The Templars' Last Secret

by Martin Walker

  Standing beside him, Yacov suddenly pulled out a phone and turned away, and after saying “Sync now,” he pressed a button on his keypad, which to Bruno meant that Yacov was using a scrambler. He began speaking in a language Bruno couldn’t recognize. He assumed it must be Hebrew and wondered why he hadn’t realized earlier that Yacov was something more than the patent lawyer he claimed to be. Firearms were not handed out by the interior ministry to just anyone. Could Yacov be the official Israeli contact that the brigadier had mentioned in the videoconference?

  “We have to assume they are on the loose, still active and possibly with another target.” The brigadier broke off to shake hands with Jack Crimson who had joined them, his daughter Miranda at his side. Bruno could see no bulge under Crimson’s armpit but remembered that the brigadier had authorized him to be armed.

  Bruno felt a moment of outrage. St. Denis was his town, its safety his responsibility, but suddenly people were being armed as if this were the Wild West. He hated it on those rare moments when he had to wear his own weapon, but now Yacov, Crimson and no doubt the brigadier and Isabelle were all carrying sidearms.

  “I gather you authorized a weapon for Maître Kaufman here, sir,” Bruno said. “Have you some reason to believe a civilian, a Parisian lawyer, might be in any danger?”

  “Yes, and don’t ask. It’s my decision.”

  “I talked to Saïd al-Husayni again,” said Isabelle. “That comment he made about the farm that we thought might refer to the scout camp—it came in the context of a diatribe against Jews. So we concluded that the scout camp was indeed a target, and that makes Yacov Kaufman a potential victim. He’s got military training, he knows his way around weapons.”

  “Would he be the Israeli contact you referred to, sir?” asked Bruno.

  The brigadier looked at him coldly. “Again, Bruno, don’t ask.”

  At that point, the wedding party emerged from the mairie, Horst and Clothilde in the lead, the mayor and Lydia behind them and then the rest, all being showered with rice and confetti by the crowd. Philippe Delaron walked backward before them, his camera to his eye, taking photo after photo. Horst caught Bruno’s eye, waved, nudged Clothilde, and they came across.

  “I remember you,” said Clothilde to Isabelle. “When Horst was kidnapped, you were part of the team that rescued him, so thank you for my new husband.”

  “I’m glad to see you both happy,” said Isabelle. “Please accept my congratulations and best wishes.” She gestured to the brigadier beside her. “My colleague here, General Lannes, led that particular inquiry, so he’s the one who deserves your thanks.”

  Horst shook their hands. “Perhaps you would do us the honor of joining us at Les Eyzies for a glass of champagne at our reception. It seems this wedding would not have taken place without the two of you and, of course, Bruno.”

  “We’re still involved in this exercise, but if we can…,” Isabelle began to say when Delaron came up, phone in hand.

  “What’s this about a shoot-out at Lascaux, Bruno? The news desk just called to ask if I can get there right away.”

  “You can’t leave. We booked you specially to take the photos at our reception and dinner,” Clothilde objected. “And we’ve all just come from Lascaux. There was an explosion and some shooting, but it’s all over. They evacuated us and gave us the all clear.”

  “Gunfire heard and an explosion, the place now sealed off and surrounded by troops and cops, that’s all I know,” Philippe said into the phone. “Unless these types can tell me more.”

  He held out his hand to Isabelle. “I remember you from when you worked around here. I know you have some high-powered job in Paris. What do you know about this?”

  “Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you,” Isabelle replied without looking at the reporter. “Sorry.”

  “That’s not good enough…,” the mayor began.

  “The incident is over, none of our people were hurt, and Lascaux is undamaged,” said the brigadier, turning away. “That’s all I can say. Anything more will have to come from the police spokesman.”

  By now, people were picking up the news on their mobile phones, clustering together and talking in hushed tones. Some began to gather around Bruno and Philippe, hungry for more information or some detail of the attack on a place that symbolized so much of their region and its long history.

