The Templar Legion

and additional, smaller creatures: a cat with enormous fangs, and something with gigantic ears and legs like tree stumps, two horns jutting from between its lips. Smaller lines had been scratched to indicate fields of grass and below everything was a thick black snake that could only be the great river behind them.

“Some man’s fever dream from long ago?” Ragnar said, letting his fingers trail over the lines.

“Or a memory,” said al-Rahman. “Perhaps this place was once a paradise of green grass and trees and hunters’ game. Perhaps the pool your men are bathing in is nothing more than rain that fell ten thousand years ago and now springs up here and there to remind us of the past.”

“How can paradise become a desert?” Ragnar asked.

“How can the civilization that built the great pyramids and the ancient temples we passed have vanished?” al-Rahman responded. “Nothing is impossible; everything fades away.”

Ragnar turned back and stared through the stands of trees at the river.

“Is our quest possible? Will we really find the Mines of Solomon?”

“The Romans thought it was real enough.” Al-Rahman shrugged. “There are other stories.” The black man paused. “There was once a great king named Sogolon Djata who could have been mistaken for Harald’s Solomon. His children grew very rich and it is said their very houses were made of gold. There are also tales of their great city in the desert, called Timbuktu, a place of vast wealth and a storehouse of even greater knowledge.”

“Could such a place really exist?” Ragnar said.

Al-Rahman laughed loudly, then clapped Ragnar on the shoulder. “I think we shall find out, Ragnar Skull Splitter, the two of us, and perhaps even return to tell the tale.”

1

“Except for that one unfortunate trip we made into Libya to rescue cousin Peggy, Africa isn’t really my thing,” said Colonel John “Doc” Holliday. “I’m more of a knights-in-shining-armor or Roman Empire kind of guy.”

“This is different,” said Rafi Wanounou. They were sitting in the living room of the archaeologist’s bright, spacious apartment on Ramban Street in the Rehavia district of Jerusalem. From the kitchen Holliday could smell the aroma of almond mushroom chicken, beef kung pao and soya duck as Peggy plated their take-out dinner of kosher Chinese food. According to Peggy the art of knowing which restaurant to order from was even more important than knowing how to cook, a philosophy she’d practiced since high school.

“All right,” said Doc. “I’ll bite. Why should I give up six months of my life to run around Ethiopia, the deserts of Sudan and the jungles of the Congo with you and Peggy when I’ve got a perfectly good job offer from the Alabama Military Academy and a chance to write my book on the Civil War?”

“Because Mobile is a sauna in the summer,” called Peggy from the kitchen.

“And the last thing the world needs is another book on the Civil War.” Rafi grinned.

“Okay, what do you have to offer besides malaria, fifty kinds of poisonous snakes and blood-crazed rebel hordes?”

“His name was Julian de la Roche-Guillaume,” said Rafi. “He was a Cistercian monk, and he was a Templar.”

“Never heard of him,” said Holliday.

“I’m not surprised; he was pretty obscure,” said Rafi, popping a dumpling into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “He’s usually referred to as the Lost Templar if he’s referred to at all. He’s basically been forgotten by history, and if he is referenced in some obscure footnote he’s remembered as a coward who deserted his holy brothers.”

“Sounds like Indiana Jones material, doesn’t it?” Peggy said.

“What is this thing you have for Indiana Jones?” Rafi said. “He certainly doesn’t use the appropriate field technique for a proper archaeologist.”

“You don’t get it.” Peggy grinned. “It’s not Indiana Jones I have a thing for; it’s Harrison Ford.”

“Tell me more about this Lost Templar of yours,” said Holliday.

“He was always more of a scholar than a real Templar Knight,” said Rafi. “When Saladin entrusted the scrolls from Alexandria and the other libraries to the Templars when Jerusalem fell, Roche-Guillaume was one of the men brought in to evaluate them. He was apparently brilliant and could speak and write more than a dozen languages.”

“Sounds like an interesting guy,” said Holliday. “What does this have to do with Ethiopia?”

“I found him there,” said Rafi. “I discovered his tomb while I was excavating at Lake Tana last year when you and my dear wife were gallivanting around Washington getting yourselves into all kinds of trouble.”

“We weren’t gallivanting,” said Peggy, bringing in the plates and setting them down on the table at the far end of the room. “We were running for our lives; it’s an entirely different thing.” She looked at her watch, then turned and used a wooden match to light the twin Shabbat candles on the old Victorian buffet. When they were lit she gently waved her hands over the flames, covered her eyes and said the blessing:

“Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.”

“Listen to that, would you?” Rafi said proudly as he and Holliday got up and went to the table. “She’s a better Jew than I am. She does the licht tsinden and the blessing like a pro.”

“And Granddaddy was a Baptist preacher,” said Peggy, sitting down. “Who would have thunk it?”

“Thirteen twenty-four is more than a decade after the Templar purge by King Philip,” said Holliday. “How did he manage to get away?”

“He never went back to France,” explained Rafi. “Roche-Guillaume was no fool. He was in Cyprus after Jerusalem fell again and he could see the handwriting on the wall. The Templars had too much money, too much power and they flaunted it to the king of France and to the pope. Not healthy or smart. They were politically doomed. Rather than go down with the ship, so to speak, Roche-Guillaume fled overland to Egypt. Alexandria, to be exact. He became a tutor to the sons of the Mamluk sultans.”

“Alexandria is a long way from Ethiopia,” said Holliday.

“You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, do you, Doc?” Peggy chided, spearing a piece of duck. “It’s a story.”

“Sorry,” said Holliday.

“Roche-Guillaume was a historian, just like you, Doc, and a bit of an archaeologist to boot-you could even say he was a little like Peggy, because he documented all his work with sketches. Hundreds of them, mostly on parchment. Among other things Roche-Guillaume was a romantic. He’d become convinced over time that the queen of Sheba really did have a relationship with Solomon, and it was the queen of Sheba who showed Solomon the location of the real King Solomon’s Mines. He was also of the somewhat unpopular opinion that the queen of Sheba was black. Coal black, in fact.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Holliday laughed. “King Solomon’s Mines is a fiction. A story by Rider Haggard from the nineteenth century. The mines are a myth.”

“Solomon existed; that’s historical fact and so is Sheba. Some people think Sheba was a part of Arabia, perhaps Yemen. Given what I’ve uncovered I’d be willing to bet it was Ethiopia. Or at least it began there.”

“What makes you say that?” Holliday asked, picking at his food.

“Because of Mark Antony.”

“The ‘I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him’ Mark Antony? Cleopatra and Mark Antony, that one?”

“That one.” Rafi nodded.

“He’s involved?”

“Instrumental. It’s thirty-seven B.C. and Mark’s running out of cash. Cleopatra’s paid for his wars so far but the cupboard is dry and his enemies are closing in.”

“Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and his pals. I know the history, Rafi. I taught it at West Point for years.”

“Mark Antony’s broke. He’s got an army to feed, but like I said, the cupboard is bare and his mistress is nagging him. So what does he do?”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” said Holliday.