The Templar Archive (22 page)

“That’s barely visible,” Mallory said, “but that does look to me like a straight line, maybe carved there by someone using a hammer and chisel.”

“And there, below it,” Robin said, “that looks like another horizontal line, but quite a lot longer than the other one. Have you got any other pictures of that part of the cave?”

When Mallory took the series of photographs, he had deliberately allowed a considerable amount of overlap between them, and in response to Robin’s question, he pulled up another half dozen images, one after another. Fortunately that precise area of rock was visible on three of them. Even more fortunately, because of the changing angle of each photograph, the flare from the flash was different in each picture.

“There’s definitely something there,” Robin said, looking at the pictures in sequence, “but all I can make out is those two lines. Even if they are man-made, I’m not sure how that could possibly help us.”

“Let me just try something,” Mallory suggested.

He loaded the best of the pictures into a piece of photo-manipulation software, enlarged the relevant area until it occupied most of the screen display on his laptop, then began tweaking it.

“The original image is a color photograph, obviously,” he said, “though pretty much everything in that cave was black. Let’s see what it’s like if we view the image in different ways, like black-and-white, sepia, and all the rest of it. Then we can try fiddling about with the brightness and contrast, just see what comes out of that.”

The successive manipulations he did only seemed to make the horizontal lines either more or less pronounced, but didn’t apparently reveal any further details. Then he
had another thought. He converted the image to black-and-white, and then inverted it, so that it was like looking at a photographic negative.

And that was when the image suddenly came to life. Directly below the longer of the two horizontal lines, they could see, very faintly, another line running almost parallel. Almost, but not quite, because on the right-hand side of the image the two lines met at what appeared to be a blunted point, while an equally faint vertical line was visible on the left-hand side, making the shape look like an extraordinarily elongated letter
T
, lying on its side.

“That’s a bit like the Shroud of Turin,” Robin said, staring at the image. “You can only really see the image on that if you view it as a negative, rather than a positive. But what is it? What is that shape?”

“I have an idea,” Mallory replied, “but I’m more interested in these lines here,” he added, pointing close to the top of the image.

On the artificially produced negative image, the shorter horizontal line was clearly visible, as were two vertical lines descending from either end of it, and between them, virtually framed by those three lines, was the faint outline of what looked like another horizontal line, shorter and thicker.

“I can see more of it now, thanks to your manipulation,” Robin said, “but I still don’t really see what that is supposed to represent.”

“We really need to get back into that cave and take another look at it,” Mallory said, “but I already think I know what that is. When the Templars rode into battle,
they invariably wore helmets, and probably the classic shape for the helmet of a Templar knight was one with a flattened top, vertical sides, and with a horizontal slot cut out of the metal to allow the wearer to see out of it. I think those few lines are just a simple representation of the helmeted head of a Templar knight.”

“It is a definite shape,” Robin conceded, staring intently at the image on the screen of the laptop. “But I hope we’re not just seeing what we want to see. If you
are
right, then the shape below it has pretty much got to be a Templar battle sword, and the tip of the blade is fairly clearly pointing toward that corner of the cave. So what we could be looking at here is the ‘guardian’ from the third clue.”

“I hope so, but the bad news is that if that shape
is
the guardian, and he
is
beckoning, he’s very clearly indicating that massive pile of stones and rocks. That probably means there’s another chamber off the one we explored, and the only way we can get inside it is if we move every one of those boulders. That’s going to be bloody hard work, and it could easily take us one or two days just to shift them.”

Robin smiled at him.

“We never thought this was going to be easy,” she said, “but the other piece of good news is that the rocks are still in place. If somebody else had come along centuries ago and beaten us to it, those boulders would have been scattered all around the floor of the cave, and the opening into whatever other chamber is there would have been clearly visible. So we can at least be reasonably sure that the Templar Archive is still hidden in there, and waiting for us.”