  Florence declared that she was taking the children home and added, without much conviction, that she might join them later if she could find a babysitter. Pamela demanded, politely but firmly, if Bruno had anything to add to the news flash. Only that Lascaux was safe, he replied. She pressed him, asking whether they would all be safe at Les Eyzies. Bruno could only shrug and say that he was going there, when he saw a figure suddenly sinking down to sit on one of the stone bollards, her head in her hands. It was Raquelle, looking stunned, a handkerchief to her mouth. She had seemed fine in the cave and when they were escorted down to their bus. But she had given ten years of her life to reproducing the bulls and horses on the copy of the cave the tourists now saw. Shock must be setting in.

  “Who is that senior-looking guy with Isabelle?” Philippe asked as Isabelle left with Yacov and the brigadier. “Is he down here for this?”

  By now Gilles had joined them, notebook poised, Fabiola at his side but holding a phone to her ear, probably trying to check whether there had been an emergency call for doctors. They had seen the Lascaux cave before and so had not joined the visiting party. Gilles had taken early retirement from Paris Match, but he still freelanced for them. The old newshound was back on the scent, Bruno thought.

  Mon Dieu, how could he deal with all these people with their questions and their worries? They were giving him no time to think. He felt he was being pulled in different directions: the emotional needs of his friends, his duty to the mayor and people of St. Denis, his obligation to the orders and official status of the brigadier, the threat to Lascaux, the unknown new danger of trained and violent men on the loose. With an effort, he resisted the temptation to reach into his shoulder holster and touch his gun to reassure himself.

  “I thought all this was supposed to be a training exercise,” Gilles said. “It looks as though the guards at Lascaux were on alert, almost as if they suspected some sort of attack was coming. Is that so? And is this incident linked to that dead woman at Commarque and the gendarme who was shot at Siorac?”

  “You can call him a senior official at the interior ministry,” Bruno replied to Philippe, ignoring Gilles’s questions. “You heard the man, there’s no damage done to Lascaux, and this is Clothilde’s wedding day.”

  Bruno left Philippe and Gilles and went to Raquelle to put an arm around her and whisper reassurance that all was well at Lascaux and that her cave had been untouched.

  “What is it? Terrorists? Arabs?” she asked dumbly, her hair awry from the distracted way she had been running her hands through it. She gazed up at him. “Mon Dieu, will this ever stop?” He remembered that Raquelle’s mother had been Israeli.

  “We’re not sure yet what happened,” he said as Amélie joined them, looking bereft at Yacov’s departure.

  “Come on,” he said, taking Raquelle by the hand. “Let’s all get to Les Eyzies, have a drink and celebrate with Clothilde and Horst.”

  Chapter 29

  By the time Bruno and his carload arrived at the National Museum of Prehistory, extra glasses had been borrowed from the nearby café, and Hubert had dashed back to his cave to bring two more cases of champagne. The sound of the party grew louder as they climbed the last spiral and came out into sunlight and conviviality. The guests had already overflowed from the terrace on the roof of the museum. Some of them were drifting through the stone archway of the old château that was tucked into the vast rocky overhang and spreading out on the longer terrace beyond the statue of prehistoric man.

  The only access to these terraces was through the new museum, either by a small elevator for the disabled or by climbing a wide spiral staircase who
se walls featured two-meter-tall reconstructions of the layers of archaeological excavations. Climbing past the entrance to the lower gallery, visitors could see at the end of one alcove a reconstruction of a giant stag, its antlers five meters wide.

  Bruno often wondered at the courage of those ancestors, taking on such beasts armed only with spears and flint axes. In the upper gallery was a reconstruction of a hunter from around the time of Lascaux, seventeen thousand years earlier, aiming a slim spear with a point made from a reindeer’s antler. In neighboring showcases were examples of spear-throwers, hooked sticks that extended the reach and flex of the human arm and endowed the spears with far-greater force. Bruno had tried throwing a spear with one at a site upriver called Pech Merle, where the family that owned the land had set up archery targets backed by thick straw. A good throw, Bruno had found, could penetrate through the straw from a range of thirty meters. No wonder humans had ended up on top of the food chain.

