He reached over to the first cylinder and lifted it up to the luggage rack, then opened the valve, happy to hear the low hiss of escaping gas. At full flow, it should provide enough oxygen for up to twenty minutes.
The piece of grit in the second valve was stuck solid. If he pushed too much, Sparke knew that he ran the risk of jamming it harder into the body of the valve. He returned to picking out specks of tar from around the grit. The only sound on the bus was the slow hiss of the first cylinder.
The silence that came when that ran out was absolute, and the eyes of the bus driver and the group leader snapped open and stared at Sparke.
Sparke took the second bottle and pointed the valve downwards to the floor of the bus and tapped it firmly. Nothing happened, the object remained stuck.
Sparke held the knife in his fist, turned the bottle full open and smashed the back of the valve. The grit, smaller than a peppercorn, flew out of the mouth of the valve and the sound of hissing gas broke the silence.
It was only then that Sparke noticed the young woman with suspected concussion now had her eyes open, and a line of saliva was trickling out the corner of her mouth.
Sparke reached over, pulled his fireproof suit toward him, and dragged the heavy hood over her head. He opened the small gas bottle it contained and the hood filled immediately with fresh oxygen.
Sparke looked at his watch. The second bottle had already been running for almost ten minutes. Sparke knew there was no point pushing the firemen; they would bring the fire under control as fast as possible and any interference from him could only slow things down. He stood and looked at the gauge. It showed 40%. Sparke watched the tiny needle flicker as it fell inexorably downwards.
The voice in Sparke's earpiece was shocking in the near silence. "The fire is contained. Argon flow stopped," said the fire-leader. "We are entering the tunnel."
A few moments later, Sparke's earpiece crackled to life again.
"We're at the site of the fire... The temperature is falling rapidly... It's out, not even smoke... Twenty meters from you... Ten meters. Smoke is clearing well. Can you see us?"
From his place near the driver, Sparke looked out the windshield and noticed that he could now see the tunnel walls on both sides clearly.
The silence of the bus was shattered as the Swiss rescue team wrenched open the coach's two emergency exits. The interior was filled by a rush of cold, stinking air from the tunnel and people leapt from their seats and cheered as the rescue workers, still wearing breathing apparatus, clambered on board. Sparke turned around to find the leader of the fire team standing in front of him. Before either could say a word, the gentle hissing from the second oxygen cylinder slowed, then stopped altogether. Both men looked at the gas bottle.
It was only now that Sparke noticed that he was still holding the Swiss Army knife in his hand. He looked at the fireman.
"Do you think I could keep this?" he asked.
Sparke was surprised at how short the walk back out of the tunnel was. The roadway now looked like a factory yard with rescue equipment scattered everywhere. Tilly´s face was pale and expressionless through the window of the Range Rover. He opened the door and reached in, dropping a small, heavy object on her lap.
"Present for you," he said as she picked up the Swiss Army knife.
Part Two
Home, Not Home.
"It´s like living with a corpse," said Salvatore.
"It haunts you?" asked the Mason.
Salvatore turned to his fellow Templar. "No, corpses don´t haunt you, they just need to be buried."
Every day, since he had arrived at the tower, Salvatore looked across the broad valley towards Radda to see the place he had called home for the first sixteen years of his life. He could see it, but it was like a mirage; less accessible to him than the most distant part of the earth. His banishment was for life, and he had said goodbye to the place so completely ten years ago that he would not have crossed its threshold even if he was allowed.
He and the Mason wore the same rough, knight´s habit, dark brown wool with the red cross of their Order on the left shoulder.
"I just remembered the last words I spoke when I left there," said Salvatore, nodding towards the town. "I told our family steward that I was the worst man in the world to become a Templar."
The Mason laughed. "A sharp observation. You knew yourself well even then. Has a decade changed your opinion?"
Salvatore smiled and shook his head. "No, still a terrible Templar, but here I am, as loyal as any other brother."
"More, far more loyal," said the Mason, "and you know it. When you were initiated, you were just a noisy boy, now you´ve earned a position in our order that few others could fill."
Salvatore knew his leader was not merely flattering him. The decade that had passed since Salvatore last rode out of Radda had transformed him into something he had never been destined to be. He had failed to follow the natural path that others did, to grow into an adult version of his younger self. Instead the young Salvatore had been broken apart and this new man assembled from the pieces.
"The past, my time in Radda as a boy, is the past of someone else. I have no past, at least none that has any hold on me now. I dreamt of study you know," said Salvatore. "As a young man I wanted to understand the world."
"And you don´t? You know more about the world than any man who ever left this country, and a lot more than those who think they can understand everything by sitting in a library for their whole lives reading the thoughts of others."
"Not much of a world. It looks like a small place from here," said Salvatore, glancing around him. His world was now this isolated watchtower overlooking a country road and ancient bridge.
"You won´t need to be here for much longer," said the Mason. "You have done more than I could have hoped for here. The position is nearly complete."
