Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3) Page 2

  “Please, come along to the office they’re letting me use here,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “I have some tea and cakes for you.”

  The office turned out to be a conference room with a long table surrounded by high-backed chairs. On the center of the table stood a silver samovar and a plate piled with baklava, halvah, and colorful Turkish delight.

  “Sit down, please. And call me Najat.” She served them, then sat across from Cole.

  “That samovar is magnificent,” Riley said.

  “Yes, the Maltese have been famous for their silver work for centuries.”

  Riley took a sip of the black tea. It was good and strong, just as she preferred.

  “So what sparked your interest in the Knights of Saint John?” Najat Günay took a big bite of pastry and made little moaning noises as she ate it.

  Riley looked at Cole, then back at their host. “I thought we were talking about the Knights of Malta.”

  Najat swallowed, then threw back her head and laughed. “Oh dear. I do have to start at the beginning for you, don’t I?”

  “Not really,” Cole said. “I’m the one with the ‘obsession,’ as she put it.” He inclined his head toward Riley. “See, my father, he wrote about the modern Knights—the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta—a sovereignty with no territory, which issues passports, has an embassy, and has been granted observer status at the UN. A very wealthy secret society with a number of powerful men and women who make up its ranks. It all piqued my curiosity, so I’m here to learn more about their origins.”

  The woman’s eyes twinkled as she rested her index finger on her chin and stared at each of them in turn. “Ahhhh, I see. What you want to learn about are the naughty Knights.”

  Cole’s lips lifted in a half smile. “I guess you could say that.”

  “Okay, well.” Najat wiped the corners of her mouth with her pinky fingers, then smoothed her skirt. “The Order didn’t start out naughty. They actually started as a monastic brotherhood doing charity work. During the Crusades, they provided care for sick and injured pilgrims in a Jerusalem hospital dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. The work resulted in bequests of land in Palestine, Syria, Italy, and France, and they grew into a military order as they had to defend their possessions. The brotherhood began the transition to the chivalric order when the pope granted them exemption from the paying of tithes. That would be like getting tax-exempt status. Best way to get rich fast. So what had been solely a monastic order grew into the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.”

  “How were the Knights of Saint John different from the Knights Templar?” Riley asked.

  “Ah, you’ve been reading Dan Brown! Good question. During the Crusades, both orders fought to free the Holy Land from the ‘infidels.’” Najat made air quotes with her fingers. “While the Knights of Saint John took on their role as Knights Hospitallers, the Templars developed a rudimentary system of banking. That’s how the Templars amassed such great wealth.”

  “Interesting,” Riley said. “Never thought about how banking got started.”

  Najat reached for another piece of Turkish delight. “When the Holy Land was lost to the infidels, both orders were homeless for a while. The Knights of Saint John eventually moved to Rhodes, but the Templars wandered. In 1305, Pope Clement the Fifth asked the two orders to merge, but they refused. Then King Philip the Fourth of France, who was deeply in debt to the Templars, ordered the Templars arrested. Nice way to get out of debt, eh?” Najat giggled into her hand again.

  Riley found herself smiling, too. The woman’s enthusiasm for this history was infectious.

  “The church accused the Templars of everything from heresy to idolatry. Eventually, Philip got his way. The Templar leaders were burned at the stake. In 1313, the pope ordered all the Templars’ property transferred to the Knights of Saint John, and the Templars were dissolved. Then the Knights of Saint John got kicked out of Rhodes by the Ottomans, and they moved to Malta in 1512.”

  Hazel said, “Part of what makes Najat such a fascinating authority on all this is her own background. She was born in Turkey to a Muslim family. Her parents were killed when she was seven years old, and she was adopted by a Christian family in Malta.”

  “They were the only parents I remember,” she said. “But I always knew that in my blood I had one side of this old conflict and in my heart I had the other.” She laughed again. “Both sides see me as an infidel.”

  “When I heard Najat speak for the first time in Istanbul, she talked about how her life changed when she went from a culture that rarely educated girls to one where she had the opportunity to learn and excel. Her personal story is just as fascinating as her Knights’.”

