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

by Scott Chapman

  She took the key from Sparke’s hand, experiencing, for perhaps the first time in her life, the feeling of touching something that may have come directly from a real person, a person with a name and a past, who had lived eight hundred years before.

  “How many other people would there have been who would have known about weapons-grade metalwork and wanted to make a key, but did not have access to a locksmith in that region, at that time?”

  “Very, very few,” said Tilly. “This isn’t evidence, of course, just a plausible idea.”

  “It’s a bloody good idea, if you ask me. I mean, if it’s less effort to believe this than to believe any alternative idea then this is the most likely thing to be true until a simpler idea appears.”

  “True, true enough,” said Tilly. “Where did you get to with the Monastery?”

  “Well, we don’t know much, but we do know that the only known link between the period when the Templars were active here, and the time when Maryam’s family had the land in the area, was the Monastery,” said Sparke.

  “You mentioned some researchers, Armenians or something?”

  Sparke had been enjoying the discussion about the key, it was ancient history, quite literarily, but his own research had been much less antiseptic.

  “Ugly,” he said. “Very nasty. I had no idea there even was a war between the Turks and Greeks before we started this. It was pretty terrible and it’s still a touchy subject. After the war, Greece and Turkey basically kicked out numbers of each other’s nationals from their countries, and not in a nice way. The phrase, ‘ethnic cleansing’ had not been created then, but it should have been.”

  “And the Armenians, why did you mention the Armenians?”

  “They had the toughest time of all. Sometimes, you learn things that you wish you didn’t know. The word ‘genocide’ was invented for what happened to the Armenians then. As it happens, they have kept the best records of anyone in terms of property that was lost. They were Christians in a Muslim country at war and they sided with Turkey’s enemies.”

  “But the Monastery was Orthodox, right?”

  “Yup, but the Armenians have a great bunch of people who can research all the events around the period. I had an Armenian research group look into the records relating to the Monastery. I also asked them to research legal contracts and property deals with the company owned by the Drysdale-Behier family. Took them less than a day to come up with something.”

  “Are you waiting for me to ask what that was, or do you plan to tell me eventually?”

  “Since you ask, here’s the thing. The Monastery signed a contract with Maryam’s great-great-grandfather that gave him the rights to dig for any minerals he wanted in their land.”

  “That must have worked out well. Maryam’s family made a mint out of mining around there.”

  “Not so much for the Monastery. Their return for giving up the mining rights was one Ottoman lira a year, a little bit less than one British pound at the time.”

  The room

  “What is this key for?” said Bastian.

  Instead of answering, the old monk turned and walked out of the room. Bastian looked at his father, and then followed the tall figure onto the walkway that wound up from the water pool, now black in the evening light.

  In the years since Bastian’s father had first shaken the old monk’s hand, the family had become more and more involved in the affairs of the Monastery. The building had known good times and bad, but the last good time had been long ago. In some places the very structure of the building was in danger of giving way, so Bastian’s father had steel girders brought up from the coast over the High Pass or transported along the much longer valley road and these had been used to underpin several areas of the walkway. The dull grey metal columns stood in stark contrast to the ancient stone they supported, and Bastian could not stop himself from reading again the name of his family’s company proudly embossed on their surface.

  The monk stopped, and noticed Bastian looking at the steel column.

  “You have a great affection for your own work, I think,” said the monk.

  Bastian pressed the palm of his hand against the cold steel, feeling the raised contours of his family’s name.

  “Vanity,” said Bastian, smiling, “and some pride. Not terrible weaknesses. What is this key for?”

  The monk did not answer, but turned and disappeared into one of the rooms that led from the walkway, picking up one of the lamps that sat in alcoves cut into the walls. During his previous visits to the Monastery, Bastian had never been beyond the same small room where his father now waited, or the areas of the walkway where their workmen had been carrying out building work. Now he was heading into the heart of the complex, into an area he had not even known existed. He had imagined that the whole place was basically a deep, natural hole in the ground with a few rooms carved out of the surrounding stone. Now he found himself walking through a series of connected chambers that lead him into the living rock. Some rooms had apertures which let in some natural light, but these tiny windows were invisible from the outside, disguised in folds in the rock.

  The monk stopped at a carved doorway, larger than the ones they had passed through so far, with a rough wooden door.

  “The Sanctuary,” said the monk. Then, realizing that Bastian had failed to understand, said, “The Church?”

  “Yes, the church, of course,” said Bastian, not sure if anything special was required to enter a church within a monastery. Growing up in Smyrna had required him to visit churches of several Protestant denominations, high and low Roman Catholic, and at least two different Orthodox disciplines, as well as Jewish Temples and several Mosques, but this was new territory. It seemed that all he had to do, though, was be aware that he was entering the church, although he did copy the monk when he nodded towards an object at the far end of the room. He did not bow. His family had a deep thread of Swiss and Scottish Calvinism running through it, and bowing towards anything, particularly a piece of stone or plaster was thoroughly alien to him.

