The Templars' Last Secret

by Martin Walker

  “Is he still a believer?”

  “We both are, but not in a way the Church would recognize. I’ve never thought God had much to do with buildings, or with priests. I think the God we believe in is closer to us here in this little valley. It’s a place touched with grace.”

  “I can understand that,” said Bruno. “The shelter it gave to two Jewish children in the war makes it blessed. Did you know they were Protestants, the farmer and his wife who lived here?”

  “Yes, Alain told me.” She paused, then looked him in the eye. “I am glad you sent Philippe to see me. It’s something I’ve long wanted to get off my chest, but I thought the Church would just ignore it, sour grapes from a woman who lured a priest away from his vows. But it wasn’t like that, Bruno. Alain was so unhappy, torn not between me and the Church but between himself and his own faith and what he felt the Church had become, a kind of obstacle between him and God.”

  “It must have been a great trial for him.”

  “He’s found peace now. Let’s go and join them.”

  Alain and Yacov were upstairs in the barn, and the mayor and Amélie were exploring the kitchen area, Amélie using her phone to take photographs as the mayor looked into the cupboards and then opened the fire door of the wood-burning stove to see how big it was inside. Alain had already chopped a supply of firewood and kindling that was stacked neatly against the barn wall.

  “It’s great,” Yacov called down from upstairs. “Better than I hoped for.”

  “Have you got the package?” the mayor asked Bruno. “I put it in the trunk of my car.”

  Bruno went to fetch a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It wasn’t heavy, the thickness of a large book and about half a meter square. He handed the package to Yacov and suggested he open it. Two blue enamel plaques emerged, ordered by the mayor from the same firm in Périgueux that made street signs for all the communes in the region. The first said, in capital letters, CAMP DAVID. Beneath, in lowercase, was written: THIS CAMP IS NAMED IN RESPECTFUL MEMORY OF PROFESSOR DAVID HALÉVY, WHO WITH HIS SISTER, MAYA, FOUND REFUGE HERE IN 1943–44.

  The second sign said simply: HERE LIVED MICHEL AND SYLVIE DESBORDES, WHO PROTECTED TWO JEWISH CHILDREN FROM THE STORMS OF WAR IN THEIR SIMPLE HOME, AND WHO WERE KILLED BY ENEMY FIRE IN JUNE 1944 WHILE TRYING TO RETURN THE CHILDREN TO THEIR PARENTS.

  Yacov stared at the plaques for a long moment, and then said a simple thank you and shook the hand of the mayor, Bruno and Alain. Amélie was weeping and trying to take photographs at the same time.

  “We thought we’d put the Camp David sign above the barn doors,” said the mayor. “The other one for the Desbordes will go above the front door of the farmhouse.”

  “That’s great,” said Yacov. “You’ve given me an idea. Maybe we could make a third sign, to put by the waterfall at that place where you and I went swimming, Bruno. We could call it Maya’s Pool.”

  Chapter 24

  There ought to be a collective noun for a group of archaeologists, thought Bruno as he entered the cave beneath the ruined château of Commarque. Before him was an excited throng of the friends of Horst and Clothilde, all jostling to see the image on the small laptop screen. Horst stood at one corner, perched perilously atop a rocking boulder. His arm was plunged into a gap in the cave wall, and a long cable snaked beneath his arm and down to the laptop. Clothilde was trying to hold the boulder stable with one foot while one arm was pressed supportively against Horst’s back and her head was craned to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the screen.

  Clothilde’s call had come as the mayor drove from the camp, asking Bruno and the other passengers to join them at Commarque at once. And with triumph in her voice she had added, “Eureka!”

  A “dig” of archaeologists, he thought suddenly. That would fit. He could identify Barrymore from Oxford, Manners, the former soldier from England, and the German from the Neanderthal valley. There was one unknown woman in the scrum of scholars around the laptop, who must be Lydia, Clothilde’s friend from Oxford. Conflicting orders were being shouted in German, French and English for Horst to move the lens this way or that and shine the lamp left or right, up or down.