  “Ah, but your friends are here to learn about the Knights. So, today, they are called the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, or SMOM, and their headquarters is in Rome. Last year the Order celebrated its nine hundredth anniversary at Saint Peter’s Basilica. They are always granted an audience with the pope. They remain the only surviving chivalric order that can date its origins back to the Crusades.”

  Hazel stood up. “Listen, Najat, fascinating as this is, I heard most of it yesterday, and I am dying to catch up with my best friend here. So I suggest you and Cole stay here and visit the museum exhibits while I take Riley to lunch. We’ll be back to meet you in”—she glanced at her watch—“say, a couple of hours?”

  Cole shrugged without looking up. He muttered something that might have been the word “Fine.”

  Once they exited the palace courtyard, Hazel linked her arm through Riley’s. They strolled the narrow stone-paved streets in silence until they came to an unpainted wood building. The sign over the door was written only in Greek, but Hazel turned through the doorway. Riley followed.

  The room inside was no bigger than fifteen by twenty feet, dimly lit from the glow of the soft-drink fridge against the back wall. A teenage girl behind the counter smiled shyly and nodded at Hazel, then turned and passed through a curtain into the back of the store.

  “You ready for a picnic?” Hazel asked. “I thought we’d find a quiet place where we could talk, away from the noisy, touristy restaurants here.”

  The girl returned and hoisted a heavy fabric shopping bag onto the counter. Hazel paid her and they left.

  The route she led them on was not haphazard; Hazel had planned it all out. It appeared she knew exactly what Riley needed. At last they climbed a narrow set of stairs and found themselves in a sheltered alcove with a clear view across the harbor from the top of the Old Town’s walls. A table was set up there with two chairs. The sounds of the city faded away on the fresh breeze.

  “What do you think?” Hazel said.

  “My friend, you know me so well.”

  The bag held cheese, bread, tomatoes, olives, and a foil dish of fish cooked in a slathering of vegetables, as well as a chilled bottle of white wine and glasses.

  When they were both seated, Hazel took out the bottle and poured them each some wine. She handed a glass to Riley, then raised her own glass. “Cheers, darling.”

  Riley smiled as she stared into her friend’s eyes and their glasses clinked.

  “So?” Hazel said. “Now can you tell me what the hell is going on with Cole?”

  Riley looked away and took a long, deep breath.

  “I’m scared, Hazel. I know, he appears to be a conspiracy nutjob sometimes.”

  “Okay, but that’s not news to you.”

  “This goes way beyond his usual conspiracy theories. This is like serious crazy. Hazel, Cole insists he’s seen a ghost.”

  Lazaretto Royal Navy Submarine Base

  Manoel Island, Malta

  April 3, 1942

  Captain Robert “Tug” Wilson loved the clanking noise of metal hitting metal, and the ringing vibration of it traveling up his arm. His opponent parried, spun, and jumped atop a fragment of a stone wall. Tug gave chase across the crumbling rocks, but when Lieutenant Commander David Wanklyn whirled around, one of
Tug’s boots slipped off the broken stones. It was only thanks to his slender frame that he was able to turn aside and avoid being impaled.

  “Ha!” Tug shouted as their sabers clanked, and Tug brushed aside his opponent’s thrust. “Good try, Wanks.”

  While he knew that the tall submarine commander’s reach exceeded his own by several inches, Tug could also count on the navy man to play fair. Not so, Tug himself. With a quick disengage, he flustered Wanklyn with a lunge, piercing the other man’s shirt with the tip of his saber. He ripped his blade free from the cloth.

  “My point!” Tug said.

  “Bad form!” the commander shouted with a grin on his face. He held his sword aloft and walked around his opponent, his other hand behind his back. “This is the last good shirt I’ve got, Captain Wilson. You’ll owe me one.” He lunged.

  Tug’s saber brushed Wanklyn’s aside, and the music of metal on metal rang out in the courtyard as their swords crossed.