  Raquelle had repaired her makeup in the car. She took a glass of champagne and went to join the archaeologists. Amélie was jolly by now, swigging half her champagne, and was then surrounded by a ring of people telling her how much they had enjoyed her singing. Bruno went to the bar and greeted the two barmen, one of them a former pupil of his rugby classes. He got a glass of champagne for Pamela, another for himself and escorted her through the tunnel of the stone gateway to raise a toast to the statue of prehistoric man. Horst and Clothilde were standing beneath it as their friends took snapshots of them on their phones.

  The terrace had been decorated with some of the spare life-size wax models of Neanderthal people from the museum’s storage room. There was a life-size model of a seated man in furs talking to a naked child as he worked on a flint tool, two women scraping furs, and a standing hunter, a spear poised in his hand.

  “I think they’ll be very happy,” Pamela said to Bruno. “It certainly took them long enough before deciding to tie the knot. Clothilde told me they first became lovers thirty years ago, and they knew all of the other’s bad habits, but they’d grown so used to one another there seemed little point in not marrying. You know she’s selling her house here in Les Eyzies? Apparently Horst’s place won because of that amazing new bathroom he installed. I often wanted to try it, all those nozzles in the shower to spray you all over.”

  “I’m sure she’d be delighted to let you enjoy it.”

  Bruno felt a little on edge. He had not spent much time alone with Pamela since she had ended their affair. They had met often enough, at the Monday dinners with their friends, at the stables, in the market, but he’d been startled by the bitterness in her tone when she saw Isabelle outside the mairie. He’d never found Pamela easy to read, despite her almost-perfect French. She remained an Englishwoman, or rather Scottish, not quite familiar with all the unspoken assumptions about life and love and la République that most French people unconsciously shared. He had found it charming, the way she believed that a cup of tea solved most problems or at least made them seem less formidable, her passion for English crosswords and listening to the BBC on her laptop as she did her household chores. He still did, Bruno admitted to himself, and on impulse he took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Don’t tell me you’re letting this wedding carry you away, Bruno,” she said, gently extracting her hand from his. “I wonder if anything will change for the happy couple? Whether Clothilde will still want to come over for a girls’ evening with Fabiola and me?”

  “Isn’t Miranda also part of your girls’ evenings?” he asked. “You share a house with her.”

  “She is once she’s put the children to bed, like Florence. But there’s a difference between women like Clothilde and me and those with small children, particularly when there’s no man to share the upbringing. I must say, I rather enjoy having the little ones around—so long as they belong to somebody else.” She fished in her bag for her phone. “I should call Florence and tell her she can leave the kids at our place. Félix the stable lad is there looking after Miranda’s children.”

  A cheer went up from the other terrace as Hubert arrived with more champagne and people rushed for refills. Jack Crimson and Miranda were among the first to emerge from the scrum and came through the tunnel to join them, each carrying two full glasses. As Crimson put the two extras on the ledge beside Bruno and Pamela, Bruno’s phone vibrated.

  “We’ve had patrols and choppers with infrared sensors beating those woods and they’re empty,” Isabelle said. “The guy who blew himself up at Lascaux was alone, which makes it look like a diversion while Mustaf’s team is still going for their main target. That means him and three more on the loose.”

  “Unless the diversion was to let Mustaf and his men get away from this area, maybe head for Paris. They must be feeling trapped.”

  “Another person feeling trapped is the brigadier,” she said. “Can you imagine how much pressure he’s under from Paris after all the resources they’ve plunged into this? And I can tell you he’s made a lot of enemies in this job who are just waiting for it all to go wrong.”

  “Have the mobiles found any sign of the transport the bomber used to get to Lascaux? If not, that could mean he was dropped off.”

  “They’re scouring the area now. Got to go.”

  “Wait,” he said. “I presume this means you can’t make the reception. Would that apply for J-J and Yacov?”

