The Chaos Code

by Justin Richards

  They passed Katherine Feather in a seating area outside. She was deep in conversation on the phone, but smiled and waved them through into the main room. Harper and Venture were seated on either side of a large conference table. The lights were turned down low, and a map of the tiny island of Valdeholm was displayed on a plasma screen from Harper’s laptop computer.

  ‘The population,’ Harper was saying, ‘is virtually zero – just a few shepherds and fishermen and their families. But the island is apparently remarkable for having six medieval churches.’ He paused to welcome Matt and Robin and gestured for them to sit down.

  They found themselves seats further down the table as Harper explained that the churches were themselves out of the ordinary in that they were of a circular construction – unusual apparently for Scandinavia.

  ‘Not so strange if they were on Malta,’ Harper went on. ‘But it does seem likely that the Knights Hospitaller were here long enough to have some influence.’ He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. ‘I feel that the Treasure awaits us.’

  ‘The island may be tiny,’ Robin said, ‘but it’s still a very big place to have to search.’

  ‘They’ll have left clues for those who followed them to retrieve the Treasure,’ Harper said. He was exuding confidence.

  ‘Let’s Find Treasure,’ Matt said.

  ‘What?’ Robin stared at him in surprise.

  ‘Just something Dad used to say,’ he explained.

  She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said, though there was no way she could have known that. Probably trying to make him look less daft in front of her father and Harper.

  But they hadn’t noticed anyway. Venture was studying the map displayed on the big screen. ‘Can you mark the churches on here?’ he asked.

  ‘You think their positions might be important?’ Harper asked.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t be the first,’ Harper told him. He tapped at the keyboard and the picture changed to show another map of the island, marking the locations of the six churches. The island itself was shaped like a ragged lozenge, and the churches were all close to the edge.

  ‘Makes sense,’ Robin said. ‘They’re probably close to the fishing communities.’

  ‘They are,’ Harper agreed. ‘But even so, their distribution is interesting. Several are exactly the same distance apart. There have been several studies that have tried to discern a relationship between their positions. The most plausible explanation, so far as it goes, is that they form a pentacle.’

  ‘A five-pointed star,’ Venture said. ‘It isn’t obvious from this, and there are six churches anyway. Unless one pre- or post-dates the others by a significant period?’

  ‘No, it’s not that simple,’ Harper said with a laugh. ‘And I don’t think it’s very helpful either. He operated the keyboard again and a series of lines appeared, joining four of the churches to a point halfway between the other two. ‘Why these two should be different and merit a single point on the star halfway between them is not something that the theory really explains,’ he said.

  ‘And the pentacle isn’t perfect by a long way,’ Robin pointed out.

  ‘Wouldn’t it make a big difference which part of the church you drew the lines to?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Indeed it would,’ Harper agreed. ‘But each church has a Maltese Cross engraved on the floor at the centre of it’s circular structure.’

  ‘And the lines are drawn from the middle of the crosses?’ Venture asked.

  ‘In theory. But again it is flawed. To make the pentacle even begin to work, the professor who first suggested a pattern had to argue that some of the churches are built in the wrong places.’

  ‘Which rather makes a nonsense of it,’ Venture agreed. ‘You can hardly argue that the people who built them had a geometrical knowledge out of keeping with the era, if you also say they got it wrong.’

  ‘He makes a good stab at it though,’ Harper said. ‘He argues that the churches are in fact built on older, ancient sites of worship and that the exact location of those sites is now lost. So the churches approximate to them, which is why the pattern is flawed.’

  ‘Finding excuses,’ Robin said.

  ‘Is there any evidence of older sites?’ Venture wanted to know.

  Harper shook his head. ‘In fact, there is evidence only for a seventh church, which has since fallen into the sea when the cliffs collapsed. Another problem with a very flawed argument. There are other geometric theories too, but mostly based on patterns that need to include notional points out to sea or in the middle of nowhere. They are even less plausible.’

  The door opened and Katherine Feather joined them. She smiled and nodded to Harper, and Matt guessed that her telephoning had been successful – whatever she had been arranging was now sorted out.

  Venture was standing close to the screen, examining each of the locations of the churches in turn. ‘A Maltese Cross, in the floor of each church,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Isn’t that what firemen in the USA use as their symbol?’ Katherine said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Robin replied. ‘And the St John’s Ambulance Brigade.’

  ‘St John?’ Matt said. ‘Is that significant? I mean, can it be?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Venture said, without turning from the map. ‘Tell them, Robin.’

  ‘Both organisations use it,’ Robin said, ‘because the Maltese Cross was the symbol of the Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St John. The Hospitallers. The St John’s Ambulance – well, that’s obvious. And the knights were originally an order dedicated to medical help.’ She drew a Maltese Cross on a piece of paper as she spoke, and held it up for them to see – four triangles, their points meeting in the centre.

  ‘And firemen?’ Matt asked. ‘What’s that about?’

