Read The Templar Legion for Free Online Page B

missing were the gazing lions and the naked women. He could hear the chittering of monkeys high above them and the shrieking calls of angry birds.
    There was something sinister here as well, so real that Holliday found himself wishing he had some sort of weapon with him. From his arrival in Vietnam barely six months after his eighteenth birthday to tours in Afghanistan and Somalia, he’d been in some dangerous places in his life, but this was different. Somehow he knew that stepping into that forest would be like stepping off the edge of the world and that once within it he might never find his way out again. Holliday suddenly remembered a quote from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness he’d memorized in high school but hadn’t understood until now: “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
    More than once he’d been in locations where he sensed and somehow almost felt the past and present occupying the same space and time: the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, where you could almost hear the echoing boot heels of the SS troops marching on parade each noon of the occupation. The killing fields of Antietam in Maryland, where you could still hear the screams of the twenty-two thousand men who were struck down there, still taste the cloying grit of gunpowder in the air. Or a quiet little forest in Picardy in the north of France called Belleau Wood whose dark, rich soil was fertilized with the blood of ten thousand U.S. Marines and an uncounted number of their German adversaries.
    Holliday felt it here more than he’d ever done before. He knew without a doubt that this place would somehow take them all into a world of madness, into the deep, true heart of darkness, beating like some monstrous drum. He shivered, even though it was stunningly hot. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it still lingered faintly. Every nerve in his body was screaming, Run .
    “Watch out for the monkeys,” warned Rafi. “They tend to hurl their feces at you.”
    “Lovely,” said Peggy. “Poisonous snakes and poopthrowing monkeys.”
    They stepped into the forest.
    Within a few feet it was obvious that they were on some kind of well-worn trail. Vines and boughs had been slashed, and recently by the looks of it. The trail was also littered with half-chewed bits of bark and rotting, partially eaten fruit.
    “The monkeys aren’t fussy eaters, I see,” said Peggy.
    “Who’s your gardener?” Holliday asked. “This trail’s man-made.” He was getting unpleasant flashes of the Viet Cong jungle trails around Bu Prang.
    “Maybe it’s the ghost of the Lost Templar.” Peggy laughed.
    “Nothing so spooky,” said Rafi, who was leading the way. “Halebo Iskinder comes out every few weeks and keeps it clear.”
    “I thought it was haunted,” Peggy said.
    “The money I pay Iskinder isn’t,” Rafi said. “Besides, Iskinder likes having a secret from the other ferrymen on the lake.”
    “What secret?” Peggy asked.
    “That,” said Rafi as they stepped out into a small natural clearing.
    Under the protective overhanging branches of a single baobab tree there was a windowless stone building that looked very much like a small chapel or a large mausoleum. The structure was built of the same brown basalt as the Coptic monasteries and churches scattered along the shores of Lake Tana. The arched door was made of dark wood with broad strap hinges. Above the door, worn with time but still clearly visible, was a heraldic crest: a lion, rampant, looking right on a field of seven stripes.
    Peggy lifted her camera immediately and took a half dozen shots. “Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Lost Templar.”
    “Doesn’t it ever start to bug you?” Holliday asked, raising an eyebrow. “All the Indiana Jones stuff?”
    “I’m used to it,” said Rafi. “Water off a duck’s back by now. At least she doesn’t ask me to wear a fedora and carry a bullwhip. It’s just Peggy being Peggy.”
    They approached the building.
    “When I arrived