The Templar Succession Read online

  Lumnije shook her head. ‘I will not try it again.’

  ‘You swear to this on Allah’s head?’

  Lumnije nodded.

  The Captain threw something on the bed. ‘Look. I brought you a shawl.’

  ‘I do not want a shawl.’

  The Captain looked at her for a long time. Then he left.

  Lumnije picked up the shawl and threw it into a corner of the room.

  That night, with no sheets left, she was forced to retrieve the shawl and use it to keep warm. The Captain came in around midnight, drunk, and raped her again. As usual, he spoke soft words to her. As usual she closed her ears and her heart to anything he said. She had given up trying to fend him off. The Captain was so massive and so overwhelmingly strong that he could hold her at bay with one hand while he did whatever he wanted to do with the other. Now she merely lay still, like a rag doll, and let him handle her as he saw fit.

  ‘Are you pregnant yet?’

  ‘How can I know?’ Lumnije said. ‘Don’t you understand females, how we work? How can I possibly know?’

  She would never have spoken to him like this when he was sober.

  He looked at her and made a sign of disgust with his hand. ‘You are not a female. What am I thinking? You are an Albanian. I kill Albanians.’

  ‘Then kill me. Kill me like you killed my mother and my father and my brother. Do you have a family?’

  The Captain looked at her in drunken incomprehension. ‘I have a son,’ he said. ‘And a wife.’ For a moment he sounded almost human. As if he felt flattered that she had asked the question.

  ‘Then I hope somebody kills them.’

  They looked at each other across the bed. Lumnije was beyond hatred. Beyond fear. Now she simply existed. Two more days, she told herself. In two more days he will let me go and I will have to stand no more of this.

  ‘I like you,’ he said, on the eve of the sixteenth day. The day he had promised to release her. ‘You suit me. That’s why I have given you these special privileges. I take no pleasure in breaking in new girls. I take no pleasure in rape. So I have decided to keep you.’

  FOUR

  Dushkaje Province, Kosovo

  19 September 1998

  John Hart watched the teenager moving in front of him through the woods. Was the boy taking him on a wild goose chase? Had he offered him too much money? Was he being led into a trap?

  He shifted the weight of his cameras and adjusted his backpack. The pair had been walking for eight hours now and Hart was tired. At twenty-five years old he was fitter than he had any right to be given his binge-drinking and his thirty-a-day smoking habit, but his fitness was as nothing compared to that of the boy. The boy seemed hardly to be sweating. In fact the boy seemed barely to notice that they were moving at all.

  Hart called for a stop. ‘How much further is it now?’

  ‘Not long,’ said the boy.

  ‘What is not long?’

  ‘The time to smoke thee cigarettes. Maybe four.’

  ‘Maybe five? Maybe six?’

  ‘No. Four. Four certain.’

  ‘And you know this place exists?’

  ‘Yes. Many Serb soldiers. Young girls in house. There is screaming.’

  Hart could feel the saliva poaching in his throat. What insanity had started him on this trip? Was it the desire to make his name after the catastrophic series of damp-squib failures that constituted his career over the past few years? To get the photo scoop to end all photo scoops? The one cool shot that would play and play forever. Like Nick Ut’s napalm snap of the burned and naked girl in Trang Bang in 1972. Or Robert Capa’s loyalist militiaman at the point of death in Cerro Muriano in 1936.

  Now, thanks to his foolishness, he would more than likely get killed for his trouble. The Serbs didn’t play nursery games. He had seen that during the bombing of Sarajevo in 1994, which he had covered as a wet-behind-the-ears twenty-one-year-old, having lied about his age to the newspaper that employed him. As a result of his experiences during the bombing, Hart still jumped whenever he heard a loud noise, and woke up unexpectedly on selective nights not knowing where he was or what he was doing. Out here in the woods, with no company but the boy, he felt vulnerable and fragile again, as if he was crawling out onto the edge of an eerily familiar precipice with no way back but down.

