The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (28 page)

She shot him a skeptical glance.
‘And then what?’

‘
We’ll then return to the castle and burrow inside a shadowy passageway until everyone has cleared the premises. Luckily, there aren’t any security cameras on site. Once the castle closes for the night, we’ll have the run of the place.’

While he didn’t
relish the idea of scaling the tower’s exterior, he accepted that it might come to that.

‘
Caedmon, it would dangerous enough to climb that tower in broad daylight and downright foolhardy to attempt to do so at night,’ Edie said, brows drawn together in a worried frown. ‘The darned thing is at least four stories high. If you fall, you could break your neck.’

‘
I daresay you’re right.’

But needs must.

Enough foot dragging. Just do it!

Worried that she might not get another chance, Anala slowly swung her right leg over the edge of the cot, her foot dangling a few inches above the floor. Holding her breath, she glanced at the guard, verifying that he was still asleep in his chair.

He was, his hands limply grasping a video game console.

Moving at an agonizingly slow speed – to prevent the bed frame from creaking in her wake – she adjusted her hips, next moving her left leg off the mattress.

For almost two days now she’d been staring at the overlooked piece of glass glittering benignly on the floor, obsessively fixating on how she might retrieve it. More importantly, she’d been scheming about what she would do once she had it in her possession. After yesterday’s little Q & A session, she had a very real fear that if she didn’t escape, she’d suffer a calamitous fate.
As in ‘worse than’.

She had a valid reason for her fear: during her interrogation, the oddly-named G-Dog had informed her that she was being held for ransom. Not a monetary pay-off, mind you. No, instead, the ransom was an ancient gospel that had once been in the possession of a fourteenth-century Knights Templar.
The likelihood of her mother meeting the kidnapper’s demand was bugger-all
.
Even if her biological father
was
a Templar scholar. It was a thought that generated an ambivalent surge of emotion, Anala still grappling with the disturbing bombshell.

Why the
big secret?
Why hadn’t her mother revealed the truth about her father? Didn’t she care that her dark secret might –

Don’t go there!
Anala mentally chastised herself as she eased her hips off the cot.
Stay focused on the task at hand.

Double-checking, she shot another glance at the guard, relieved to see that his blubbery mouth now hung wide open. God only knew what would happen if he suddenly awakened from his slack-jawed reveries.
Her
jaw still ached from the roundhouse punch he’d given her four days ago when he’d discovered her trying to escape through the window.

Refusing to contemplate the worst-case scenario – why dwell on the negative? – Anala placed a bare foot on the linoleum floor.

So far, so good.

Ever so carefully, she lifted her bum off
the bed and stood upright.

Swaying slightly, she drew breath, pulling musty air through her nostrils to her lungs. Unfortunately, she wasn’t functioning at a hundred per cent physically. Given the lack of exercise and dreadful fare – a nauseating rotation of
SpaghettiOs and cheese sandwiches – she was operating at about sixty per cent.

Hopefully, that would provide enough steam to get the job done.

Again, she longingly eyed the thick piece of glass. It was only eight feet away. Eight paltry steps. Sixteen in total from start to finish.

I can do this.

Determined to retrieve the object of her obsession, Anala took the first step – toe to heel – gently easing her weight as she shifted her hips. In that same instant, she heard the wooden chair squeak. Pulse racing, she immediately tensed up. Bracing for disaster, she peered at the guard.

Still sleeping like a baby.

She relaxed a bit and took the next step. And another. Then, just wanting to get the nerve-wracking escapade over and done with, she took the last five steps in quick succession.

Bending at the waist, she plucked the thimble-sized piece of glass off the floor and carefully palmed it. She wasted no time making the return journey back to her lumpy cot.

Three steps from the finish line, she heard a loud crash.

Whipping her head round, Anala was horrified to see the fully roused guard jumping to his feet, awakened by the sound of his game console falling to the floor.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he rasped.

Blindsided with fear, she immediately crouched over, grasping her lower belly. ‘I think . . . I’m going to . . . be sick . . . I – I didn’t want to – to vomit on the mattress.’

Moving surprisingly fast for a man who’d been sound asleep a few seconds ago, the guard snatched a plastic bag and held it under her chin. ‘Puke into this!’ he ordered. ‘I don’t want to have to mop the floor.’

‘Thank you for –’ Heaving
violently, Anala retched on cue, the SpaghettiOs finally getting the better of her.

‘Three bloody well better be the charm,’ Caedmon muttered as he released the rope on the rappel device and slowly slid down the side of the tower.

Literally on the brink, this was his third descent down the exterior wall of the four-story tower. Unable to find a
signum
,
or mark, inside the Taurus tower, he was now in the process of examining the exterior; a laborious undertaking made all the more difficult by virtue of the fact that night had fallen and the only illumination was the golden fan of light from his headlamp.

