The Sacred Weapon: A Tom Wagner Adventure

by Roberts, M. C.

  “It was a boring conversation anyway,” he said.

  When Tom reached the crypt, Hellen and Palffy were already standing next to one of the sarcophagi. The crypt was a surprisingly welcoming place, with light-colored marble floors, white walls with baroque-era decorations in gold and a simple altar on the left, decorated with the crucifixion scene and the obligatory Maltese cross. The most important Grand Masters of the chivalric order had been laid to rest here, each in his own white, elaborately decorated marble coffin. On the right, in a niche directly opposite the altar, was the coffin of Grand Master Jean de la Cassière. Small notches had been chiseled into the center of the marble slab that formed the top of the coffin; they looked to be the exact counterparts of the indentations in the sphere. Palffy set the orb onto the guides and slowly pushed it backward. Again, a soft click sounded.

  “We need a candle,” Palffy said.

  “I left the Christmas decorations at home, but maybe this would do the job?” said Tom, handing Hellen the small tactical flashlight he kept in a belt clip at his waist. Hellen rolled her eyes, then clicked the button and aimed the beam into the opening in the side of the sphere.

  “Wow!” all three said at once.

  Small apertures in Hellen’s amulet allowed light to escape at the top and an image was projected onto the arch of the niche where the sarcophagus stood. The projection showed the coat of arms of the Grand Master Jean de la Cassière—the same coat of arms emblazoned at knee level on the side of the sarcophagus, and which also adorned the bottom of the sphere.

  But something was different. In the center of the projection was an area that did not exist in the real coat of arms. Hellen knelt and took a closer look at the version on the side of the sarcophagus. Tom, beginning to chafe at being relegated to the role of mere muscle, bent down behind Hellen and peered over her shoulder. Hellen ran her fingers over the surface of the black coat of arms, about two feet high.

  “There’s a little edge here!” she cried.

  Hellen and Palffy looked at each other and smiled. Tom had already taken out his knife; he drove it into the narrow slot. A small stone plate opened up in a cloud of dust, revealing a cross-shaped incision. Palffy knew immediately what to do. He took the cross that had previously served as a lid on top of the sphere and pressed it into the incision. It clicked into place seamlessly. Slowly, Palffy turned it counterclockwise. This time there was no soft click. Instead, they were startled to hear a loud scratching and scraping, as of enormously heavy stone slabs sliding over each other. Behind the sarcophagus, a small passage opened.

  53

  Côte d’Azur, France

  Despite his bad mood, François Cloutard was feeling a little proud of himself. If he could have, he’d have patted himself on the back. He had managed to track Ossana from San Marino across half of Italy to the Côte d’Azur in Nice without arousing her suspicions. Throughout the long journey he had racked his brains, trying to work out some way to use Ossana to regain his lost control. But until he knew what was really going on, and who Ossana was truly working for, he was helpless. She hadn’t personally collected a package and murdered the theater director for no reason; he needed to find out where she was headed. Cloutard would stick to her heels until he figured out her plan, then he would think of a way to avenge himself and reassert power over his organization.

  They had left San Remo, driven through Menton—for Cloutard the most beautiful and underrated city on the French Riviera—then taken the scenic Grande Corniche through Monte Carlo toward Nice. Cloutard recalled the old Cary Grant films he had seen as a child, which had been shot along the Côte d’Azur. He had always loved these mountainous coastal roads. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to enjoy the spectacular views along the coastal route quite as much as he might have otherwise.

  Just before Nice, Ossana turned off the Grande Corniche and onto a narrow road that wound its way up into the mountains. Cloutard had to be careful. He dropped back a little, putting more distance between them. He hadn’t come this far only to be spotted right at the end of Ossana’s little jaunt.

  The road climbed steeply for a while, then ran parallel to the coastal road before turning downhill again. From above, Cloutard could now see the winding road below easily, and could follow Ossana’s path with little risk of being seen by her. Finally, she stopped at an old farmhouse a couple of hundred yards off the road and got out. A small, Arabic-looking man emerged from the farmhouse. They shook hands and he pointed to a small, white van. Apparently, the van had been freshly painted—the paint buckets and tarpaulins around it suggested as much. The two exchanged a few words and went to Ossana’s car. They lifted the flight case out of the Alfa Romeo, carried it to the van, carefully placed it in the back and covered it with a tarpaulin.

  Ossana and the man spoke briefly again, and the man returned to the house. Ossana climbed into the van and drove back to the main road.

  Cloutard quickly evaluated the situation: he had a perfect view of the road from where he was. There were no turn-offs at all on the route back to the sea, which meant she was heading back to the coastal road. He had a little time. He could afford the risk of searching the car that Ossana had left behind.

