The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “Hang on a minute,” Mario said. “I’ve got a better idea, or rather a variation on that. If we take two of the longer pieces of timber, we can extend them through the waterfall and into the pond and then slide the chests along them. Use the wood as a kind of ramp. Two people in here to lift the chests onto the timber, and two people standing in the pool outside to lift them off once they’re clear of the falling water.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Toscanelli conceded, “and doing that should be a lot faster as well.”

  They selected two of the timbers that were roughly equal in length and the same thickness and pushed them forward, through the curtain of water and down into the pool, making sure that they were lying parallel to each other, and about one meter apart.

  Then Mario and Salvatori pulled on their waterproof clothing and stepped down into the pool. Inside the cave, Paolo and Carlo lifted up the first of the chests and rested it on the ends of the lengths of timber. While they held it in position, Toscanelli wrapped a piece of waterproof tarpaulin over the top of it, to protect it and its precious contents from the falling water.

  When everything was ready, they pushed the old wooden chest forward, through the waterfall, and into the waiting arms of the other two men.

  It was a lot easier than any of them had expected, the force of the waterfall actually helping to move the chests along the timbers, and it took less than fifteen minutes to complete the operation. They pulled the lengths of wood back into the cave, because leaving them exposed would obviously attract attention, and they knew they might still have to go back inside again, with the right kind of tools, if Vitale decided that they did need to recover the small chest that Mario had seen—or that he thought he might have seen, to be absolutely accurate—just before the Englishman triggered the final Templar booby trap.

  With all six chests resting on the ground beside the waterfall, the Italians stripped off their waterproof garments and replaced them in the bag. Then four of them set off down the valley toward the hired van, each pair carrying one chest between them, and leaving Mario by the waterfall with the remaining four boxes, just in case some wandering stranger appeared.

  But they were only about halfway down the valley when a figure seemed to almost literally materialize in front of them. One moment that part of the valley appeared to be completely empty apart from the four of them, and the next second a nightmarish shape, the outline blurred and distended by the ghillie suit it was wearing, seemed to erupt from the ground just yards away.

  But it wasn’t the shape of the figure that stopped the Italians in their tracks. It was the sight of the SPAS-12 combat shotgun it was holding, the muzzle pointed directly toward them, and the unmistakable sound as the stranger worked the action to chamber a round.

  * * *

  Mallory hadn’t replied to Robin’s remark, because there really didn’t seem anything useful that he could say.

  Instead he’d switched off his flashlight and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark, hoping against hope that he would see some glimmer of light that might suggest there was a way out of their new prison. But the blackness was total, and after a couple of minutes he switched his flashlight on again.

  “I was just—” he began, but Robin interrupted him.

  “I know what you were trying to do.”

  Robin switched on her flashlight as well, shone it all around the space they had found themselves in, then switched it off.

  “The Templars did a pretty good job of that, didn’t they?” she asked. “It could take days, maybe even weeks, to shift enough of those stones to get through to the other side, and we’d be dead long before we were even halfway there. In fact, it’s even possible that that rockfall is airtight, in which case we’ll suffocate long before we die of thirst or starve. There’s a kind of rule of three somebody told me ages ago: three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, or three weeks without food. They’re all death sentences. And not a single one of them is an attractive option.”

  Mallory nodded, because again he couldn’t think of a useful response. His mind was racing, figuring the angles, wondering if there was any possible way out, anything they could do. But they already knew the tunnel had been hacked out of the solid rock, and Robin was right about the tumble of rocks and boulders in front of them: there were just too many, and most or all of them would be too heavy to move.

  But they still had to try to find a way out. And so, doing their best to conserve the life of the batteries in their flashlights, they examined almost every inch of their rocky prison, tapping the walls and checking the floor and ceiling for any crack or crevice that might possibly provide an escape route. After about half an hour, they ended up back again against the blank end wall of the tunnel, at the spot where they’d started, their patience exhausted and their last hopes dashed.

  “So that’s it, then,” Robin said. “We’ve looked everywhere, and there’s definitely no handy escape tunnel. There’s no way out of this place. We’ve escaped getting shot, but we’ve managed to imprison ourselves in a stone tomb instead. I think, on the whole, I would have preferred to get shot.”

  “Yes,” Mallory said shortly. “And I know it’s too late now, but I’m really sorry I got you into this.”

  “Hang on a minute.” Robin sounded more irritated than anything. “You didn’t get me into anything. I walked into this with my eyes open, just like you did. And I still think triggering that Templar trap was the right thing to do. If we hadn’t, right now we’d be lying dead on the floor of this cave. At least we’re still alive. Deep in the shit, I grant you, but still alive.”

  Mallory wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight, tucking her head under his chin.

  “Sorry,” he said again, staring into the utter blackness that surrounded and enveloped them.

  Then he released her because against all the odds he’d just seen something. And just thought of something else.

