The Templar Key, By Number One Author (Peter Sparke Book 3)

by Scott Chapman

  “It was a case of putting yourself in their shoes and thinking as they would?”

  Sparke took a long look at his coffee cup. He avoided talking about his discovery whenever he could. The last thing he wanted to do was to find himself sounding enthusiastic.

  “I would say that there is no good reason to believe that people were either more or less intelligent then than we are now, so there is a reasonable chance that the logic they applied is similar to the logic we would apply. Barring the supernatural, of course.”

  So far, the conversation had gone much as Maryam had expected. Now it was going in a different direction.

  “When you say ‘supernatural’, you mean what, exactly?”

  “Well, just that. Things beyond nature and beyond science. From the little I know about the period, I think more or less everyone believed in spirits and devils and invisible creatures that could change the laws of physics. That sort of belief can probably impact a person’s thought process, but perhaps I am wrong.”

  “Could that be relevant here?” said Maryam.

  “I have no idea,” said Sparke. “Did your family believe in invisible powers or that supernatural creatures spoke to them?”

  “From what I know they were a very prosaic group of people. Are you including mainstream religion here?”

  “Absolutely,” said Sparke.

  “We will have the archive reviewed, but I am sure that there are no references to any strong religious leanings.”

  “So,” said Sparke, “if we work on the assumption that God did not tell your family to save this key, we should think on the basis that it has, or did have, some practical value. Being a key, the supposition could be that there was a lock that it fitted, and that whatever lay behind that lock had some value or importance. Passing the key on to the family heir makes perfect sense, I suppose, if you believe that you are not going to survive for long yourself.”

  “You seem to be saying that this is all pretty run-of-the-mill stuff then?”

  “No, there is something wrong. It is not what your grandfather received on the dockside of Smyrna. It is what he did not receive. The thing that is missing.”

  For the first time in the discussion, Maryam looked confused.

  “What do mean missing? There is nothing missing,” she said.

  “Yes, yes there is. You mentioned that Sebastian had time to fill this strong box with share certificates and bank details?”

  “Yes, it looks as though he had made quite a substantial amount of arrangements, in fact.”

  “Why did he not find time to write a few lines explaining what the key was for?”

  Maryam had spent so long thinking about what was in the box, it had never occurred to her to think what might have been missing. If anything, this proved that Sparke was the right person to turn to. It was time to stop this discussion and move into real activity. She leaned forward towards Sparke.

  “Peter, we will offer you one hundred thousand euros for a week’s work and a written summary of what you find or do not find,” she said. “You will have an absolute guarantee of anonymity and access to whatever resources you need.”

  Sparke did not hesitate.

  “Thank you for the kind offer, but no.”

  The Small Hut

  The next few days saw Bastian plodding through mountains of files full of flimsy paper copies of Turkish wireless communications intercepted by Royal Navy posts in the eastern Mediterranean. Fellows and The Boss told him that he needed to ‘get his ears in’ by immersing himself in Turkish military language.

  “German codes are excellent. The Turkish ones were created on the back of an envelope by some unqualified clown,” said The Boss. “Army and Navy both use the same code system, which is handy for us. Turkish naval officers on the two German ships seem to send communications back to Istanbul every day. What do you make of them?”

  “I’ve read about forty messages from the ships and about a hundred from Turkish Naval Command, sir,” said Bastian. “Virtually all the Istanbul messages are requests for information and almost all the messages from the ships are descriptions of what has happened over the past days.”

  “And that tells us what?” said The Boss.

  “That the Germans are in charge of the ships and they tell the Turks what is going on after the event.”

  “Good, good,” said The Boss. “What about the Army communications?”

  “Interesting thing there, sir. All of the messages refer to Turkish units, almost nothing from non-Turkish forces within the Ottoman Army.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Perhaps that suggests that they feel the Turkish troops are the only ones worth talking to, sir.”

