Valley of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page B
Authors: Paul Christopher
Tags: thriller
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cursed silently. If only he’d taken the two days he needed at the Swiss conference two years ago, he would have had the cardioverter-defibrillator implanted at the Lindenhofspital in Bern and he wouldn’t be in this situation. Dear God, if only he hadn’t decided to walk back from the Trinity College campus, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
The doctor composed himself as best he could,nodded to the top-hatted doorman in the red frock coat and stepped into the front lobby and confronted the staircase that led up to reception. He forced himself to climb without relying on the old-fashioned double wooden banister and made his way up to reception. He picked up his key, climbed into one of the refurbished cage elevators and waited as the white-gloved operator took him up to the top floor.
By the time he reached his room and stepped inside, he was gasping for air. He made his way to one of the upholstered club chairs in the sitting room of his one-bedroom suite, picked up his medical bag and dropped it into his lap. He found his bottle of bisoprolol, swallowed a ten-milligram tablet of the beta blocker dry and waited for his adrenaline levels to drop. At the same time he took out his portable battery-operated blood pressure machine, fitted on the cuff and hit the START button. He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. He was carrying around the most terrifying secret in the world and it was literally killing him.
It took the better part of an hour. When his pulse had slowed to a more tractable eighty beats per minute, he called down to the Horseshoe Bar and ordered a bottle of Pyrat Cask dark rum. When it arrived he poured three fingers of the expensive liquor into a Scotch glass and drank it slowly. He poured a second drink, then picked up the telephone.It was time. To carry the secret any longer was to invite death, and not just from ventricular fibrillation. Two bullets from El Tuerto, the One-Eyed’s famous silver-plated Type-92 Chinese semiautomatic, was just as likely. The phone rang twice and a somewhat nasal voice with a distinctly London accent answered.
“British embassy. How may I direct your call?”
William Copeland Black walked down the carpeted hallway of the principal floor of the British embassy on the Merrion Road in the Ballsbridge suburb of Dublin, home to most of the diplomatic missions in Ireland. He turned into the cultural attaché’s office, a small room with two desks and a tiny window that looked out onto the low-profile embassy’s courtyard, the last place on the property you were allowed to smoke. The only other person in the office was Anabel Bonet, who had supposedly been seconded to the cultural attaché’s office from Scotland Yard’s Art Theft and Forgery Squad to deal with the rash of art thefts that had been plaguing Ireland for the last few years.
The truth of it was that Anabel Bonet had never seen the inside of New Scotland Yard and anything she knew about art came from a first-year course she took at Cambridge. William Copeland Black was no cultural attaché, either, and everyone who was anyone in the embassy knew it, right down to EvaBurden, the woman who answered the telephone. Both Anabel Bonet and William Black were MI6, tasked with keeping track of any potential terrorist action against the United Kingdom originating in or passing through the Republic of Ireland.
Black sat down behind his desk, pulled open the middle drawer and stared at the yellow packet of Carrol’s Sweet Afton cigarettes. He closed the drawer and looked across at Anabel. “I’ve just had the most intriguing telephone call.”
“Not here, you haven’t,” said Anabel.
“No, it came through the inquiries desk. When he gave them my name, they patched it over to my cellular while I was coming in to work.”
“After a very long lunch, I might add.”
“I went into Dubrays on Grafton Street to hear that writer.”
“Which writer?”
“Simon Toyne, the one with the funny hair. He’s
The doctor composed himself as best he could,nodded to the top-hatted doorman in the red frock coat and stepped into the front lobby and confronted the staircase that led up to reception. He forced himself to climb without relying on the old-fashioned double wooden banister and made his way up to reception. He picked up his key, climbed into one of the refurbished cage elevators and waited as the white-gloved operator took him up to the top floor.
By the time he reached his room and stepped inside, he was gasping for air. He made his way to one of the upholstered club chairs in the sitting room of his one-bedroom suite, picked up his medical bag and dropped it into his lap. He found his bottle of bisoprolol, swallowed a ten-milligram tablet of the beta blocker dry and waited for his adrenaline levels to drop. At the same time he took out his portable battery-operated blood pressure machine, fitted on the cuff and hit the START button. He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. He was carrying around the most terrifying secret in the world and it was literally killing him.
It took the better part of an hour. When his pulse had slowed to a more tractable eighty beats per minute, he called down to the Horseshoe Bar and ordered a bottle of Pyrat Cask dark rum. When it arrived he poured three fingers of the expensive liquor into a Scotch glass and drank it slowly. He poured a second drink, then picked up the telephone.It was time. To carry the secret any longer was to invite death, and not just from ventricular fibrillation. Two bullets from El Tuerto, the One-Eyed’s famous silver-plated Type-92 Chinese semiautomatic, was just as likely. The phone rang twice and a somewhat nasal voice with a distinctly London accent answered.
“British embassy. How may I direct your call?”
William Copeland Black walked down the carpeted hallway of the principal floor of the British embassy on the Merrion Road in the Ballsbridge suburb of Dublin, home to most of the diplomatic missions in Ireland. He turned into the cultural attaché’s office, a small room with two desks and a tiny window that looked out onto the low-profile embassy’s courtyard, the last place on the property you were allowed to smoke. The only other person in the office was Anabel Bonet, who had supposedly been seconded to the cultural attaché’s office from Scotland Yard’s Art Theft and Forgery Squad to deal with the rash of art thefts that had been plaguing Ireland for the last few years.
The truth of it was that Anabel Bonet had never seen the inside of New Scotland Yard and anything she knew about art came from a first-year course she took at Cambridge. William Copeland Black was no cultural attaché, either, and everyone who was anyone in the embassy knew it, right down to EvaBurden, the woman who answered the telephone. Both Anabel Bonet and William Black were MI6, tasked with keeping track of any potential terrorist action against the United Kingdom originating in or passing through the Republic of Ireland.
Black sat down behind his desk, pulled open the middle drawer and stared at the yellow packet of Carrol’s Sweet Afton cigarettes. He closed the drawer and looked across at Anabel. “I’ve just had the most intriguing telephone call.”
“Not here, you haven’t,” said Anabel.
“No, it came through the inquiries desk. When he gave them my name, they patched it over to my cellular while I was coming in to work.”
“After a very long lunch, I might add.”
“I went into Dubrays on Grafton Street to hear that writer.”
“Which writer?”
“Simon Toyne, the one with the funny hair. He’s
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