The Templars' Last Secret

by Martin Walker

  “Oh, Bruno,” murmured Florence, still leaning against him, her face turning toward his.

  A burst of distant gunfire cut her off. It stopped for a few seconds, then started again in short but slower bursts of four or five rounds. It sounded to Bruno like two separate weapons.

  “Stay here,” Bruno shouted and darted for the exit and up the stairs into the open air. The sergeant was on his radio, crouching behind the armored car. The machine gunner in the turret, his weapon now cocked, was looking nervously toward the woodlands to the south, and a group of tourists waiting their turn to go into the cave was huddled in the shelter of the steps down to the cave entrance.

  “Captain is on his way,” the sergeant shouted to Bruno as another long burst of gunfire provoked a chorus of wails from the tourists. “Patrol in the woods saw something, then came under fire.”

  “Where’s that chopper of yours?” Bruno asked.

  “Don’t know. They’re not on this net.”

  Bruno called Isabelle to report what was happening and asked if reinforcements were available, if the roadblock outside Montignac could hold back any tourist groups heading for Lascaux until there was an all clear. He heard her conferring, and then she came back to say tourists would be stopped and that a squad of army troops would be deployed by helicopter from Brive. Where should they land?

  “On the access road, as near as they can get to the cave. The parking lot is too covered by trees for them to land. Do you have an ETA?”

  “At least thirty minutes. They have to be rounded up, briefed on the mission, issued ammunition, and there’s fifteen minutes of flight time.”

  Bruno ended the call as the captain arrived at a jog. “At least two of them,” he panted. “One fired at a patrol and now another one has started shooting at our chopper on the ground. I asked for orders and was told to stand by.”

  “I’ve just been on to the command post,” said Bruno. “A squad of army reinforcements is coming by chopper in about half an hour. Right now the priority is protecting these civilians, one group is already in the cave, the other is taking cover by the steps. I’ll get them into the cave and your armored car should stay here to protect them. Your men at the roadblock will be getting orders to stop all further tourists. Can your chopper fly?”

  “I’m waiting for a report. We have one man down in the patrol.”

  “You’d better stay here in command. Once we have these civilians under cover, may I take your sergeant to see what’s happening with your helicopter? We can try to bring back the wounded man.”

  “Good plan.”

  Almost all the tourists, mainly Dutch and German, were only too happy to be steered into the shelter of the cave, crowding in with Raquelle’s group. One of them, however, shouldered his way to the steps to face Bruno. It was Horst’s English friend, the former soldier called Manners.

  “Let me know if I can help, Bruno. You seem a bit short of manpower.”

  “Not yet, but thank you. It would useful if you could keep them all in order down here. We don’t want any panic. Tell them that army reinforcements are on the way.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  The sergeant handed Bruno a FAMAS rifle from a rack in the rear of the armored car and a belt with pouches containing extra magazines. Keeping a good ten meters apart, they set off leapfrogging through the trees, one moving and one remaining still. After a hundred meters or so, the sergeant called out, “Fougières.”

  From ahead, someone called back, “Gallois.” Bruno recognized it as a standard password and response among gendarmes, a combination only they were likely to know. Gallois de Fougières had been the first-known gendarme to die in battle, and his remains were buried beneath the gendarme memorial in Versailles.

  Bruno and the sergeant moved up, cautiously, to find one gendarme on watch from behind a tree while close by another one was tying a tourniquet around the leg of a third. One field dressing, sodden with blood, lay beside the wounded man. Another had been applied to a thigh wound.

  “He’s all right, Sarge, not an artery.”

  In the small clearing ahead stood an unarmed and immobile Fennec helicopter with air force markings. There was a row of bullet holes across the bulbous glass nose and a large pool of oil or fuel spreading beneath it. From the position of the holes, the shooter had been to the east, somewhere to Bruno’s left.

  “How many are they?” Bruno asked the man on watch.

  “Don’t know. I heard only one gun that wasn’t ours, but it came from different directions. Could be two shooters, could be one doing fire and movement.”

  “Where’s the crew of the chopper?”