  ‘Why don’t your people do anything about this?’

  ‘Because we are weak and they are strong.’ The boy’s face hardened. ‘And because the girls aren’t worth saving.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They have been touched.’

  ‘Touched? I thought this was a rape house.’

  The boy twisted his head to one side and spat. ‘When a girl has been touched she is never clean again. Her family is besmirched. Her people are shamed. It is better for her to die.’

  Hart watched the boy. He was slowly beginning to understand the depths of hatred between the two groups that made up the Kosovan population. Neither thought the other was entirely human. The worst thing you could do was to take one of the other side’s young women and rape them. For an Albanian Muslim, this was tantamount to psychological murder. The girl would be shamed and exiled or, if she was lucky, forced into a silence that could last a lifetime. She could never tell her husband. Her father. Her mother. And if she was made pregnant she faced ostracism and the forcible adoption of her baby. In Bosnia, Hart knew that there had been cases of girls killing their own children at birth. Killing themselves while still pregnant. Rape was a war aim. Everybody knew the cost.That’s why they did it.

  ‘If your sister was raped, would you turn your back on her?’ he said.

  ‘If my sister was raped I would kill her. Then I would kill the man who raped her.’

  Hart shook his head. ‘Then why are you taking me to this place?’

  ‘The money,’ said the boy. ‘I need the money.’

  ‘To buy clothes?’ said Hart. ‘To buy a fucking motor car?’

  ‘No. To buy weapons.’

  They left it at that. Neither liked the other. It was a visceral hatred, made up of illogic and youth. Hart didn’t trust the boy and the boy disdained him as an interloper and as a voyeur of other people’s pain. There was no bridging the gap.

  ‘And you will wait for me while I take my pictures?’ said Hart.

  ‘That is the deal.’

  ‘But will you keep to it?’

  ‘Your question is stupid.’

  Hart knew his question was stupid, but still he had to ask it. He couldn’t break through this boy’s carapace. Couldn’t read him. He was left with honesty.

  They continued on their way.

  Four cigarettes. How long a time does it take to smoke four cigarettes? thought Hart. An hour? Fifteen minutes per cigarette?

  An hour later the boy signalled him down. They began to crawl. In the distance Hart could hear male voices and the revving of machines.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Maybe they are going?’ said the boy. ‘Maybe they are packing up? Maybe you will miss your pictures?’

  Hart felt the shame burning his cheeks. He knew what the boy meant. Here he was, an observer, with a safe hotel to return to. A comfortable bed. And here the boy was, a participant, with no home left, let alone a secure place to sleep. How the kid must despise him.

  Hart crawled behind the boy to the edge of the clearing. The house stood back a little, in honour of its importance. It had been the home of a lawyer, maybe, or a government official. There were decorative flourishes on the roof and windows – money flourishes, designed to impress. In front of the house men were climbing into trucks. Hart fumbled with his telephoto lens. No. No women. Maybe this was just a barracks after all, and the Serb soldiers were going out on exercise?

  ‘They’re leaving. This isn’t a rape house. I knew
these places didn’t exist. You’ve brought me all the way out here to watch a bunch of Serb paramilitaries heading out on fucking exercise.’

  ‘No. Look.’

  Two Serb soldiers were sealing the house from the outside. Iron bars at the windows, wooden beams propped against the doors. They were doing it casually, as if it had been done many times before.

  ‘What does that prove? Only that they’re securing the house for their return.’

  ‘You a fool,’ said the boy. ‘You don’t lock from outside in when you secure. They locking people in, not out.’

  Hart watched the trucks disappear up the track, leaving a dust cloud in their wake. ‘Will there be guards?’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ said the boy. ‘There are only girls inside. No one will come to save them. No one care.’

  His face was haunted by unseen ghosts.

  FIVE

  Two hours later, the boy melted away. One moment he was there; the next he was gone.