  “Yacov left here some time ago and said he was joining you. J-J has gone to Lascaux. And I’ll stay in touch. Sorry we can’t make the reception.” She rang off.

  Bruno noticed more and more people coming through the tunnel to this larger terrace, away from the crowd around the bar serving champagne. Hubert was among them, carrying a bottle of champagne and chatting with Amélie. Suddenly Yacov emerged from the tunnel and Amélie’s face lit up when she saw him.

  “How’s my old friend Yossi?” Crimson asked Yacov jovially, holding out his glass for Hubert to refill it. “Still running marathons?”

  “No idea,” Yacov replied, looking uncomfortable and turning to Bruno to ask if there was any news. Bruno put down his glass and took Crimson’s and Yacov’s glasses and put them alongside his own on the ledge. Then he led Crimson and Yacov aside, toward the farther end of the terrace until they were well out of earshot.

  “I know you’ve both been authorized to carry weapons, which makes three of us. So let’s stop drinking, just in case anything goes wrong here.” He explained what he’d heard from Isabelle and that the four most dangerous men were still on the loose. “I suggest we go through the tunnel to the smaller terrace, since that’s the only way to get up here.”

  “You don’t think they could be coming here?” Crimson asked.

  “I have no reason to think so, but let’s not take any chances. And what was that crack of yours about Yossi? Who’s he?”

  “Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, an old friend of mine,” Crimson said. “We worked together when he was sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program. And he does run marathons.” He paused and looked at Yacov. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t work for him.”

  “I think Bruno just gave us some good advice,” Yacov replied neutrally. “Let’s go through to the other terrace. We can talk about old friends later.”

  “What are you carrying?” Bruno asked.

  “Glock seventeen,” said Yacov, and Crimson nodded. “Same here.”

  “Spare magazines?”

  Yacov said one; Crimson shook his head.

  “I’m carrying a PAMAS nine millimeter, with two spare mags,” Bruno said. “That’s about ninety rounds between us. If trouble comes this way, I’ll hold the head of the staircase, you two get everybody else through the tunnel and hold them off there.”

  “You’re serious about this?” Crimson asked as Bruno led the way back.

  “I’m serious about taking intelligent precautions.” At the bar, he asked for three glasses of mineral water, then installed himself at a corner where he could look down over the rooftops to the stre
et and the entrance to the museum. He took out his phone to call Isabelle but kept watching.

  “Remember in J-J’s notes of the interview with Dumesnil, he told us that he’d talked to Leah and al-Husayni about Horst and Clothilde and about their wedding?” he said.

  “I don’t recall that being in J-J’s notes,” she replied.

  “Putain, well he certainly told us that, and that when he was being interrogated he even had a copy of the paper thrust at him with a picture of Horst and that seismic machine at Commarque.”

  “Yes, I remember about the paper being pushed in his face, but I didn’t make the connection. Do you think Horst is in danger?”

  “I think it’s possible this wedding reception could be a target. Can you get some reinforcements here right away? We’ve got more than a hundred people at the museum here.”

  “I’ll get on it.” She hung up.

  In the street below, he saw a figure in a police cap emerge from the museum entrance and start patrolling the street. It was Louise Varenne, the town policewoman. He called her number and saw her pull her phone from the case on her belt.

  “Louise, it’s me, Bruno. This is urgent. Make sure you’re armed and come up to the roof terrace of the museum. We may have trouble brewing. And wear your flak vest.” As he spoke he recalled that the ones issued to the police were said to give protection against handguns but would not stop a round from an AK-47.

  “I’ll have to go to the mairie. My weapon’s in the safe there. What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. Now move, as fast as you can, and bring all your spare magazines.”

  They hung up, and he saw her trot across the street to the small mairie and fish out a key to let herself in at the locked front door. He looked up and down the street, filled with the parked cars of the reception guests. There was no other traffic.

  “You seem very serious about a security risk at this wedding,” said Yacov, suddenly appearing at Bruno’s side. “Is there a special reason for that?”