The Templar Map Read online

  “Solomon?” Nick hunched his shoulders.

  “Yes, Solomon, son of King David. Are you with me? Oh, my God, I am working with imbeciles. King Solomon, the Old Testament, Jewish history? Forget it. The text looks Sumerian in that photo, and I transposed some Khitan and Sanskrit to fill in, and ran it through a computer program one of my colleagues wrote up, and anyway, I was able to decipher some coordinates.”

  “Do you mean a location? Are you telling me you can calculate the location of Solomon’s mines?” said Dalton.

  “Yes, and bad men will kill to get that information. You will buy me a ticket to India, yes? I’ll disappear. I’ll slip away in Kashmir and pray in the temple every day. Why did you send this horrible thing to me? They will send bad, professional killers to find it, and I am just a simple scholar.”

  Dalton paced back and forth beside the rug and covered his mouth.

  “Please, I am sorry I called you an imbecile. I want very much to see my family in India. I only want to leave before nasty men with guns, like the ones that were watching my apartment earlier, come to find my calculations.”

  “Stop,” demanded Dalton. “You were making guesses with languages, right? I mean you were just working from a photo.”

  “Yes Mr. Dalton. But that just proves what I could do with the real Solomon’s Key. I could decipher it and find a location.”

  Dalton stopped pacing. “If that’s true then we may be in trouble.”

  Nick moved from the study and was fiddling with the red curtains that glowed with the sunlight trying to enter. He reached above his head and pulled them aside, and light flooded the room through the industrial windows.

  The first shot made a clean entrance hole through one of the panes. The thud when it hit the glass was the only sound it made. It was such a silent attack that Nick didn’t react. He stood searching the windows, wondering what had broken the one pane. During that moment of reasoning, another shot hit the glass. By that time, Nick knew what was happening.

  “Get down!” he shouted, and dove behind the door.

  The third shot had hit a statue of Krishna on the desk. The next one hit the encyclopedia in Mr. Singh’s hand. The impact knocked the book against his chest.

  Dalton pulled him to the wall behind the refrigerator. Mr. Singh shrieked and shouted and threw his arms about.

  “Nick, can you see where the shots came from?” On his hands and knees, he fought to restrain Mr. Singh while peeking around the edge of the refrigerator. “No, Nick, don’t—”

  But Nick already had the two-by-four lock in his hand, and was opening the door. He threw the board aside and pulled the door open as bullets burst through the door. Sunlight entered through each hole like a tiny flashlight beam. Nick shouted and ran onto the staircase and fired three shots at the rooftop of the building across the street.

  They didn’t wait around to find out who’d fired the shots. That person was probably long gone. But Dalton didn’t take any chances, either, as he led Mr. Singh down the vibrating staircase, his weapon drawn, Nick following behind.

  On the street they stopped at Nick’s Volkswagen. Dr. Singh grabbed the roof of the car like a child refusing to get in. The car rocked back and forth as Dalton tried to shove the heavy man into the back seat.

  “Get in, Singh, or I’ll shoot you myself.” Dalton pulled back the action of his automatic.

  Singh’s eyes got large, and he spun around and pressed his back against the roof of the Volkswagen.

  “This is America, and you want me to escape in a Volkswagen bug? You should be ashamed.”

  Dalton ran around to the other side of the car and pushed Nick out of the way; he climbed into the backseat. “Stay here and get shot, I don’t care. Nick, get us the hell out of here. Drive.”

  Mr. Singh climbed in with a groan. “I don’t know what is worse: to be shot in America or have my family learn I escaped a shootout in a Volkswagen.”

  Dalton shoved his pistol into its holster and looked about the streets. Then he pushed Nick. “He’s embarrassed to be seen in your car.”

  Nick turned. “My car drove all the way from New York. It survived flash floods and blazing Mojave heat. Bugsy gets twenty-four miles to the gallon on the highway. You can get out where you like.”

