Sword of the Templars

by Paul Christopher

  They rattled across a set of railway tracks then turned off onto a narrow, two-lane dirt road with a long, curving beach on one side and a swampy pool with a trio of pale flamingos feeding on the other.

  Beyond the swampy area there was an industrial salt pool with a long elevated pipeline feeding it from beyond the sweeping bay on their left. Then the stark, bleak ruins of Castle Pelerin rose in front of them like a dark dream from the past. It made the old castle ruins on Kellerman’s estate outside Friedrichshafen look puny by comparison.

  Wanounou parked by the side of the road, and they climbed out into the hot, bright sun. The professor was wearing faded old fatigue pants and a T-shirt that said: ARCHAEOLOGISTS DO IT IN THE DIRT. Holliday and Peggy were both in jeans and DON’T WORRY, BE JEWISH T-shirts they’d picked up in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem the day before. All of them were wearing Hebrew University baseball caps against the harsh summer sun. In front of them was a rocky promontory three quarters of a mile long, forming the northern arm of a small harbor to the south. The remains of the inner keep stood like a massive square beacon against the brilliant blue background of the Mediterranean beyond.

  “Holy crap,” said Peggy.

  “An apt enough description,” laughed the professor. “They dug a forty-foot-wide fosse, or moat, the entire width of the peninsula that they could flood with seawater on command. On the other side of the moat there was a colossal limestone wall sixteen feet thick, rising almost a hundred feet into the air. The whole thing was built by hand, mostly by volunteer labor from pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, and it only took them six months.

  “On the dead ground in front of the wall they built three massive towers, one at each end and one in the middle. The only way you could get beyond the towers and the wall was through a narrow entrance, angled so it was impossible to ram the gates. There were stone halls, chapels, crypts, storerooms, and everything necessary for a force of four thousand men and the workers to provide for them.

  “The place was invulnerable; they had their own harbor, and in the event of a siege they could be re-supplied from the sea. There was an artesian spring, a pool, and three deep wells to catch the runoff through the limestone from Mount Carmel, so water wasn’t a problem either.”

  “Wasn’t there a fortification here before the twelve hundreds?” Holliday asked. He vaguely remembered something about an earlier fortress. They walked toward the old moat, following a narrowing, winding path through the rough grass and sand.

  “There was a small outpost called Le Destriot by the coast road, but it was long out of date even before they built Pelerin,” answered the professor. “The Romans had a harbor here two thousand years ago, and the Phoenicians were here two thousand years before that. When the Templars were digging the foundations for Pelerin they found a treasure of Phoenician gold coins that was almost enough to finance the construction of the whole castle.”

  “So we’re not the first people to look for treasure here?” Peggy asked, her eyes twinkling.

  Wanounou twinkled back, then turned and pointed to the craggy slopes of Mount Carmel two miles or so west across the narrow coastal plain.

  “We’ve been excavating up there in the caves at Wadi el Mugharah since 1951,” said the professor, “the Brits and you Yanks even before that. Where we’re standing now is the biblical Plain of Sharon. We’ve found material dating back to the Neanderthals and even before, to the early Stone Age.

  “There’s been human occupation of one kind or another in this area for two million years. There’s even good evidence to show that this was once the biblical Garden of Eden, at least as far as the old prophets were concerned.” He turned around, arms spread out. “The sea, the plains, the mountains. Everything old Adam and Eve could have asked for.” Wanounou smiled. Peggy smiled back.

  Holliday frowned, then sighed, wondering if it was time to have a chat with her about the potential dangers of the situation. Wiser to keep his mouth shut for the moment, he thought.

  They reached a high, rusty razor wire fence that stretched across the neck of the narrow peninsula. There were faded red notices in Hebrew, Arabic, and English every ten or fifteen feet along the wire:

  MORTAL DANGER—MILITARY ZONE

  ANY PERSON WHO PASSES OR DAMAGES

  THIS FENCE ENDANGERS HIS LIFE

  No exclamation marks, just a simple and explicit statement of fact.

  “Heartwarming,” said Peggy. On the other side of the fence they could see a slight dip in the ground that marked the position of the old moat. A few yards farther in the earth thin sandy soil rose steeply, thick with coarse weeds and shrubs, all that was left of the original imposing curtain wall.

  They walked on down the path for a short distance, stopping in front of a gateway set into the fence. It was secured with a heavy padlock. There was another sign on the gate. This one was even clearer:

  MINEFIELD

  “Are you sure we have permission for this?” Holliday asked.

  “Better than that,” said Wanounou, digging into one of the pockets of his baggy fatigue pants. “I’ve got a key.”

