The Templar Archive

by James Becker

  He strode over to the other chest, opened it, and began scrabbling through the documents that it contained. He selected three from different levels in the contents and inspected each in turn, with the same result.

  He called out the name Marcel, and the man who appeared to be the leader of the small group, the one who had spoken to Toscanelli, walked over to him and they had a brief conversation. Marcel then stepped in front of the seated Italians and issued a series of simple instructions.

  “You will go back to the waterfall and bring the remaining four chests here,” he ordered. “I presume the other member of your group waiting there is armed, so just in case you get any ideas about indulging in some heroics, let me remind you that the sniper will be watching everything you do. So when you get about twenty meters from that man, you are to tell him to take out his pistol, hold it up so that the sniper can clearly identify it as his weapon, and he is then to throw it into the pool below the waterfall. If he fails to do this or there is any doubt that he has actually disposed of it, I will instruct the sniper to kill one of you. The remaining four, or five if you’ve behaved, can carry the chests. If any of you do anything other than follow those instructions, the sniper will kill you. Now go.”

  Hardly taking their eyes off the spotter and the muzzle of his combat shotgun, the Italians clambered to their feet and headed up the valley toward the waterfall.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Mario asked, once they were out of earshot.

  “Nothing,” Toscanelli replied bitterly. “At the moment, they hold all the cards. But all of you, keep your eyes open and if you see an opportunity, take it.”

  * * *

  “More important,” Mallory went on, “the Templars also knew that they couldn’t climb it.” He shifted slightly to one side and pointed. “So they helpfully built a staircase.”

  He pointed his flashlight over to one side so that Robin could see what he had found. A matter of about three feet above them, just above the bottom of what Mallory had mentally termed “the funnel,” and in an oval opening on one side, was the start of a rough-hewn staircase that led upward, curving gently out of sight.

  “That was their escape route, the way out of here that they would use as a last resort,” he said. “I’ve no idea where it goes, but I can’t believe it won’t lead somewhere that will get us out of this cave system.”

  They climbed down from the rock pile and Mallory retrieved most of the length of the climbing rope, cutting it off where it vanished underneath the fallen stones. He knew they wouldn’t need the rope to reach the stone staircase, but he thought it might well prove useful later.

  The presence of the staircase also meant that they could take the small chest with them. It was heavy, but Mallory could lift and carry it unaided if necessary, and in the narrow confines of the staircase they would be able to manage it between them.

  “You know,” Mallory said as they reached the top of the rock pile again and prepared to start their ascent, “this is a really clever piece of design. And it must’ve been bloody hard work to construct it. There was probably a natural cleft in the rock already that connected the end of the tunnel to the mountainside above. I guess they opened it up to create the funnel, and hacked the staircase into the rock alongside it to provide their escape route. They would then have had to build that massive wooden platform down in the tunnel to seal the base and erect the heavy timbers to hold it in place before they filled the funnel with stones from the top.”

  “And of course the rockslide did two separate things,” Robin agreed. “It blocked the tunnel to keep their enemies at bay, and would also have provided the Templars with a way of climbing up to reach the bottom step of the staircase, just as we’re doing now. You’re right: it’s a very clever idea that, as it’s turned out, has worked exactly as they’d intended, just about seven hundred years later than they would probably have expected.”

  The staircase was twisting and narrow, the builders obviously having taken advantage of the natural fissures and cracks in the rock to make their work easier, and it changed direction fairly frequently, though always keeping close to the side of the funnel, as they saw at intervals.

  Neither of them was counting steps, but Mallory guessed they’d probably climbed at least fifty or sixty before they finally saw daylight in front of them. A few seconds later, they reached the end of the stone staircase and stepped out of a more or less oblong opening and onto a flat stone at the bottom of a pit about eight feet deep. Set into the sides of it were flat stones, clearly intended as steps to allow someone to leave the pit.

  Carrying the chest up them was clearly not practical, because they were far too narrow, so Mallory took out his climbing rope, lashed it carefully around the chest, and then climbed out of the pit, carrying the remainder of the rope. Once he was standing on level ground, he pulled on the rope as Robin lifted the chest from the stone below, and in a couple of minutes they were both out of the pit and looking around, the chest lying on the ground in front of them.

  Robin looked back down into the pit with a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Mallory said. “These hills are probably full of hikers during the summer months, and the top of that staircase is clearly visible, so why didn’t somebody spot it?”

  “Got it in one,” Robin said. “So what’s the answer?”

  Mallory grinned at her. “I think it’s really very simple. Nobody spotted the staircase because it wasn’t there. Look, the sides of the pit are bare earth. If they’d been exposed for any length of time, there’d be grass and plants growing all over them. I think that stone we stood on to climb out was originally at ground level, just another rock sticking out of the grass on the hillside. But unlike every other stone, it was resting on the top of that pile of rocks that tumbled down into the tunnel. When those rocks were freed, it fell down about eight feet and jammed itself, probably into a narrow cleft in the bedrock below, exactly as the Templars intended, and in doing so it exposed the staircase and at the same time provided a stable platform that they could have used to get out.”