  Hart cursed under his breath, but there was nothing he could do. He was marooned near a Serb outpost with a clutch of cameras, two bottles of water and a Sujuk sandwich. He felt like every sort of a fool.

  He gave it ten minutes and then stood up. In the two and a half hours he had been watching the house he had heard and seen nothing. He held up his press pass and stepped out into the clearing. Part of him expected to be shot. Another part, still flush with the confidence of youth, reckoned he could talk himself out of nearly anything, given half a chance. Hand out a few cigarettes. Explain that he had been looking for the monastery the boy had been muttering about. Visoki something or other. That he had wanted to photograph the tomb of St Stefan. That would be sure to appeal to the Serbs.

  He stood in the clearing and looked around. Nothing stirred. It was past mid-September but it was still hot. Hot enough to fry an egg on the bonnet of your car. Maybe thirty degrees. The cicadas were chirruping as if it were high summer.

  Hart took a sip of his water and looked at the house. It sat there like a physical manifestation and stared back at him, revealing nothing.

  Hart walked closer. He could feel the back hairs on his neck rising. Had it turned cold all of a sudden? Maybe there had been a zephyr of wind on this otherwise windless day? A fluttering of leaves?

  Then he heard it again. The moan. It was long drawn out. The distillation of despair.

  Hart looked around himself in consternation. Yes. It had been a human moan. And it had come from inside the house. He caught himself taking a step backwards preparatory to running.

  He was a photographer. A photojournalist. Not a participant in this crazy civil war. If someone was locked inside the house he should leave them, shouldn’t he? And what if there were Serb soldiers? They would kill him. Or at the very least confiscate his cameras and beat him up.

  He took a few more steps towards the house. He had come out here, into the depths of the countryside, to get a scoop. No one had succeeded in photographing one of the so-called ‘rape houses’ before. No one was even sure they existed. The Serbs maintained that they were Albanian propaganda. The Albanians maintained that the Serbs were using rape as a weapon of war. The Serbs countered with the fact that the Albanians were doing the same thing. But, like Samuel Goldwyn had once famously proclaimed, the consensus was that ‘nobody knows anything’.

  John Hart had made it his business to force the issue. He had gone around asking questions until someone, somewhere, responded. Then he had bribed them to take him to see one of the houses for himself. The man who had given him the information had sent the boy instead of coming personally. Hart had hesitated. But in the end he had gone for it. What did he have to lose? He had no reputation to speak of yet. No contract to imperil. He was a freelancer. Had been since Sarajevo. He was lucky to sell five photographs a month. Sometimes less. But all it would take would be one classic. The one shot that everyone needed. Then he would be a made man. Write his own ticket. Hart was in a hurry. He was young. He was still in love with his profession.

  He walked to the front door of the innocuous house in the clearing and prodded the beam. It was hammered tight. Hart stood back and kicked it. The beam stirred a little, but remained in place. He kicked it again. It stirred a little more.

  He looked around to see if anyone had noticed the noise he was making. The cicadas had shut up, but the clearing itself seemed alive. It seemed to be waiting for him to do something. As he watched, mesmerized by the sudden silence, the cicadas began to saw again. He swallowed, but the saliva would not come. All his instincts told him to run back towards the shelter of the woods. Retrace his steps. Lose himself inside the greenery.

  He kicked at the beam a third time. This time it moved. Hart heard the moan again. Then there were more moans. Female voices. High-pitched. Close to hysterical. Probably scared that the Serbs were coming back.

  Oh Christ, what am I doing, thought Hart.

  He kicked the beam fully out of the way and yanked at the door. It opened. His nostrils were immediately assailed by a noxious mixture of sweat, faeces, semen, urine, blood and ammonia. Hart clamped a handkerchief to his mouth and ventured inside.