  The monk had no need of the lamp and passed it to Bastian as they walked through the chapel. The thin light from the lamp illuminated the room, occasionally creating a tiny flash as it caught on gold-leafed icons around the walls.

  An altar took up half of the rear wall, and Bastian was amazed to see the monk apparently disappear into what he thought was solid stone. He raised the small lamp and saw that a dark curtain disguised a gap between the wall and the altar. He squeezed through the narrow gap, catching the holster on his belt in the narrow space for a moment.

  Unlike the other passages in the Monastery, this one was narrow and uneven. The walls were mottled with shadow created by the rough surface of the stone. Bastian paused for a moment and raised the lamp to the wall. The surface was not unfinished stone, as he had first assumed, but a swirling mass of carvings, circles, curves and roughly cut letters. He turned to look at the monk.

  “What are these? Were they made by monks?”

  The monk ignored the question, but pointed back to the beginning of the passageway to where they had left the chapel.

  “The Monastery stops there,” he said, “and I stop here.”

  Bastian looked down and saw that the monk was standing next to a strip of smooth black stone, set into the floor. It had the look of a threshold, and one which the monk was, plainly, not going to cross. Beyond the stone the passage was a dark void. Bastian raised the tiny lamp and held it as far ahead of him as possible and slowly walked into the blackness.

  After a dozen paces the passageway came to an end. Directly facing him was a wooden door, black with age, but obviously solid. Reinforcing iron bands ran in a lattice work from top to bottom and side to side. Bastian searched the rough surface of the door for some time before he found what he was looking for.

  The keyhole looked like the eye socket of a skull. He took the key and slowly inserted it into the hole until he felt it hit the lock. Then he wiggled it slightly to make su
re it could go no further.

  He turned to look back down the passageway at the monk, but the weak light could only illuminate his outline. Bastian put his hand on the key and slowly turned it anti-clockwise. Nothing happened. There was no movement at all. He changed his grip on the cold metal and turned it the other way. Immediately he felt the key move slightly and heard a faint metallic click as the key engaged with the lock mechanism. He put more pressure on the key, turning again, but felt no further movement. The effort was hurting his hand as the metal dug into his flesh. He stopped. Then, frustrated, he rattled the key in the lock, turned it swiftly and snapped it round a full turn.

  The sound of the lock opening echoed through the narrow passageway and a tiny gap appeared between the door and its stone frame. Bastian leaned against the timber, but it took all of his weight to make the door move. The hinges squealed as metal ground against metal, filling the passage with noise. He heard the monk mutter something and turned to look at him. He could see that the monk had turned to face the other way.

  Slowly, Bastian walked through the black doorway. There were no windows here and the weak lamp could only cast a glow over half of the room. It was perhaps five yards long and the same width, the ceiling had been cut into a series of domes to cover the span and hold up the tons of rock above it.

  At the far end of the passageway, the monk had heard Bastian struggle with the lock, then felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the horrible sound of the hinges creaking. Then silence.

  For an hour, perhaps more, Bastian remained alone in the room. It was only when the lamp began to flicker and die that he left, locking the heavy door behind him and walking slowly back up the passage to where the monk waited. Bastian followed the monk back into the chapel. The room now looked brightly lit after spending so long in the dark passageway. He looked at the monk, but said nothing.

  The monk returned his gaze, and then looked down at the leather holster on Bastian’s belt. The cover was unclasped, the holster now empty.

  Bastian nodded to the monk, then walked past him, back towards the main walkway, holding the key in his hand.

  Izmir

  The return journey to the Monastery had none of the glamour of their first trip by private helicopter, but for Tilly is was less stomach churning. From Istanbul they caught a connecting flight to Izmir airport where Maryam’s people had arranged for a four-wheel-drive hire car.

  They spent the night in the city, planning to head into the hills at first light.

  “Is the old Pilgrim Road marked on the GPS?” said Tilly over dinner.

  “I don’t know if it’s exactly the same road, but there is a route which takes you from here up through the pass where the Redoubt is, and then into the Monastery valley. No idea how good the road is though. If it’s too rough we’ll have to come back and take the long route up to the north and come in from the new road.”

  “I could live without a long car journey,” said Tilly. “If there’s any way up through the High Pass I’d go for it. When was the last time you slept under canvas?”

  As part of their planning for the trip they had decided that it made sense to bring camping equipment in case they wanted to spend a few days in the valley.

  “Not for about five years,” admitted Sparke. “You?”

  “Work sometimes means that I need to rough it a wee bit, but not too often. Did a fair bit of hiking when I was younger, though, so it probably won’t kill me.”

  “You go out on archeological digs? Camp under the stars, brush the dirt off old bits of pottery, that sort of thing?”

  “You’re watching too much television,” said Tilly. “I’m more likely to be surveying sites with a 3D mapper and reading data from undersurface scanners. And you, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you doing this? A desire to be a part-time Indiana Jones? Bored at work?” Tilly paused for a moment, and then added, “Hiding from that Karin back in the office?”