  “Very good, Drysdale-Behier. Keep reading, keep thinking,” said The Boss. He smiled slightly towards Fellows, and then addressed Bastian again. “You are off to Malta tomorrow, and you’ll be on the Queen Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, sir. And when I get there, sir? If I can ask my duties?”

  “Just told you, reading and thinking. Read everything that comes over your desk, send a daily report to Mr. Fellows. By the way, your promotion is through,” added The Boss. “Fellows, do you have that packet?”

  Fellows, who had been sitting on his desk reading through the summary Bastian had written of the Turkish radio communications, reached over to a wire basket on his desk and tossed a package to Bastian. It contained details of his new promotion, travel documents, and a roll of dull yellow metallic ribbon, the braid used to denote rank.

  “I would nip off to stores if I were you, and get that sewn on before you head out.”

  Bastian saluted and walked out of the office towards the stores block where a tailor was engaged full-time altering uniforms and changing officers’ rank insignia. A rush job like this would move more smoothly for the cost a packet of cigarettes, but it would be done Navy fashion.

  The next morning Bastian began the long journey that would take him from the south coast of England to Malta, a fortress island with a Royal Navy base at the heart of its central harbor. From there he boarded one of the regular sailings of Navy tenders out to the fleet cruising in a blockade of enemy coasts in the eastern Mediterranean.

  Although Bastian had been wearing a Navy uniform for months, this was his first time aboard one of His Majesty’s Ships as a serving officer. To anyone watching, he looked like an officer and walked like an officer, but Bastian felt that he had a lot to do to become one. He was increasingly aware that throughout his life he had either done as he was told, or done as he had pleased. Now, there was a real risk that he would have to find a third way of doing things.

  After reporting to the officer of the watch, he was briefly introduced to the few officers in the Ward Room, then shown his cabin. It was a brand new super battleship and junior officers such as Bastian had individual cabins that were reasonably comfortable. The ship was a marvel. At a time when a fast cargo ship would make fourteen knots, HMS Queen Elizabeth could fly across the ocean at up to twenty-five, despite the fact that she was one of the largest and heaviest ships in the world.

  He dropped his kit onto his bunk then started the painful process of trying to find his way through the anthill of identical steel passageways that formed the arteries of the giant machine. Slowly and carefully he weaved his way through and up the belly of the ship until he reached the signals rooms near the back of the bridge.

  Most ships afloat in 1914 were built long before radio was in use, so radio equipment was often housed in what was, quite literally, a wooden hut built onto the deck. The term stuck, even on brand new vessels like this, and was now applied to all radio rooms. On HMS Queen Elizabeth there were two huts.

  The Big Hut was where all normal radio communications took place between the ship and the rest of the fleet and, when occasion demanded, with the Admiralty and the shore base in Malta. The Small Hut was to be Bastian’s new domain.

  As he ducked his head to enter the Small Hut, a piercing voice cut through the chatte
r and endless background hum.

  Sub Lieutenant Clapham was outraged, and outrage was something he was well practiced in. Normally, up to half of his conversations contained the phrase, “Does anybody know what the hell is going on?” At the moment he was far exceeding that quota.

  He was standing in the middle of the small room, holding a sheaf of flimsy message copies. Around the walls of the room sat three radio operators wearing headsets. They were obviously not part of his conversation. At Bastian’s appearance, one of the operators noticed him and shouted the rest of the room to attention.

  Clapham and the operators stood like statues as Bastian surveyed the room. Pieces of paper lay in piles on every flat surface. All three operators were dressed in varieties of standard naval uniform. Despite the relaxed atmosphere of the office shared by The Boss and Fellows, Bastian now realized that he had never seen a piece of paper lying around that was not being used at the moment.

  Bastian returned Clapham’s salute.

  “Mr. Clapham? I’m Lieutenant Drysdale-Behier.”

