by James Becker
That was what they hoped, anyway.
The other factor was the timing.
Gellerman entered the border crossing point at St Stephen in New Brunswick into the satnav and it came up with an arrival time late in the evening. He had no idea if that crossing point was open twenty-four hours a day, but even if it was, they certainly weren’t going to arrive at that sort of hour. Three adult males in one car, all carrying Israeli passports, claiming to be holidaymakers and trying to get into Canada at eleven o’clock at night would set alarm bells ringing for even the doziest customs or border protection officer. At the very least the car would receive a thorough search.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘That timing won’t work. We’ll revert to Plan B. Lemuel, book us rooms in the same hotel in Halifax as Bronson, and then find us a hotel for tonight somewhere near the border. We’ll aim to get to the crossing point tomorrow morning at around ten, just another carload of tourists in the queue, eager to see what Canada has to offer.’
‘There are plenty of towns in that area,’ Dayan said, looking at the screen of his smartphone. ‘The closest and probably the best is Bangor, because that’s right on the main road. I’ll find something there.’
A few minutes later, he put his phone back on the dashboard.
‘It’s done?’ Gellerman asked.
‘It’s all done. There’s a Marriott just west of the city centre that looks all right. It’s got free Wi-Fi and a free breakfast, so that’s where I’ve booked.’
He leaned forward again and picked up his phone, then accessed the satnav and entered the address of the hotel.
‘We’ll get there about nine thirty this evening according to the satnav, and I told them on the booking site we’d be arriving late. We should stop for a quick meal somewhere along the road. Then we can just check in and go to bed.’
Chapter 55
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
The aircraft landed a few minutes early, and the hire car was ready and waiting for them when Bronson went to the desk in the terminal.
‘Hotel first, I guess,’ he said as he drove away. ‘Then we’ll start digging around for clues. Have you got any fresh ideas?’
Angela shook her head. ‘Not really, but I still think Oak Island is part of the clue leading to the location of the Ark of the Covenant. We need to buy a detailed topographical map of Nova Scotia, because if we don’t have that, we’re not going to get anywhere.’
The hotel had a gift shop on the ground floor, near the reception desk, and to Angela’s surprise, it had a good selection of maps on sale, including the pure tourist type, the maps decorated with pictures of the various attractions and with bold arrows pointing to the location where those particular delights could be sampled. But it also had more detailed maps, similar to the Ordnance Survey series produced in Britain and with a comparable level of detail. They bought one that showed almost the whole of Nova Scotia, and another that just covered the central area of the peninsula, the part they were interested in.
In their room, they spread out the more detailed map on the bed, and both of them stood and studied it.
‘Let’s start from the beginning of the Latin clues,’ Angela suggested. ‘The first two phrases are quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius and in insula et in monte, which translate as “as it is above so it is below” and “on the island and on the hill”. They’re probably meant to be read together and tell us that there are similar structures on the island – Oak Island, in fact – and on this hill, wherever it is.
‘Then we have medium inter finibus ubi flumen currit ad meridiem or “halfway between the coasts where the river runs south”. As you spotted, there is one place on the peninsula that really does seem to match that. There’s a major river, the Gold River, that runs almost due south across the country and drains into Mahone Bay. And the midpoint between the north and south coasts of the peninsula is this place here, beside the river.’ She jabbed her right forefinger at the map. ‘New Ross. So that’s where we need to go.’
‘And what about this peculiar well?’ Bronson asked.
‘I have no idea. I’m hoping that we can find something when we get there that will help identify it. The Latin was sub puteus quod no habet aqua, “beneath the well that has no water”, and I still don’t know exactly what that means. Right, let’s get going.’
Chapter 56
Nova Scotia, Canada
The border crossing had been slightly easier than Gellerman had expected. Their car had been stopped, as had every car in the queue ahead of them, and their passports and eTAs had been scrutinised, as well as the rental agreement for the car and the vehicle’s insurance documents. They had explained that they were tourists taking their first look at Canada, and Dayan had produced their hotel reservation confirmations in Halifax for that night, and their return air tickets to Toulouse, all of which seemed to satisfy the officer. He’d opened the boot of the car and glanced inside, but hadn’t even touched any of their carry-on bags. They could actually have left the weapons in the briefcase, but Gellerman was pleased they’d hidden them. You could never predict how any crossing of a manned border was going to go.
He steered the hire car off the main road in an area called Benson Corner half a dozen miles beyond the border and stopped in a pull-off that was shielded from the road by trees and bushes.
While Gellerman stood beside the car keeping a lookout, Dayan jacked up the vehicle. Chason pulled on the nylon overalls and slid lithely under the front of the Buick, the craft knife in his hand. Ten minutes later, the car was back on the road, each man now with a pistol and a spare magazine concealed in his clothing.
Dayan glanced at his watch and then at the satnav, now programmed with the address of the hotel in Halifax.
‘It looks like we’ll get there an hour or so after the targets,’ he said.