Salvatore glanced over to the watchtower. It was there that his life had changed, the moment he killed the brother of the girl he loved in a fight between two warring families. Compared to the things he had seen in the ten years since, it now seemed nothing more than a brawl, but it had sealed his fate, and the fate of the tower they had fought over. The Bishop of Siena had been happy to take possession of it as part of the peace agreement, and happier still to then gift it to the Templars. A gift that was rewarded by the return token of a fat Templar vineyard near Pisa.
Salvatore stood on an island of Templar property in an ocean of land that he was exiled from. He looked over the gathering dusk at the wild wooded country that encroached to the very edges of the fields and vineyards. As a boy he had walked, rode and hunted every yard of this land. Now, everything about it reminded him of the day he was forced to leave to join the Templars.
"Was I as bad a novice as I thought?" said Salvatore.
"I would say that you asked more questions and sought more debate than any other initiate before or since. I cannot remember any point of our rules that you did not challenge."
"Asking questions is a good thing, no?"
"It depends who you are asking," said the Mason. "I do not think your own brother relishes the excitement of debate."
"For Massimo there is nothing to debate. All questions have already been answered, the only point is obedience."
"He never fails to ask about you whenever he meets any of our Order."
"Brotherly affection, said Salvatore, "I´m sure."
The Mason looked directly at Salvatore and said, "For someone who has a bottomless pit of questions, you have never once asked why we sent you to this quiet corner of Tuscany, why you are here and what you are doing."
"I work on two assumptions," said Salvatore. "First, I assume that you would not send me here to rebuild this old tower without good reason. I can guess why you sent me. I know the local people, I speak their dialect and can buy the things we need from them at half the price you could."
"And the other assumption?"
"The other is obvious; I assume that you
know more than I do, that you are someone with a bigger view of the world and that this little stone keep plays some part in the plans which you and the Grand Master have."
The Mason nodded. "It´s a great skill to know when to ask questions and when not to. What do you think you are doing here?"
"Here? Well, we have sleeping space for thirty men, but only have a troop of eight. Enough dry food to last a year and stabling for scores of mounts. We are far from the coast, nowhere near the main roads and there are no pilgrims to offer protection to."
"Which means?"
"Which means this is a place that is easy to forget, not even easy to find. But," said Salvatore, looking around at the partly rebuilt building, "it is not somewhere that could be defended for long, so I think that it is not intended to stand against any determined enemy."
"And where does all this lead you to?" said the Mason.
"It leads me to think that this is a refuge, a short-term place to hide and rest."
"And regroup, perhaps?"
"Regroup from what? Do you feel we are under such threat?"
"More than a threat. Your own brother, Father Massimo, has made a great name for himself as an Inquisitor and he seems to count our Order as one of the enemies of the Church more every day. If we lose our foothold in Acre we will have no part of the Holy Land and with that, there are many who would be happy to see us brought down."
"Brother Mason," said Salvatore, "I avoid the politics of the Church. I have seen it poison my brother. It eats him up and has done since we were boys. I have chosen the Order and I hope I know my duty. Give me a task and I will do my best to complete it. Keep me away from my brother and keep me away from politics."
The Mason smiled broadly. "No," he said, "I will do neither. Your brother is far beyond my power to control, and as for politics, that is exactly what we require of you next."
Now?
"What happens now?" said Tilly.
"Now?" said Sparke. "The emergency teams will clear the tunnel, then they will need to send in some engineers..."
"No," said Tilly, "I don´t mean the people at the tunnel, I mean what do we do now? Are we going to nip out for a coffee as though nothing has happened?"
Sparke, unsure about what to say, kept his eyes on the road as they drove back the way they had come some hours earlier. "What do you think we should do?"
"Peter, don´t be dense. You were wearing one of the big silvery fire suits an hour ago for God´s sake. You just walked into a burning tunnel and saved the lives of a busload of American students."
"And a bus driver."
"Yes, and a bus driver. You don´t need to be doing normal things right at this moment. This," said Tilly, pointing her finger at Sparke, “is not a normal moment."
"That´s true, this is not a normal moment. We need to do something out of the ordinary."
"Uh huh, like something to deal with the stress or some-such. You must know what to do. You´ve been in this crisis management racket for years. What´s the plan?"
"Actually, I do have a plan. Here´s the thing. All of our clothes stink of smoke fumes and, I hate to say this, but that smell never goes away, so your outfit is ruined."
Tilly lifted her arm up to her nose. "I thought the smell was just you."
"Nope, we both stink. Now, instead of going back to my flat, I think we should go into Lausanne. They´ve got a super posh shop there called Bongenie or something. How about we go there and buy all new clothes? My treat."
"That´s a stupid idea," said Tilly. "Everything is far too expensive here and there´s no way you are buying clothes for me."
"Yes I can. First off, I´m pretty much a rich guy now, second it´s a spontaneous thing to do, and third it is really good fun, and I mean really good fun, to go into posh shops and get the staff to run around and pick clothes for you. You´ve got to see it, they love doing it, plus they actually know a lot about clothes and whatever."
"No way."
"Yes way," said Sparke.