  Robin looked at him. “I know I wasn’t entirely convinced you were doing the right thing down there, but I’m really glad you spotted that release device and decided to activate it. Talk about a clean getaway. Do you think the Italians are at the bottom of that rock pile, or on the other side of it?”

  Mallory shrugged. “We were able to get out of the way easily enough, so I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t have done the same. And that means they’re not out of the game. They can get out of the cave system the same way we came in, so we’ll probably run into them again.”

  “That’s what I thought, so what do we do now?”

  Mallory pointed at the chest. “What we can’t do is run around Switzerland carrying that between us. So we need to walk down this mountain and work our way around the hills and back to where we left the car. And because we know that the Italians have been following us, we need to find another hotel and another car as soon as possible.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we see exactly what we’ve got in that chest. Once we know that, we’ll be able to decide what to do about it.”

  * * *

  When the Italians reached the waterfall, they did precisely what they had been told to do, and about ten minutes later they’d walked back to where the other men waited and lowered both chests to the ground beside the first two. Then they repeated the journey, and recovered the final two chests.

  Once again, the older man selected a random sample of documents from each of these chests as well, and examined them carefully. But none of the documents appeared to be what he was looking for.

  Again, he had a brief conversation in German with Marcel, who then walked over and stood directly in front of Toscanelli.

  “What do you think is in those chests?” Marcel asked.
<
br />   The Italian knew there was no point in prevaricating. In his view, the identity of the documents—what they were—was self-evident.

  “I believe we’ve found the Archive of the Knights Templar,” he said simply.

  Marcel clapped his hands in a manner that could only be described as ironic. “Bravo. Well done. And that’s exactly what you have found. Unfortunately we know from our research that the order maintained two separate archives. The one that’s contained in these chests is certainly one of them, but not the one we’re looking for. What you’ve stumbled upon are the day-to-day records of the transactions that the Templars conducted, the loans, deposits, and payments and so on that they made as a part of their normal business. What we’re looking for is the other archive, the records of major capital acquisitions, grants of land and property, and the like. That would fit in a box that would be, most probably, much smaller than even one of these chests, and it would almost certainly be locked.”

  Marcel looked appraisingly at Toscanelli.

  “Now,” he said, “despite your diplomatic passports and the illegal weapons you were all carrying, I’m quite sure that your interest in the Templar Archive is purely academic. No doubt you intend to take these chests and the documents that they contain back to Rome with you where they can be properly studied and eventually a few selected items might be placed on display in some of the better European museums. And the good news from your point of view is that we are perfectly prepared to let you do this. I noticed that you came here in a large van, easily capable of accommodating these six chests, and I might even be prepared to provide you with a document that will avoid the vehicle being inspected at the border, just in case your passports don’t do the trick.”

  Toscanelli nodded, the man’s comments reinforcing his belief that Marcel was most likely a senior figure in the Swiss government.

  “I have a feeling,” he said, “that there’s a large ‘but’ coming at the start of your next sentence.”

  “There is, and I’m glad we understand each other,” Marcel said, with a brief and insincere smile. “All this is contingent upon you answering a couple of questions completely truthfully, and to my satisfaction. If you don’t do that, we may just decide to dump your bodies in the cave behind the waterfall. Where, if I’m not mistaken, one member of your group has already lost his life, because he certainly hasn’t walked out of the entrance. We’d rather not do that, because it would be messy and take time that we really haven’t got, but just remember that it’s still an option.”

  He again smiled bleakly at the Italian, and in that moment Toscanelli saw himself in the other man’s eyes. He was a stone-cold killer as well, polished and urbane, but underneath the veneer of culture and civilization Toscanelli knew Marcel could be just as brutal and vicious as anyone he had ever met. Cooperating with him was the only way he and his men were ever going to walk out of that valley, and right then Toscanelli knew it.

  “Now,” Marcel continued, “have you also recovered a smaller chest or box?”

  Toscanelli shook his head. “No. When we got inside the cavern, all we found were the six boxes you see here. But we weren’t the first to get in there.”

  “I know. Mallory and Jessop were ahead of you.”

  “You know about them?” Toscanelli’s surprise was obvious from the tone of his voice.

  “We know almost everything. Our sources are both impeccable and reliable. Did you catch up with them in the tunnels or caves? They got inside sometime before you and your men did.”

  “We almost caught up with them in the final cavern, but they triggered an ancient Templar booby trap that nearly caught us. But what it did do was imprison them behind a wall of rock.”

  “Tell me what happened. From the time you entered the cave system.”

  Toscanelli briefly described how they’d followed the English couple, the booby trap that had killed Nico, and the trigger that had released the first rockfall.

  “How did you get around it?” Marcel asked.

  “The rocks didn’t reach the roof of the cave, and we managed to shift enough of them to work our way up to the top.”

