The Templar Prophecy by Mario Reading

Author:Mario Reading
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

THIRTY-FOUR

Effi Rache sat between her two girlfriends at the Gasthof zur Hirschtal and tried not to look at the man dining alone at the window table ten feet away from her. But each time she looked away, her attention was drawn back to him again. There was something familiar about him. Some distant memory associated with the way he looked.

‘Do you know who he is?’ she whispered to her friend, Margrit Hanauer. ‘I’ve seen him before. I know it. Is he an actor?’

Margrit leant to one side and opened her handbag. As she did so she glanced across at the man. ‘No. But he’s handsome enough. He looks like Brad Pitt. Only with a widow’s peak instead of a straight hairline. Do you fancy him, then? Do you want me to go over and fetch him for you?’

Effi punched Margrit lightly under the table. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ But she kept on looking at him. It would come back to her eventually, this elusive memory. But why didn’t he look up? Everybody knew who she was. The other diners had clocked her straight away. But he seemed lost in whatever he was reading and didn’t appear to know that she was in the room.

A flurry began on a table at the far side of the panelled dining room. Effi glanced over. Three young men were eating Sauerbraten and drinking steins of beer with schnapps chasers. One of the young men was pointing across to her and saying something in a loud voice to his companions, who were trying to restrain him.

Effi was used to this. People either supported her or hated her. There was no middle ground. This meant that she encountered an equal mixture of anger and adulation everywhere she went. It rarely got out of hand, though. The Bavarians still held to the habits of formal courtesy that they had inherited from their forebears. But politics fuelled by drink was another matter entirely.

The boy made as if to get up from his seat but his friends dragged him down again. Margrit rolled her eyes, and Effi’s other friend, Alena, made a face and took out her phone. ‘Shall I call Udo?’

‘God, no. We involve that little shit and our name is mud. He’d probably wreck the place and lose us fifty votes. Let these people dig their own grave. They don’t need any help from us.’

The uproar was getting worse. The other diners had become aware of the problem and were glancing across the dining room with a mixture of disapproval and apprehension. The manageress was preparing to involve herself. One of the chefs had emerged from the kitchen and was monitoring proceedings.

The young man broke away from his companions and made across the floor towards Effi’s table.

‘Oh God. Maybe you had better call Udo after all.’

Alena ducked down and began making the call.

‘You fucking fascist whore.’ The young man was shouting as he walked. He was pointing his finger at Effi. ‘You know who this bitch is, everybody? She’s the person who is trying to send Germany seventy years into the past.

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