Mallory nodded. “Well, it’s going have to wait at least another twelve hours. It’s too late to go back there today, and in any case we’re going to need leather gloves, probably another crowbar or two, and a heavy hammer at the very least, plus a couple of decent battery-powered lanterns because we’ll need good light in that cave to see what we’re doing. So tomorrow morning we’ll go shopping, and when we’ve done that we’ll see what lies on the other side of that rock pile.”

Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

“They’re still in the hardware store,” Paolo reported, “and I can’t see what they’re doing. Do you want me to go inside after them?”

“No,” Mario said decisively. “Don’t take the risk of them noticing you. Pick them up again when they come out and keep following them. But if you can, try to see what they bought in the shop.”

“Understood.”

“Carlo, Nico. Make sure you stay off the street where that store is located and out of sight. Wait for Paolo to tell you which way the targets are headed. Then the one of you who’s closest to them will take over the surveillance. And keep the commentary going. We need to know everything they do and everywhere they go.”

Once again the Italian enforcers were using the conference call facilities on their mobile phones to remain in
touch. It was a simple but extremely effective tool for the task at hand, allowing all four of them to keep in constant contact with one another.

“They’ve just walked out of the shop,” Paolo reported. “The man Mallory is carrying a canvas work bag that looks quite heavy. I presume he’s bought tools of some sort, but I can’t tell what. They’ve turned left and are heading down the street toward Nico.”

“I’ve got them,” Nico said.

And as Mallory and Robin made their way back through the streets, the loose group of four Italians moved and shifted around them, one of them always keeping the English couple in view. When they reached the hotel and went inside, the group assembled outside the building, out of view from the windows at the front, but in a location from which they could see the main entrance, and waited.

*   *   *

“I’m beginning to think,” Mallory said as he lowered the canvas bag of assorted tools to the carpeted floor of the bedroom, “that we’ve got company—again.”

“Not those bloody Dominicans?” Robin demanded.

“I really don’t know. I’m reasonably observant, and I seem to have noticed either the same man, or two men who look and dress remarkably alike, in the streets of this town. In fact, it’s not just one man, but two or three different men who seem to be taking something of an interest in what we’re doing.”

“You mean they’re people you’ve seen before?”

“Not as far as I know. And it might well be a
coincidence, and we’ve just run into a few locals who happen to have been in the same area as us at the same time, but with what’s happened to us in the past I’m inclined to be cautious.”

“Definitely. Do you want to just walk away? To get out while we can?”

Mallory shook his head. “I don’t want to quit any more than you do, and I may well be jumping at shadows. But I do have the distinct feeling that we’re being watched, that kind of prickling sensation. And even if we have picked up a tail, I still think our best option is to keep going, to try to follow the clues and get to the archive before anybody else can.”

“I feel it,” Robin said. “I feel we’re now so close. We’ll carry on, just keep our eyes open, make sure we’re not being followed, and try to make sure nobody knows where we’re going. With a bit of luck, we could get inside that hidden chamber today or tomorrow, and that could be the end of the quest.”

*   *   *

As Mallory and Robin talked together, their words were relayed from a voice-activated audio bug concealed inside a power socket in their hotel room to a digital recorder mounted in the glove box of a black Mercedes sedan parked in the adjacent street.

The bug had been installed that morning, shortly after they had left their room, by a technician who had presented unarguable credentials to the hotel manager, credentials that had been provided by the same people who were employing the sniper team. The hotel manager had supplied
him with a master key for the room the targets were occupying, and the insertion of the device had taken him less than ten minutes, including testing the chosen location for sensitivity and clarity of reception.

As well as the recording equipment, their conversation was also being monitored in real time by the two men sitting in the parked car.

When Robin mentioned the Dominicans, they glanced at each other and one gave a barely perceptible nod.

“As we guessed,” one of the men murmured.

“It really had to be them,” the other responded. “After all these years, who else would have the slightest interest in chasing down a couple of treasure hunters on the trail of the Templars?”

“So what do we do about them? The Dominicans, I mean.”