  “Don’t know, they’re air force, nothing to do with us.”

  Frustrated, Bruno turned aside and called his colleague, Louis, the municipal policeman of Montignac, to ask where he was and what was he doing. He replied glumly that the mayor had told him to report to the gendarmes for orders and he’d been assigned to traffic duties.

  “Are your braques at home, Louis?” Bruno asked. The braque de Gascogne was one of the best hunting dogs in France, able to deal with any type of game “from fur to feathers,” as the hunters put it. They were excellent gun dogs but also good in the chase. Bruno explained where he was, what he wanted the dogs to do and assured Louis that by the time he reached Le Regourdou Bruno would have arranged new orders from the gendarme general.

  He then called Isabelle, shared his thoughts, and within the minute she came back on the line with the general’s authorization. Bruno asked her to repeat that for the sergeant of gendarmes at his side. After a brisk “Yes, sir—ma’am,” the phone came back to Bruno. The man on watch and the gendarme who had applied the tourniquet then carried the wounded man back to the armored car. Bruno explained to the sergeant exactly what he expected to happen and what he intended to do.

  Shortly thereafter came the sound of baying dogs in the woods to Bruno’s left, but it sounded like considerably more than the two braques he had expected. Then the sound changed, from the bay of the hunt to the sharp bark that means the game had been found. Bruno tucked the FAMAS into his shoulder.

  A sudden burst of gunfire erupted, then a second, followed by the yelping of a dog in pain, then more barking. On the far-left side of the clearing about two hundred meters away, a blurred shape emerged from the scrubland beneath the trees and began running, crouched low, branches that had been tucked into his jacket for camouflage bouncing around the figure’s head. Bracing his arm against a tree trunk, Bruno sighted carefully and fired two bursts of three shots into the man’s hips and thighs. The sergeant beside him followed suit.

  The man fell and then a large brown-and-white dog emerged from the trees, crept forward, low to the ground, and then pounced onto the fallen man’s chest and began to growl with menace. The man raised his arm, a strange gesture, as if pulling at something rather than trying to fend off the hound. And with that came a sudden flare of brilliant white light, the boom and instant echo of an explosion and then a fountain of dark smoke from which clods of earth rose almost lazily before scattering around the clearing and spattering the shot-up helicopter. Of man and dog, there was not a single sign.

  “Mon Dieu,” Bruno murmured to himself: a suicide bomber. Why didn’t I think of that?

  Some instinct made him look at his watch. “Mon Dieu,” he repeated. The wedding!

  Chapter 28

  Clothilde was looking marvelous as she descended gracefully from the hired Rolls-Royce in a beautifully cut dress of heavy cream silk. It hung just below the knee, and the flared sleeves came down almost to her wrists, just revealing a heavy bracelet of silver on one arm. She wore a necklace of the same metal in spirals that Horst had given her, a copy of a piece found in a Neolithic grave in Ireland. Her red hair was piled high on her head, and she carried a springtime bouquet of white and yellow daffodils and lily of the valley, the leaves matching the bright green silk scarf at her throat. She smiled broadly as she saw the mayor in his red, white and blu
e sash of office and Bruno, hastily showered and dressed in his only civilian suit, waiting to greet her. He forced his face into a welcoming smile, firmly repressing the memory of that blinding flash of the explosion and Louis’s stricken features at the loss of his best hunting dog.

  Lydia Manners, her matron of honor, had already climbed from the car, and she was quickly joined by Pamela and Florence, her bridesmaids. Florence’s two toddlers, Dora and Daniel, dressed in white, were staring wide eyed at the bride. A small cheer arose from the gathering crowd of St. Denis folk as the mayor escorted Clothilde and Lydia to the elevator. Bruno waited to do the same for the bridesmaids and the children. Because of the old custom that bride and groom should not be together before the ceremony, Horst and his archaeologist friends had already taken the stairs before the bride’s arrival, discussing how many centuries of feet had been required to carve such grooves into the old stone steps. Bruno made polite conversation while waiting, but spotted from the corner of his eye Yveline and Isabelle, taking time off from their duties at the gendarmerie to watch the show.