Gellerman nodded agreement. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem. Wherever they’re looking, they’re not going to find the relic this afternoon. If its hiding place was that obvious, it would have been discovered years ago. We’ll check in, sort ourselves out and wait for the targets to leave the hotel, or to come back if they’re already out, and then we’ll follow them. One of us will have to keep watch in the lobby until we spot them. And don’t forget this might not be the end of the quest. It could be just another clue they’re looking for, so make sure we can all leave the hotel at short notice. Keep your bags packed and just take out what you need when you need it.’
‘I think I’ll give Jerusalem a prod,’ Dayan said, picking up his mobile phone. ‘Maybe Luca Rossi and the Inquisition are still in the hunt somewhere. If so, they should have some idea of his movements.’
Chapter 57
New Ross, Nova Scotia, Canada
‘There’s not much here,’ Bronson remarked as he drove the hire car through New Ross and over the crossroads by the white-painted church, heading north. It looked like a small, pleasant village marked by the occasional store and other commercial enterprise, the houses well spread out. It appeared prosperous, the buildings all seeming to be in good condition. The Canadian version of small-town America, in short.
‘Can’t argue with that,’ Angela replied. ‘I was expecting a bit more development here. It’s really just a scattered village.’
They stopped a mile or so further on, pulling off onto the right-hand side of the road where dozens of cut logs were stacked, presumably ready for transport to a lumber mill somewhere. While Bronson again studied the detailed topographical map they’d bought, Angela went back to her smartphone. She’d noted a handful of sites that looked interesting – at least from their point of view – and had bookmarked them to check again once they were on the spot.
‘According to this site,’ she said, ‘there’s supposed to be a castle back there in New Ross.’
‘A castle? The biggest thing I saw was that church in the middle of the village.’
‘Well, perhaps not exactly a castle,’ Angela conceded. ‘Maybe I should
have said the remains of a castle.’
‘Bits of the walls, you mean? Or just the foundations?’
‘Sort of. Okay, to be completely accurate, a few stones that might at one time have been part of a castle. Or part of a house. Or a wall. Or maybe they’re just a bunch of interesting-looking rocks. It all depends on your point of view.’
‘But who would build a castle out here, and why?’
‘Exactly. Building a castle would have been a massive undertaking. There would have to be a good reason for doing it and it would need to be erected in the right place. I don’t think New Ross would work. It’s not at the top of a hill – in fact, we’ve been climbing slowly ever since we drove out of the village – and that was where castles and fortresses were usually erected, for obvious reasons. And in any case, there really wouldn’t have been any need for a structure like that. In the accounts I’ve been looking at, the local Mi’kmaq people were quite friendly, but even if they hadn’t been, Sinclair’s force included the Templars, armed and armoured knights with their full battle regalia, and no doubt bowmen as well. The Templars were the special forces troops of the time and would have been perfectly capable of defending themselves against any Indian attack, so they certainly wouldn’t have needed a castle to hide away inside.
‘And there are the simple logistics. They’d have needed stonemasons and dozens of labourers to construct even a small stone fortification, and it’s doubtful that they had enough people to do anything like that. If they had needed a defensive structure, they could have erected a simple wooden stockade in a couple of days.’
‘So no castle, then?’
‘Unless I’m missing something crucial and far from obvious, no.’
‘Shame,’ Bronson said. ‘I quite like castles. But you’re right. It doesn’t make sense on any level.’
While Angela continued scanning various websites, Bronson turned his attention back to the map.
‘This is interesting,’ he said after a while, folding the map sheet to present a much smaller section.
‘What?’
‘We’re looking for a well, right? There’s one marked right there. See that small circle?’
Angela nodded.
‘The problem,’ Bronson said, opening up the map again and pointing, ‘is that there are hundreds of them. I’ve just done a search using my phone on a Nova Scotia government website, and there are more than a hundred and seventy wells in and around New Ross. But I also checked the settlement date, which was 1816, so most of them will have been dug after that year, because there would have been no reason to find a water source until the first houses were built.’
‘We need to find a map of the area before it was settled.’
‘I’ve already looked,’ Bronson replied. ‘There aren’t many, and those that are available don’t show that kind of detail. I think we’ll have to just look around the area ourselves and see what we can find.’
‘Anyway, well spotted, pun intended. So we have achieved something. We’ve seen New Ross and identified a couple of hundred wells. I need to check these websites again and see if there’s any other information available.’
‘And I need to buy a few bits and pieces if we’re going to go exploring. Torches, a shovel, that kind of thing,’ Bronson said. ‘I’m getting hungry, so let’s head back to the hotel now and we’ll come out here again in the morning.’
Chapter 58
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Nova Scotia resident Francesco had told Marco Ferrara to contact was calling himself John Smith, a very obvious alias, and Ferrara’s sole means of contacting him was via a burner mobile. He didn’t seem surprised by the Italian’s request when the two men met in a cafe in the centre of Halifax.