  “And you’ll have to find me to get me to pay up,” Tug said. “I got my orders. They’re calling me back home.”

  Tug backed up, fending off Wanklyn’s onslaught. The navy man’s confidence drove him on as it did at sea. Tug was beginning to understand why this man’s boat had sunk more enemy ships than any other submarine in the British Navy.

  “I wonder how they plan to get you out of here,” Wanklyn said.

  Their fight took them closer to the seawall and the glittering harbor. Commander Wanklyn’s face appeared even more pale in the bright light, especially given the contrast with his dark, V-shaped beard. These past months the man had spent more time beneath the sea than out in the daylight.

  Both men were sweating and breathing heavily when the slow windup of the air-raid siren sounded from the loudspeakers hanging outside the arched galleries of Lazaretto Submarine Base, home to the Royal Navy’s Tenth Flotilla. Out in the creek, one of the moored sub’s Klaxon horns sounded as she prepared to dive. The bottom of the creek had become the big boats’ only safe refuge from the constant aerial attacks.

  Their sabers crossed and both men leaned in, Tug looking up into the face of the tall submarine commander. “You’re not going to let a few planes put a stop to our fun, are you, Wanks?”

  Wanklyn’s eyes shifted skyward as both men heard the distant drone of planes approaching.

  “Hey, you two!”

  Tug turned and looked into the arched galleries that fronted Lazaretto Creek. The only other man on base wearing army khaki was waving at them.

  “Are you fellows mad?” he yelled. “Another minute and the two of you’ll be flying about like farts in a colander.”

  The engine noise grew louder. Then they heard the first whine of the bombs dropping.

  “What do you say, Wanks?”

  “Much as I’d love to stay and ram my saber right through that gap between your teeth, Wilson—”

  They saw the plane at the same time. It was coming in low from the west and headed straight for them.

  “Shit!” Tug said. Both men dropped their swords and bolted for the cover of the old stone hospital building.

  The explosion knocked them off their feet, and they landed half inside the old building’s gallery. They lay still on the ground, hands covering their heads while rocks and wood debris clattered onto the stones around them. The bomb, meant for the submarine tied farther along the catwalk that connected to the seawall, had fallen a hundred feet short and taken out one of the hospital’s outbuildings. It would have killed the two fencers if they hadn’t run for cover.

  Lance Corporal Charlie Parker of the Beds and Herts Regiment walked out of the hall that led back to the officers’ mess. He stood, hands on hips, shaking his head as he looked down at the two men at his feet.

  “Looks like they almost smoked you two musketeers.”

  Tug sat up and brushed off dirt and debris. Lieutenant Commander Wanklyn stirred.

  “You all right, Wanks?” Tug asked as he grabbed Charlie’s extended hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

  Wanklyn stood and dusted off his trousers. He looked back at the crater in the side courtyard, where they had been fencing minutes ago, and slowly stroked his dark beard. “Thank God Jerry hasn’t got better aim,” he said.

  Tug smiled at Charlie. The two army commandos had come to understand these submariners a bit during their stay here in Malta. Wanks hadn’t been worried about his own safety. The sub tied up to a floating catwalk just off the Lazaretto Base was Wanklyn’s own, the HMS Upholder.

  It took a bit of digging to find their sabers. Charlie was the most enthusiastic excavator of the lot. Back home he’d been something of an amateur archeologist, and he’d once told Tug, as they walked the streets of Valletta, that he was thrilled to find himself stationed on Malta.

  “Parker,” Tug had said, “it’s a little rock in the middle of the Med. The bloody Luftwaffe bombs are reducing the place to rubble, and the rationing is so bad the whole island’s run out of beer. Who the hell wants to be here?”

  Charlie had replied, “Every time a bomb drops, what’s left is an archeological dig. For thousands of years people have been building on top of buildings here.” His eyes glowed with an inner light. “This city is an absolute world treasure. Think about it. We may be the last ones to see all this culture still standing.”

  Watching Charlie now, as he turned over rocks and sifted through the rubble, was like watching a kid digging through presents under the Christmas tree.

