The Last Secret of the Ark

by James Becker

  The interiors were amazing, not least because of some of the curious carvings.

  ‘That’s the Star of David,’ Angela said, ‘but inside it there’s another symbol that we’ve met before.’

  Bronson looked where she was pointing and nodded. ‘A cross pattée. The unmistakable symbol of the Knights Templar. In fact, I’ve seen Templar crosses and symbols all over this place.’

  ‘They were here in the thirteenth century,’ she reminded him.

  They left after about an hour and climbed into the waiting taxi to return to Axum and their hotel.

  ‘So now what?’ Bronson asked when they were once again having a drink in the bar. ‘What’s your next step?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Angela replied. ‘I know where the Ark isn’t, so I’d like to find out where it is. My best guess is that the Temple priests hid it somewhere in Jerusalem – most probably down in the tunnels that honeycomb the Temple Mount – before the Babylonians overran the city in 587 bc, and it wasn’t recovered because the only people who’d known where it was were killed at the end of the siege. It might still be there, but I doubt it because of the nine years or so that the Knights Templar spent exploring and excavating the Temple Mount, and what happened when they finished. I believe they found it, used it to blackmail the pope and then hid it somewhere else. And then it again vanished from the historical record.’

  ‘So it’s a dead end, then?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Angela replied, ‘or maybe not. Sometimes things that are lost suddenly get found again. Maybe a clue will surface somewhere. Or maybe not. I don’t know. I hope that one day something will just turn up. And when it does, I’ll be right on it, digging away.’

  ‘And you know I’ll follow you on the trail,’ Bronson said. ‘Just like I always do.’

  Chapter 4

  Rue des Remparts, Limoux, Languedoc, southern France

  Ten days ago

  ‘Pour la dernière fois, où sont les fichiers? Les archives?’

  The speaker, a heavily built man wearing a dark suit and a five o’clock shadow so pronounced that it made the lower part of his craggy face appear almost black, looked and sounded irritated, an impression that was entirely accurate. He was also losing patience with the slim, balding, bespectacled clerk sitting in the upright chair in front of him.

  The clerk was named René Maréchal – not that Luca Rossi had bothered asking his name – and he’d been lashed to the chair with plastic cable ties by the man who had accompanied Rossi when he’d kicked in the locked side door of the notary’s office half an hour earlier. Or rather, the former notary’s office, as the business had closed about three weeks ago and Maréchal, the longest-serving member of the firm, had been told to catalogue and properly dispose of the files – the fichiers and archives – and process any outstanding paperwork.

  Maréchal was obviously terrified of both Rossi and the black automatic pistol pointing directly at his stomach. Any person who uses a tool on a regular basis develops a familiarity with it that is readily apparent to an observer, and Rossi handled his pistol with the same sort of casual confidence that a carpenter would exhibit for a hammer or a saw. He looked like a man who could and would use the weapon without the slightest hesitation.

  Maréchal shook his head, despair clouding his features. ‘I’ve told you already. I have no idea where those records are,’ he said in French. ‘You’ve made me check the file room and they’re not in there. I don’t even remember seeing them when the office was open.’

  ‘Then think harder.’ Rossi’s French was quite fluent, but his accent betrayed the fact that it was not his first language. ‘They were here, we already know that, and now they’re not. So where are they? Who took them? Where did they go?’

  ‘How do you know they were here?’ Maréchal asked, professional curiosity temporarily overcoming his fear. ‘This was a private office, a long-established notarial firm, so how could you know what documents we held? And why do you want papers that date from over two centuries ago? What’s the point? Who are you people?’

  Rossi didn’t bother to answer, just repeated his own question. ‘Where are the records?’

  Maréchal shook his head again.

  Rossi nodded at the other man. Roberto Lombardi was almost Rossi’s twin, heavily built with black hair and a dark complexion, and his job was not to ask questions but to do what he was told to do when he was told to do it. He was standing beside the clerk’s chair and watching both Rossi and the captive. When Rossi nodded and lowered the muzzle of his Walther, Lombardi stepped in front of Maréchal, paused for a couple of seconds so the clerk would know what was coming next, then drove his right fist straight into the man’s midriff before resuming his previous position. Maréchal bent forward as far as his bonds would allow as the air was forced out of his lungs and he gasped for breath. It wasn’t a hard blow, because the man looked as if he was well over seventy years old and it was essential that he provided the information they sought. They couldn’t kill him. Or not yet, anyway.

  Rossi waited until the clerk’s breathing had almost returned to normal before he spoke again.

  ‘Now that I have your full attention, let’s try one more time. Where are the records?’

  Still struggling for breath, Maréchal replied, his voice cracking, ‘But I don’t know. If I did, I promise I would tell you.’

  Rossi gestured again, but before his enforcer could deliver another blow, Maréchal cried out.

  ‘Wait, wait. Tell me the name again.’

  Rossi – who like Lombardi was wearing latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints in the office – pulled a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and read the name printed on it.