  * * *

  Toscanelli reacted first. Maintaining his grip on the metal handle of the chest, he spoke in Italian to his companions. “He can’t kill us all. On my command, drop the chests, split, and then take him down.”

  “I can’t kill you all,” the figure said, in equally fluent Italian, his words relayed through his mobile to the sniper on the hillside above, “but my friend can. Look at your chest.”

  Toscanelli glanced down and there, right in the middle of his torso, was a tiny but fiercely bright red dot. And even as he looked, the dot skipped sideways, settling on each of his companions in turn before returning to Toscanelli.

  “You have some things that don’t belong to you, inside those chests you’re carrying, and the people we work for want them back. So what I want you to do is lower those two chests to the ground, because your arms must be aching by now. Then you can step back and then, one at a time, each of you take out your pistol with your left hand and put it on the ground. Don’t even think about doing anything stupid, because if I don’t kill you, my friend on the hillside with his long rifle certainly will. This is an open valley, so you’ve got nowhere to hide and you can’t outrun a bullet.”

  The spotter gestured with the end of the barrel of the SPAS-12 and the Italians lowered both the chests, then followed his instructions and removed their pistols as well. Once all five weapons—Toscanelli had been carrying Nico’s pistol in his pocket as well as his own—were on the ground, the spotter ordered the men to step back and sit down cross-legged, because that would make it impossible for any of them to get up quickly. Then he collected the weapons and placed them on the ground behind him and well away from the Italians.

  “Now what?” Toscanelli demanded, his voice grating.

  “Now we wait.”

  “What for?”

  “For some other people to arrive. When they do, they’ll decide what to do with you.”

  Toscanelli didn’t like t
he sound of that, but he—and the others—knew there was nothing they could do about it. Right then, they were outgunned and vulnerable. Their only ace in the hole was Mario, still armed and no doubt watching what was happening from beside the waterfall. But Toscanelli also knew that the sniper, hidden somewhere on the neighboring hillside, would undoubtedly be watching him as well as them, and at the first hostile move could kill him as easily as swatting a fly.

  The only sound in the valley, apart from the occasional snatch of birdsong and the noise of insects, was the continuous and unvarying roar of the waterfall, but then a new sound began to intrude. At first, it seemed little more than a subtle alteration in the noise of the tumbling water, but after a few moments it was obvious to all of them that the direction the sound was coming from was entirely different—from down the valley rather than from its end—and that the noise was mechanical in origin. It was the sound of a big diesel engine, probably turbocharged, and within seconds it was also clear that there was more than one vehicle.

  Out of sight of all of the participants, about a minute later three Mercedes four-by-four G-Wagens drove up to the end of the road and parked in a line across the center of the open area. Six men, all wearing dark suits, emerged from them, stood together in a group for a few moments, then set off through the patch of woodland toward the end of the valley.

  “Company,” the sniper said softly into his Bluetooth earpiece. “Six men, no visible weapons, approaching from behind you.”

  “Understood.”

  The spotter glanced quickly over his shoulder, then looked back at the Italians. He moved over to one side, away from the hillside where his partner was located so as not to get in his line of fire—you could never be too careful in his game—and clear of the path the six newcomers were taking.

  Nobody spoke. Toscanelli and his companions were switching their attention between the approaching men and the spotter, just in case any opportunity to escape or turn the tables presented itself, though the ever-present unwinking red eye of the sniper’s laser target designator, roaming among them, ensured that they didn’t dare move.

  The six men came to a halt just a few feet away.

  Toscanelli stared at them. They looked like successful middle-aged businessmen, which was not at all what he had expected. Their dark suits and highly polished shoes suggested they would be far more at home in a boardroom or office somewhere than in an anonymous valley deep in the Swiss countryside. They didn’t look like criminals, and that at least suggested that he could try to negotiate with them.

  “Six men went inside the cave,” the spotter reported in German as the new arrivals stopped and looked at him, “but only these five came out. The principal targets, the English man and woman, are still in there. I stopped these four carrying these two chests down the valley. The fifth man is still up there near the waterfall, with another four chests. He hasn’t moved since I showed myself.”

  “And your colleague?” one of the men asked. “Where is he?”

  “On the hillside, covering all of us.”

  “Can you ask him to join us?” the man asked, glancing toward the side of the hill.

  The spotter shook his head firmly. “He’ll stay where he is. He’s my insurance policy against any possible problems.”

  The man’s smile slipped slightly.

  “Do you think we intend to betray you?” he asked. “Try to shoot you, or something?”

  “I have no idea what you intend to do,” the spotter said. “But I’ve been betrayed before. So he stays where he is, watching everything that happens, until this is over. If I go down, he’ll kill every one of you. And we’re linked through our mobiles as well, so he can hear everything that I say.”

  “There’ll be no deception on our part; of that I can assure you.”