  “It’s so exciting,” said the count, extricating himself to greet the newcomers. “They can look inside the cavity with that device, and they’ve found what seems to be a tomb.”

  “How does it work?” asked the mayor.

  “It’s a much-bigger version of the cameras doctors use to see inside the body. It lets us look into the cave behind the wall,” the count explained. “One of the Germans brought it as a wedding present for Horst, and once they realized this was a false wall they drilled through.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if you raised the laptop so that Horst could see which way he’s pointing the cable with the camera lens?” asked Amélie, pulling out her smartphone and diving into her handbag for a small case that contained a selection of cables. “Wait, I think I’ve got a solution.”

  She burrowed her way through the throng of people, smartphone in hand, and reemerged at the back of the laptop, examining the cables. A chorus of protests arose as the laptop screen went black, but then the ghostly gray image reemerged while a second image appeared on the screen of her phone. Amélie handed her phone to the count.

  “You’re the tallest guy here,” she said. “Hold the phone so Horst can see the screen and then he’ll know where he’s pointing the cable.”

  “That’s better,” said Horst as the count did as she suggested. The protests from the archaeologists gave way to murmurs of appreciation and a tumble of competing interjections, from which Bruno made out the words “medieval” and “tomb,” followed by “Crusader” and “thirteenth century,” and finally he heard the unknown female voice declare “Templar.”

  The count handed Amélie’s phone to Manners and left the archaeologists to it. Once out in the open air, the count then explained that the seismic survey and the ground-penetrating radar had between them defined the dimensions of the cavity that lay hidden behind the one in which the archaeologists now stood. The cavity, which seemed to have no entrance or exit or connecting passage, was six meters deep and four meters wide and tapering from three meters in height down to a single meter the farther it went back into the hill beneath the château. But this cavity appeared to be protected by an almost-impenetrable wall, two meters thick, of solid stone.

  Lydia Manners had then observed that she had never before seen anything quite like the strange geology of the cave they were standing in. She’d examined the face of solid rock that stood between them and the cavity. “I’ve never seen limestone do that before,” she had said, pointing to the way the rock seemed to change in color and texture, the chalky limestone running in almost geometrical streaks.

  Then another of the archaeologists, the count explained, had telephoned a geologist friend and e-mailed to him photographs taken with his phone of the rock, the surrounding limestone and the streaks of white calcareous stone. The geologist had confirmed it looked like a schist boulder, possibly brought by glacial action. By this time, Lydia Manners and her husband were scraping gently at the calcareous stone and pronouncing it to be pure chalk. Clothilde commented that it reminded her of the hidden caves in Cappadocia, Turkey, where caves and passages had been concealed behind false walls formed of large boulders mortared into place, the joins covered by moistened chalk dust which was left to dry.

  “At that point there was no stopping them,” the count continued. The archaeologists had begun to measure the outer cave and agreed that the boulder could have been rolled in to block access to the deeper part of the cave and thus form the hidden cavity. The boulder had then been sealed into place with smaller stones and chalk. At the top of the boulder, they found the chalk was only a thin layer. Scraping it away, they realized they could get a light and a mirror inside to get some sense of what the cavity contained. Horst’s German friend from the Neanderthal valley then said he could do even better. The cable with its
lens and light was brought and inserted through the thin gap in the chalk, and that was how they had been able to see the tomb. At which point Clothilde had called Bruno.

  “So the cave was deliberately hidden by bringing in that boulder,” said Bruno. “But it must weigh tons.”

  “They could have brought it by rolling it over logs of wood as they did building the Pyramids of Egypt,” the count replied. “And now they have found the tomb, which I imagine contains the remains of one of my ancestors, and who knows what else. Clothilde called the ministry in Paris,” he went on. “They’ll have to authorize a full opening of the cave. It will be quite a job, drilling around the boulder. But now that we know there’s a tomb there, it should be just a formality. Usually when the ministry gets such a request they consult the experts at the Musée National, which is Clothilde. And I’m the landowner, and I suppose I’ll have to agree.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it,” said Yacov. “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s certainly a medieval tomb. There’s an effigy of a knight above the sepulcher with crossed feet, which is usually the sign of a Crusader, and a cross on his shield which looks like a Templar sign, which is interesting but a mixed blessing. It means we’ll be overrun with Templar enthusiasts looking for lost treasure.”

