The Templar Thief: Peter Sparke book 4

by Scott Chapman

  "What on earth is that?" said Tilly, looking at the pile of plastic and metal components scattered across the kitchen table.

  "I told you I had a plan," said Sparke, handing her an espresso, "and my plan does not include me yomping up and down Tuscan hills in the middle of summer."

  "Let me guess, it's a James Bond jet pack that lets you fly up them."

  "Closer than you might think. It's a drone."

  "A drone?"

  "Uh huh. Remote control, four hours flying time, high-resolution cameras. My big plan is to sit in the shade and have this thing do the grunt work."

  "Peter, you are almost as clever as you are lazy. Great idea. Do you know how to assemble it?"

  "No."

  "But you have instructions somewhere here?"

  "I haven't checked. Where's the fun in using instructions?"

  Tilly picked up pieces of the drone at random, as though working through a jigsaw puzzle with Sparke. Then she noticed a package on the floor, still wrapped.

  "What's this, another bit of the drone, missile launcher perhaps?" she said.

  "No, no, that's actually something for you. It's a present."

  "A present?"

  "Yup, I'm trying to teach myself to be a nicer person, so I'm following up on my instincts and trying to be a little more caring and sharing." He lifted the parcel onto the kitchen table. “I was going to give it to you later, but why wait?"

  Tilly looked at Sparke, her eyes seeming to sparkle.

  "I absolutely love getting presents, especially surprise ones," she said, picking up a kitchen knife and cutting carefully through the carton.

  "It's heavy, so probably not a box of chocolates." She grabbed the two halves of the top of the box and pulled them apart, the glue that held them closed snapping loudly. She peered into the box, then looked up to Sparke with an expression of mild shock.

  "It's a hand-held Substrate Compression Analysis Gauge. Peter, it's just what I've always wanted." She beamed and threw her arms around Sparke's neck.

  Brothers

  “My brother must be a heavy burden for your Order to carry,” said Father Massimo. “Even as a child, he was always a difficult member of our family, and I can only feel sympathy for you now that he is part of yours.”

  “Salvatore is a valued member of the Order,” said the Mason. “He has been of great service in his years as a Templar.”

  Massimo gave a practiced smile, bowing slightly. “You are too kind and far too generous in your love. My work for the Church has called me to many parts of the world and, more than once, I have heard of the problems he has caused you by his intemperate actions.”

  “His contributions more than make up for his transgressions.”

  “He is no longer in Genoa, I understand. He is here in the Holy Land perhaps?”

  “Like you, he is called by his duties to travel more than he would probably wish.”

  “Indeed, where do his duties take him now? I thought I heard it said that he was seen here in Acre some weeks ago.”

  The Mason knew enough of Massimo, and enough of his relationship with Salvatore, to know that any interest he had in his brother was not driven by fraternal love.

  “He was here but was sent on an errand. He will return.”

  “An errand? Alone? I always thought that your Order never travelled alone?”

  “Salvatore has proved to be very capable of looking after himself,” said the Mason. “He has been dispatched in the role of a messenger.”

  Massimo looked directly at the Mason. “I would very much like to see him again. If he should return to Acre during my stay here, I hope you would inform me directly so that we can have an opportunity to meet again. We so rarely have any chance to speak.”

  “Once he returns, I will make sure that you are informed.”

  “Informed immediately, I hope.”

  “Of course,” said the Mason, “immediately on his return.”

  The appearance of Massimo was never a welcome sign; he was a favored son of the Church, but not because he often brought praise or good news from Rome. The Mason knew him as a man sent by the leaders of the Church on tasks that required particular rigor and energy. Massimo had gained a reputation as a thorough advocate of the privileges of the Church and an enforcer of its authority. His dealings with the Order had often been fraught with discord.

  “What brings you to Acre Father Massimo?” asked the Mason. “I understood that you were fully occupied with the Inquisition in France.”

  “I have no preference as to where our church sends me. I am happy to be a simple servant of its will. It is the will of the Church that I come to Acre in order to make an assessment of the security of our possessions here. So, I come, and I make my assessments and report back to those whom God has placed in authority over us all. But enough of this friendly chit chat. We both have our wok to attend to and I have taken too much of your time already.”

  “What did that man want?” said the Grand Master as soon as Massimo had left.

  “He suspects something, but knows nothing,” said the Mason. “He is asking after his brother.”

  “Salvatore? Does he know he is here in the Holy Land?”

  “Yes, somehow he does. He has eyes and ears in many places. He wants to be informed as soon as he appears.”

  “A truly compassionate brother.”

  “Indeed,” said the Mason. “If Salvatore does return, there will be no way to avoid telling him.”

  “Can we stop Salvatore returning here?”

  “We have no way to contact him. We can only hope that when he returns, if he returns at all, he does so silently.”

  ***

  The days passed easily for Salvatore. The sound of his hammer and the smell of newly chiseled stone mixed with the salt air and the scents blown from the land that passed on their port side. Sailing against the main Mediterranean trade wind made the journey back to Acre a slow one. It took seven days at sea before Salvatore saw the harbor lights of Acre again. The crew of the boat knew their jobs and had no interest in anything beyond the ends of their noses. Salvatore whiled away the time working with hammer and chisel on the pieces of flagstone and timber that he had dumped in the hold from Dimitrios’s boatyard, carving, cutting and joining, always learning.