  “What do you think you’re going to find, anyway, Parker?”

  “You never know, Tug. Maybe some kind of treasure.”

  “It better be my saber. Do you realize I took that off the Arta?”

  “The Arta?”

  Tug sat down on the low stone wall and wiped his face with his sleeve. “That German troop transport that grounded on the banks off Kerkennah Island. I was in the boarding party. I found some Jerry’s saber, and I mean to hang on to it, so you keep looking.”

  Charlie stopped digging and looked up. “You might help.”

  “What? And spoil all your fun with your rocks?”

  “It’s not just rocks, Tug. There are layers upon layers of history here. You realize this base is an old hospital built in 1643 to house plague victims who arrived on sailing ships? That’s one layer, three hundred years ago. This is a fantastic natural harbor. With Manoel Island right in the middle, certainly people’ve been living here as long as there have been people in Malta.”

  “And how long is that?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Ottomans—they all fought over this rock and settled here for a time.”

  Tug reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled package of smokes. Two left. He shrugged, stuck a bent cigarette in his mouth, and touched a match flame to the end. He pulled the smoke into his lungs and held it before blowing a perfect smoke ring. “Where’d you learn all this?”

  “Always liked history. Been reading about it since I was a kid. Aha!” Charlie held a bent saber aloft. “Found one!”

  Atop the Ramparts

  Rhodes Old Town

  April 9, 2014

  “You, my friend, are the bravest woman I know. If you’re scared, something is seriously wrong.”

  Hazel served them up plates of fish, cheese, and olives, and they settled back to watch the small boats skittering back and forth across the harbor.

  “I don’t know where to start, Hazel.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. That’s your starting and ending point.”

  Riley looked across at her friend. “Remember all that business more than ten years ago when I was stationed down in Lima?”

  “Darling, of course I do. That bastard Priest almost blew you to bits.”

  Riley took a long drink of her wine. “Right.” The food didn’t look as good as it had a few minutes ago. For a long moment, she couldn’t figure out how to go on.

>   “Honey, I’m confused. What are you trying to say?”

  Riley touched the stone wall surrounding their little picnic spot. “There’s a fine line between love and hate. Maybe the only reason I can hate him so much now is because I once loved him.”

  “That sick son of a bitch—all that horror in Lima, your burn injuries, and then there was what he did to you later in the Caribbean.”

  “Actually, it started even before that. That day I watched Diggory Priest break my father’s neck, he confessed that he had killed Michael, too. Diggory was my father’s Skull and Bones protégé.”

  “Oh Riley, I hate that this is making you relive all that. It was horrible, yes. But it’s old history now. You’ve pressed on, and now you have this new life with Cole ahead of you.”

  “It seems Diggory won’t leave me alone.”

  “You’ve never said much about that boat explosion in the Caribbean, but I gather there wouldn’t have been a piece of him big enough to find.”

  “Right.” That was what made it so difficult to say it out loud. It sounded so crazy. She’d just have to blurt it out. “Cole claims he’s seen Diggory Priest in Turkey.”

  Hazel choked on her wine. “What?”

  “I know. It doesn’t just sound crazy, it is crazy, right? Diggory Priest is dead.”

  Neither woman said anything for several minutes as they drank their wine and stared out over the rooftops at the sea.

  Riley put down her glass and clasped the edge of the table with both hands. “Hazel, we had such a great time sailing my boat here. We’d sold Cole’s old boat. The new boat was on order. Cole and Theo had already flown out to Marmaris and met with the designer and builder.”

  “And how is First Officer Theo?”

  Glad for the momentary change of subject, Riley narrowed her eyes and examined her friend’s face. “You’ve been asking about him quite a bit lately.”

  “I find him interesting.”

  “Well, he’s gone far beyond being just Cole’s first mate. He’s been living in Marmaris the whole time we were out sailing, and he’s taken all of Cole’s ideas and made them happen. All the tech on the boat is Theo’s design, and it’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. This new expedition vessel is going to be the perfect workboat for Cole’s archeological expeditions.”