  He stopped at the farm and rushed across to Ossana’s car. It was locked. Without stopping to think, Cloutard picked up a large rock lying on the edge of the road. Then he took an old piece of tarpaulin lying by the paint buckets. Holding it in front of the window to muffle the noise, he smashed the side window of the car with the rock. He reached inside, unlocked the door and began feverishly searched the interior. Back seat, trunk, passenger seat, footwell, glove compartment. Nothing. Frustrated and discouraged, he decided not to waste any more time and to renew his pursuit of Ossana. He was in the driver’s seat, still leaning across toward the glove box, and when he sat upright again he saw a small piece of paper that had slipped between the seats. The few seconds it took to tease the piece of paper out of the narrow space felt like hours, but when he had it in his fingers, he saw that it was a rectangular slip of thermal paper—a ticket of some sort—with a turquoise logo near the bottom edge. A closer look at the cheap printing yielded the following:

  Area Barcelona

  Autoritat del Transport Metropolità

  Linea 2

  Cloutard had no idea how Barcelona’s public transport system was involved, but he shoved the ticket into his pocket.

  54

  The catacombs of Valletta

  Hellen, Tom and Count Palffy exchanged excited smiles and peered back into the newly revealed passage that had opened in the wall.

  “Ladies first,” said Palffy, extending an open hand toward the opening. “You have waited a long time for this moment, my dear.”

  Hellen was about to accept his offer, but she paused for a moment and retrieved her amulet from the black sphere. It had accompanied her all her life, and she did not want to leave it behind. But Tom sensed that this was not the only reason for her hesitation.

  “I’ll go first. God knows what’s waiting for us down there.” Tom turned on his flashlight and slipped past the sarcophagus and into the opening in the wall. Hellen followed, with Palffy close behind. Immediately before them, a steep and extremely narrow wooden staircase spiraled into the depths. Despite the powerful beam of light from Tom’s SureFire flashlight, the bottom of the staircase lay hidden in the darkness somewhere below. Slowly, step by step, they made their way down the ancient, creaking stairs, Tom leading, Hellen behind, and Count Palffy bringing up the rear. With every step, the stairs groaned frighteningly.

  How many years has it been since someone last used these stairs? Hellen thought. Just a few seconds later, she heard a crack behind her. Palffy had lost his balance. He toppled backward, falling back onto the stairs and then sliding down, crashing hard into Hellen in the process. The tread under Hellen gave way, and she lost her footing as well. Palffy and Hellen began a bumpy slide together, one stair after another breaking under their combined weight. Tom, abou
t ten steps ahead, was already bracing for a hard impact when his foot touched solid ground. He had reached the bottom of the staircase. Hellen and Palffy followed seconds later, sliding onto the floor behind him.

  “Everybody in one piece?” Tom asked.

  Hellen was the first one back on her feet. “I’m fine,” she said.

  She was just giving Palffy, also uninjured, a helping hand when Tom suddenly sprang forward and pushed both of them away from the staircase. He was the first to hear the groan of the wood overhead—the staircase was about to collapse. Moments later the wooden frame came crashing down. If Tom hadn’t pushed Hellen and Palffy out of the way, they would have been buried beneath it. It was some time before they could breathe easily again, or even see their own hand in front of their face, but when the dust finally settled Tom shone his flashlight around, lighting up a circular chamber some sixty feet in diameter.

  “Let’s hope there’s another way out. We’re not going back up there.” Tom peered back up the shaft, but the remains of the staircase dangled a hundred feet overhead. He turned back to the chamber. The smell of salt water was strong down here, and there were passages leading off in all four directions. Tom shone the flashlight down each of the four corridors in turn, and they all peered after the light as far as they could. One passage—the one on the south side—had caved in after a few yards and was impassable. That left three, all filled with dense blackness. They examined the walls for clues, but found nothing.

  “Useless,” said Tom. “We’ll have to check each passage. Any ideas, Count?”

  “Valletta has a vast network of catacombs, many of them only discovered a few years ago. Some of the passages are a major tourist attraction today, but to my knowledge only a small part of the tunnel system has been explored.” Palffy waved his hand in a circle. “We seem to have the dubious honor of having stumbled upon an unexplored section.”

  Two of the tunnels, he suggested, probably led more or less directly to opposite sides of the peninsula on which Valletta’s city center was situated.

  “The passages to the north and south may be a kind of escape route, or a connecting tunnel between the cathedral and the Grand Master’s Palace or other buildings. Perhaps in earlier times they enabled the high officers of the Order to come and go in secret. I consider myself quite knowledgeable in the history of the Order, but this is all unknown territory to me, I’m afraid.” Palffy snapped a few pictures with his phone camera.

  “The western passage leads down much more steeply than the eastern one,” Hellen observed. She was taking a closer look at the texture of the walls. “Looking at the condition of the collapsed staircase and the stonework, I think we can assume that this chamber and the passages sometimes get flooded during high tides or storms,” she said.

  “And me without my Speedo,” said Tom.

  “Ha ha,” said Hellen humorlessly. “We might be under water here soon, so we’d better hurry up and explore the passages. It’ll be faster if we split up.”

  “I’m not keen on splitting up,” Tom said. “The staircase just showed us how quickly things can go to hell.”

  “Then we’ll just have to be more careful,” said Palffy, who had switched on the light on his phone and was already disappearing into one of the passages.

  Hellen, a little disconcerted, looked at Tom. “Looks like the boss has made up his mind.” She went off in another direction, also using her cell phone to light the way.