Tilly drummed her fingers on the armrest for a moment.
"I said ´no way’ and you said ´yes way´. Is that really your best logical argument?"
"Best I´ve got."
"Okay, hard to beat sound, empirical reasoning like that. Let´s do it."
Sparke swung the Range Rover through the Lausanne streets, parked in the Place de Ripon near the center of town, and they walked the short distance to the department store.
Like staff of exclusive establishments the world over, they didn´t blink at the appearance of Sparke and Tilly in stinking, disheveled clothes.
It took Sparke an hour to emerge from the Men’s Couture department with his new outfit in three large, but elegant shopping bags.
"I would have been done in ten minutes if it had been left to me," he said to Tilly. "Fortunately they actually know what they are doing and care about the end result. Where are you in the process? Bought anything yet?"
"Down to the final options," she said, waving her hand to a range of tops, jeans, pants and jumpers hung around the changing area.
"Tilly," said Sparke, his face suddenly expressionless, "could you do me a huge favor? I mean a personal favor."
Shocked by his seriousness, Tilly turned to look at Sparke.
"Of course, what´s up, do you want to leave? Are you feeling ill?"
"No, nothing like that. Would you do me a favor and let me buy all of them? I mean, what´s the point of having bags of money if you can´t spend it like an idiot sometimes."
"Now you´re being unreasonable. I agreed to let me buy me some new clothes because I´m being nice to you. You´re probably traumatized, so I humoring you a wee bit, that´s all."
"There´s no point in discussing it," said Sparke. "If you come up with any reasons why we shouldn´t buy all these clothes, I´ll say ´yes way’ again and your arguments will collapse. Anyway, maybe I am traumatized so you´d better humor me."
"Peter, are you serious? This stuff costs a fortune."
Sparke smiled at Tilly. "I love this bit," he said, turning to the two shopping assistants who were helping. "We´ll take everything," he said.
Two hours later, Sparke and Tilly stood in the kitchen of his apartment scrubbed clean and dressed in some of their new clothes.
"Being rich," said Sparke, "is great."
"Looks very all right," said Tilly, looking at herself in a three-quarter-length mirror.
"Want to go out? The cafe round the corner is excellent, but it´ll be packed at this time of day."
"You don´t think I want to hang around indoors wearing all these new threads do you? Let´s go out. My treat."
The cafe Sparke chose was the largest of the several that dotted the main street of Morges. The market that occupied the street every Saturday morning had been cleared away and it looked as though the entire population of the town was cramming itself around tiny restaurant tables.
Every cafe in town was actually a baker shop and all sold elegant French-style cakes. At the rear of each pastry store was a ´Tea Room`. It had taken Sparke a number of confused visits to realize that the process was to buy the cake for cash at the front of the store, then take it to a table and order coffee separately. At lunch time, the Tea Rooms also offered meals and Sparke realized that he was starving.
"There´s a table up the back. Get a move on," said Sparke. "There´s only the quick and the dead when it comes to getting a table in here."
"I think that woman with the stroller is heading for it."
"Then hurry up. She knew what she was getting into when she walked in here. It´s a fair fight."
They beat the woman with the child to the only seats in the place and smiled at the waitress who swooped in and wiped the table with a thoroughness that came from years of experience. She reappeared a moment later with menus and a cup of coffee, which she placed in front of Sparke.
"Pour boire, madam?" she said.
"Eh, small beer, please?"
The waitress gave the briefest of smiles,
then disappeared into the throng.
"Do they always do that? I mean, bring you a coffee without asking?" said Tilly.
"They do actually, once you´ve been somewhere once or twice, they seem to remember you and bring you what you had last time."
"Nice to be a regular."
"I think I´m getting to like it," said Sparke. "You look great in that outfit, by the way."
"I know I do, but not as great as that guy think he looks in his."
Tilly nodded towards the entrance where a man, possibly in his late thirties or early forties stood. He was wearing a heavy, old fashioned overcoat over a suit. His hair was styled into a center parting, but most noticeable of all was his perfectly formed, canary-yellow bowtie.
The second Sparke looked up he regretted it. The man caught his eye with an expression of something approaching fury and he began to push his way through the narrow gaps between the tables directly towards him.
"Bloody hell," said Sparke, "I think I might have another stalker."
Politics
"I despise politics," said Salvatore.
"Good, then you will be a natural at it. All the great diplomats know that politics is a means to an end. The ones who cause the problems are those who relish it like a sport. We need you to carry out a task for us, and everything we have seen in your ten years in our Order makes it plain that you are the best equipped man we have to carry it out."
"When do I leave and where am I going?"
"There is no point in leaving for a few weeks yet."
"There is nothing much to finish here. Why the delay?"
"There is no point in leaving until the snows melt."
"Snows?" said Salvatore, looking round at the cold, but thoroughly snow-free, Tuscan landscape.
"Between here and where you are headed, the snow is a very serious matter," said the Mason smiling. "When you leave..."
The Templar Tower: Peter Sparke Book Five Page 10