  “Uh, what about the mines?” cautioned Peggy.

  “There aren’t any,” said the professor, smiling broadly. “The signs are to impress the tourists and scare off any kids.”

  “Said the one-legged blind guy with no fingers,” muttered Peggy.

  “Your connections must be better than I thought,” said Holliday. They went through the gate, and Wanounou locked it behind them and pocketed the key again. They headed up a sandy footpath that crossed the old moat and wound its way up the hillocky remains of the old wall.

  “Turns out that the navy hasn’t used this place in ages,” the professor said as they trudged up the path. “They used to train in Haifa Bay, but it got too polluted, so they moved down here. But then they cleaned up the bay, so they moved back. They might have left some equipment behind, but the property is empty. They left the fence and signs in place until they figure out who to hand it over to—the archaeologists or the tourists.”

  A flight of dowdy-looking, pale brown Marbled Ducks flew overhead in ragged V formation, heading for the marshland where they’d spotted the flamingos. The air tasted of salt and the sea, and there was a light onshore breeze taking the edge off the midday heat. A hundred and fifty miles away Cyprus crouched invisibly on the blue horizon. They reached the top of the path and looked down on the ruins spread out before them.

  Enough of the gigantic castle remained to make visualizing it relatively easy. From the low foundations to the seaward end of the castle was more than two football fields in length. From side to side the structure had been about half that size. There had been north and south towers on the inner wall, a higher upper ward flanked by sunken undercrofts flanking it and the massive castle keep in the center.

  There had been walls on all three sides, including the side facing the sea with a seawall and a long breakwater that still remained, jutting out into the shallow, natural harbor. Lateen caravels and square-rigged cogs would have unloaded there, safely protected and out of range of any attackers from the landward side.

  Ringing the keep, there had been five great halls, each one at least a hundred feet long. Now, only lines of half-buried stone and ghostly dips and patterns in the soil remained. Tufted patches of sea grass grew here and there, slabs of paving stone appearing between them, marking old walkways like long scars in the dirt.

  “Needle in a haystack,” said Peggy, looking across the enormous interior of the castle’s inner wards. “That’s an awful lot of ground to cover.”

  Raffi Wanounou reached into his pocket again, this time taking out a folded map. It was a diagram of the castle excavations, done years ago when he’d spent three summers here when he was a graduate student. He turned it in his hands, orienting himself.

  “What does your little ditty say?” he asked.

  Holliday had memorized it:

  “In the black waters of the Pilgrim’s Fortress

  A treasured silver scroll is found,

 
A thirst for knowledge girded round

  These holy walls without a sound.

  With dead Saladin’s echoing voice it calls

  Us into battle once again.”

  “The ‘black waters’ might well refer to the castle’s water supply,” said the professor, looking down at the diagram and up at the huge expanse of broken ground in front of them.

  “You said there was a spring and some kind of pool,” said Peggy. “Maybe that was it.”

  “I can’t see them burying a treasure in an open pool,” said Wanounou. “It’s more likely near one of the wells.”

  “Where were they?” Peggy asked. She came and looked over his shoulder at the diagram, her arm brushing his. “Show me,” she said.

  “They’re long gone,” replied the professor. “We never found anything remotely like a well when we were excavating.” He shrugged. “Mind you we barely touched the surface here before the IDF kicked us out and brought in Shayetet 13.”

  “Maybe I can do one better,” said Holliday, stepping between Peggy and Wanounou, glancing at the diagram in the professor’s hand. “The verse says, ‘A search for knowledge girded round these holy walls . . .’ That sounds like a church to me.” He pointed down at the diagram. “That long oval shape with the square at one end, close to the seaward wall, what’s that?”

  “The undercroft—the crypt—beneath what we think was the chapel,” said Wanounou. “We called it the Round Church.”

  “Mimicking the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,” nodded Holliday. “Like all Templar churches.”

  “That’s right,” said the professor.

  “ ‘These holy walls,’ ” said Holliday. “It’s worth a shot.”

  They picked their way slowly down the embankment and began to make their way across the rubble-strewn expanse of the castle’s middle ward.

  “From the way you speak about them I take it you’re not one to toe the party line when it comes to the Templars,” said Wanounou.

  Walking between them, Peggy laughed.

  “Doc doesn’t toe the party line when it comes to much of anything.” She grinned. “Must run in the family.”

  “You’re not a believer in their Christian piety?” the professor asked, cocking a skeptical eyebrow.

  “I think some of them were religious fanatics,” said Holliday. “Most of them were mercenaries. There were a lot of unemployed knights back then. A few of them might have believed in the cause, but not many.” He shook his head. “I’ve been in a lot of wars in my time, Professor, and one way or another they’ve always been about money. The Crusades were no different.