  Tom had to admit defeat, and took the third corridor. “Meet back here in ten minutes,” he shouted after them before they disappeared completely in the darkness.

  Tom had taken the passage to the west. It dropped steeply and, after a short distance, began to twist back and forth with increasing frequency, becoming almost serpentine. Sometimes it swung to the left, sometimes to the right, and here and there were little niches in the walls. Just in time, Tom grabbed hold of a small ledge—in front of him, the tunnel floor abruptly vanished, interrupted by a gaping hole. He looked around, realizing that the water must have worn away the rock; it looked as if part of the tunnel had collapsed into the sea at some point in the past, and he could hear the sound of water surging down below. On the other side of the chasm, the passage continued, but it would mean a jump of maybe ten feet: not an easy leap at all. He decided to turn back.

  He was the first to return to the circular chamber. A few minutes later Palffy appeared.

  “The passage runs for a few hundred yards and stops. It is a dead end, I’m afraid,” Palffy reported, disappointed.

  “Where’s Hellen?” Tom asked, concerned.

  “Her passage leads north, so she could be directly beneath the Grand Master’s Palace. Maybe she found something and lost track of time in her excitement. You know what she’s like. Who could blame her, after all?” Palffy said, and he waved Tom into the northern corridor.

  “I’m sure she could use reinforcement,” Tom muttered.

  After a couple of minutes they saw light ahead, and the passage widened considerably.

  “Hellen?” Tom called.

  “I’ve found something,” she called back enthusiastically.

  Hellen was standing in a large chamber about thirty feet square, its walls covered with faded frescoes. On the floor of the chamber was a huge Maltese cross. Between each of the arms of the cross was a marble pillar about eight feet high topped by a brazier, apparently used to light the chamber in earlier days. In the center of the cross was a circular opening about ten feet across, bordered with blocks of red marble. One of the blocks, also marked with a Maltese cross, protruded a little.

  Palffy approached the frescoes and clapped his hands in delight. “These are by Mattia Preti! Probably no one has seen them for centuries.” Palffy walked eagerly from wall to wall, taking pictures of everything. “The technique is fascinating. It seems he’s used some sort of special preparation here to protect the frescoes from humidity.”

  Hellen saw Tom’s face and had to smile. “Mattia Preti is the same artist who painted the picture of Saint George we saw up in the cathedral,” she explained. “He worked in the tradition of Caravaggio; he’s one of the most important artists of the entire Renaissance.” Hellen went from one wall to the next, and Tom followed. “The frescoes depict the capture of Jesus on the Mount of Olives. Here’s the scene where Peter takes his sword and defends Jesus against Malchus. We must be in the right place.”

  Hellen walked carefully to the opening in the center of the cross and looked down into the darkness.

  “Just a hole in the ground? That’s all?” Hellen seemed disappointed.

  Tom knelt at the edge of the opening and shone his flashlight down into it. “It looks like some kind of well leading down to the sea. Look, you can the surface of the water. But the walls are completely smooth. Climbing up or down would be impossible,” he said.

  “It must be down there,” Hellen said.

  Palffy pointed to the lower right corner of the fresco with the scene on the Mount of Olives. “That is strange. There is a kind of snail painted there that doesn’t seem to have any connection with the rest of the picture.”

  Hellen took a closer look at the symbol. “That’s not a snail. It looks to me like a spiral staircase seen from above.”

  “But there’s no staircase here,” Tom said. “There’s only this well, and it seems to drop straight into the sea.” He shone his light into the well again, and his eyes locked onto the uneven marble block with the Maltese cross.

  “Look. There’s a notch here, too, like the one on the sphere in the chapel.”

  Hellen hurried to Tom. “You’re right,” she said. She quickly took off her amulet and pressed it into the small recess. Once again, they heard heavy blocks of stone grinding against each other. But this time the sound lasted longer and gradually grew fainter. It came from inside the well. Tom shone his light into the shaft and all three looked down curiously in time to see individual stone slabs sliding out of the wall, each offset about eighteen inches
to the side and down, gradually forming a staircase spiraling down inside the shaft.

  “I’d say that’s a clear sign of where we’re supposed to go from here,” Tom said dryly.

  “But the staircase is flooded,” Hellen said as she hung the amulet around her neck again. “We can’t just walk into the water. It can’t be the right way,”

  Palffy spoke up. “Yes, Hellen, it can. The catacombs of Valletta were only opened to tourists a few years ago. Presumably, special paths have been built for tourists to visit the catacombs and also to allow boats to pass through them. It is quite possible that the water levels within the entire system have changed as a result, and you can add to that the rise in sea level since the 14th century. And unless I am mistaken, it’s a full moon right now, which would also have an impact,” Palffy said. “Maybe the spring tide has already started, and that is why the water is so high,” he added.

  “Well we can’t wait for the moon to change before we continue our search for the sword,” Hellen said impatiently. “I’ve never been this close to my goal before.”

  “I’m going to take a closer look,” Tom said, already removing his shoes.

  “What are you doing?” Hellen asked.

  “I’d love a foot massage, would you mind? It’s the perfect time for it.” He grinned at her. “I’m going to go down and take a closer look.”