  French pronunciation is precise, as any English tourist who has ever asked for a Coca-Cola in a French bar without placing the stress on the first syllable of ‘Coca’ can testify. Saying the product name the way the rest of the world pronounces it will normally produce a puzzled frown and a Gallic shrug but no drink. Rossi’s first language was Italian, and Maréchal clearly didn’t recognise the French name he’d spoken.

  ‘I don’t know it,’ he said. But as Lombardi stepped forward again, he called out, ‘Don’t say the name again. Let me read it.’

  ‘Show him,’ Rossi ordered, holding out the paper.

  The enforcer took it from him and held it in front of the clerk’s face.

  Maréchal read the printed name and nodded, his relief evident in his expression.

  ‘Now I know who you mean. I do know about this estate and the Hautpoul papers,’ he said, pronouncing the name in an entirely different way to Rossi. ‘I think you’re Italian, and your French…’

  ‘So where are they? The records?’

  ‘I need to check my ledger. It’s the green book on that desk over there.’ Maréchal nodded his head towards the volume he wanted.

  The enforcer picked it up and held it in front of him.

  ‘You’ll have to open it for me,’ Maréchal said, stating the obvious. ‘Towards the front of the book.’

  Lombardi opened the ledger at the first page, where details of the oldest documents were listed, and then began displaying the pages one at a time to the clerk.

  ‘Stop,’ Maréchal said. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Rossi ordered.

  Maréchal read the entry on the page, then looked at the man holding the pistol.

  ‘The records aren’t here,’ he said, something like relief in his voice. ‘The archive was sent to Paris, apparently for research.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I have no idea. I presume the decision was taken by the notary before he retired.’

  ‘Where did it go to in Paris?’

  Maréchal peered again at the entry. ‘As it was for research purposes, presumably to a library or university, but that’s just a guess. The destination address hasn’t been filled in. The entry just says “To Paris” and gives the name of a courier. I have no idea where it actually went.’

>   Rossi strode across the room, grabbed the ledger and looked at the entry himself. The name of the archive was clear, as was the date, almost two weeks earlier. But at least he now had a lead that he could follow. He took out his mobile phone and snapped a photograph of the page, which he could send to his masters to show them what he had discovered. That just left the clerk to deal with, and in that respect his orders were quite clear.

  Rossi was a well-paid and dedicated contractor employed on a casual but frequent basis by the Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, or Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the CDF. This wasn’t so much a successor organisation to the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition as exactly the same organisation wearing a new suit of clothes, or at least with a new name. It was formed in 1542 and was the oldest of the present nine congregations of the Roman Curia, the administrative entities that effectively ran the Catholic Church.

  Just like the original Inquisition, which began its bloody and brutal work in France during the twelfth century, the CDF was charged with spreading Christian doctrine – something that was arguably harmless – and more importantly defending the Church and its traditions against heresy. Heresy in this context meant anything the Vatican didn’t agree with, a task that historically had proved to be the exact opposite of harmless, as the countless millions of ‘heretics’ executed by the Church over more than half a millennium in the most brutal and painful manner possible, all in the name of a loving God, could have testified.

  Despite being an important part of the Vatican’s machinery, the CDF was based not in the smallest state in the world, but in the Palace of the Holy Office, just beyond the walls of the Vatican. Rossi had never visited this building, all contacts with his paymasters taking place in anonymous and neutral locations, but his instructions allowed no room for manoeuvre. In those matters in which he was told to involve himself, no trace of his participation or that of the CDF was permitted, nor any evidence of what a particular operation had been intended to achieve. And above all, no loose ends were allowed.

  Which was unfortunate for René Maréchal, because in that place and at that moment it was difficult to describe him as anything else. He’d correctly guessed Rossi’s nationality, and he now knew exactly which archive the Italian was looking for. Those two facts alone meant that the clerk was expendable. With immediate effect.

  For a couple of seconds Rossi toyed with the idea of shooting him, but the Rue des Remparts in Limoux was a fairly busy street and the sound of an unsilenced gunshot would certainly not pass unnoticed. So that left something quick and quiet, and sometimes the old methods were the best. Then he noticed something about the chair the clerk was sitting in.

  ‘Garrotta,’ he said simply, pointing.

  The silent enforcer followed his gaze and nodded. The upright chair had a high back, and in the top centre of it was a decorative hole, positioned almost directly behind the clerk’s head. Lombardi picked up a length of thin rope, perhaps used for tying heavy parcels, and clicked open a switchblade to cut about a metre from it. He tied the ends together, passed the loop through the hole and dropped it over Maréchal’s head.

  The clerk obviously realised what was happening and began struggling frantically, desperately trying to break the cable ties. As he opened his mouth to scream or shout, the enforcer stuffed a rag into his mouth as a makeshift gag and tied it around his head, silencing him.

  Then he picked up a short length of wood from the cluttered floor, inserted it into the other end of the loop and began rotating it, twisting the rope and increasing the pressure on the clerk’s somewhat scrawny neck.

