The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (29 page)

Would two plates suffice?

Somehow, he didn’t think so.

‘Did you find them?’ Edie called up to him.

‘Yes . . . no. Er, not entirely,’ he sputtered.

‘What do you mean “not entirely”?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get down.’ Panic-stricken, his thoughts jumbled, Caedmon stuffed the two plates inside his rucksack. It was Thursday night; the deadline for delivering the ransom was noon on Sunday. That left him precious little time to find the third plate.

The sodding Tau.

Symbolic of the Temple and the Templars and
tempos.
Father Time. Ticking, ticking, ticking.

Maybe there was another Tau carved on to a different stone. Or perhaps there’d only been two plates to begin with.

No
,
he self-corrected. According to the Chinon Transcript, there were three copper plates.
So, why would Fortes de Pinós have only put two plates in the –

Without warning, the rope suddenly jerked. Plunging a full twelve inches,
Caedmon’s knees pounded into the stone facade with a bruising impact. Immediately he checked the rope twined around the brake rack and verified that it was tightly wound. Wondering what could have caused the sudden drop, he peered up towards the saw-toothed merlon at the top of the tower. Even in the shadowy light, he could see that it was askew.

Christ.

Unlike the ancient Romans, who added aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide to make a dense mortar, the stonemasons of the Middle Ages used lime. Full of impurities, cured lime mortar was known to deteriorate under long-term exposure to wind and rain. Ponferrada Castle had been exposed to the elements for eight full centuries.

Caedmon
stared at the cockeyed merlon, transfixed, afraid to move, afraid the merlon would give way at any moment. Body curved, he dangled like a displaced quarter moon.

The rope jerked another few inches.
While he knew it was an illusion, the stars in the night sky seemed to jerk in unison.

Disoriented, he heard Edie shouting at him from below.
He glanced down and saw that she was frantically waving her arms. A dancing shadow.

He made a quick calculation.
It was a long drop. A good twenty-five feet. One that could very well prove fatal. People had been known to break their bloody necks from as little as a five-foot fall.

The thought made
him feel very much like a dead man on shore leave.

His pulse pounded in his ears.

But it wasn’t his death that he feared. He was terrified of what would happen to Edie, and to Anala, should he plunge to his death. Before she even had time to mourn, the bloodthirsty Calzada would undoubtedly execute Edie. Pull the trigger, ‘pop’ her, and be done with it.

He stilled his breathing, afraid
that even the slightest motion would send him hurtling through the air, base over apex.

I
n the next instant, just as he’d feared, the merlon gave way, chunks of stone flying through the air.

Bracing himself,
Caedmon fell to earth.

‘Ding-dong.’

Hearing Anala’s overture, the guard glanced up from his video game, an annoyed frown stamped on his face.

‘
I’m not feeling well,’ she told him, wincing in pain. Having carefully written the script, Anala raised her manacled hands, showing him a blood-smeared palm. She then gnawed worriedly on her bottom lip, trying to appear as mortified as humanly possible. ‘As you can see, I’ve just started to menstruate.’

The guard’s eyes opened wide, genuinely horrified by the disclosure.
So far, so good.
She was banking on the fact that, like most men, he’d have an unnatural fear of anything related to the female reproductive system.

‘Wh-what does that have to do with me?’ he stammered, staring at her as though she’d just sprouted horns, hoofs and a tail.

You sodding moron, what do you think? I need to use the toilet!

‘Can you please take me to the loo? S
ince I tend to be a heavy bleeder, this is something of an emergency.’ Bringing her knees together, Anala tried very hard to convey the image of a woman holding back the dam.

The
indelicate postscript worked, the guard nodding brusquely. ‘Hurry up. Let’s go.’ Getting up from his chair, he motioned for her to get off the cot. As he saw the dark red bloodstain on the cot mattress, he visibly blanched.

Head bent at a submissive angle – not wanting to arouse his suspicions – Anala obediently followed him down the hallway to the toilet.

‘Thank you for being so kind,’ she said just before she closed the door.

In a hurry to execute the plan, Anala flipped on the light and stepped over to the disgustingly filthy sink. Finagling a hand into the pocket of her cargo trousers, she retrieved a wadded paper napkin. Inside the napkin was the piece of glass that she’d earlier used to puncture her fingertip so that she could stain the cot.

She pinched the thick piece of glass between her thumb and index finger and, turning her manacled wrist, began to saw through the plastic band.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

When the band finally snapped apart, her shoulders sagged with relief.

Worried
about what the future held, certain that her mother would never be able to meet the outrageous ransom demand, she’d devised an escape plan. And while the thought of having to hurt, maim or even kill someone turned her stomach, the fear of being summarily executed was even more gut-wrenching.

Rewrapping the piece of glass in the napkin, she shoved it back into her pocket. Ready to implement Phase Two, she removed the heavy porcelain lid from the back of the toilet, taking care not to make any undue noise. Tightly grasping the lid, she stepped behind the door and raised the lid above her head.

‘H-help me!’ she croaked in a weakened tone of voice. ‘I can’t get up!’

Hearing a heavy footfall, she held her breath, her heart beating so fast she feared it might jump the tracks.

A split second later, the door flew open. As soon as the guard charged into the room, Anala struck him on the back of the head. Caught by surprise, he staggered several feet before toppling forward, collapsing on the floor in an ungainly heap. Knocked out cold.

Still holding the lid, she quickly put it back on the toilet.

‘Excuse me. Have to dash,’ she said, stepping over the sprawled body.

