Read The Templar Inheritance for Free Online

for the first time since the bomb attack. ‘Thank you. That was beautiful.’
    ‘Now you tell me. . .’ she began.
    ‘Wait.’ Hart held up one hand. He knew exactly what she was about to ask him. It would be about the apparatus they had seen in the attic. What it was. What its purpose had been. Hart needed to deflect her from any such questions.
    ‘Before you say anything, I have something to show you. Something very special.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a glassine envelope. ‘I want you to look at this. It is dated the winter of 1198. More than eight hundred years ago. It was written by Johannes von Hartelius, a former Knight Templar, on the very day of his execution for treason. I carry it with me wherever I go.’
    Nalan frowned at him. ‘Why are you showing me this now?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Hart’s neck was stiffening up after the roof fall, and he tried to ease it. He was acutely aware of the white lie he was about to promulgate. Of its bullshit quotient. But there were times in life when displacement activity was needed. ‘Because it bothers me, I suppose. Because I don’t understand it. Because the past matters. And because we are sitting here in this abandoned tank, in a suburb of As Sulaymaniyah, with no idea whether we are to live or die.’
    Nalan bowed her head to indicate that she understood, and even sympathized with, his motives. That she was happy to accord him her time if he felt he needed it. ‘Who is the man who wrote this?’
    Hart let out an inaudible sigh of relief. ‘My paternal grandfather – only twenty or so generations back. I had no idea that I was related to this man until events a year ago proved that he was my direct forebear. At first I understood him to be a hero – the hereditary Guardian of the Holy Lance.’
    ‘The Holy Lance?’
    ‘The spear that was used to puncture Jesus’s side on the cross.’
    ‘Ah yes. I know of this thing.’
    ‘Then I found a letter hidden inside the gilt sheath that surrounds the Holy Lance, and my certainties vanished. A letter written nearly a thousand years ago. My ancestor wasn’t a hero, it transpired – he was a villain.’
    ‘You have the Holy Lance in your possession? The true Holy Lance?’
    ‘Yes. It came into my possession through my father. A friend is now holding it for me.’
    ‘This is incredible. People would kill to have this.’
    ‘They have already done so. An extreme right-wing party in Germany killed my father, his lover and their driver. Others died too. The thing is jinxed. But it has enormous symbolical value. Adolf Hitler was obsessed by it.’
    ‘I am sorry, John. I am sorry for your father and his people.’
    ‘Thank you. But the bitter truth is that I hadn’t spoken to him since I was five years old. I can’t pretend that we were close.’
    ‘How can you be sure this is the true Holy Lance?’
    ‘The letter I found inside proves beyond a doubt that this is the real spearhead – the one carried on the Third Crusadeby Frederick Barbarossa – and not one of Adolf Hitler’s fakes that he got up to fool the Americans.’
    ‘What does the letter say?’
    ‘It’s written in old German. I had it translated. I’ve read it so many times that I know the text by heart. It reads: “I, Johannes von Hartelius, Baron Sanct Quirinus, hereditary Guardian of the Holy Lance, lawful husband of Adelaïde von Kronach, lawful father of Grimwald, Paulina, Agathe and Ingrid von Hartelius, former Knight Templar, exonerated from his vows of chastity and obedience by Frederick VI of Swabia, youngest son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, acting lawfully in the name of his brother, Henry VI Staufen, do dictate this letter on the day of my execution, to be placed inside the Holy Lance as a warning to all those who may come after me. Swayed by my unlawful love for Elfriede von Hohenstaufen, former lawful sister of the king and former intended wife of Margrave Adalfuns von