  “Carry on.”

  “When we got into the larger cavern, the chests weren’t piled up, just standing on the floor of the cave, but I think when they’d been abandoned they’d probably been stacked one on top of the other, covering the entrance to the final tunnel. There were marks in the debris on the floor of the cave that suggested that.”

  “So presumably Mallory and Jessop had moved them,” Marcel suggested.

  “That’s what I thought. We carried on along the tunnel, and we’d almost reached the two of them at the very end of it when they used a rope to release another rockfall. It all happened so quickly that we couldn’t see how they’d done it, but I suppose they’d identified another of the Templars’ booby traps and decided to trigger it rather than face us.”

  “Presumably they knew you were going to kill them—that was your intention, obviously—so that might have seemed their only option at the time. They’d hope to find another way out rather than face a bullet.”

  “Maybe,” Toscanelli agreed, “but it didn’t do them any good. That last rockfall was even bigger than the first, and they were standing in a dead-end tunnel with no way out. They’re going to die behind that rock pile.”

  “At least we know where they are,” Marcel said, “and there’s an obvious question I need to ask.”

  “I know,” Toscanelli replied. “Did they have a smaller box or chest with them? And I can’t give you an answer. I didn’t see anything, but Mario”—he pointed at him—“thinks he might have seen something like that in the tunnel before the roof fell in.”

  “I can’t be certain what it was,” Mario said when Marcel turned his gaze to look at him, “but I think there was what looked like a box near the end of the tunnel. We only had flashlights, and we were trying to find the English couple, so that’s what we were looking for. But my flashlight did pick out something. I’m sure of that.”

  “How big? Like a suitcase? Or something bigger?”

  Mario paused before he replied, doing his best to replay the event in his mind. “Bigger, I think. What I really noticed was that it seemed out of place—I do remember that. Straight edges and square corners where everything else was rounded. The rocks, I mean.”

  Marcel nodded. “That could be what we’re looking for. And at least we now know where it is.” He paused for a few moments, considering, then continued. “That final rockfall—you said it blocked the tunnel completely, but presumably it would be possible to move enough of the stones to get through to the other side?”

  “Yes,” Toscanelli agreed, “but it wouldn’t be easy, and you’d probably need special equipment, hydraulic jacks, hoists, and that kind of thing, because some of the stones are definitely too big to be moved by muscle power alone. But a properly equipped team of men could probably get through it in a couple of days.”

  “We’ll think about that,” Marcel said. “But I think we’ll leave it for two or three weeks to make sure that Mallory and Jessop are dead. That will save us having to shoot them if they’re still alive when we break through, and means we can explain away their deaths as a potholing expedition that went disastrously wrong.”

  He glanced at Toscanelli, then swept his gaze along the line of seated men, considering his options.

  “I think you’d all better leave,” he said. “Leave this valley, and get out of Switzerland. As soon as possible. Take the chests with you because we don’t want them. I’m sure you’ll be able to talk your way across the border into Italy with them. Leave the weapons. We’ll take care of them. If I see any of you again, I’ll have you killed. Now go.”

  Twenty minutes later, Toscanelli watched Salvatori and Mario lift the final chest up and into the back of the closed van.

  “That’s it,” he said as Ma
rio closed and locked the rear doors of the vehicle. “We’re out of here.”

  “Where are we going?” Mario asked. “And what are we going to do about the English couple?”

  “We’re going to do exactly what that Swiss guy told us to do, because we don’t have any other choice. We’ve got the lost Archive of the Templars in the back of that van, and our first priority is to get it back to Rome. Don’t forget that that Swiss expert—I suppose that’s what he was—only looked at a handful of the documents they contain, and I think there’s a good chance that the other deeds and stuff might well be somewhere in those chests, despite what he said. And as for Mallory and Jessop, they’re as good as dead already, and they know it.”

  “And the smaller chest I saw?”

  “I know we talked it up, but you aren’t certain you saw a chest, Mario. But even if you did, there’s nothing we can do about it. You can bet that the Swiss will keep that cave entrance under surveillance from now on until they move in and shift those rocks, and if we try to get involved they’ll just blow us away. I know Marcel’s type: he’s a killer and if he said he was going to shoot us, that’s exactly what he’d do. We’re lucky we’re walking away from this right now.”

  Toscanelli looked at the men standing in a rough half circle around him. “This is the end of it as far as we’re concerned. Mario—you and Carlo can go in the van. Get back to the hotel, pick up your stuff, and then drive the van to Rome. I’ll go in the car with Salvatori and Paolo. We’ll collect the other hire car, hand them both back, and then fly out of here.”

  The three men watched as the van reversed out of the parking space, maneuvered around the three Mercedes G-Wagens that partially obstructed the road, and headed off down the valley. Then they walked over to their hire car. Paolo reversed out and then swung the steering wheel to follow the white van. As they started driving down the road, Salvatori glanced out of the side window by the backseat.