  “Castles like this one weren’t built to protect pilgrims, they were built to give Europe a foothold in the Middle East. Like the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada or the U.S. Cavalry outposts in the American West. The crusaders didn’t want to free Jerusalem from the infidel, they wanted to conquer it.

  “The Templars called themselves the ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ,’ emphasis on the word ‘poor.’ By the time they were disbanded in 1307 they were almost as rich as the Roman Catholic Church and richer than some countries, including France, which they virtually owned outright. The Temple fortress in Paris measured seven hundred feet on a side. That’s not piety, Professor. That’s greed, avarice, and power.”

  “But that doesn’t stop you from looking for their treasure.”

  Holliday stopped walking. He turned to Wanounou.

  “This isn’t about treasure,” he said, a little anger creeping into his voice. “It never has been. It’s about something that concerned my uncle enough to get him to tramp halfway across Europe at the age of eighty-six when he hated leaving the study in his house. It’s something that seems to concern some other people, as well; they’ve been looking for the answer to this riddle for a very long time. They’ve been willing to lie for it. Burn down buildings for it. Kill for it.”

  “Then I guess we’d better find it,” said Wanounou brightly, ignoring the heat in Holliday’s words. “Right, Peggy?”

  “Right,” she answered. She gripped Holliday’s elbow and squeezed. “No more lectures, Doc, okay?” She squeezed his arm again. “Now, make nice with the professor.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Colonel Holliday,” added Wanounou. “I got us in here, didn’t I?” He held out his hand. “Shalu shalom yerushalayim, yes?”

  Holliday took the extended hand and shook it.

  “Call me ‘Doc.’ ”

  They turned and continued on toward the ruins of the ancient castle church.

  19

  They reached the far end of the castle’s upper ward and stopped when they came to the long oval of stones that marked the foundations of the old chapel. Wanounou consulted his diagram once again.

  “One hundred and sixty feet long by forty feet wide,” he said. “Rotundas at each end, the chancel facing north, the nave to the south. There was a cloistered walkway that connected the chapel to the main great hall over there.” He pointed toward a long, freestanding line of immense limestone blocks, even larger than the stones used to build the curtain wall. “The builders used a lot of leftovers from the Phoenician structure that was here before them,” he explained. “Everything done in eights and multiples of eight. Eight columns in the nave, two columns of eight in the chancel, eight arches in the cloistered walkway.”

  “Why eight?” Peggy asked.

  “Eight was the Templars’ magic number,” said Holliday. “If you look at a Templar cross the ends are bifurcated, making eight points.”

  “What was the significance?”

  “Mostly religious,” said Wanounou. “Seven plus one equals eight, the day of the Resurrection. God created Earth in six days, rested on the seventh, and introduced man into the Garden of Eden on the eighth. Man has twenty-four ribs, divided by eight gives you three—the number of the Holy Trinity. Noah was the eighth man off the Ark. The Ark itself was three hundred cubits by fifty cubits—three plus five is eight. Lazarus was brought back to life after he’d been dead eight days. The first cubed number is eight . . . The list goes on and on.”

  “Which is important to us here why?” Peggy asked, looking at the foundation work at her feet.

  “Because what we’re looking for will probably have something to do with the number eight or a multiple of eight,” said Holliday. He began pacing out the length of the foundation in one direction, while Wanounou went the opposite way.

  “Just what are we looking for?” Peggy queried.

  “ ‘In the black waters of the Pilgrim’s Fortress a treasured silver scroll is found,’ ” recited Holliday. “ ‘Black waters’ suggest that it was dark, maybe underground, like the undercroft, or crypt beneath the church,” he said.

  “It’s probably some kind of cave,” called out Wanounou. “The land around here is all limestone. Groundwater percolating down from the mountain creates them. The whole area under Pelerin is probably riddled with them.”

  “I’m claustrophobic,” said Peggy. “I had to do a photo shoot for National Geographic in Carlsbad, and I hated every minute. Caves are creepy.”

  “We’ll protect you,” laughed Wanounou.

  “I may have found something,” called Holliday.

  “That didn’t take long,” said the professor, turning away from his own investigation of the stones. He joined Peggy, and they walked back toward Holliday’s position at the far end of the chancel.

  “You sound skeptical,” said Peggy.

  “Archaeology’s never that easy,” he answered. “Most of us never find anything.”

  “I thought the guy who found Troy was an amateur,” she answered. “And wasn’t the person who found the Dead Sea Scrolls a goat herder or something?”

  “Where are you getting all this?” Wanounou asked.