  Mr. Singh reached over, took the shoulder belt and wrapped it around himself, then looked out the rear windshield as he latched the buckle. “Krishna help us,” he said, wagging his head about and pointing behind the car. “Mr. Nick, drive fast and don’t look back.”

  “Oh my god,” said Dalton. “You named your car Bugsy?”

  “Shut your mouth.” Nick turned the key. The engine cranked over but didn’t start.

  “You got to be kidding,” shouted Dalton, waving his gun. “If I fucking shoot Bugsy, will he start?”

  “He always starts.” Nick turned the key and the engine cranked and cranked and finally started. But it was too late.

  Dalton was thrown against the window as a black Cadillac SUV smashed the side of the bug. For a moment the Caddy stood still, then lurched forward and shoved the Volkswagen against the curb. The passenger window rolled down halfway, and a man stuck his head out and laughed.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. You have nowhere to go. Isn’t that a shame?”

  Another SUV screeched to a halt behind the first, and the doors flew open. Three men and a woman jumped out and walked toward the Volkswagen. Nick rocked back and forth in his seat and hit the dashboard with his fist. "Oh, so I got nowhere to go?" He reached beneath his jacket and pulled out his father’s .45. He aimed it at the man in the window.

  The guy jumped out of view when he saw the gun.

  Nick didn't have room to stick the gun out the window and shoot, so he popped a round through his own windshield and put out the front tire of the Cadillac. "Here, you! Take this," he said, and tossed the pistol onto Mr. Singh’s lap.

  Mr. Singh picked it up as though he didn’t know which end was which, fumbled with it, pointed it through the shattered windshield, and shot into the engine compartment of the SUV. But the .45 jumped violently, and he discharged two more rounds by accident through the roof of the Volkswagen before Dalton grabbed the weapon out of his hand.

  "Oh, I got nowhere to go?" Nick shoved the gear shift into reverse and dumped the clutch, and the bug lurched backward and hit a parked motorcycle at full speed, knocking it onto the hood of parked car.

  "Holy crap, Nick! An hour ago, you were a computer nerd. What happened?" Dalton discharged the clip from the .45 and counted four rounds, shoved it back into the pistol.

  "I'm pissed." Nick shoved the gear shift forward and turned the wheel into the curb. But the curb was too high for the VW, and he shifted into reverse, rolled back a foot, then hit first gear and stomped on the gas. One of the rear wheels spun and smoked, then got traction, and the bug shot forward and jumped the curb.

  The car bounced and threw Dalton off the backseat and into the air, where he hit his head against the ceiling.

  The Volkswagen crossed the sidewalk and crashed against a stucco retaining wall. But it didn’t stop. It bounced off and screeched along, hugging the wall as the motor raced. Nick fought with the steering wheel and raced up the sidewalk until he got wedged between a parked car and the retaining wall. But he wouldn’t give up.

  Dalton pushed between the seats and raised his legs and kicked the rear window. “Get us out of here!”

  Nick shoved it into reverse and revved the engine and popped the clutch, and the car hopped up and lurched and spun a tire, then pulled free and raced down the sidewalk backward, bouncing off the retaining wall and crashing into three parked cars before it dropped over the curb behind the SUV, did a quick little turn, and took off down the road.

  Dalton kicked, and the rear window fell out. He jumped up and fired two rounds into the SUV. “They’re coming, Nick!” he shouted.

  They flew into the first turn so fast that the car turned sideways and Dalton thought it was going to flip over as it
climbed up onto the two right wheels. It probably would’ve fell over on its side, but an SUV slammed into it and pushed it along the street sideways, the tires hopping across the asphalt. Suddenly the Volkswagen hit a patch of rough asphalt, and the tires found traction and the Volkswagen shot free.

  Nick was revving the engine so high that when it finally did gain traction, the car took off backward so quickly that he couldn’t react fast enough. Bugsy raced up an asphalt driveway, crashed through a twenty-foot-high wall of shrubs, and flew off an embankment. The men shouted as the car left the ground.

  It came down hard, hit and bounced, left the ground again, and stopped at the bottom of the steep grade carved with gullies. Twenty feet away stood an abandoned oil derrick. The dirt was stained black.

