Read Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars for Free Online

Surveillance du Territoire. So now the French were after him as well as the Company. He felt as if there was a target painted on his back. He hurried down the alley to the end. He was running out of time.
    With the inclusion of the French cops, everything had been thrown for a loop. It was a whole new ball game.
    He stopped and turned back the way he’dcome. Whatever net had been thrown over the area had effectively been doubled now. He went back thirty feet into the shadowy alley. There was a small lane servicing the buildings that faced the Quai Saint-Michel. He squeezed down the narrow crevasse. It smelled like the garbage that was spilling out of the bins at the rear entrances of the buildings. A rat scurried. Holliday reached a bin marked “Hôtel du Quai.” The same name was stenciled on a gray steel door that was propped open with a brick. Holliday pulled it open and stepped into a short hall that led him to a kitchen area filled with steam, turmoil and the odors of half a dozen dishes being cooked. Men in paper hats and aprons were moving from station to station fetching, chopping, tasting and flambéing, while a fat man with sweat streaming down his face wearing a tall chef’s hat bellowed orders. A skinny man looked up, a bloody cleaver raised in his hand above a butcher block with a slaughtered suckling pig spread-eagle across it. He scowled. Holliday flashed the ID folder and the man dropped his eyes and his scowl.
    Holliday pushed out through the swinging doors into a dowdy restaurant that was barely larger than an average living room. The walls were yellowing and decorated with cheap printsof Parisian scenes. The floor was covered in carpeting that had probably been a rich red but had aged to an ugly dark brown after decades of use. There were three diners all eating soup and none of them looked very happy about it.
    Holliday threaded his way between the tables and left the room walking between two faux marble pillars and into the lobby. The lobby was small, dark, decorated in much the same manner as the restaurant. A dark-complexioned man was reading a magazine and sitting behind the counter. The man was reading
Der Spiegel
and smoking a foul-smelling cigarette. Holliday recognized the stink of the cigarette—it was an F6 brand. The man behind the desk was German.
    â€œEin Zimmer. Keine Fragen gestellt,”
Holliday said and flashed the ID folder again. The man behind the counter put down the magazine and slapped down a key with a tag on it. Holliday fished three fifty-euro bills out of the dead policeman’s wallet, put them down and picked up the key.
    â€œDanke,”
he said.
    â€œBitte,”
replied the man behind the counter, and he picked up his magazine again. Holliday went up two flights and found his room, which faced out over the Quai Saint-Michel. It was small and narrow. The gray wall-to-wallcarpeting was thin and burnt here and there by errant cigarette butts. The bed was a single and the art on the wall was surprising: a famous Ronald Searle cartoon showing café life in Montmartre. Searle, the creator of the infamous Girls of Saint Trinians, had lived in Paris for many years to escape onerous British taxation and wound up falling in love with the city. And despite his fame and wealth he lived out his life above a café on the Left Bank.
    Holliday went to the window and glanced down. The Quai Saint-Michel was a one-way street that headed west. The broad avenue as well as the parking lane directly below him were choked with traffic. He turned away and went to the house phone on a small beside table. He sat down on the bed and picked up the phone.
    â€œDesk.”
    â€œDo you have porters here?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œSend one up to 346.”
    â€œSure.”
    Five minutes later there was a knock at the door. The bellhop was in his forties, balding and wearing a cardigan. His fingers and mustache were nicotine stained and he smelled faintly of