  As the headlands around Acre passed, he had the crew anchor and, at first light, had one of the crew row ashore with a message for the Mason, telling him only that he had arrived.

  By mid-morning, Salvatore could see a large boat with four rowers make its way through the anchored ships and head for his own craft. Seated at the rear of the boat were two men, both wrapped against the chill sea breeze.

  At one hundred yards, Salvatore knew that one of the figures was the Mason, the other was not wearing Templar garb, but dressed in the simple clothing of a priest. When the boat was fifty yards away, Salvatore recognized with a sickening jolt that the other man in the boat was his own brother. He dropped from the deck, into the hold, tearing apart the pack he used to carry his personal possessions. No matter what happened when his brother boarded the boat, Salvatore knew that he could not be found dressed in civilian clothing. He hauled on the Templar habit that had been crushed into the pack and tried to clean some of the dirt from his shoes and leggings, dragging his fingers through his matted hair to give it some semblance of order.

  The boats bumped against each other just as Salvatore emerged up the short ladder back to the deck.

  “My brother, my dearest Brother Salvatore,” beamed Massimo, his arms open wide in greeting.

  Salvatore bowed towards the Mason. “Brother,” he said, “I apologize for my rough appearance. It has been hard to manage on this small boat.” The Mason inclined his head the barest fraction. Only now did Salvatore turn to his brother.

  “It is a surprise to meet you in such a place.”

  “A surprise, and I hope a pleasure,” said Massimo. “You are almost clean shaven, I thought Templars were always so proud of your ful
l beards?”

  “It is not an essential rule of our Order,” said the Mason, “merely a habit.”

  “Indeed,” said Massimo. “You look as though you have travelled around the oceans, a regular saltwater man. So you are back. Back in an empty boat with no colleagues to share your journey.” Massimo looked down into the bare hold.

  “Not a truly empty boat, though. What is this you are carrying?” he gestured with one hand at the canvass wrapped bundle in the hold.

  “Nothing of any value.”

  “No? Well certainly it is nothing that is any secret, I’m sure. We servants of the Church have no confidences we are not happy to share with each other in our common duty.” Massimo stepped lightly on to the small ladder and dropped quickly into the hold.

  Before Salvatore could move, Massimo reached down and cut the single stand of rope that held the canvas sheet, uncovering the carved top of a wooden box.

  He turned to Salvatore. “Open it. Open the box, my brother. The Church is curious about your cargo.”

  Hug

  For Sparke, the experience of being embraced by Tilly was in the same league as being hit by the tsunami. It was a combination of new sensations that combined to be something much greater than its individual parts. Hugs had not been part of his Scottish childhood and even his short marriage was not marked by spontaneous displays of affection. As he was absorbing the impact of Tilly, he realized that his last hug had, in fact been from his ex-wife on the day their divorce had been finalized. It had been the sort of hug that people gave to people who had come in a disappointing second place in a race.

  "Oh, sorry," said Tilly, leaping back, breaking the spell that enveloped Sparke. "I forgot about your sore ribs. Did I hurt you?"

  "No, not even a little bit." Sparke's mind was blank. What did you say after a hug? "Batteries," he said pointing vaguely towards the box containing her gift. "Probably need to charge them fully before you try to use it."

  Tilly tilted her head and looked closely at Sparke. "Yup, batteries. Peter, this has to be just about the nicest present anyone has ever bought me. I have never had anything so thoughtful."

  "It was a tough call between a bunch of flowers or a hand-held Substrate Compression Analysis Gauge. Glad I didn't go for the bouquet."

  Tilly smiled, a huge, whole face smile without restraint. "You're really not going to read the instructions on your flying machine?"

  "Maybe, after I put it together. Nice to see what all the bits do, not just the whole machine. You can learn a lot from looking at the small bits of a thing."

  Tilly fished around inside the box her gift had come in, and pulled out the instruction manual. "What gave you the idea to get me this?"

  "Seemed obvious, I suppose. The whole idea of that machine is that it can measure the density of parts of something that have been put under a lot of compression, so even when things like carvings have been eroded away, you can still tell what the shape was by which parts of the stone have been compressed. Sounded a bit like x-ray glasses for an archeologist."

  "Exactly the sort of thing every girl dreams about." Tilly had folded herself into one of the kitchen chairs and immediately became absorbed in the manual. Sparke turned his attention back to the drone and slowly clicked the machine's parts together.

  Every so often, one of them would stand up and make coffee, but mainly, they sat in comfortable silence, in the cool of the stone-floored kitchen.

  The heat of the Tuscan day passed and by early evening they both realized that they had forgotten to eat anything since flying in that morning.

  "Food," said Sparke.

  "Food and wine," said Tilly.

  ***

  "Let's talk about plans then," said Tilly, placing her knife and fork on her empty plate and picking up her wine glass.