  Bruno nodded, remembering the crowd of cars and sightseers that had thronged this place after Philippe Delaron’s story in Sud Ouest.

  “Look over there,” the count said, pointing across the valley to where a knot of people was staring at them with binoculars. “I closed the château today, but we can’t stop them walking through the valley, so they’ve set up camp to watch what we’re doing. The moment we leave they’ll be clambering all over this spot.”

  “You could fence off the access to this cave,” said Amélie.

  “That won’t stop them,” the count said glumly. “We’d need a security guard around the clock and probably have to fence off the valley itself, which I’d hate to do, and it would cost money.”

  “We might be able to help with that,” said the mayor. “I think we could find some money in the Conseil Régional budget.”

  “And think of the publicity,” said Yacov. “Commarque will become one of the hottest tourist attractions in the region.”

  “And as you said, who knows what you might discover inside that tomb?” said Amélie. “Maybe you’ll even unearth this long-lost Testament of Iftikhar. You know the Templar legends, you could find the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant. It’s going to be huge.”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I have to get back to St. Denis,” said Bruno, looking at his watch. “I just need to speak with Clothilde before I leave.”

  He headed back to the cave, and Amélie followed to exchange her phone for one belonging to Lydia Manners, checking that she had recorded the images of the tomb. The archaeologists were still clustered around the laptop.

  “I’m heading off,” he said, addressing Clothilde’s back as she peered at the screen. “We’ll see you at Laugerie Basse at seven-thirty.”

  “We might be late,” she said, not shifting her gaze from the screen. “It looks like we could have some Paleolithic engravings on the wall inside this cave. I’m pretty sure that’s a horse’s head, and there are some of those mysterious marks you see at Lascaux.”

  “It’s your wedding, and they’re opening the inner cave just for us so all your archaeologists can say they’ve dined in a cave that contains a prehistoric grave,” said Bruno. “You can’t be late.”

  “Don’t be silly, Bruno. All the guests are right here, and the wedding itself isn’t until tomorrow afternoon. That’s the important bit.”

  “For tonight, Clothilde, the food is the important bit, and you know better than to mess around with a chef.”

  She gave no reply. Bruno shrugged and headed back to the car, phoning J-J to say he was on his way back to St. Denis.

  “Sorry we can’t take better care of you this evening,” he said to Yacov, turning around from the front passenger seat.

  “You already told me about the wedding, so I’ve invited Amélie to join me for dinner.” Yacov and Amélie exchanged the kind of glance that Pamela would have described as significant.

  “He’s taking me to the Vieux Logis,” she said. “But I really like weddings. Would it be okay if we waited at the mairie tomorrow and threw rice and confetti?”

  “You’d be very welcome,” he said. “Clothilde couldn’t be happier. It looks like they’ve found some prehistoric engravings as well as the tomb.”

  Amélie was fiddling with her phone. “I’m just e-mailing you some of the images from the tomb so you’ll have them for your media friends.”

  Back at the gendarmerie in St. Denis, Bruno was greeted by the brigadier with a testy “Where the hell have you been?”

  Startled, since he’d already explained his plans to Isabelle that morning, Bruno reminded the brigadier that he’d been with the mayor and one of the trustees of the scout camp to arrange the postponement of the formal opening. Evidently under intense pressure from Paris, the brigadier grunted a reluctant assent.

  Fortunately, J-J was waiting to haul Bruno across the road to the Bar des Amateurs for a beer, saying he couldn’t stand the atmosphere of frustration around the gendarmerie for another minute. They took a seat on the small terrace with their drinks, and J-J drank half of his glass before speaking.