“They are not our concern. If they get in the way, we’ll take them out, but our only real problem is this English couple. Judging by what the woman said, it is just possible that they really have found the lost Templar Archive, or at least they think they have. We’ll have to make a judgment about what to do with them once they’ve explored whatever chamber they think they’ve found.”

“It’s a shame we can’t bug them as well, but at least we’ll know where they go, thanks to the tracker the technician fitted to their car. You know he found another device already installed on it?”

“Yes. I saw his report. At least that explained how the Dominicans—or whoever those people are—were able to track the English couple without driving along right
behind them. And I think we did the right thing in leaving their tracker in place. Removing it would have tipped our hand. This way, if we follow the English pair, we’ll know more or less where the Dominicans are as well.”

The other man nodded. “With any luck, we’ll be able to eliminate all of them, the Italians and the English, at the same time as we destroy the archive.”

“You still think we need to do that? The documents could have significant historical importance.”

“I don’t doubt it, but the contents are too dangerous to be allowed to survive. We have to totally destroy them. There is no other option.”

*   *   *

In fact, shifting the rocks didn’t take quite as long as Mallory had feared, for one very simple reason: what they had assumed, in the light from their flashlights, to be a massive pile of boulders was in fact nothing of the sort.

When he and Robin returned to the cavern that morning, they set their two new lanterns on the lowest available illumination, which was quite bright enough for their purposes in the otherwise total darkness, and would maximize battery life, pulled on the heavy-duty work gloves they had purchased, and started shifting stones. Prudence dictated that they start as near to the top of the pile as possible, because Mallory was concerned that removing rocks near the base might trigger an avalanche of boulders, which would almost certainly be injurious to their health.

He clambered up the rocks until he could reach the boulders at the very top of the pile, and passed each one down to Robin as he freed it from its resting place. When
he removed the third one, he paused and stared into the cavity that his action had created. Then he handed her that stone and waited until she’d lowered it to the ground.

“There’s something that looks a bit odd here,” he said. “Can you pass me my flashlight, please?”

“Define ‘odd,’” Robin said as she handed it up to him.

“Give me a second.”

Mallory shone the beam of light into the space where the stone had been, then glanced down at Robin.

“What?” she demanded.

“A bit of déjà vu,” Mallory said. “Obviously once the Knights Templar found a technique that worked, they kept on using it. Remember the cave in Cyprus?”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” Robin interjected.

“Nor me. Anyway, the chests were hidden in a cavity in the floor of the cave. Then they’d covered the opening with heavy wooden planks and put stones on top. Well, it looks like they’ve done exactly the same thing here. Behind that stone I’ve just taken out, I can see the tops of some pretty substantial lengths of timber.”

He climbed down from his perch on the rock pile and stood beside Robin. Both of them stared at the rocks, trying to work out where the timbers must be positioned.

“I think they leaned a sort of platform of really thick wooden beams—they’re much thicker than planks—against the wall of the cave, and then just covered them with a couple of layers of rocks,” Mallory suggested.

“In which case we don’t need to take it down stone by stone from the top,” Robin said. “As long as we stand far enough clear of the path the falling stones will take, we
can just lever out some of the rocks near the bottom and then just let gravity do the rest.”

“That works for me.”

Mallory picked up one of the other tools they’d bought that morning, an extendable steel pry bar, essentially a long crowbar, and slid the end of it down the right-hand side of a substantial stone located about two feet above the floor of the cave. He motioned Robin to stand behind him, well out of the path the stone would take when he levered it out of the pile, and then began to apply increasing force to the other end of the bar.

Nothing happened. He changed his grip and slightly altered the position of the bar, then began pushing again, but again without result.

“That one’s obviously jammed in pretty tight,” Robin said.

Mallory nodded, pulled out the bar, and repositioned it to one side and behind a slightly smaller stone located above the one he had first tried to move. This time, almost as soon as he applied pressure to the end of the bar, there was a cracking sound and the boulder immediately began to move.

“Watch out,” he said, then gave a final hard push on the steel bar.