  At first, still blinded by the daylight, he could make nothing out. Then he saw them. Eight or nine naked girls cowering against the wall. Most of them were covered in filth and caked blood. Some were protecting their breasts and pudenda from his gaze – others simply stood in place, their heads bowed.

  Hart threw the door wide open to let more air in. He was close to gagging. He beckoned to the girls, but none of them approached him. The cameras on his chest weighed on him like a sackful of stones. The stones of conscience.

  He backed outside and smiled. Then he urged them anew. No one moved. When he made to enter the room again one of the girls screamed. Hart edged as far away from the girl as he could and towards another door, situated further inside the property. He threw that door open too. The room was empty. A collection of sex toys was grouped together on a nearby table, as if being readied for some perverted game of chess.

  He backed out of the room and sidestepped round the girls until he came to a further door. He talked all the time to them. In English. Tried to calm them. But not a single one of them seemed to speak his language. His body was dripping sweat. His shirt and trousers were wringing. He feared that at any moment a detachment of Serb soldiers would burst in and shoot him.

  He reached the second door and tried the handle. This one was locked. He signalled for a key, but the girls shook their heads. Hart kicked at the lock. It began to splinter. He kicked again. The sound was obnoxiously loud in the confined space, but Hart sensed, from the way the girls were behaving, that something or someone of significance lay concealed behind the locked door.

  At his third kick, the door swung open. A young woman was tied, more or less fully clothed, on a bed. Her body was half covered by a bloodstained shawl. Long withheld nausea overwhelmed Hart’s defences. He tried to hold back but he couldn’t. He vomited on the floor, retching and choking, one hand on the door frame, the other trying to hold his cameras back against his chest so that they would not be soiled.

  When he was finished being sick he wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, then stared at what he had done with disbelief. Eventually he looked at the girl. She had bruises on her cheeks and about her eyes. There was blood caked beside her mouth and in her hair. He took out his pocket knife and untied her.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ he said. ‘English? My name is John Hart.’

  The girl hesitated. Her gaze drifted to the open doorway behind him.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  The girl stirred as if awakening from a dream. Her eyes flared. Her face took on the rictus of normality, as of one who rarely speaks.

  ‘My name is Lumnije Dardan. I speak English. You must go from here and lock the doors again. Just as you found them. Or when they come back the soldiers will kill us
all.’

  SIX

  Lumnije watched the tall young man with the golden hair standing beside the door. She could smell his fear. This one was not a soldier. He carried no pistol. The soldiers she knew did not vomit when they saw young girls. They picked one and took her. The girls were too scared or too broken to argue.

  The week before, a girl had succeeded in killing herself with one of the soldier’s knives. Lumnije had been made to watch her body being dragged out of the house. The Captain, after a loaded glance at Lumnije, had ordered the girl to be jointed and fed to the pigs. The rest submitted. There was nothing else to do. The cost could be counted later.

  ‘You must come with me,’ the man said to her.

  Lumnije almost laughed.

  ‘Please. We must hurry. There are no soldiers here now. But they will return.’

  ‘No soldiers?’ she said.

  ‘None. I broke in here. No one stopped me. The soldiers have gone away for the time being. You must tell the others to come with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Why should we come with you? Can you protect us?’

  The tall young man with the golden hair looked down at his cameras. ‘No. I can’t protect you.’

  She watched him from across the floor. Then something stirred inside her. Some echo of possible salvation. She got up from the bed and crossed the floor towards him. She saw him flinch when he caught the stench from her body. She walked past him. He followed her.

  ‘You. All of you,’ she said to the cowering girls. ‘This man is taking us away. We must go with him.’

  No one moved. Some were from her village. Some were not. Lumnije clapped her hands together to capture their attention.

  One of the girls stepped forward. A girl she did not know.

  ‘You are the Captain’s whore. Why should we listen to you?’

  Lumnije walked to the front door and looked out. It was true. There were no soldiers. ‘We are all whores now. You can go or you can stay. I don’t care. I go with this man.’