The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Read online

  The Order had begun as a charitable Order dedicated to providing hospitals for leper pilgrims. It had been sponsored by the Templars and, with leprosy rife in the Holy Land, it has become the natural home to any Templars who became infected by the curse.

  The steady stream of fighting men into the Order had slowly turned it from a charitable Order into a fighting force.

  There was no cure for leprosy, every man in the Order was a dead man walking. Men with no future, no friends beyond their brotherhood, no home that would ever welcome them back, they fought with a fearlessness that only the dead can have.

  Fifty men disembarked from the ship. Some were former Templars, some knights from great families, one was the son of the King of Navarre. They spoke quietly to each other, ignoring the stares of the harbor side crowd.

  An invisible curtain of fear hung around them.

  “You are most welcome, brothers.” The voice of the Mason cut across the divide between the knights and the outside world. “We have great need of you.”

  One of the leper figures turned and walked slowly across the stone quayside until he stood six paces from the Mason. Few outsiders would welcome any closer approach.

  “My good Brother Mason,” said the figure. “It has been many years now.”

  “Too many years, sir,” said the Mason.

  Altitude

  Sparke looked down the gangway of the aircraft. In the two minutes since they hit the rough air, he had paid close attention to the sights and sounds of everything around him. As a crisis manager, his focus had been to understand the moment of change between steady state, when everything was functioning as it should do, and disrupted state, when things started to move outside normal operating conditions.

  He knew that the human brain was poorly equipped to make a judgement on whether an aircraft was flying level, climbing or descending, but he definitely felt that the aircraft was tilted with its nose up.

  “This is incredible Wi-Fi,” said Tilly.

  “What?”

  “The Wi-Fi. I mean who would have thought that we would be able to get such a great connection, thousands of feet above the sea?”

  The updraft of warm air hoisted the aircraft six hundred feet in the space of three seconds. As it flew out of the pocket and back into cold, fast-moving air, it lost most of that in a single, jarring fall. Two hundred tons of aircraft bounced.

  There was the sound of crashing crockery from the first-class galley and a passenger’s laptop skidded along the aisle until it smashed into the bulkhead that separated first and business class seats.

  “Woo, that was sporty,” said Tilly, peering along the interior of the cabin.

  The shaking did not bother Sparke, but the following silence did. There was no announcement from the cockpit. There were two pilots up there, this weather was unpleasant but not dangerous for a plane like this, so why was there no comforting message from the captain?

  Sparke looked as his new watch. The rise and fall of the aircraft had been recorded on the small screen. He tapped a few icons on his tablet and transferred the data from his watch so that he could see it on the bigger screen. It would be interesting to send this to some contacts in the aviation business.

  He swiped two fingers across the screen and changed the timescale of the display. Up until now it had shown the recording for the past four minutes. He expanded the timescale again until he was looking at the altitude record for the past twenty minutes; a perfectly flat flight until the rapid climb then descent. Every two seconds the altimeter in his watch took another reading.

  The old, familiar calm came over him that he felt when he was watching data. He opened another window on his screen and accessed the interface with his own computer back in Switzerland. He typed, “Access, and record data from tablet”. It would be interesting to view this back later.

  The words, “I’m on it”, appeared on his screen. Sparke scowled at the screen. This friendly new attitude of the screen was wearing. Still, if that was the worst of his problems he had nothing much to worry about.

  Talking and deciding

  Silence filled the room. The twenty men around the wooden table were deep in thought.

  The Mason had spoken for an hour, and by the time he fell silent the men knew their world was ending. There was much to think about. At length it was his own Grand Master, Guillaume of Beaujeu, who broke the silence.

  “Brother Mason,” he said. “You are the finest of our Order and a knight of unimpeachable honor. It is a great sadness that I find my heart sinking whenever I see you now. It has been a long time since you brought anything but bad news, and your report today is grave.”

  Silence fell over the room again.

  Guillaume looked to his left where the commander of the Templar garrison sat and said, “What of the sea?”

  “It is ours for the moment. The ships of Genoa, Pisa and Venice come and go without hindrance. But the Caliph’s fleet is massed in Alexandria. They have a squadron in Tripoli now.”

  “We can count on supplies by sea?” said Guillaume.

  The garrison commander nodded.

  “Brother Mason, you have a plan?” said the Grand Master. “You always have a plan. Do not fail us now.”

  “We must prepare for the worst,” said the Mason. “The Caliph is calling on all four of his armies. They are already on the move. I encountered a scouting guard from Damascus. They were checking the high passes.”

  “The high passes? Why is that important? Be clearer in what you say, Brother,” said Guillaume sharply. Several of the men glanced at each other.

  “The only reason for them to need the high passes is because they must need the main routes for other uses,” said the Mason. “The roads will be needed for heavy equipment. Siege equipment.”

  Werner the Hanoverian, one of the leaders of the Teutonic Knights, spoke up. “The Venetians believe he will make a show of attack, then retire once honor is satisfied. They say that the Caliph needs a few hundred Christians dead.”

