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Yvonne Crowe Writer
Yvonne Crowe Writer
Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Endeavour Press Limited
Pages: 542
Copyright: June 11, 2014
ISBN-13: 1499797486
Price: $4.97 (eBook)
The second book in the Nicolina Fabiani series, the intrepid journalist who dares to go where angels fear to tread to uncover ancient secrets.
For fans of Daniel Silva, Glenn Meade and Simon Toyne.
Who is The First Madonna and what is the mystery surrounding her?
To unlock this secret , Nicolina Fabiani, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist teams up with David Baron, a Professor of Ancient Languages, whom she suspects is more than he appears to be on th surface, to search in Ancient Temple sites throughout the Middle East for answers.
What is the Knights of Malta's connection to the Templar Knights?
And why do they cover The First Madonna and her secret?
As Nicolina and David stay one step ahead of her old nemesis, the Knights of Malta, they uncover a revelation about the origins of mankind and a power that men are willing to kill for.
This eagerly awaited sequel in the Nicolina Fabiani series is a fast paced, well researched thriller, reaching a shattering climax in an archaeological dig in Anatolia, which is rewriting mankind's history; and where the First Madonna reveals her power and what it will mean for a world poised on the brink of disaster.
Excerpt
Prologue
The man lying on the floor of the dank dungeon in one of the palaces belonging to King Philippe IV of France, groaned in agony. Every inch of his body had been beaten and tortured until it no longer resembled that of a human being. Nevertheless, he had not told his torturers what they wanted to know and now he yearned for the sweet release of death.
“If you want to save your life, you will tell me where The First Madonna is.”
The figure standing over the shattered man wore a black habit with the white cross on his chest of the Order of the Knights of St John Hospitallers, which had morphed from a small organization that provided care for poor, sick or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land; into a religious and military order under its own Papal charter which was charged with the care and defense of the Holy Land. Following the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 1291, the order had operated from Rhodes.
The torturer gazed nonchalantly at the macabre tableau in front of him; busily picking some bits of meat he had been lucky enough to score for lunch out of his rotting teeth and enjoying them a second time. He looked rather like a cow chewing its cud as he watched; being quite blasé about the entire episode.
What did he care about one Order of do-gooders coveting another’s assets and secrets to the extent that they would stoop to this sort of behavior? He had seen them come and go in his long career. It was all in a day’s work for him and he needed as much as he could get as he was only paid when he worked and starved if he didn’t. When it came to their wealth, the grandees were not believers in the trickle down theory.
Being in the employ of King Phillipe IV of France was good steady work, particularly since Pope Clement V had given the King the nod to destroy The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Order of the Knights Templar. The King sorely needed this campaign in order to absolve him of his debts to the Order, which had made generous loans to him in order to wage continuous wars against his enemies. He shared the Knights’ fortune with the Papacy of course and the Knights of Hospitallers were given the Templar Orders’ property and assets, which consisted of eight tongues in Aragon, Auvergne, Castile, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Provence; and included their libraries with important documents.
However, it looked as though one secret had not been imparted to them and rumor had it this was the one that had allowed the Templar Knights to enjoy unprecedented power and wealth. The Knights of Rhodes were determined to coax it, by the direst methods possible, out of this Templar Knight, who had survived against all odds, the campaign to annihilate the Order he belonged to.
In the torturer’s opinion the Templar Knight would die before he gave up the secret.
His attention was abruptly brought back to the red-hot pincers in the glowing brazier, when the senior Knight in his black habit barked out an order.
“Take out his eyes.”
Although the mangled body of the Templar Knight flinched, he still kept his mouth shut. The torturer personally thought this was surely going beyond the call of duty and honor, but who was he to judge?
‘This would do him in for sure,’ he thought. Oh well it would save him being burnt alive at the stake like his Grand Master Jacques de Molay had been. That had been jolly good sport for the common folk. It broke the drudgery of their lives of servitude and poverty.
It was all in a day’s work for him, so he bent to his task.
The last of the Templar Knights did not bother deluding himself that there was the faintest chance of being allowed to live and remained still, trying to detach himself from the agony he was in.
