shoulder. The inside of the car smelled like blood and gunpowder. Holliday worked his jaw back and forth; his ears were ringing. Adrenaline was rushing through his system, and his stomach was roiling. Most other times and places he would have been sick. He swallowed bile.

“Unlock the doors,” he ordered. “Reach for some kind of weapon and I won’t even think about it.” Kellerman nodded, his head barely moving. He reached down and touched a button on his door. There was a dull clicking sound. Holliday glanced out the window. Dark woods on either side. They were in the middle of a forest.

“You okay, Peg?” Holliday asked.

“Yeah,” she answered, her voice choked. Stefan’s body was sagging against her like a sleeping lover.

“Open the door and push out the body,” ordered Holliday.

“I don’t want to touch him.”

“Just do it, we don’t have much time.”

“Okay.”

She leaned over the dead man and tugged the door open. Pushing and straining, she toppled him outward. The corpse flopped half out of the car, legs and feet still inside. Peggy kicked and struggled, finally managing to get the rest of the body out. Holliday looked out through the blood-sprayed windshield. Still no traffic.

“Get the guy out of the front seat,” he said to Peggy.

“Aw, come on!”

“Do it, Peg!”

She climbed out of the car, stepped over Stefan’s body and opened the front passenger-side door. Gri macing, she grabbed the nearly headless body by the arm and hauled it out of the car.

“Now what?” Peggy called from the side of the road.

“Get the gun out of his holster. There’s a little lever with an S on it on the left-hand side. Push it down. Aim it at Kellerman. If he does anything that makes you nervous, squeeze the trigger and keep on squeezing until you don’t feel nervous anymore.”

“Okay,” she answered. She crouched down over the guard’s body and retrieved his weapon, taking off the safety and aiming the pistol back into the car.

Holliday turned his attention back to Kellerman.

“I’m getting out of the car and so are you. Make any kind of stupid move and I will kill you, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do it. Slowly.”

The two men climbed out of the car. The open air smelled like pine needles. A breeze sighed through the trees. The moon was rising. The forest looked like something from a fairy tale.