  Ever alert to her surroundings, Pamela noted his quick glance at the two women in the crowd and asked, “Who’s that woman with the short, dark hair standing beside Yveline?”

  “Commissaire Isabelle Perrault, from Eurojust in The Hague,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. He was pretty sure that Pamela had known who she was all along. He remembered her being furious when she had been told by some local busybody that Isabelle and Bruno had been spotted together at a hotel in Bordeaux. It had been during an operation against a ring smuggling illegal immigrants into France. They had each been on duty and nothing had happened between them. Isabelle had been shot in the thigh that day, leading the team arresting the smugglers and their cargo of Chinese.

  “That Isabelle? Your old flame?” Pamela drawled, ice chips in her voice. Florence’s eyes widened at her tone. Pamela turned away so as not to be caught staring and looked at him fiercely. “What brings her down here this time, more of your so-called security exercise?”

  “She’s here with the brigadier, based at the gendarmerie,” said Bruno, coolly.

  Isabelle and Pamela knew of each other but to his knowledge had never met until now. He had loved each of them and a part of him always would. But why did Pamela seem to think she still had some claim on him after breaking off their affair for what she had insisted was his own good? He damped down the surge of irritation, knowing how he’d feel if he found himself confronting some new lover of Isabelle’s or a new beau for Pamela. Bruno remembered how shaken he’d been when he’d mistakenly thought Pamela had begun an affair with Jack Crimson.

  Bruno shook his head to clear it of such thoughts. His role now was to officiate at a wedding, and he was uncomfortably aware of the shoulder holster he was wearing beneath his suit. The jacket was sagging with the weight of two extra magazines in each side pocket. The brigadier had insisted that he remain armed, despite the wedding. At least the jacket hung loosely enough to leave no obvious bulge. He’d have to tell Florence’s children they were getting too big for his usual trick of picking them both up at the same time.

  The elevator came, and Bruno led the way to the council chamber, from which the chairs had been removed and the ancient table pushed against the wall and covered with flowers. The mayor’s secretary steered Clothilde and Lydia to a nearby waiting room. Bruno turned as he always did in this chamber to the long window to enjoy one of the finest views of St. Denis, the wide curve of the river and the old stone bridge, the quayside with its anglers and the gentle stirring of the willow branches as their tips kissed the surface of the water.

  The room filled quickly behind him with the wedding guests. The baron and Raquelle stood to one side of Gilles and Fabiola, Jack Crimson and his daughter on the other. The visitors from Germany and Britain had somehow been steered by Pamela into the front row. He saw the tall figure of the count toward the rear among the staff of Clothilde’s museum, along with various well-wishers from St. Denis and the surrounding communes. Wearing an enormous hat was Horst’s neighbor, a plump and motherly type who did his cleaning. Beside her stood Sergeant Jules and Yveline, both in uniform.

  Of Isabelle there was no sign. Philippe Delaron was crouched in a corner, two cameras around his neck. In the doorway Bruno spotted Yacov and Amélie holding hands as they made way for the mayor, leading in the soon-to-be-married couple. Amélie winked at him. Bruno suspected that she, too, was looking forward to the little surprise they had arranged between them.

  Bruno checked that he had the ring in his pocket and took his place behind the groom as Horst and Clothilde came in separately to stand in front of the mayor to take their vows. There were no religious vows, though, in this civil ceremony, where the mayor announced under the powers conferred upon him by la République française and according to Article 212 of the civil code he was prepared to solemnize this union under the law.

  First Clothilde and then Horst declared that they consented to take the other as spouse, the mayor pronounced them to be united as one in marriage, and they signed the register. Bruno and Lydia Manners then signed as témoins, the witnesses the law required, followed by Barrymore and Raquelle. Bruno and Lydia brought out the rings for the couple to slide onto each other’s finger. Horst was formally handed the livret de famille, the mayor took his usual bonus of being first to kiss the bride, and the deed was done.