The Knight in the black habit nodded to the torturer, who plunged the poker held by pincers in his gloved hands, into the burning coals of the brazier and left it there until it glowed white-hot.
The Templar Knight was too shattered to lift his head to see his fate as the knight from the rival Order nodded again.
“One last time,” the Knight of Rhodes said. “Where is The First Madonna?”
Despite his agony, with his dying breath the Templar Knight shook his head slightly which was as much as he could manage. He watched with fascinated horror as the red hot poker came towards his right eye and screamed himself hoarse as his eyeball erupted and the most unbelievable pain assailed his senses and he blacked out, only to come to, but barely, as icy cold water was thrown over him. The shock was simply too much for his shattered body and mind to bear; and as his spirit prepared to depart from its earthly vessel, he barely registered the excruciating pain as the poker seared his left eyeball.
He looked down to see his barely recognizable body lying on the floor of the dungeon, and then released his hold on it.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…………
In his fury, The Knight of Rhodes smote the body with his sword again and again until it was dismembered, headless and gutted. He had to report his failure to elicit from the Templar Knight the whereabouts of The First Madonna that held the secret of Eternal Life and Power over all, which his Grand Master of the Order he belonged to coveted above all else in this transitory world.
Chapter one
Nicolina Fabiani, an American born journalist of Italian ancestry, looked out of the small window of the Airbus A320 that was carrying her to Syria. As they made their approach into Damascus International Airport she held her breath, trusting the Syrian Air carrier would not be blasted out of the sky, given the turmoil the country was in.
Turning to her fellow traveler in the aisle seat, she attempted a brave smile, which she used to cover up the nervousness she always felt when going into a war zone.
Archaeologist David Baron, who was seated beside her on the aircraft, was returning to Syria in an attempt to recover some of the artifacts he had found on a dig in Palmyra before the conflict had broken out in the country. Naturally all Syrian government departments were in disarray and the dig had to be abandoned as it was far too dangerous to continue under the current circumstances.
The artifacts had been duly submitted to the Antiquity Department of the Syrian government as was the norm and he hoped to be able to keep a particular piece he was attracted to.
During the trip, Lina had discovered that David was a Professor of Antiquity and Ancient Histories at the American University in Beirut, and constantly took trips into neighboring countries in search of historical links to the past in the Middle East.
When Lina, as she was informally known, stood up to take down her laptop out of the overhead locker, David quickly moved to reach up and bring it down while her cameraman Ben, in the window seat, looked on with amusement.
As their eyes met, Lina couldn’t help but be struck by the stunningly deep emerald pools set in David’s tanned face with its chiseled cheekbones and Roman nose. ‘That’s a stunning combination,’ she had to admit to herself.
“Where are you staying in Damascus?” David enquired.
“We’re booked into the Four Seasons Hotel which we’ll use as a base but I’m hoping to get out to Aleppo and also visit the refugee camps in Turkey. And you?”
“Oh, archaeologists from Universities don’t have that sort of budget.” David grinned ironically. “I have a good friend here in Damascus and I can bunk down in his apartment.”
“It’s pretty hairy stuff out there.” Lina raised her eyebrows and looked at him.
“No more than your own situation,” he responded. “No-one’s safe in Damascus right now.” With that they moved through the cabin and out in to the finger that would take them into the immigration and customs areas.
Nearby they could hear the sound of sporadic gunfire and the three of them looked at each other.
“You’ll need to be very careful going through to Aleppo. We’re lucky to get in to the country at all. I hear some insurgents are blocking the roads leading into the city.” David expressed his concern at the current situation.
“The Internet is still down, which is a major problem,” Lina gnawed at her lower lip.
“I think we can discount mobile services as well.”
“We’ve got a satellite phone, a satellite link on our laptops and our fingers crossed,” Lina grimaced. “I’m also hoping the manager of the hotel has a satellite phone stashed away safely.”
“Hmmm. Cross everything you possibly can,” David advised her, noting her very nice pair of legs.