  “Of course,” said Clapham. “We had a signal this morning about your arrival. Although, there’s a bit of confusion as to what you might be here for. We thought we were fully crewed.”

  “I wonder if you could show me around, Mr. Clapham?” said Bastian.

  “Of course I can, but I wonder, could it wait until this bit of a flap is over? We’ve been ordered to collate all the Turkish Army communications for the past three days and we need to wait for the translator chap in Malta to wake up.”

  Of all the welcomes Bastian might have expected when he took over his new command, being told to wait until his subordinate could find time to deal with him was not one. He heard the sound of his own voice as though it was a stranger’s as he spoke to Clapham, pleased at his own ability to remain calm.

  “Have all the Turkish messages put on my desk, Mr. Clapham,” said Bastian, grateful to have something he could do immediately. “What other orders have you been given?”

  Clapham, pleased to be given the stage, immediately gave vent.

  “From what we know we are heading off to do bloody shore bombardment around the Bosporus, nursemaiding some old gun hulks, for God’s sake. Churchill wants us to sail up to Istanbul all guns blazing.”

  Bastian had never been told what to do in a situation where he walked into a room to take control and every other person had significantly more experience than he had. He did not know how a Small Hut should look or operate and he was not totally sure how a Sub Lieutenant, like Clapham, should talk to a Lieutenant in front of other ranks, but he was sure that he was not happy with how this all felt. He looked through the narrow doorway into an office behind the main room. He beckoned Clapham to follow and walked through, motioning for him to close the door behind him.

  “Mr. Clapham, if someone like Mr. Churchill has a hammer he will probably go out and find some nails to hit. Right now, I imagine we are the biggest hammer he can lay his hands on and the nail he wants flattened is Turkey. If the government wanted us to be in charge of the war, we would be the War Minister. Since we are not the War Minister, I suggest we save our energy for more practical things such as supporting the war effort by tidying up that signals room and getting the Turkish communiqués on my desk as soon as you can.”

  Clapham’s body temperature dropped by a degree or two as he recognized the tone of voice normally used by unhappy senior officers. Bastian paused for a moment; he knew there was something missing.

  “Before I left, I was told my job was to read everything and think about what it means. I will assume that your job is to help me do that. Is that a fair assumption, Mr. Clapham?”

  Clapham snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good, Mr. Clapham. Carry on,” said Bastian, who had just matured by five years.

  Work

  “If talking was an Olympic sport she could win gold for Australia,” said Sparke.

  “What did she say?” said Tilly.

  “A lot. She said a lot.”

  “But she couldn’t convince you to take the project on?”

  Sparke shook his head and sipped his unbelievably excellent Turkish coffee.

  “History is just a hobby. I’m trying to keep my real life in one piece, as far as I can.”

  “Must be a pretty interesting real life,” said Tilly.

  “Must it?” said Sparke, surprised at the idea. “I hadn’t thought. Anyway, she told me that, regardless of my decision, your project would not be affected.”

  “I know. In fact, we have been paid for the first part in advance. It’s an interesting field. Not much work been done on the Templars on this coast.”

  The two sat in the luxurious surroundings of the breakfast terrace. Below them the roofs of Istanbul dipped and rose like stone waves until the blue of the sea became visible in the middle distance.

  Sparke was about to ask Tilly more about the project when his phone rang. The ringtone was a little unusual for a day in early summer - it was the chorus from the tune ‘White Christmas’, specifically chosen so Sparke would recognize calls from this number as being what they were: an alert signifying that his company’s central crisis management system had been activated and that he needed to dial in immediately. He smiled at Tilly in apology and walked a few yards from the table to take the call. He had an old fashioned belief that talking on a phone when he was in someone’s company was rude.

  Tilly watched him as he spoke, seeing his smile evaporate and his face take on a deadly serious expression.

  “Sorry, Tilly,” he said, finishing the call. “It’s a work thing and I need to call the office.”