With a sudden loud crack, the stone leaped free from the pile. The steel bar clattered to the ground as Mallory lost his grip on it, and, with a cracking and roaring sound that was almost deafening in the confined space, the boulders above it began to tumble out of position, bouncing off other stones as the force of gravity pulled them
inexorably downward. One of the smaller rocks from the top of the pile bounced toward Mallory and Robin, then struck a much larger stone and shattered harmlessly into half a dozen pieces.

“Are you okay?” Mallory asked when the last stone had bounced and crashed and rolled to a standstill.

“Of course,” Robin said, stepping out from behind him. “As you might have noticed, I was using you as a shield.”

Perhaps surprisingly, there wasn’t much dust, presumably because of the general dampness within the cavern. It didn’t take them long to move the fallen stones that were impeding their progress, so that they could see exactly what had been hidden behind the pile of rocks.

“Those are really substantial timbers,” Mallory said, looking at the lengths of wood running almost all the way up to the roof of the cave and leaning at an angle against the wall in front of them. “And they still look to me as if they’re in pretty good condition.”

“They obviously knew, or at least they guessed, that wood wasn’t likely to survive the millennia unless it was dry and properly seasoned to start with, and also pretty massive,” Robin agreed.

Shifting the wood was somewhat similar to moving the stones. Picking up and carrying the individual timbers was not really possible, because of their bulk and weight. But on the other hand, by hooking the end of the crowbar over the top of each length of timber and then pulling, that allowed the wood to topple away from the wall and crash down onto the piles of stone that now covered the
floor of the cave. It was a noisy, but fairly quick, way of exposing whatever lay behind them.

And once Mallory had shifted a couple of lengths, he was able to slide through the gap that he had opened up and push the timbers from behind, which was actually an easier way of moving them. Only when the last length of wood had thudded down onto the rocky floor of the cave did Mallory and Robin turn their attention to the gap in the wall that their work had revealed.

It was a high and wide opening, shaped roughly like an arch with fairly straight sides and easily big enough for two people to walk through side by side.

“That must be about nine feet tall at the highest point,” Mallory suggested, “and it’s at least six or seven feet wide.”

“You can see chisel marks on the sides, quite clearly,” Robin said, shining the beam of her flashlight to show the obviously worked stone on both sides of the opening. “There was probably a fissure here already, and they just opened it up wide enough to make access easier for them.”

Beyond them, the blackness of the inner chamber beckoned.

“Shall we?” Mallory asked, and then led the way through the opening, Robin right behind him, their dancing flashlight beams illuminating the way.

*   *   *

Marco Toscanelli stood beside Mario at the edge of the stand of trees that blocked the wider end of the valley and stared at the twin waterfalls that tumbled down into the wide pool below.

He and another of the Dominican enforcers—a man using the work name Salvatori—had flown in to Geneva late the previous evening and had arrived in Schwyz that morning. In his luggage, protected from customs inspection and scrutiny by his diplomatic passport, were six new and unregistered automatic pistols and four boxes of nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition, plus half a dozen switchblade knives, so all members of the group were now armed.

“You saw them enter the cave before?” Toscanelli asked.

“Yes,” Mario replied. “As I told you, since they arrived in Switzerland we’ve followed them to a number of different locations, but all the places they visited had one common feature: they were all blind-ended valleys. Then something seemed to happen—maybe they discovered some new piece of information or for some other reason they changed their strategy slightly—and the next locations were still valleys, but each one also had a stream running into it.”

Toscanelli nodded. “And presumably the first valleys they visited didn’t?”

“Some did, some didn’t, but the last few have all contained streams or rivers. More important,” Mario added, “on the last two they visited, both of them climbed through the waterfall at the end of the valley, so it’s fairly clear that they’re looking for something that’s hidden in a cave that’s concealed by the water.”

“And this is the one they visited yesterday?”

“Exactly. After they left here they went straight back to their hotel. But this morning they went out into the town and bought some tools. We don’t know exactly
what, because I didn’t want to send one of the men into the shop in case either of the targets recognized him from the surveillance we’ve been mounting.”