The Revolutionary Army was intent on establishing a democracy in Syria, but the goal of the imported insurgents, which was that of a political regime similar to that of Iran’s under the Ayatollah Khomeini; in other words a framework of theocracy in a format of syncretic politics that is guided by an Islamist ideology, was scarcely better. It was a no win situation for the people of Syria, who wanted change, but most decidedly did not want the regime replaced with a radical Islamic government.
Her cameraman followed, as always nervous about his equipment, which he had to get through passport control and customs inspections. He had two cameras slung around his neck and was nervous about getting them into war torn Syria.
His fears were justified, as when they reached the customs area the cameras were treated less than gently and almost taken apart by the inspectors.
“Hey, don’t do that,” he complained to the Customs Inspector who glared at him and spoke in Arabic to his companions. The greeter from the hotel, who was assisting them with the procedure and had met them in the passport control area, calmed the inspectors down and looked at Ben with concern.
“Back off Ben,” Lina cautioned him, “if you want to get the cameras back at all. They have complete power over us and they know why we are here. They don’t want foreign journalists covering the conflict and are really tetchy.”
Ben subsided mumbling and grumbling as these were his beloved children but realized the truth in what she said. They had been together on many junkets such as these and discretion was the better part of valor when confronted with a dictatorship.
Lina was still acting as a freelance journalist and had been sent on this assignment by a television station in Berlin after having made a name for herself uncovering the machinations of a rogue Cardinal in the Vatican, who was a member of the ubiquitous Knights of Malta.
The television station deciding there was no point in losing them to a Syrian taxi driver’s erratic driving skills before they had a chance to report back on the crisis, had arranged for a limousine from the hotel to be available and the greeter took them directly to it.
“Would you like a lift somewhere?” Lina asked David who was close behind them. “We can easily drop you off wherever you like.”
“Thanks for the offer but I don’t think you quite understand that you can’t just drive around Damascus at the moment.”
“Well, I do really,” she retorted smarting at the remark. “I’ve been in plenty of these situations before. It’s what I do for a living.”
“Nevertheless,” David remained unfazed. “I suggest you get straight to your hotel. I’m fine with the local taxi drivers.”
“Please yourself.” Lina shrugged him off, then held out her hand and shook his. “Best of luck with recovering your antiquities,” she wished him.
“Yeah,” David grinned. “I just hope they’re still in one piece.”
As they parted and climbed into their respective vehicles, David couldn’t resist leaning forward and looking out of the taxi window at Lina in the limo. In his opinion, she was one striking woman and he wondered if he would ever see her again.
Driving through the hotel from the airport, Lina and Ben noticed trucks with machine guns mounted on the back and the better equipped bands of Bashar al Assad’s military forces, roaming the city at odds with each other.
A twenty five minute hair raising drive found them arriving safely at the Four Seasons. They checked in, were cautioned about going out into the city, thanked the concerned staff and went to their respective rooms.
A knock on the door and Lina opened up to find Ben on the doorstep. They were not the only ones after a story and it appeared that half the world of television and print were camped out in the Four Seasons, all vying for that great scoop that would see their names in headlines.
“Ready?” He certainly was, with a Camcorder slung around his neck and around his waist, the production pack holding batteries, spare cassettes, lens tissue, pens and Lavalier microphones.
“Yes, let’s go.”
Chapter two
They found the action some blocks away and keeping as safe a distance as it took to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, Ben trained his camera on the opposing forces. The odd civilian would scurry out from buildings that were pockmarked from previous encounters between the Revolutionary Army and the Government forces and it was hard to tell who had the upper hand in the skirmish they were watching. One moment it appeared the rebels were gaining ground and pressing forward until a barrage from Al-Assad’s troops would drive them back into damaged buildings whose entire frontages were exposed from previous mortar shelling.
They persevered for the rest of the day, staying out of the range of bullets as they endeavored to obtain that one classic shot that would make world headlines and a scoop, both of which would earn them a considerable amount of money. Finally as the fighting forced them back towards their hotel, they gave up for the day.
“Let’s pack it in,” Lina said wearily. “We’ll go back to the hotel and look at what we’ve got.”