  Nick hit his door with his shoulder several times. With each blow it creaked and opened a few inches, then the door dropped to the ground and fell over.

  “Am I alive?” Dalton climbed to a sitting position.

  Nick was the first to unfasten his seatbelt. He dropped out of the car onto his knees, shook his head, and stepped to the car and helped the others get out.

  Once out of the vehicle, they gathered behind the car on their hands and knees. Dalton looked out over the top of the smashed bug to the embankment. Men were running about. One of the SUVs sped off.

  “They’re coming, Nick. How many rounds you have left?”

  Nick pulled out the clip and counted his remaining bullets. “Four rounds. I don’t know what happened to my other clips.”

  “You had to send me this death project. I’m a good Hindu. I only wanted to get back to India to see my mother before she died.” Mr. Singh lowered his face to the ground, as though praying.

  “We’re not dead yet, Singh,” said Dalton. “Come on, they’ll be down here in a minute. Let’s get out of here.”

  Mr. Singh moaned and shrieked when he climbed to his feet, and collapsed in pain. “My ankle! I think I broke my ankle in that ugly little car.”

  Nick and Dalton each took an arm around their shoulders and carried him past the oil well and out to the road. They had just reached the black-top when the first SUV screeched to a halt.

  Dalton threw the arm from around his shoulder, dropped to one knee, and aimed his weapon. But it was no use.

  Three men climbed out of the SUV, each aiming a combat rifle with a laser scope. A second SUV stopped behind the first. Two men and a woman hurried over and took position.

  “There is no reason to die here,” said Dalton, climbing to his feet.

  The woman from the diner smiled and stepped in front of her associates.

  “That was some good driving,” she called. “I need that program that Dr. Singh was bragging about in an email. I’m taking it whether you’re alive or dead.”

  “Singh,” shouted Nick. “You mentioned it online?”

  “Maybe I might have told a friend that I was onto a discovery.”

  The loud chopping sound of a helicopter stopped all talk. Then it appeared over the ridge, hovering above them, its loudspeaker blaring.

  “This is the FBI. Put down your weapons!”

  The woman and her associates looked at each other, not knowing if they should shoot the helicopter out of the sky or run to the vehicles.

  They didn’t have long to consider. Moments after the helicopter appeared, FBI vehicles rolled onto the street from both directions. Agents jumped out and dove to the dirt with automatic weapons and shotguns pointed at the Israelis.

  The woman cussed and stomped a foot.

  Harvey Lowenthal climbed out of a car and put a bullhorn to his mouth. “Put down your weapons or die on foreign soil. I will not ask again. I’m going to count to five before we cut you down.”

  The Israeli agents set their weapons on the road.

  “Never again,” said Dalton. “You never drive again.”

  “Bugsy saved us.”

  Chapter 11

  They drove down Shell Hill in an FBI vehicle. On the edge of Signal Hill, where concrete, industrial buildings met the tract homes of Long Beach, they turned into a driveway behind a long brick building that had once been a National Guard facility.

  As they waited for the electric gate to open, eight protestors surrounded the car and waved picket signs that read: WE LIVE HERE, NO GOV. SECRETS, and SPIES OUT. Men and women, their children beside them, shouted: “Spies must go!” over and over.

  Soon Dalton and Nick found themselves in a lecture hall with tiered seating. Several agents walked in with briefcases. A female agent carried in a laptop and joined the others on the stage.

  A few minutes later, Harvey Lowenthal walked across the hall and said with a loud voice, “Okay, agent Murkowski, why don’t you open?”

  An agent stood up and hoisted his belt buckle, crossed the stage, pressed the button on the wall, and a large television screen turned on. “Sir,” he said, “from the beginning?”

  “We discussed this yesterday, agent Murkowski. Yes, from the very beginning.”

  An illustration of Solomon’s Key appeared on the screen. “An artifact stolen from the Vatican just after Martin Luther, recently came to our attention in Germany.”

  The image on the screen changed to photographs of a barroom crime scene.