  “No news on the search for Mustaf,” he said. “Isabelle thinks they’d already prepared some backup accommodations, maybe even a camper. The road patrols are now stopping all vans and trucks for proper searches, but we can’t keep up the current level of manpower much longer. The overtime bill is going through the roof, and there are no new leads, unless your hunters and hoteliers come up with something.”

  Bruno shook his head. He’d already checked his phone for messages.

  “And we’ve had to arrange a guard for some Professor Philippeau in Paris,” J-J added. “The damn doctor forgot to pass on Dumesnil’s message that he’d had to give them the man’s name. Apparently it was the first thing Dumesnil said when he was able to speak. Thank heavens the nurse remembered. And it looks like they’ll let us interview him at the hospital first thing tomorrow morning, so we’d better meet here at the gendarmerie at seven sharp. There’s one bit of unrelated news which I personally found very welcome. We had a team searching through the records at the psychiatric hospital to find how Leah got the fake ID card from the patient, and an interesting name came up. Want to guess?”

  “No idea.”

  “Madame Duteiller, the psychologist who’s been giving me such grief over the pedophile case. She used to work there, but they asked her to leave, citing professional differences. When pressed, one of her colleagues said they found her work, I quote, ‘less than reliable and not very helpful.’ ”

  “So she was fired?”

  “And walked right into a new job down here, where we provincial dummies don’t know any better. Anyway, it gives me a bit more ammunition when the magistrate and prefect’s wife start nagging at me again. In the meantime, we’ve asked the head of her clinic in Périgueux whether they checked her professional credentials with the Paris hospital.”

  “You’re playing rough,” Bruno said. “Isn’t there some proverb about never taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut?”

  “I’ve barely started. One of my sergeants has a friend on the news desk at France Bleu Périgord, and he’s leaked what her Paris colleagues think of Duteiller.” He glanced briefly at Bruno. “And I hear your friend Delaron from Sud Ouest has been making inquiries about this ex-nun beating the kids in her care. So if Duteiller thinks she can use the media to embarrass me, she’s about to learn what it’s like to be on the receiving end. You want to play with the big boys, you play by their rules.”

  “Is she going to be charged with tax evasion on that gîte she was renting out?”

  “Officially that’s up to the procureur, but he’ll be reluctant to go ahead un
less he knows the mayor of the commune wants a formal prosecution, since it involves local taxes rather than national. But Prunier has been helping the mayor understand the benefits of justice being seen to be done, particularly when it comes to renting to terrorists.”

  J-J finished his beer, slammed his empty glass on the table between them and looked Bruno squarely in the eye.

  “I worked that case as hard as I could, interviewed everybody, checked dates and time, ran cross-referencing on every single allegation and looked into the background of everyone who was said to have abused the kids. At the end of all that, we had no more real evidence than we did at the beginning—these recovered memories from hypnosis and the unsupported claims of the embittered ex-nun. What would you have done?”

  “Laid it all out to the investigating magistrate and said if she wanted to bring in another investigative team, she was free to persuade Prunier to spend even more of his budget on a case that was going nowhere.”

  “I knew Prunier would back me up, in spite of the prefect’s wife. But that wasn’t the point. What I wanted to do was to come out and say the allegations were unfounded, that these people had been wrongly accused. And the magistrate wouldn’t let me do that. She was content to let those allegations hang around the necks of those men, one dead, one senile and one too old to defend himself, rather than come out openly and say she’d been wrong. It makes me sick.”

  Bruno turned down J-J’s suggestion of a second beer, reminding him that he had a wedding rehearsal dinner to attend. He knew J-J, who had become friendly with Horst and Clothilde after meeting them during another case, had been invited to the wedding itself on the following day—if the manhunt gave him time to attend.

  Bruno drove home, planning to feed his chickens and take Balzac for a brisk walk through the woods. And while he was not greatly surprised to find no sign of the two archaeologists who were staying with him, there was a strange car, a rental, in his driveway. And there was no sign of his dog. He whistled and heard an answering bark from behind his house, and a familiar voice called out, “We’re here.”