  It was all over in about three minutes. The garrotte bit deeply into Maréchal’s neck, cutting off the arterial blood supply to his brain and constricting his windpipe, stopping his breathing. His face flushed deep red, his eyes behind his glasses seemed almost to pop out of their sockets, and his tongue protruded from his mouth with a ghastly rattle.

  It wasn’t a pretty death, but then very few deaths were.

  Rossi checked that the clerk was definitely dead, then glanced around the office and nodded his satisfaction.

  ‘Pick up that ledger. We’ll take that as well. Now let’s get out of here. We can be in Paris by tomorrow morning.’

  Chapter 5

  Paris, France

  As in every other Western European nation, courier services are common in France, providing an essential service to individuals and organisations that need, for whatever reason, to send a package direct to an addressee and track its progress for the entire journey. DHL and UPS are the big names, the international couriers, but there are dozens, probably hundreds, of others, some working locally to cover a particular city or district while others are national, operating over much of the country.

  The company selected by the notary in Limoux was a firm with a national presence. Rossi had learned this from the ledger, but not the destination address. With hindsight he knew he should have searched the office until he’d found the consignment note or whatever the courier firm called their transit documentation, but he had no idea where to look for it, and the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until after Lombardi had garrotted the clerk. But he had got a company name and he thought that would be enough.

  It was late morning the following day when the two men checked into a mid-priced hotel in the Rugis district to the south of the centre of Paris, near Orly airport, an area that saw hundreds of arrivals and departures every day and where they would not stand out. They’d been driving all night, taking turns at the wheel and stopping only for fuel, snacks and coffee, and both men were exhausted. Rossi booked two adjoining rooms, told Lombardi to get some sleep, and then immediately went to bed himself, setting his mobile phone alarm for three in the afternoon. He was snoring within minutes.

  Getting specific information out of a commercial organisation was usually only a matter of finding someone to ask. And it wasn’t as if what he wanted to know was exactly a secret. He didn’t expect it would be very difficult.

  That afternoon, with both men showered and shaved and looking as much like businessmen as possible, Lombardi followed the directions supplied by the car’s built-in satnav to the nearest office of the courier company, then stopped the vehicle on the street while Rossi went inside.

  He’d decided the easiest and probably quickest option was to claim there’d been an administrative cock-up, that the Limoux notary’s staff had failed to record the destination of the documents, and he was there to try to sort it out. That had the benefit of being true – to a degree – and he had the original ledger with him as confirmation.

  ‘It’s just to complete our records, you understand,’ he explained to the counter clerk, showing her the incomplete ledger entry. ‘As a law firm, we are required to provide proof of the disposal of all documents in our charge.’

  ‘They’ve already been delivered,’ she said, looking at the screen of her computer, ‘so we can’t give them to you.’

  Though that was of course precisely what Rossi was hoping to achieve, he shook his head firmly.

  ‘Of course. This is purely administrative. I just need to know where they were sent, nothing else.’

  The clerk nodded and again checked the screen of the computer in front of her. ‘That’s no problem. The delivery address was the Bibliothèque Serpente in the Rue Serpente here in Paris. They were signed for on arrival by a Monsieur Lefèvre, initials R. C. That’s all I have.’

  When he heard the word bibliothèque, Rossi’s spirits lifted. Almost by definition, libraries usually allowed free and unrestricted access, at least to members. Maybe he would have to register to join, or produce some sort of authority, but actually getting inside the building should be fairly easy.

  ‘Do you have the full address?’ he asked. ‘Just so I can complete our records.’

  ‘I’ll print you a copy of the delivery note,’ she replied, and moments later the laser printer beside her spat out a single sheet of paper th
at she handed him.

  Rossi read the address as he walked out of the office towards the waiting car, and immediately realised that getting inside might not be quite as easy as filling out an application for a library card.

  The Bibliothèque Serpente was a part of the Maison de la Recherche, one of the research departments of the Sorbonne. Rossi guessed that the chances of a casual browser being able to just wander into that particular library in search of the Hautpoul family papers were probably fairly slim. It wouldn’t be like borrowing a book. He would need academic credentials of some kind to get inside and find what he needed.

  But his employer had access to the halls of academe in numerous countries, so providing him with suitably convincing forged credentials would probably just be a matter of time. Even as Lombardi steered the car away from the kerb, Rossi was already writing an SMS to alert his contact at the CDF to what he had discovered and what he would need. The mobile number he sent the message to wasn’t registered to anyone. It was a burner phone obtained for this one operation and would be destroyed once it was over.

  * * *

  Three days later, Luca Rossi visited a post office in Paris and collected papers that identified him as Angelo Romano, a professor of post-medieval European history at the Università di Bologna. Using his new documentation, he had little difficulty in getting inside the Bibliothèque Serpente, being welcomed as a visiting academic. The following day he was able to access the documents he needed to see and began talking about them to members of the staff and faculty who worked there.

  The day after that, he left the library and walked out into the Rue Danton – despite its address of 28 Rue Serpente, about half of the imposing building that was the Maison de la Recherche was actually located in the Rue Danton at the intersection of four streets – clutching a document folder containing copies of all the papers the notary had sent, the principal part of his mission accomplished.