  “So you say.” The spotter sounded entirely unconvinced. “Anyway, this is your show, and we’ve done our bit in stopping these guys, so over to you.”

  Toscanelli had watched, but not understood, the exchange in German between the two men, but he had formed the opinion that they were not on the best of terms. Perhaps working together out of necessity, but coming from very different molds: probably principal and mercenary. So as the man in the suit turned in his direction, he spoke up.

  “Before you do anything,” he said in English, hoping it might be a common language, “you need to know that we all hold diplomatic passports, and that our whereabouts is known to our government.”

  The man stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

  “I already knew that,” he replied. “I presume you’re either Marco Toscanelli or Salvatori Vitolli, as those two were the last of the group to arrive in Switzerland, presumably only traveling here after your minions had identified the target. But I doubt very much if your government has the slightest idea where any of you are, because no government actually issued your passports. That was the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, though I’ve no doubt you’ve been keeping your Dominican masters in the Via di Sant’Alessio fully briefed with your progress.”

  That was absolutely the last thing that Toscanelli had expected the man to say, and he immediately revised his opinion of the new arrivals. They might look like businessmen, but the level of knowledge that that man had just displayed meant that either he was a senior member of the Swiss government or alternatively he had access to somebody who was. And that altered the game, and the odds.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Mario asked.

  “Anything we want,” the man in the suit said coldly. “It all depends on what we find inside those chests.”

  38

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  “We’re not dead yet,” Mallory said, “and something’s just dawned on me.”

  “What? And this had better be good.”

  “Two things. First of all, I can see just the faintest glimmer of light down there. It must have taken all this time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.”

  “You mean there is a way out? You can see it?”

  “Not exactly. Or not yet, anyway. But think about it,” he went on, taking Robin’s hand and leading her down the cavern toward the rockfall. “We’ve just triggered the Templars’ last booby trap in this cave system. When they constructed it, they would have known that releasing that timber was going to completely block the tunnel—which it has—but as we said before, they weren’t suicidal. And they would also have known that if they were being attacked by a large force, that rockfall wouldn’t have been enough. A hundred men, equipped with picks and shovels and ropes, would be able to get through it in a few days, and if they did, then whatever assets the Templars had dragged in here to this end of the tunnel and were trying to protect would be captured.”

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “Which means that the rockfall trap could only ever have been intended to be a delaying tactic, just something to hold up their enemies long enough for the Templars to escape and to take their assets with them. There has to be another way out of here.”

  “Are you just saying that to keep my spirits up?” Robin asked, more than a hint of weariness in her voice.

  “No. Definitely not. Look, we know the walls and floor here are solid, and the Templars would have known roughly how big an area those rocks would occupy once they were released, so the only possible way out of here is straight up. In fact, straight up the hole that those rocks have just come out of. It’s the only possible escape route.”

  Robin grabbed his arm.

  “Now, that is bloody good thinking,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

  The height of the tunnel was around twelve feet, and as they approached the edge of the fallen rocks they shone their flashlights upward, into the dark cavity out of which the boulders had tumbled.

  It was roughly circular, almost like the bottom of a funnel down which the stones had tumbled. That
was not unexpected, given what they had witnessed, but Mallory realized it posed a very obvious problem: how were they going to be able to climb up it?

  “I’ll clamber up these rocks and take a look,” he said, switching off his flashlight as Robin turned hers on to guide his footsteps.

  The boulders were heavy enough that he had no doubt they would provide a firm foothold, and in a few seconds he was able to look up into the open space above him. And as he did so, he began to laugh.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll do better than tell you,” Mallory said. “If you come up here I’ll show you.”

  He shone the beam of his flashlight so that Robin could see the best route to climb, and in seconds she was standing beside him.

  “So show me.”

  Mallory shone his flashlight up, the beam revealing the smooth walls above them.

  “There’s no way we’re going to be able to climb that,” Robin said, “so I hope that wasn’t what you were laughing at.”

  “It wasn’t. You know we can’t climb that, and I know we can’t climb that. But there’s something else.”

  * * *

  With a gesture to his colleagues to follow him, the man strode across to the first of the chests and lifted the lid. He and the other men peered inside, and then one of them reached into the chest and took out a handful of documents. He selected one of them, a folded sheet of parchment, opened it up, and then handed it to the man who was clearly the oldest member of the group.

  He studied it carefully, his eyes and his right forefinger tracing the lines of faded Latin text, while the other men watched.

  After a few moments, he shook his head, folded the parchment again, and handed it back, taking a second document from the other man. This time, his inspection was even quicker, and at the end of it he again shook his head. He issued a brief instruction in German, handed back the document, and stepped over to the open chest. There, he thrust his hands down into the pile of documents, reaching deep into the chest. He seized something, held it out, and looked at it. And, again, he shook his head, tossing the piece of folded parchment back into the chest.