Read Online The Templar Cross by Paul Christopher - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Christopher
Tags: Fiction, Historical
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nothing. “Now leave.”
They did so, walking quickly down the hill from the corner.
“Now I see what must have happened,” said Rafi. “Peggy and her expedition must have tripped over a cache of old Nazi gold lost in the desert somewhere. That’s why no one’s asking for ransom.”
“The Vichy French and the Germans controlled most of North Africa for the first three years of the war,” said Holliday, “and the Italians even before that.”
“What’s your point?” Rafi asked.
“If Rauff collected all that gold from North African Jews, you would have thought he’d have sent it back to Germany. So what was it doing out in the desert?”
They reached the bottom of the hill and flagged a silver Mercedes taxi cruising the harbor front, trolling for business from the restaurants overlooking the water. Twenty minutes later they’d booked themselves into a garish pink suite overlooking the crescent of beach in front of the Royal Casino Hotel in Mandelieu-la-Napoule.
“I guess the next stop is Tunisia,” said Holliday, crouching in front of the minibar and getting out the fixings for a stiff drink. Both the sight of Felix Valador’s grisly corpse in the cupboard and the nasty feel of the Holocaust gold in his hands had shaken him badly.
“Not necessarily,” said Rafi, sitting on the edge of one of the beds and flicking through the channels on the big flat-screen TV. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He tossed it to Holliday. “Check out the shots I took.”
Holliday put the phone in picture mode and scrolled through the photos. There were two or three general views of the antique store interior, one of Valador, dead in the armoire, the phony ruby in his ear, three pictures of the gold bar and two more of the old Bakelite wall phone between the Grecian columns. The first of the two was a wide shot of the phone’s relative position between the columns and the last shot was a close-up of the phone itself.
“What do you see?” Rafi asked.
“A bad picture of an old dial telephone.”
“What’s on the wall above the phone?”
Holliday squinted, then zoomed in.
“A number.” He read it off. “0112032087582.”
“Zero-one-one is the international dialing prefix. The next two digits are a country code and the single digit after that is the city code.”
“What country? What city?”
“Let’s find out,” said Rafi. He went to the phone on the night table between the beds and dialed the concierge in the lobby. Holliday mixed his Jack and soda. “Parlez-vous anglais?” Rafi asked. There was a pause. “Great. I wonder if you could tell me what telephone country code is twenty . . . two-zero, yes. And the city code three . Trois , oui , yes. Merci bien . ” He hung up the telephone.
“Well?” Holliday asked, sipping the drink.
“Alexandria,” said Rafi.
“Virginia?” Holliday asked, not entirely surprised. Alexandria, Virginia, wasn’t too far from MacLean and Langley, home of the CIA. It figured that they’d be involved.
“No,” said Rafi. “Egypt.”
7
They flew out of the Nice- Côte d’Azur Airport the following morning on a rattletrap Boeing 737 in faded blue Royal Air Maroc livery. The aircraft was ancient, some of the ceiling panels held up with duct tape. Rafi’s seat table kept collapsing, almost spilling a suspicious-smelling breakfast of something yellow in his lap, and throughout the trip small children ran up and down the aisle screaming at the top of their tiny lungs. There was no drink service and the toilets were overflowing after the first hour. Holliday was sure he smelled cigarette smoke coming from behind the ill-fitting cockpit door.
Their journey was a convoluted one, going first to Paris-Orly and then to Casablanca, where they waited to be refueled for three hours. From Casablanca they hopped north again to Tangier, then east to Oran in Algeria for a brief stop before flying on to Algiers.
In Algiers there was another unexplained
They did so, walking quickly down the hill from the corner.
“Now I see what must have happened,” said Rafi. “Peggy and her expedition must have tripped over a cache of old Nazi gold lost in the desert somewhere. That’s why no one’s asking for ransom.”
“The Vichy French and the Germans controlled most of North Africa for the first three years of the war,” said Holliday, “and the Italians even before that.”
“What’s your point?” Rafi asked.
“If Rauff collected all that gold from North African Jews, you would have thought he’d have sent it back to Germany. So what was it doing out in the desert?”
They reached the bottom of the hill and flagged a silver Mercedes taxi cruising the harbor front, trolling for business from the restaurants overlooking the water. Twenty minutes later they’d booked themselves into a garish pink suite overlooking the crescent of beach in front of the Royal Casino Hotel in Mandelieu-la-Napoule.
“I guess the next stop is Tunisia,” said Holliday, crouching in front of the minibar and getting out the fixings for a stiff drink. Both the sight of Felix Valador’s grisly corpse in the cupboard and the nasty feel of the Holocaust gold in his hands had shaken him badly.
“Not necessarily,” said Rafi, sitting on the edge of one of the beds and flicking through the channels on the big flat-screen TV. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He tossed it to Holliday. “Check out the shots I took.”
Holliday put the phone in picture mode and scrolled through the photos. There were two or three general views of the antique store interior, one of Valador, dead in the armoire, the phony ruby in his ear, three pictures of the gold bar and two more of the old Bakelite wall phone between the Grecian columns. The first of the two was a wide shot of the phone’s relative position between the columns and the last shot was a close-up of the phone itself.
“What do you see?” Rafi asked.
“A bad picture of an old dial telephone.”
“What’s on the wall above the phone?”
Holliday squinted, then zoomed in.
“A number.” He read it off. “0112032087582.”
“Zero-one-one is the international dialing prefix. The next two digits are a country code and the single digit after that is the city code.”
“What country? What city?”
“Let’s find out,” said Rafi. He went to the phone on the night table between the beds and dialed the concierge in the lobby. Holliday mixed his Jack and soda. “Parlez-vous anglais?” Rafi asked. There was a pause. “Great. I wonder if you could tell me what telephone country code is twenty . . . two-zero, yes. And the city code three . Trois , oui , yes. Merci bien . ” He hung up the telephone.
“Well?” Holliday asked, sipping the drink.
“Alexandria,” said Rafi.
“Virginia?” Holliday asked, not entirely surprised. Alexandria, Virginia, wasn’t too far from MacLean and Langley, home of the CIA. It figured that they’d be involved.
“No,” said Rafi. “Egypt.”
7
They flew out of the Nice- Côte d’Azur Airport the following morning on a rattletrap Boeing 737 in faded blue Royal Air Maroc livery. The aircraft was ancient, some of the ceiling panels held up with duct tape. Rafi’s seat table kept collapsing, almost spilling a suspicious-smelling breakfast of something yellow in his lap, and throughout the trip small children ran up and down the aisle screaming at the top of their tiny lungs. There was no drink service and the toilets were overflowing after the first hour. Holliday was sure he smelled cigarette smoke coming from behind the ill-fitting cockpit door.
Their journey was a convoluted one, going first to Paris-Orly and then to Casablanca, where they waited to be refueled for three hours. From Casablanca they hopped north again to Tangier, then east to Oran in Algeria for a brief stop before flying on to Algiers.
In Algiers there was another unexplained
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