  Tilly smiled at him. She knew that Sparke was a crisis manager, but had never thought about what that meant in terms of day-to-day work.

  “Work is work,” she said. “I’ll be here all day with Maryam, so if you get free later, I’m sure she won’t mind you joining us. You might enjoy it, who knows?”

  “I have no idea how long this might take. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

  Although his mind was already focused on the incident that he was about to step into, he was surprised to find himself distracted by the image of a smiling Tilly, sitting in the splendor of the hotel’s terrace in the warm morning sun. He had received dozens of alert messages over the years and each created a tense excitement, a guilty pleasure in the challenge of facing a new situation. This was the first time that this feeling had ever been tempered with another thought: the wish that this problem would disappear and allow him to keep sitting here with Tilly, drinking Turkish coffee in the sun.

  In his suite he switched on his computer and, as the machine flipped into life, he saw a personalized message for him and a latest status board. He scanned the message and the latest posts, then spoke to the incident manager in Munich. He felt the outside world melt away as he became enveloped in the situation. It was a feeling that he loved, increasingly needed: the absolute knowledge that nothing else he could be doing was more important that the situation he was involved in.

  “Markus. Peter here. What’s the latest on this?”

  The retina projector made it unnecessary to even look at a screen, so he stepped out of the suite onto the balcony to enjoy the fresh morning air.

  “Peter, good to hear from you,” said Markus. “Sorry to put you on the team like this, but we have an anxious client who feels that you are needed today.”

  “OK, I can see where we are so far on the screen,” said Sparke, reading further on the incident board. The client was a Taiwanese company that ran a fleet of very large cargo vessels, shipping containers around the world. They were an excellent shipping line and, like many firms from Taiwan, they were still managed by the person who created the organization. They delivered personal service from the top of the company and expected the same from their suppliers.

  “Do I need to talk to the client?”

  “Soon, I think. Right now, he just wants to know that you are on the
job,” said Markus. “Here is the top line. The vessel is pretty much pinned to the rocks, but afloat, so we sent a damage crew down to inspect the hull. The ship shifted and forced the hull against the shore. A second rupture occurred and the automatic systems for damage control were triggered. The damage crew is trapped behind watertight doors, below the waterline. The impact caused quite a few of the containers to move, so access is even more dangerous. We have a crew cutting their way through to them now, but that will take more than twenty-four hours.”

  “I can guess there is a complication,” said Sparke.

  “According to our models, the ship is so well-wedged near the bow that when the next low tide takes place, the stern will drop far enough for the spine of the ship to snap. The bow will fall forward and the rest of the ship fall back. The people trapped inside will have no chance.”

  “What options do we have?”

  “That is the problem,” said Markus. “We have none.”

  A Deal

  Bastian’s father was not a miner, and certainly not a prospector, but as an engineer he felt that the basic task of finding evidence of different types of minerals in the rocks could not be beyond his grasp. At the start of the long, quiet winter season, he wrote to Hatchard’s bookshop in London, telling them he needed the best available works on mineral prospecting and asking them to select the five most relevant titles. They sent him three and explained that these should be enough - two more would result in repetition rather than expansion of what he wanted to learn. Having read all three books, he contacted Hatchard’s again and had them send him a set of mineral and rock samples of the type geology teachers used, and a kit of chemical tests that could verify the composition of a sample.

  When the samples arrived, the flat wooden box that held them required a new desk to be brought in to his father’s study. Much of that winter was passed with Bastian watching his father standing in the study, in front of the glowing fire, peering closely at the rock samples with the help of an eyepiece. Since four-year-old Bastian showed interest, his father could see no reason not to allow him to take part. Soon, his father was handing the child two samples of rock and challenging him to say which was copper and which was iron. When he got it wrong, his father would explain why that was so, and when he got it right, his father would check to make sure that Bastian had not simply guessed. Occasionally, when Bastian excelled, his father would draw himself up to his full height and address his son with deep gravity.