  And at that point, pure and high, Amélie’s voice rang out in that most beloved of French songs of love, Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.” Clothilde turned to see, a wide smile spreading across her features. Horst clapped his hands in delight until Clothilde took him in her arms and they began a slow, affectionate dance to the music of the song. It was, Bruno realized, their first act together as a married couple.

  “Mon Dieu, that’s delightful,” murmured the mayor to Bruno as the song came to an end and the storm of applause died away. “She has a marvelous voice and we must certainly have her at our concerts this summer. You see, Bruno, I know you hated the idea at first, but I was right to bring the two of you together. I presume you and she worked out this little musical interlude?”

  Before Bruno could reply, Clothilde was at his side, clutching Amélie with one hand, and hugging him with her other and announcing what a lovely idea the song had been and that Amélie and her escort must come along to the museum for the reception. They would fit them in somehow.

  Bruno knew that while only the wedding party would attend the dinner inside the museum’s biggest room of exhibits, there was to be a much-larger reception with drinks and snacks on the terrace where the huge statue of Cro-Magnon man stared out over the town. There would be plenty of room there.

  On a ledge in the tall cliff that dominated Les Eyzies, the terrace was reached from the top floor of the new museum, along a cobbled path to the old ruined château that had occupied the ledge since the Middle Ages. The ruins had been bought by the state in 1913 and converted into the first museum of prehistory, a cramped, dark space, now used as offices. The original stone archway to the old château now led the way across cobblestones to the terrace and the statue. It was, Bruno knew, a splendid place for a party with room for a hundred or more people, and Clothilde had invited all the museum staff as well as the wedding guests.

  “Do you think we could ask you to sing again at the reception?” Clothilde asked Amélie, still clutching her hand.

  “I couldn’t refuse a bride, and you look glorious, madame, and such a handsome husband,” Amélie replied. “I’m glad you enjoyed our little surprise. It was Bruno’s idea, but I was thrilled when you decided to dance.”

  “Thank you, we’ll talk at the reception, but right now I have to circulate.” Impulsively Clothilde kissed her cheek and set off around the council chamber, being kissed by everyone. She stopped at Florence’s children and cried, “Our lovely little page and flower girl,” and bent to kiss them both.

  “I’m glad it worked,” Amélie said to Bruno. “I wa
sn’t sure if it was quite the right song for a wedding.”

  “It was perfect,” he replied. “And you passed the audition. The mayor tells me I have to get you for our summer concerts, so tomorrow I’ll introduce you to the guitarist who runs the local bookshop, the garage owner who plays drums and our choirmaster who plays piano and keyboard. They’re pretty good, and I know they’ll be delighted to accompany you.”

  “Maybe I can get Florence to sing duets with me.”

  “You’re going to be adopted by St. Denis at this rate.” He smiled and held out his hand to Yacov, who approached, kissed Amélie on the lips and then gripped Bruno’s hand with both his own.

  “A lovely wedding, Bruno, I’m glad to have been here for it. But I have to take you away for a moment. The brigadier wants to talk with you, urgently. There’s been a development.”

  As they pushed their way through the crowd, most of whose members wanted either to shake Bruno’s hand or to kiss him in the general mood of celebration, Bruno was jostled against Yacov. He felt something hard and solid under Yacov’s left armpit. The man was armed. He glanced at his friend sharply. Yacov put a finger to his lips and murmured, “The brigadier gave it to me.”

  “What the hell is this?” Bruno asked, grabbing Yacov’s arm when they were on the staircase. “Since when does a Paris lawyer get given a gun by a senior official of the interior ministry?”

  “You’d better ask him,” Yacov replied, gently removing Bruno’s hand from his arm. “He’s waiting downstairs.”

  A small crowd had gathered outside the mairie waiting for the wedding party to emerge, but the brigadier and Isabelle were standing at the far side of the road, and the brigadier beckoned to him.

  “So, you were right about Lascaux,” the brigadier said when Bruno arrived. “They found the remnants of his gun, one of those AK-forty-sevens that flooded into Europe after the Balkan wars. The problem is that after a very thorough sweep by the army reinforcements, it turns out there was only one of them. The other four are still at large, and they may have joined up with others.”