Ben agreed with a further suggestion. “Then we can go down to the lounge, grab ourselves a drink and see what other crews have got out of today.”
Retreating back to the relative safety of the Four Seasons, they ran the shots off and declared themselves dissatisfied.
“I’ll feed these back to Uwe, but they’re not going to set the world on fire.” Picking up the satellite phone she called Berlin and told the station’s news director of the situation.
“We’ll head out again in the morning.”
“Okay, take care of yourselves,” Uwe cautioned.
Making their way downstairs they ordered a couple of bourbons at the bar, and then thankfully sank into a couple of armchairs.
“What are you two doing here?” They both looked up as someone stopped beside them.
“Same as you I guess Brian,” Lina looked up at the tall American journalist who stood grinning down at them.
“Get anything worthwhile?”
“We didn’t set the world on fire today,” Ben admitted.
“There are some lunatics out there doing just that.” Brian retorted and plunked himself down into another of the chairs scattered around a low table and held up his hand for a waiter.
“Where’s Noel?” Ben wanted to know where the journalist’s cameraman was as they were kindred spirits.
“Showering,” the man replied, “He’ll be down in a moment.”
The discussion turned to the fighting in the capital of Syria and Lina shook her head. “It’s the usual insanity. They’re destroying Damascus which is one of the oldest populated cities in the world.”
“How it’s managed to remain unscathed for so many centuries I’m stuffed if I know,” Brian commented, “but it’s going to be a pile of ruins before too long.”
The others nodded in agreement, looking glum at the prospect, but cheered up when Brian’s cameraman appeared and they could settle down to shake off the detritus of the day, in the manner of most journalists and their crews, with a good stiff shot of whisky or some other spirit. A meal together, a couple more drinks and they were off to bed ready for their next foray into the war zone the following day.
Despite warnings from the staff of the hotel the following morning, the intrepid journalist and her cameraman went out into the street looking for trouble.
They found it not far away. No sooner had they rounded the corner two blocks away from the hotel than they saw the two opposing forces standing off from each other. The Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces on one side; and the Syrian Military Army on the other. There had obviously been a recent skirmish, which had driven the citizens out of their homes and a band of maybe twenty five men, women and children, were desperately trying to reach some safety, somewhere, somehow.
Edging closer in an attempt to get that one great shot every cameraman and his journalist prayed for, Ben raised the camera and began recording the scene as the two sides fired at each other. Suddenly, the Revolutionary Army turned and fired on the hapless innocent victims of this brutal civil war as they tried to leave the area, mowing down every man, woman and child.
“What the fuck?” Ben cried as Lina gasped in shock at the outrage. No matter how many wars she covered, she would never get used to the barbarity. The groups of armed men then appeared to turn on each other, shouting and yelling.
“What is the matter with you?” screamed the leader of the Syrian Free Army group. “Why did you shoot those people?” he demanded.
Another leader, who appeared to be one of the extremist Jihadists that the Free Syrian Army had warily incorporated into its ranks, shouted back as Ben caught the action on his camcorder, “This is war.”
“Not against the people of Damascus,” the Syrian opposition movement leader screamed back. Whilst they had welcomed external forces in their fight for freedom, they were uneasy about the extremists in their midst.
The Jihadist group leader shrugged and nodded with his head in the direction of the military forces, who stood by dumbfounded, watching this interesting development between the uneasy alliance of the imported insurgents and the true revolutionaries. “We will claim they killed them,” he said heartlessly. “We will be believed.”
“I will not fight with you,” the secular rebel group leader screamed and shouted at his men to pull back from the fracas. At this, the Jihadist leader raised a rifle and shot the other team leader. As his men tried to escape, he shot them also.
Lina and Ben were reasonably inured to the bestiality of war, so the camera kept rolling, capturing the scene as Lina commented in to the microphone.
“It appears President Bashar al Assad’s claims that the rebels have been killing unarmed civilians, has some validity,” Lina reported. “These are extremists in the rebel forces who shot and killed innocent victims attempting to escape the violence. There has been a major dispute between what appears to be a leader of the popular front and the extremist insurgents, which appears to have culminated in the death of the Syrian Revolutionary Army field leader.”