  “So, it surfaced in Germany and disappeared after this attack. We believe Uri Dent led the assault. He is working for the Rapid Intervention Group, which is part of the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State. They are a special forces unit.”

  “Uri Dent, a.k.a. the Snake,” shouted Harvey Lowenthal. “Does that name sound familiar, Dalton?”

  “Why are you showing this to me?”

  “Because,” said Harvey Lowenthal. “I’m hoping some of it will sink into your thick skull. We need to find that artifact, and we need your help.”

  Dalton stood up. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “That is out of my hands.”

  “I’ve heard that before. Isn’t it funny how a treasure makes governments forget about the law?” Dalton flicked Nick on the shoulder. “Come on, we’re out of here.”

  One of the agents stood up and walked to the door with his hand on his holstered weapon. “Boss?” said the agent when he reached exit.

  “Look, thanks for the show. I appreciate it. But we’re not under arrest, so we’re leaving.”

  Harvey Lowenthal waved a hand, and his agent stepped away from the door. “Look Dalton, you’re free to go. But that artifact is stolen property. It’s our job to return it to its owner.”

  Dalton and Nick walked across the room. When they reached the exit, Dalton stopped. “And because you can’t figure out who it belongs to, well, you’ll just lock it up while you locate the treasure, right?”

  Dalton pushed open the heavy door and squinted in the sunlight.

  “You need to come back in here,” said Lowenthal. “I have something for you.”

  Dalton looked into the room. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw on the screen what looked like an old image of himself in military uniform. “Really? You had to dig that up? I’m never amazed how low you feds are willing to go. What? Now you’re going to blackmail me? Man, you guys just wallow in shit. How do you keep your shirts white?”

  “I got the results back on your fingerprints. It’s a new day and age when the Federal Bureau of Investigation is actually sharing information with the Department of Defense and the Justice Department. Glory be.” Lowenthal waved his hands.

  The image changed, and the agent continued. “Here we have young Mr. Dalton in army uniform in 2005.”

  “Do you know how many lives you just put at risk?” asked Dalton.

  “But you dropped out of sight in 2014. A source tells me you were given a new identity in exchange for testimony against the cartels.”

  Harvey Lowenthal slapped a file on the table beside Dalton.

  Before the agent withdrew his hand, Dalton spun it behind his back and shoved Lowenthal’s weapon under the agent’s chin.

&nb
sp; “How does it feel to have your life put at risk?” Dalton backed away as agents moved toward him. With one hand he ejected the clip from Lowenthal’s weapon, kicked it across the floor, and tossed the weapon onto a table. The pistol slid across the surface and dropped to the floor. “Tell your men to back away, or I’ll snap your arm at the shoulder.” He shook Lowenthal and repeated the threat.

  “That’s assault on a federal agent.”

  “You threaten to expose my identity. That would put my life and the life of all my loved ones in danger: men, women, and children. But when I threaten back, wow, you get all worked up and say I assaulted a federal agent. You make me sick. Nick, take photos of them and the images they showed us. Take the files too. I think the Times will be interested. I’m sure my attorney will be peachy happy to see all this.”

  “Back up,” said Lowenthal. “Everyone, stay calm. Put your weapons away.”

  Dalton put his lips to the agent’s ear and whispered: “Remember what you read in my file about sniper training, Lowenthal. If you make that information public, and one of my family is hurt, you won’t even hear the shot. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess we can’t drive your bug,” Dalton told Nick, still holding the agent.

  Nick finished snapping photos. “Not hardly. But Uber is on the way.”

  They ran across the parking lot and climbed into a Prius with the Uber symbol on the windshield.

  “Are they going to come after us?” Nick said, turning to look back.

  “A little station like that, I don’t think so.”

  Chapter 12

  Dalton leaned forward and told the driver, “Drive down by the beach and head north along Ocean. Take us downtown and just keep driving around until we tell you different.” After the driver agreed, Dalton looked at Nick.

  “You knew all that stuff Lowenthal was going on about anyways, right?”