Luckily, he and Edie had found a sporting goods shop in town with a mountaineering section where he’d purchased fifty
meters of rope, a rappelling harness, headlamp and leather gloves. Two doors down, at the hardware store, he’d bought some basic tools. Purchases made, they’d hurried back to Ponferrada Castle, managing to find a secluded
garderobe
where they’d hidden until the staff had departed the premises. Calzada and Diaz had stationed themselves outside the castle, taking up a position near the public entryway. Neither of them wanted to be caught inside the castle lest the alarm was sounded.

Edie, who had very succinctly informed him that clambering down the tower in the dead of night was akin to madness, waited for him at the bottom. Bated breath a given. And while
he was unable to entirely banish his own queasy doubts about the risky endeavor, he did manage to shove them to the far corners, refusing to dwell on the fact that the rope was secured to an 800-year-old merlon, the high part of the squared saw-tooth that rimmed the top of the tower.

If, indeed, Fortes de Pinós had left a telltale
signum
on the tower’s exterior, he too would have had to rappel down a length of rope.

Those damned Knights Templar.

While the warrior monks had always fascinated him, quite frankly he never understood what would have compelled a man to join. Although the Templars were glamorized in modern movies and novels, monastic life was one of endless privation. Once initiated into the order, a warrior monk led an austere and grim existence. Meals were taken in silence; the monks were forbidden personal possessions; and to make even their slumber a torturous affair, they were forced to sleep with the lights on. During their waking hours, when they weren’t busy with rigorous martial training, a Templar monk strictly adhered to the Liturgical schedule of prayers, mass and biblical readings. All-in-all, a cheerless and loveless life. The latter would have been particularly hard to bear. Unless a man had joined as a widower, he would never have known the joy of hearth and home.

At the midpoint of the descent,
Caedmon glanced down at Edie, the stolen glimpse causing him to momentarily loose his footing.

‘
Fine time to be a stumble-bum,’ he rasped, exhaustion beginning to set in.

‘
Caedmon! Be careful!’ Edie called up to him, her voice fraught with worry.

‘No need to be concerned. I simply –’

Fuck me!
There it was. The
signum
that he’d been searching for. An unmistakable symbol carved into a smooth stone – the
Tau
– from whence derived the astrological sign of Taurus, the bull.

The nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, it was a symbol steeped in sacred meaning. A visual depiction of the spiritual precinct where the earth meets the heavens, it harkened to the
Templum Hierosolyma
,
the Temple of Jerusalem from which the Templars took their name.

The
Tau.

A key to treasure –
clavis ad thesaurum
– the symbol had been used since ancient times to mark the place where riches had been hidden.

The
Tau
.

The age-old sign of redemption.

‘Oh, how I do hope,’ Caedmon whispered. Relief washing over him in waves, he rested his cheek against the cool stone, waiting for his heart to beat at a less dizzying rate.

‘
Caedmon, are you all right?’

‘Yes, I . . . I’ve found the
signum
,’ he yelled down to Edie as he wrapped the rope around the brake rack on his harness.

‘Are you sure about that?’

Caedmon smiled. ‘Quite.’

Securely locked into place, he removed the chisel and mallet from the gear loops on his harness and began to chip away at the mortar around the stone. Raising his arm, he bit back a groan, his joints stiff, his body having been pushed to the limit over the last few days. Despite the pain in his shoulders and neck, he experienced an exuberant burst of hope as small chips of lime mortar pelted his cheeks.

This
had
to be where Fortes de Pinós cached the
Evangelium Gaspar.

Since their demise in 1307,
rumors had long swirled that the Knights Templar had devised a secret code known only to twelve high-ranking knights: the Grand Master Jacques de Molay and eleven of his closest associates. In case of a Doomsday scenario, any surviving member of the twelve-man cabal could use the code to retrieve the Templars’ most sacred relics.
But from where?
That had always been the big mystery, many Templar scholars claiming the hidden stash was safeguarded in faraway Scotland.

Caedmon
was beginning to suspect that the Templars’ treasure had been squirreled in Spain rather than the Highlands.

I shall soon find out.

Finished chipping out the mortar, he shoved the chisel and mallet into their respective gear loops and reached for a flat-edged screwdriver. Prying the slender tool under the loosened stone, he slowly eased it forward. A southerly breeze lifted strands of damp hair off his brow, his face beaded with perspiration. He finagled the stone a few inches, just enough to enable him to get a firm, two-handed grip.

Time to raise the curtain.

Slipping the screwdriver into a loop on his harness, he grasped hold of the block and slid it free.

‘Stand back,’ he instructed Edie. ‘I’m going to drop a stone to the ground.’

He glanced down, verifying that she’d moved out of range before he let go of the liberated block.

Releasing a tightly held breath
, he peered into the cavity.

S
eeing the tarnished copper plates cached in the hollowed-out space, he experienced a giddy burst. Heart pounding wildly, he reached inside the stone niche and removed the copper plates which were approximately ten inches by twelve inches and –

Christ, no!

There were only two plates!
Where the bloody hell was the third plate?

The blood fast drained from his face,
his hope of securing the full ransom obliterated.