The Templar's Curse by Sarwat Chadda (classic books to read TXT) 📕

Oh, patronizing. That wasn’t the best way to start. Billi stopped at an alabaster figurine, not more than ten centimetres tall, of a bearded, muscular man holding a lion in one arm, an axe in the other. “Gilgamesh, right?”

“You know your Mesopotamian mythology.”

“Only since breakfast.” She’d crammed hard after having read through the emails between Sir George and Lawrence. That’s when the plan had formed, an idea that had brought her into the offices of Outremer Consultancy.

Sure, she’d got hold of the djinn jar, but that had still left her wondering what else Lawrence might have locked away, waiting for the right buyer to come along. She knew he made most of his money selling mundane, non-occult, items to buyers from all over the world. But what about the more... specialized items, like the jar with the trapped djinn? What else did he have? Who had supplied him in the first place? Who was behind smuggling priceless artefacts out of the world’s war zones? Now she knew.

Sir George Cartwright.

It had taken her all day to piece it together. Some was just research through the internet, but some through Arthur’s old army contacts. Soldiers gossiped, just like everyone else. Sir George was quite a player in the world of private security or, in plainer terms, the world of mercenaries.

He’d retired straight after the Iraq war. He’d used his contacts and a significant amount of private wealth to establish Outremer Consultancy, a one-stop shop for all your mercenary needs. Ranging from bodyguards all the way up to private armies, he could have boots on the sand within seven days, special discount on militias. All his years in the Middle East, all those contacts both within his army and in local troops, gave him a unique insight and advantage in waging war in places like Mosul, Fallujah and Damascus. His clients included governments that couldn’t be seen intervening in such war zones. Sir George and his company, and others like it, made sure those governments’ interests remained protected, and central in any local politics.

But where had the money come from for Sir George to set all this up? She was looking at the answer to that question right now. The detail on the figurine was exquisite, right down to the minute ringlets of his beard. “This looks just like the Gilgamesh stolen from the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities in April 2003.”

Sir George cleared his throat. “You’re mistaken. It’s just a cheap copy I picked up at the Baghdad souk while I was stationed there. It’s just a memento, nothing more.”

Billi put her finger on the top of its head and rocked it back and forth. “Just a cheap copy, eh? Easily replaced?”

Sir George’s hands tightened into fists and his gaze was pure venom. “You should not touch things that do not belong to you.”

“My thoughts exactly.” And Billi let it fall.

“No!”

Sir George sprang up so fast his chair flipped over, crashing loudly upon the hardwood floor. He stretched out as if hoping to catch it but he was four metres away, it wasn’t going to happen.

Billi let the small figurine drop into her other hand. She then put it back, very carefully. “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

There was a knock at the door and Agatha appeared with the tea. “Sir George? Is everything —”

“Just piss off, Agatha!” he snapped, glowering from his desk.

Agatha left. With the tea.

He was nice and rattled now. It was just like having a duel. You wanted your opponent unsettled, out of his comfort zone and deep in yours. Then the jabs and stabs landed easily. Put him on the back foot and keep him there. “You smuggled a lorry-load of artefacts out of Iraq at the beginning of the war when the whole place was in chaos. You did it for a man called Lawrence, you’d been working for him for years already, and you handed the artefacts over to him at the Turkish border, in exchange for several million dollars, transferred to your account in the Cayman Islands. All I want is the inventory of everything you stole, then I’m out of your life.” Billi held out Lawrence’s mobile. “He really should have deleted those emails.”

Sir George pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast-pocket and tapped the sweat from his forehead. He was pale, leaning over the desk, chewing his neat white moustache. He was out of breath. Just like in a duel. “I was just handling logistics and transport. There were troops working under me. They were the ones stationed in Baghdad. It was a major under my command who did the... removal.”

“His name?”

“Simon FitzRoy. I chose him because he was discreet, and his family had been soldiers for generations. His grandfather had served under Allenby out in the Middle East during World War I. Simon knew the people, the language and territory well.” Sir George’s shoulders slumped. He looked through his desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder and slid it across the desk. “Here. Take it for all the good it’ll do you.”

Billi took it and gave it a quick look. There were a dozen items listed, including a bronze canopic container, the djinn jar. “What do you mean?”

“I should never have trusted Simon. It wasn’t till years later when one of his men, a sergeant who now works privately for me, told me the major had separated some artefacts from the collection and kept them for himself. What I got were the leftovers. The bastard kept the best treasures for himself.”

“Does Lawrence know?”

He stared at her. “Are you mad? Of course not. As far as Lawrence knows he got everything of value.”

“I think I need to pay this Simon FitzRoy a visit.”

Sir George laughed. Genuinely laughed. He looked at her with a hint of victory in his eyes. “Good luck with that. I’ll be very surprised if you get anything out of him.”

“I can be persuasive.”

“You’ll have to be a medium, child,” said Sir George. “Simon FitzRoy killed himself