‘Two pistols and a rifle?’ he asked. ‘And ammunition, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Ferrara replied. ‘Fifty rounds for the pistols and twenty for the rifle, if you can do that.’
‘Of course,’ replied Smith. ‘None of that’s a problem. I’ll need payment in cash,’ he added.
‘How much?’
‘In Canadian dollars, one thousand for each weapon and ammunition, so three thousand in total. If you don’t fire any of them, I’ll buy them back off you for half that.’
That was more or less the kind of price Ferrara had expected, and it wasn’t as if he’d be paying out of his own pocket, so he nodded agreement.
‘When and where?’ he asked.
‘Call me in one hour and I’ll tell you. You have got wheels?’
Ninety minutes later, Ferrara handed over a wad of brown Canadian hundred-dollar bills, checked the weapons he’d been given and then put them back in the sports bag Smith had used to transport them to the quiet road to the south-east of Halifax, near Cow Bay, that he’d selected for the handover. He put the bag in the boot of his own hire car and shook hands with the Canadian.
Half an hour after that, he positioned himself with a newspaper and a cup of coffee in the lobby of the hotel Bronson and Lewis had booked into and began his surveillance, a Colt nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol tucked into a belt holster – also supplied by Smith – on his left-hand side.
He had no idea if the two targets were in their room at the hotel, in the dining room or out somewhere, but it was obviously a good idea to begin keeping watch. And he needed to keep his eyes open in case the men from Zeru were also mounting surveillance.
About an hour after he’d sat down, the targets walked into the hotel and went straight through to the dining room. He recognised them from the brief sighting he’d had of them at Campagne-sur-Aude.
He called Rossi’s mobile, told him that Bronson and Lewis were back and then went into the coffee shop to get something to eat.
Tomorrow he would make sure he got up early and followed the targets, dogging their footsteps wherever they went.
And the moment it looked as if they’d found what they were looking for, he would step in to seize the prize and kill the English couple at the same time. It was just a shame, he thought, that he wouldn’t have time to really savour ending Angela Lewis’s career. And her life.
Chapter 59
Nova Scotia, Canada
Before they returned to New Ross, Bronson knew they needed to buy some tools. What he didn’t know was exactly what they would need, but some items were obvious, like a couple of decent torches with plenty of spare batteries, a trenching tool – a kind of combined shovel and pickaxe – a crowbar, a length of climbing rope, safety helmets, gloves, hiking boots, stout poles, overalls, an axe, a sheath knife, compact binoculars and so on. The sort of stuff they would need if they did find their way into a cave or tunnel.
A hardware store in the western outskirts of Halifax supplied what they wanted, and with the boot of the hire car loaded, they set off along the Fishermen’s Memorial Highway, which ran more or less along the southern coast of Nova Scotia. When they reached the junction just north of Chester Basin, they turned right for New Ross.
And it was at about that stage in their journey that Bronson became certain they were being followed.
‘This is getting a bit like France all over again,’ he said.
‘In what way?’ Angela sounded puzzled as she glanced out of the window, because the one thing that was perfectly obvious to her was that the terrain of Nova Scotia bore almost no resemblance to that of southern France.
‘Not the landscape. The car behind us.’
She turned to glance behind her. ‘That blue Ford, I think it is?’
‘It is a Ford, and it is blue, and it’s also been a prominent feature in my rear-view mirror since we left the hotel this morning. When we stopped at the hardware store, that car pulled into a parking bay about fifty yards down the road. When we drove away, it took up position behind us again. I was altering speed on the freeway back there, and the Ford’s driver did the same, just matched whatever speed I was travelling at. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit tired of being followed.’
&n
bsp; Angela didn’t tend to panic, but she looked decidedly nervous as she glanced at Bronson.
‘Do you think it’s those Italians, the same ones who were watching us in Auch?’ she asked. ‘And will they be armed?’
‘That’s two questions, and the answer to both of them is that I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get a look at the driver, but the car’s always been too far away. But if it is the Italians, they’re a long way from home and I don’t know how easy it would be for them to find weapons over here. If they flew from France, obviously they couldn’t have brought pistols with them.’
‘Are we safe? Are they just watching us, or what?’
‘I think we’ll be perfectly safe until we find something, because the only reason for them being behind us is to grab the Ark.’
‘So what can we do?’
‘What’s the geology of Nova Scotia?’ Bronson asked, a complete non sequitur.
‘What? Oh, well, I think there’s quite a lot of granite, but I don’t know too much about it. Ah – you mean are there any caves? Is that what you’re asking?’
‘Yes.’
‘There certainly are on the north coast, by the Bay of Fundy, but around here I don’t know. Hang on – I’ll check the topo map.’
A few minutes later, she shook her head.
‘Nothing that I can see,’ she said, ‘and if there were caves, they should be marked.’
‘Okay. Look beyond New Ross, out in the country, and see if you can find a quiet-looking road with a secluded pull-off marked. Not a lay-by but somewhere we can drive off the road and be out of sight of any passing traffic.’