  “You know, I don’t know,” said Sparke. “I suppose the opportunity just arose. I never really had to make that many choices at work. People made suggestions to me, and on the whole I said ‘yes’ to most of them. So I found myself wandering from university into my first job, then from that I ended up doing this, somehow.”

  “Life is what happens to us when we are busy thinking about other things,” smiled Tilly. “At least you have a job that you like, which is more than most people can say.”

  “I never thought about it like that,” said Sparke. “My job is…” he struggled for the word, “different from other jobs, I suppose.”

  “Certainly more exciting,” said Tilly.

  “Sometimes,” agreed Sparke. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  He paused to think for a moment.

  “You know, sometimes I have to work with some pretty interesting people, people who live lives that we can barely understand.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like, for example on that incident with the ship last month, the one off the coast of Africa. I was working with a Captain in the Royal Marines, her name is McCafferty, and we’ve worked together before. In fact she is not actually in the Marines, she is some sort of Special Forces type.”

  “I didn’t know there were women in the Special Forces,” said Tilly.

  “Oh yes, up to all kinds of strange stuff. Anyway, she once called me an ‘adrenaline junky’, which is a bit rich coming from someone who goes to work carrying a machine gun.”

  “And are you?” said Tilly. “Are you an adrenaline junky?”

  “It’s a bit scary, but when I am involved in an incident, a live critical incident, it makes everything else seem a bit pointless.”

  “You enjoy all the excitement, I suppose, and you’re good at it.”

  “The horrible thing is that I like it too much. If I don’t have something else in my life then I worry that it might be all that I care about.”

  “Nothing wrong with enjoying your job, is there?”

  “There might be, when your job is dealing with the misery of other people.”

  “This is a nice alternative, all this historical stuff?”

  “It was when it started. A bit of an intellectual puzzle, you know, trying to tie together a collection of facts. Before we came here I did some research on what was happening in this city when Maryam’s family fled. There’s a lot of controversy over the facts, but tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people died. A whole culture was wiped out within a few days. I mean I know it was almost a hundred years ago, but just because the misery happened a long time ago, doesn’t make it less real, does it?” said Sparke.

  Tilly picked up her wine glass and thought for a moment.

  “I suppose I like my horror and misery a safe distance away,” she said. “Medieval calamities are nice and academic.”

  “What about this medieval calamity,” said Sparke, “you really think there’s a link between the Templars and Maryam’s family?”

  “There was some sort of link, I’m sure of that. There’s the key, which seems genuine enough. I mean, since the Templars were so committed to personal poverty, it’s hard to see why such a key would even exist. The fact that is seems to have been passed down to her grandfather so carefully does indicate that it was more than just a nice keepsake. What about you, what does your intuition tell you?”

  “First of all, there’s no such thing as intuition. But just because something doesn’t exist doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. I can tell you what I know from the Armenian researchers. When the Turks recaptured Smyrna and this whole area, the Greeks were kicked out in a savage way along with almost everyone else who wasn’t an ethnic Turk. There was certainly a strong link between the Drysdale-Behier family and the Monastery, so if there is anything to be found, then the Monastery seems the place to look.”

  “It’s the only place to look, as far as I can see,” said Tilly.

  “And, if there’s nothing?”

  “From my side, there’s enough from our discove
ries about the truth behind the Battle of Jacob’s Column and the Templar involvement to publish some decent research and Maryam can doubtless get a television program with lots of conjecture over the key. So we would both win out of it. But not so much for you, I guess. Would you just go back to work?”

  “Suppose so,” said Sparke. “On the one hand, I want to see if there’s anything we can find, to see if we can draw any real conclusions here and get this finished. On the other hand, I really don’t want to stop.”

  “Because you love being a historical detective?”

  “Hmm, partly,” said Sparke. “But partly because I like spending time with you.”

  Child

  Bastian watched his child stumble along the veranda at the back of the house, marveling at how this creature had come into being from nothing. The boy had been walking before he was a year old and now talked easily. Almost everything he said was a question of some sort: “When is dinner? Why does grandfather always sit in a chair? Where does father go all the time? What are the soldiers doing?”

  Bastian’s patience seemed endless, and he treated every question as though it deserved an answer.

  “The soldiers are fighting other soldiers far away in the hills,” he said.

  “You work in the hills. Are the soldiers there?”

  “No, the soldiers are going much further away, to the other side of the desert.”

  The boy struggled briefly to understand, then immediately forgot about the question when he saw his mother appear with a tray of glasses and a jug.

  “Lemon fizz,” he said, intently, waddling towards the table.

  Clarise set down the tray and poured out the bittersweet yellow drink.

  “Everything is done now. We’ll see a little bit more of you?” she said.

  “Hopefully,” said Bastian. “The new shareholders want to put their own managers into the mines. They want me to stay on as General Manager, but there should be no more trips to Athens for a while.”