Until now the extremist insurgent’s attention had been diverted by the reaction of the Syrian leader, but now one of them noticed Lina and Ben and shouted to his leader who swung around and began to shoot at them.
“Time to get out of Dodge,” Ben shouted to Lina as they turned and ran for their lives, with the rebels hot on their heels.
“Shit, they’re gaining on us,” Lina gasped, as they rounded the first block with the Four Seasons Hotel as their goal. They should be safe there.
Added to the pounding of feet and bullets whizzing around them as they zigzagged and prayed to whoever might be listening, they heard the roar of a motorized vehicle joining in the chase.
“Oh shit,” Ben exclaimed as he dug deep for that last bit of adrenaline.
Suddenly a Humvee drew up alongside them and the passenger door was abruptly flung open. “Get in,” commanded their erstwhile traveling companion, David Baron. Whilst in shock at the unexpected rescue, Lina and Ben were not about to argue and clambered aboard. Their rescuer stepped on the gas, raced around the corner and drove into the entrance of the hotel.
“Out!” he commanded, and the couple did not hesitate but ran for their lives into the safety of the building. Rather than try to outrun the furious insurgents behind them, David jumped out of the Humvee, threw the keys to a stunned bellhop, called out, “Park it under the hotel and leave the keys in the ignition,” threw him a couple of bills, which would feed his family for a few months and ensure his instant and eternal devotion to David, who then followed Lina and Ben into the lobby.
There the three of them stood panting with the exertion. “They won’t dare to storm the hotel,” Lina managed to say.
“Don’t be too sure,” David put nothing past determined radical militants with the mood they were in. They would be aware that if those photos reached the outside world, sympathy for their cause would turn against them, with their ultimate goal of establishing Sharia Law in Syria could become a distant memory.
With his Jewish heritage, David was determined this would not happen to the small nation of Israel. They could not be ringed in by radical Islamists, who were now in power in Egypt and Iran. Turkey was also in an uproar as their elected Prime Minister showed his true colors; and with their sights set on Syria, whatever disputes Israel had with the current Syrian government, paled into insignificance if the unthinkable happened and a militant Islamic government was elected into power.
“Upstairs. Quick.” Lina dived for the nearest elevator, which had just reached the ground floor, with Ben and David scrambling in after her. Luckily no one else was waiting to ascend so they had the cabin to themselves.
“Give me the door card,” Lina demanded of Ben, who pointed back at her with his forefinger.
Realizing her mistake, Lina took the key out of her jacket pocket, ready to disappear into the room. By now they had reached their floor and ran down the corridor to Lina’s room, inserted the card and threw open the door. Lina immediately dived for her laptop on the coffee table while Ben stood by with his camera. She grabbed the USB connection cable, plugged it into Ben’s camera and connected it to her laptop. Immediately she typed in the password to the satellite connection between herself and Berlin then began streaming the pictures to the other end. In the meantime she dialed the news director on the satellite phone.
“Coming down now Uwe,” she told the astounded man on the other end as he listened to her tale.
David and Ben stood by while she achieved her goal. Despite the double glazed, sealed windows, they could hear the uproar outside the hotel as the insurgents tried to enter it, but the military police had arrived on the scene within seconds and blocked their way.
Furious at being thwarted, the Jihadists began to fire on the hotel. Government forces came around the corner and were joined by another faction of the Revolution army who had heard of the murder of their squad, so the fighting renewed again. The extremist group’s attention was thankfully diverted once again as the precious photographs found their way to the eager editor whom Lina was now in contact with on her satellite phone.
“Mein Gott,” Uwe gasped as he viewed the first of them, and the others streamed from Lina’s computer to his own. “Heilige Scheisse, this will rock the world. We’ll air them on breaking news right now.” Then his thoughts turned to Lina and Ben. “Get the hell out of there now. We’ll see you back in Berlin.”
The three of them stood in the room looking at each other as the hotel remained under siege.
“Your lives won’t be worth anything now. You have to leave Syria.” David stated the obvious.
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