Rushing out of the loo, she sped towards the wooden staircase at the end of the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time. The treads creaked and groaned under her weight. At the top of the stairs, she came to a sudden stop, taken aback at finding herself in an empty assembly hall. She turned full-circle, searching for an exit. Spotting a set of double doors at the other end of the hall, she sprinted in that direction.

Fear giving way to euphoria, she flung the doors open and ran outside, gulping in mouthfuls of crisp air. For days now, she’d been forced to breathe the most foul, mildew-laden air imaginable.

Amazed that the plan had gone off without a hitch, she peered at the hilly countryside, the towering trees casting ominous shadows. For some inexplicable reason, she was actually comforted by the fact that there was no sign of human habitation. Until she figured out where she was, she didn’t know who, if anyone, she could trust.

Craning her head, she glanced at the building she’d just escaped from.

Blimey!

Her mouth fell open, astonished that it was a small-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon.

‘I am
definitely
not
in Athens.’

So where the bleep am I?

‘
Death, be not proud
.’

Or, at the very least, don’t be quite so brutal,
Caedmon silently pleaded, the journey to the great beyond turning into a grueling ordeal. His head hurt, his ribs ached and his right hip felt as though it’d been ripped from his body. Punishment for a life of sin and cynicism. If he’d known beforehand, he would have parked his arse in the pew with greater frequency.

Too late now
.

‘
Caedmon! Wake up!’

Somewhere, in the far distance, a woman called to him through a dimly lit tunnel. A muffled voice filtered through a dense cirrostratus cloud. A preposterous juxtaposition.
Why was there a cloud inside a tunnel?

Annoyingly persistent, the woman again called his name. More strident this time, the summons was accompanied with a sharp slap to the cheek.

Bloody hell! That’s a fine way to treat a dead man.

He blinked, the light inside the tunnel growing brighter with each passing second. First white, then yellow, and then a luminous shade of Persian blue.
St Elmo’s Fire.
An incandescent ball of plasma that left him awestruck.

A beautiful will-o’-the-wisp.

He raised a hand to touch the glowing orb, struggling to keep his eyes open. A frustratingly impossible endeavor.

‘Whatever you do, don’t close your eyes,’ the woman in the tunnel ordered.

Thinking his Angel of Death a stern mistress, he managed to keep his lids from draping over his pupils. ‘He was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.’

‘Who was?’

Belatedly realizing that she was shining a flashlight directly into his eyes, he shoved it aside. ‘St Elmo, of course.’

Slowly coming out of his stupor,
Caedmon became aware of the fact that he was sprawled on the ground, the Taurus tower looming above him. A voracious stone vulture. Unnerved by the sight, he struggled to sit up, groaning as he did so.

Edie put an arm around his shoulders, helping him to raise his back off the ground. The effort cost him, every muscle in his body shrieking in protest. While no bones were broken, he most assuredly had suffered several cracked or bruised ribs, making each indrawn breath an agonizing affair.

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘That’s an asinine question,’ he snapped. Even as he said it,
Caedmon obliged and glanced at Edie’s raised hand. ‘Two.’

‘Do you have any broken bones?’ she next
inquired.

‘I don’t think so.’ A miracle given that it’d been a bleeding long drop. He sucked in a deep breath, biting back a painful moan.

‘Just to be on the safe side, I’m going to call an ambulance.’ Edie opened her messenger bag and removed a mobile phone.

Caedmon
immediately snatched hold of her wrist. ‘I don’t want Calzada to know that I’m injured.’

‘But you could be suffering from a concussion.’

‘If I am, being jostled about in an ambulance isn’t going to cure me,’ he countered, rest being the only remedy for that particular malady. ‘The copper plates are inside my rucksack.’

Her
worried expression instantly morphed into animated expectancy. ‘So you
did
find the
Evangelium Gaspar
?’

‘Yes, but t
here were only two copper plates inside the cavity.’

Her brow crinkled
again. ‘According to the Chinon Transcript, there’s supposed to be three plates.’

‘Leaving me somewhat in the lurch.’ Unsnapping his rucksack, he removed the plates and set them on the ground, grateful that they’d not been damaged in the fall. ‘For whatever reason, Fortes de Pinós only placed two plates inside the niche.’

His headlamp lost in the fall, Caedmon snatched Edie’s flashlight, aiming it at the ground. Although badly tarnished, the incised lettering was still clearly visible. Written in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his apostles, both sides of each plate were engraved. A precursor to modern-day Hebrew, Aramaic was one of those dead languages that he’d never taken an interest in.
Alas.

Crouched
beside him, Edie stared intently at the plates as she ran her fingers over the incised surface. An instant later, she jerked her hand away as though she’d just been singed. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. She knew that the
Evangelium Gaspar
had spelled Fortes de Pinós’s doom.

God only knows what was scribed on the two plates.

‘Do you think that Anala’s captors will accept two plates as full ransom?’

Caedmon
took a swig of water from Edie’s bottle, rinsing the metallic taste from his mouth. ‘I intend to call G-Dog and find out. But first, I want you to make rubbings of each plate as we discussed earlier.’

In addition to the climbing gear, they’d also purchased white butcher’s paper and wax crayons during their shopping foray, worried that if he did find the
Evangelium Gaspar
,
Edie wouldn’t be able to take clear enough photographs of the 2000-year-old gospel with the iPad. Hector Calzada, a thieving bastard as well as a murderous thug, had confiscated her Nikon.