C. Palov - Templar's Quest

Playing white, Ivo moved his pawn to E4. The French Opening . A fitting tribute to his friend and colleague, Fabius Jutier.

The Cultural Minister had been trained – they had all been trained – to swallow a cyanide tablet rather than surrender to the enemy. No different to what many SS officers had been forced to do at the close of the Second World War, the Reich in flames, the Allied army on a bloodthirsty manhunt.

Indeed, a brave man must always be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good.

Ivo glanced at the computer screen. It had taken but a few moments for Java King to position his pawn at E6; the first move of what he hoped would prove a ferocious battle. Play. Counter-play. Attack . The weekly match kept his 76-year-old brain sharp; a weak mind was endemic to the lacklustre horde. His father, the noted physicist Friedrich Uhlemann, had been convinced that the mass of men, possessed of middling intelligence, required a guiding hand. Only then could such men meaningfully contribute to society.

As with all of the Seven’s founding members, Friedrich had been a brilliant scholar. Created in 1940 by the superintendent of the Schutzstaffel , Heinrich Himmler, the unit was envisioned as a seven-man think tank. Its members culled from the best universities in Göttingen, Vienna and Paris, the Seven bridged the divide between the humanities and the sciences. During the 1940s, interdisciplinary research had been a radical concept. In fact, the Ahnenerbe, the academic branch of the SS, had been subdivided into fifty different sections, each focused on a single narrow field of study.

With a click of the computer mouse, Ivo positioned his knight at C3, the diagonal now open.

As he waited for Java King to make the next move, he opened another tab on the computer, pleased to see that the two dossiers he’d ordered had been forwarded. He gave the photograph of Katsumi Rosamund Bauer a cursory glance before scanning the particulars of her life.

Hmm, a most interesting background .

Thirty-nine years of age, Katsumi Bauer had a doctorate in cultural anthropology and, until two years ago, had been a professor at Johns Hopkins University. According to the genealogy chart that a family member had obligingly posted online, the Bauer family emigrated to the American Colonies in 1710, part of a large contingent of Palatine German farmers who settled in New York. Her maternal line, which included several generations of samurai, arrived in California in the early twentieth century. Aiko, her mother, was a curator at the Pacific Asia Museum; father Alfred taught astrophysics at CalTech. As he read that, Ivo chuckled. How ironic.

He pulled up the second dossier.

‘Hmm, it would seem that our commando hails from a less stellar background,’ he murmured, again chuckling, amused by the pun. The parents, Patrick and Fiona McGuire, moved to Boston in 1972 from Northern Ireland. Typical of working-class Irish Catholics, the mother had been a homemaker, the father a day labourer until his untimely death in 1988. Perhaps it was bred into them. Whatever the reason, the Irish had a long history of being a subjugated people, always serving one master or another.

Ivo quickly skimmed the next few paragraphs, eyes opening wide on reading that McGuire’s twin brother, Mychal, was a member of Boston’s notorious Irish mob.

Seventy years ago, the McGuire brothers would have been a prize catch; German researchers were particularly interested in studying twins. To advance the burgeoning field of eugenics, all test subjects were thoroughly photographed. Tissue biopsies were then performed. If male, semen samples were forcibly collected; if female, gynaecological exams were conducted. Once the tests were completed, the subjects were euthanized with a single injection of chloroform to the heart, the collected data used to winnow out society’s undesirables.

As he finished reading the dossiers, Ivo clicked on the second computer tab. At a glance, he could see that his opponent had just moved his bishop to B4.

Well played, Java King. The move threatened Ivo’s white knight. While his Tuesday-night opponent tended to be passive, overly concerned with losing a major piece, Ivo played a more brazen match.

Again, he wondered at the American’s game, unable to determine if the commando was being passive or dangerously bold. What did Finn McGuire hope to gain in refusing the Seven’s generous monetary offer? And the woman, Katsumi Bauer – what role did she play in this recent turn of events?

Given her proud heritage and impressive education, Ivo suspected that he would have enjoyed the pleasure of her company.

A pity that Katsumi Bauer was not long for this world.

10

The serpent, the Cursed One, fouled the earth.

An orgy of blood, Paradise lost.

Kill the firstborn then burn in hell.

The serpent, the Cursed One, all covered in –

‘Pathetic.’

The assassin known as the Dark Angel disabled the iPhone in mid-song, bored with the shrieking vocals and discordant rhythm of the Black Metal music. Nothing but a pack of alienated young white men, their primal screams evoking a violent fantasy world.

So much better to live the fantasy.

Hitching a leather-clad hip against the wrought-iron railing, the assassin scrutinized the little green brick house on the other side of the walkway. The cream-coloured shutters looked newly painted, the brass door knocker was shaped like a pineapple, and the window boxes on the first floor brimmed with pink pansies. Too trite for words. Overlooking a placid stretch of canal, the row of brightly painted residences was more reminiscent of Amsterdam than Washington.

Oh, to be in Amsterdam on a hot, muggy night. With the lurid fluorescent lights and writhing bodies behind plate-glass windows. A red-light district second to none. A true outpost of the erotic frontier. Raw, raunchy and real. What’s your pleasure, bébé?

Annoyed to suddenly hear a tinny buzz, the assassin glanced down. It only took a few seconds for the intrepid mosquito to land on a patch of bare skin, oblivious to its fate. Unaware that the hand of God was two feet away, ready to strike.

How long should I let it live?

‘Hmm … I think that’s long enough.’

Intrigued by the sight of smeared blood and smashed wings, the assassin softly cackled. Do give my regards to Fabius Jutier. Who, no doubt, went to his grave snivelling and sobbing, the Frenchman having been an effeminate weakling.

Not like the two Delta Force commandoes. Fine specimens, the both of them. Real men, as the Americans are fond of saying. All bunched muscles, tightened sinews, eyes burning bright with hatred . Fighting against the restraints with every ounce of power in their big, muscular bodies. Right to the bittersweet end.

Such a shame that stolen pleasures never last long enough.

‘But the night is still young.’

Smiling in anticipation, the assassin glanced at the address scrawled on a crumpled sheet of paper, verifying the house number.

Time to get to work.

11

‘ Shit! ’ Finn hollered as the front end of the catering truck smashed into the fire hydrant.

Folding his left arm over his face, he slammed against the steering wheel with a bruising intensity.

Beside him, Kate faired no better, the force of the collision propelling her against his outstretched right arm. Flung forward, a split-second later they boomeranged backward. Like a pair of crash dummies. Except they didn’t have any airbags to cushion the impact.

His spine jangling, Finn turned towards Kate. ‘You okay?’

‘It’s raining,’ she murmured, a dazed look on her face. Then, an instant later, more lucid, she said, ‘No, it’s not raining. It’s the hydrant.’