  "I have a map," said Sparke. "I loaded it onto my computer and categorized hilltops around Radda. We know that there was a Templar base here in the thirteenth century and it looks as though Doreen described having been there just over two hundred years ago. This is such a tourist area nowadays that if it was still in one piece, it would probably be an attraction. Since it isn't mentioned in any tour guides, and doesn't seem to have been written about since Doreen's book, we need to assume that either it has changed considerably, or was destroyed somehow."

  "Gotcha, or it could have been absorbed into a new building."

  "Uh huh. So, on my map I ran a little bit of a logic program. There are eighty-five distinct hill tops in the target area. I set up the logic to eliminate any with buildings that predate Doreen's book, then, because she said it was remote, I eliminated all those that are near the main roads that existed in her time or were too close to towns. That left twenty-one hills. It was a defensive building, so you don't tend to build castles on hills that are easily overlooked, so that eliminated another few. Then I picked the ones with no clear roads leading to the top. I would think that any castle or fortification must have had a road leading to it at some point, but I would imagine that any road would just disappear under the vegetation after a few dozen years."

  "Solitary hilltops, no old buildings, no roads leading to them?"

  "That's the logic I used. What do you think?"

  "It's a good place to start. You're going to fly your robot helicopter thing to these hills and take photos?"

  "That's the plan. I reckon that with the flying time of the drone, we can give it the co-ordinates of the hills and send it off to work and have some first images of all of the target hills by tomorrow night."

  "You don't have to pilot it?"

  "Nope, just plot the course, tell it what to take photographs of and hope it remembers where it started from. Just need to bring it back for a recharge every couple of hours."

  They were talking in a restaurant that consisted mainly of a large terrace overlooking the rolling Tuscan hills. One of these hills might be the one that contained whatever was left of the Templar Keep they were searching for.

  The sky turned from pale-blue to blue-black as they sat at their table, creating and abandoning theories of how the Templars might have used this Tuscan backwater as a base, and how that might be connected to the discovery of the final hiding place of the Order's greatest possessions in Scotland.

  "I get the feeling that we are looking for something, but we don't really know what it is," said Sparke as he drove them back to the villa.

  Tilly had her face near the open window of the car, enjoying the warm night air as it blew against her face. "I know what you mean. It's like playing a board game without knowing the rules. Still, it's a great game." She lifted her arm to the window and let the wind race over her fingers. "I like being here. I'd rather be here with you doing this than anything else I can imagine."

  Sparke stared intently at the road ahead, his mind a total blank as to what to say in response.

  Openings

  Salvatore, the Mason and Massimo stood around the carved wooden box, the canvas sheet that had covered it, discarded in a heap.

  "There is nothing of any value here," said Salvatore.

  "Nothing? You arrive in Acre on an empty ship, dressed like a beggar and with a face almost clean-shaven carrying only a single object and you tell me it is nothing?" said Massimo. "I am your brother, but I am also a servant of the Church.

  "So why does a servant of the Church have such interest in a simple box?" said Salvatore, his voice a hard challenge.

  "Do you," said Massimo, his upper lip twitching, "do you dare to tell me the limits of what the Church should and should not have an interest in?"

  "It is nothing outside the interest of our Order."

  "Your Order? Your Order? I think that it is clear that your Order sometimes forgets its greater duty. You are nothing more than an arm of the Church Militant. The will of the Church is, at all times and in all cases, paramount. It is the will of the Church, expressed through me, that you open this box and explain yourself."

  The three men stood on the bare deck in s
ilence, the two crewmen suddenly busy with something in the prow.

  "I will not tell you again," said Massimo, then turning to the Mason, "I trust you still have some trace of sense. I will have this box opened."

  The Mason nodded, then spoke to Salvatore. "Lift the lid of this box, we have nothing to hide here."

  Salvatore stared long and hard at his brother, and then bent down to the box. He placed his hands on either side of the lid, and then lifted it clear, placing it carefully on the canvas sheet near his feet.

  "What is this?" said Massimo, gesturing into the box. "Explain this."

  Salvatore said nothing, but bent down again and lifted the contents of the box out. It was a slab of stone, four inches thick and almost two feet square. Its surface was heavily carved.

  "It is an image of Fra Muratore, brother, said Salvatore. "I have been told that I am too lazy and should apply my time more profitably. My brother, the Mason, has tasked me with learning some of the stone-worker's craft."

  Salvatore glanced quickly back into the box, then looked at the Mason.

  "Our Order has need of men with many skills," said the Mason. "This is a small task I asked your brother to do as a penance."

  "I chose to use the image of the patron of our own town, you see?" said Salvatore.

  "What I see is arrogance and contempt for the privileges of the Church. The Church will not stand to have its servants mocked."

  A moment later, Massimo climbed out of the hold and dropped into the boat he and the Mason had arrived in.

  "He will, doubtless, send the boat back for you," said Salvatore.

  Truth and Consequences

  The Mason and Salvatore watched the boat carrying Massimo to the shore. Both knew that as soon as he stepped ashore he would not be happy to sit with his anger. He would act and by nightfall he would have written to his superiors in Rome.

  “Before you speak,” said the Mason, “remember that you have received total absolution for any acts you were obliged to commit in the pursuit of your task and any sins are already remitted.”