  “Perhaps the Venetians are right,” said the Mason.

  “Do you think they might be?” said Guillaume.

  “No.”

  The Grand Master sighed and said, “You have a depressing habit of being correct in these matters.” He looked around the table.

  The twenty men made up the leaders of the Templars, Hospitalers and Teutonic Orders. At their command were the most effective fighting forces in the city. The mass of knights and men at arms that had flooded into the city since the start of the emergency had proved themselves largely worthless. Mercenaries shipped in by the Venetians had been so drunken and violent that they had been expelled from Acre by the militias. They now rampaged through the surrounding countryside pillaging farms and villages.

  “Your thoughts, Brother,” said Guillaume to the Master of the Hospitalers. Once he had spoken the Grand Master turned to the next man. One at a time each spoke, giving his estimation of their chances. Some made proposals for strengthening defenses or actively slowing the advancing armies, but none offered any hope of victory.

  “Brother Mason, tell us your thoughts,” said his Grand Master.

  “Our backs are to the sea and our walls are strong. They can only take the city if they breach the walls, and they can only do this with catapults or by collapsing the walls through tunnels. The only defense against tunnels is to dig counter mines; we have time to bring miners from Lombardy if we move now. The only way to fight catapults is to have more and heavier artillery of our own. Better yet, we can sally out and burn their engines before they are in place. It will take them months to rebuild and winter may save us.”

  The Grand Master looked at the untouched cup of wine on the table before him for a long time before speaking.

  “Win or lose, this is my last battle,” he said. “I choose not to fight it by digging in the ground or raiding Saracen ox carts to burn their engines.” He looked directly at the Mason and said, “You do not advise us to meet them in open battle b
efore they are fully in place?”

  “If that is your order, sir,” said the Mason.

  “It was a question, not an order, Brother,” said Guillaume.

  “I do not counsel an open battle sir, no,” said the Mason.

  “Your reason?”

  “Their armored cavalry is stronger than it once was. Their numbers are greater than ours. They will not break when we charge.”

  “So,” said Guillaume, “we cannot win?”

  “We can beat an army twice our size, even three times,” said the Mason. “Khalil can bring ten mounted men for each of ours. If we fight with our walls and counter his strengths, we can try to hold until the rains come.”

  Everyone had spoken and the room fell back into a deep silence. The meeting was held in the Templar castle and it was for the Grand Master to decide when the conference was over. He picked up the cup of wine and raised it part way to his lips. He paused for a moment, then placed it untouched back on the table.

  “For the sake of charity, and to preserve supplies, the women and children should be sent out of the city by ship,” he said. “We must try to persuade our merchant friends to keep their costs low. This is not a time to count profits.” He raised his hands to give a final blessing to the room, but was halted before he could speak by the sound of the heavy door opening. Everyone in the room turned. The door was always closed when the Grand Master entered, and opened only when he chose to leave.

  The servant who stood in the doorway cut a nervous figure. The Mason recognized him as one of the scribes who worked for the Grand Master directly. The man, obviously unused to being the center of so much scrutiny, took a step forward, then stopped.

  “You have something?” said the Grand Master.

  “A messenger, sir… a letter… the messenger was most insistent that it be brought to you immediately,” said the scribe. He raised a document in front of himself as though it was a shield.

  The Grand Master frowned but waved the scribe forward. He took the document, broke the seal and unfolded the vellum sheet. He read it slowly, absently reaching out to take a sip of wine from the cup. Eventually he raised his eyes.

  “Encouragement,” he said. “We have the support and encouragement of one of the leading princes of the Church. We are reminded by Father Massimo of the Inquisition that our Orders exist for the glory of the Church. He is kind enough to point out that any action or any thought that weakens our position in the Holy Land is an act of heresy. He invites us to act as the arm of the Church and to dispense merciless justice to any man who takes a step back from the enemy or who suggests that defeat is an option.”

  He dropped the letter onto the table. “It seems that to make any plan that countenances defeat in Acre is sacrilege and may be punished by the judgement of the Inquisition,” he said.

  “Gentlemen, I will respond to the good father and confirm our resolution in the cause. Further, I will pledge that the Order of the Templars will never abandon this castle to the enemy.”

  “Grand Master,” said the Mason, “if I may–”

  “You may not, Brother Mason, you may not. You will give your opinion when it is sought, and it is not required now.” Behind the Grand Master, his attendant, known as the Old Guardian, glared across the room at the Mason.

  Distractions

  “We will not enter Syrian airspace, do you acknowledge? We are a civil airliner Flight 771 and will change course in six minutes. Do you acknowledge?” The pilot looked at the handset and waited for a response.

  Decades of radio conversations had taught him that silence on the other end invariably meant that there was a hurried conference taking place. The radio operator, whoever he was, was probably being chewed out by his officer for being overzealous. The longer the silence lasted, the more he could relax and pay some attention to the aircraft. There was a chorus of alarms buzzing in the cockpit, but after that bump it was no more than expected. He began to scan the dashboard.

  “Flight 771, you are on course to enter restricted military airspace. This is a warning. Divert immediately.”

  The captain had a deep reservoir of patience, but it was reaching its limits. He thought about the controller he was talking to: probably undertrained with poorly qualified supervision. He was just making a mistake. Best to focus on agreement.

  “Acknowledged,” he said. “Diverting to new course… in six minutes.”

  He smiled as the ensuing silence grew and turned to his co-pilot. A good time to share a few learning points with a junior pilot. He had kept some jumpy military ground controller happy and still managed to keep on course to skirt the worst of the storm.

  The co-pilot showed no indication that he had heard the conversation, in fact he looked as though he was having some sort of seizure. His eyes were fixed on the dashboard, his right hand gripped the flight control and his left was pushing back on the power levers. The pilot could see the skin on his hands stretched over his knuckles.

  The pilot reached up and switched off the buzzer that had gone off when they had dropped into the cold air.

  “Everything good?” said the pilot, making sure he projected a calm, steady tone.

  “Losing altitude,” said the co-pilot.

  “We just flew into some cold air,” said the pilot. “Let’s just…”

  “Flight 771. This is your final warning! Change course immediately!”

  “We are in international airspace,” snapped the captain.

  Next to him the co-pilot never moved. His right hand kept the stick full back, his left kept the power full on, his eyes staring, unblinking, at the screen in front of him.

  A few yards behind the cockpit, Sparke looked at his tablet screen from the comfort of his first-class seat and decided to have a chat.

  Like most jobs, crisis managers have their own professional organizations. Sparke had lived in a rarified world inhabited by only a few hundred men and women who spoke a language that few outsiders would be able to understand.

  As most practitioners spent much of their time glued to computers, they had a vibrant online chat community. Sparke logged in to the Chatter forum and clicked on “New Topic”.

  “CA event flight data. Real time ex PD. Charting,” he typed.

  To those who lived in the world of crisis response, the meaning was obvious. Civil aircraft event flight data was being recorded live from a personal device. Data was everything in this world and Sparke knew that there would be an interest in the idea that a personal device might be a source of potentially valuable information.

  Within a few seconds a member of the online community posted a response asking what the device was. Before Sparke could answer, another person added a comment about wristwatches which transmitted location and key data on heartbeat and body temperature.

  Sparke linked the output from his new watch to the discussion so that it updated.

  Ten people around the world were now viewing the chat thread. Sparke’s name was well known in this small world.

  The discussion quickly moved onto the topic of how this data might be accessed during a crisis. An emergency response manager sitting at a screen in Helsinki suggested that any device that a civilian could buy over the counter was automatically suspect in terms of accuracy. A safety officer in a nuclear power station in New Jersey disagreed, hinting that Helsinki was being a bit of a tech snob.

  Sparke added his own thoughts. He was thoroughly in his element now, talking to fellow professionals in one of the world’s smallest professions. The aircraft was still bouncing, but not so much that it stopped him using his tablet. He looked across at Tilly who seemed almost oblivious to the turbulence, sipping water from a bottle and engrossed in a book.

  The tiny image of the chart showing the altitude of his aircraft flickered each time the data was updated.

  After the first upward spike and sharp descent, the altitude leveled for a moment, then began to drop again.

  “Looks like your driver is trying to get under the bad weathe
r,” typed a contributor from Hawaii.

  “Still bumpy?” asked another.

  “Shaking, less bouncing,” responded Sparke.

  Off to the north a flash of lightning lit up the sky. The horizon was not visible, but the layer of thick, fat clouds they were flying over was illuminated for a second. Through the window, the cloud base sloped sharply down from left to right.

  “Looks like we are climbing now,” typed Sparke. “Nose is up.” Just as he finished typing, the chart update again.

  Sparke enlarged the screen and then peered out at the dark sky. The nose was pointing up.

  “Nose up but losing alt?” typed a contributor.

  “Confirm,” responded Sparke, dropping into the argot of his trade.

  “Flight number?” This came from someone who had been watching the thread but had not joined in so far. Their user name was “Skywatcher”.

  Sparke had to dig around in the pocket of the seat to find his boarding pass and then typed in the number of his flight number.

  “Please confirm,” typed Skywatcher, “you are on Flight 771, you are losing altitude and your aircraft posture is in climb?”

  Sparke felt a coolness wash over him. His breathing slowed and he sensed a growing detachment from the aircraft around him. Everything except the small tablet screen in front of him faded. He glanced at the chart on the screen, then checked that it was the same as the reading on his watch. He flicked the control of the in-flight entertainment system to the “journey tracker” channel. The altitude it gave was within twenty meters of the one shown on the watch.

  “All data confirms,” he typed.

  Approach

  The solid mass of the Saracen army trickled out of the mountain passes and spread across the approaches to Acre. Ahead of them, fanned out barely beyond arrow range, rode a patrol of a dozen Templar knights.