  ‘The Turks threw bottles of naphtha at the knights in battle. When they were covered with it, the Turks threw firebrands and ignited it, burning the unfortunate soldiers alive. The knights who weren’t on fire dragged their fellows clear and tried to help them. The first firemen. Sort of.’

  ‘Which is of academic interest,’ Harper said, ‘but hardly helpful.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong about that,’ Venture said. He took a felt pen from a flipchart stand at the side of the room and started to draw on the surface of the plasma screen.

  Katherine gave a gasp of astonishment and got up to stop him, but Harper stopped her: ‘Wait.’

  Venture was drawing a line connecting two of the churches. Although he drew it freehand, the line was perfectly straight. Then he drew lines from each of them to a point in the middle of the island, forming a triangle. Then he did the same with two more of the churches. The result looked like a bow tie.

  ‘Half a Maltese Cross,’ he said.

  ‘But only half,’ Harper told him.

  ‘And where exactly was the seventh church before it fell into the sea?’

  Harper worked the keyboard, and a small X appeared just off the edge of the island. Venture was already holding his pen over the exact spot. He connected the point to the last but one of the surviving churches, and again drew a line from each of these into the middle – another inward-pointing triangle. ‘Three quarters of the cross.’ ‘But that only leaves you one church,’ Katherine said.

  In answer, Venture drew a line from the last church into the middle of the unfinished cross. ‘We’ll have to measure it out exactly,’ he said. ‘But to complete the Hospitallers’ symbol, the Maltese Cross, we need to use a point just here.’ He drew another X on the screen, then drew lines from that point to the last church and into the middle, completing the cross. ‘This is the point they wanted us to find,’ he said tapping the pen on the X he had drawn. ‘This is the missing point in the picture. The one point we need to add ourselves in order to complete it.’

  ‘So?’ Katherine said, still puzzled.

  ‘So that,’ Robin told her, ‘is where the Treasure is.’

  They all stared in silence for a whi
le at the cross that Venture had drawn. Then Harper said: ‘You’ve ruined the screen, Julius, and I imagine the hotel will charge me for that. But it sounds as though it was well worth it.’ He turned to Katherine. ‘Are all the arrangements in place?’

  ‘I just need to let them know the exact point where we wish to dig. Sven will sort out any problems with local landowners.’

  Harper clapped his hands together in satisfied delight. ‘Then I think we should be on our way. No point in wasting any more time.’ His voice was almost trembling with excitement. ‘How soon can you arrange the travel?’

  A mere four hours later, in a noisy helicopter, with the island of Valdeholm just minutes away, Matt was just beginning to feel the same excitement welling up in his stomach. Was there really an ancient treasure down there, just waiting for them to come and get it?

  The reach of Harper’s influence was apparent as soon as they landed. Matt had guessed that they would have to spend several more days finalising permission to dig – finding local equipment and help, organising accommodation and transport from the mainland … He could not have been more wrong.

  Katherine Feather’s time on the phone had obviously been well-spent. Now Matt could see what she had been doing. The pilot set the huge helicopter down on the cliffs close to where they believed the treasure was hidden. As they flew in over the sea, Matt and the others had a good view of the grassy clifftop. There was no sign of habitation at all, and normally there would be nothing to suggest anyone lived on the island. It was like looking across a huge grassy plain, except that the side of it had been sheared off and dropped away almost vertically to the sea.

  But today was not a normal day for the island. Matt could see at once where they would be digging. It was a small, low hill, bulging up from the flat plain like a medieval burial mound or barrow. Clustered round it, like metal insects, were several yellow diggers and earth-movers and two off-road four-wheel-drive vehicles. Harper was serious, and he was in a hurry.

  It was cold on the cliffs, despite the bright morning sunshine. The long grass was blowing in the wind which whipped round Matt’s body, tugging at his coat and freezing his ears. He stood with Venture and Robin while Harper and Katherine spoke to a man in a suit who had been sitting in one of the four-wheel-drives.

  After a few moments, the man in the suit nodded and walked back to his vehicle. Harper turned towards Matt and the others and gave them a thumbs-up. Everything was in place, all the paperwork was already processed. They could begin.

  The man in the suit drove away. The other four-wheel-drive belonged to a man called Sven who had a neatly trimmed red beard that matched his fierce red hair. He was over six-feet tall and thin as the metal rods being hammered into position round the site. The seats in the back of his vehicle were folded down to form a low table, over which was spread a large-scale map of the area. From Katherine’s directions, he had already marked on the Maltese Cross, and he told them he’d double-checked the measurements using GPS satellites before coming over from the mainland to meet them.

  Venture and Harper examined the map, and discussed with Sven where best to start digging. As they spoke, another man arrived with a computer printout.

  ‘Ground penetrating radar,’ Harper explained, taking the long, folded sheet of paper. ‘No time to get the most modern equipment, I’m afraid, but this will probably do.’

  Matt had seen similar printouts before. It looked like a sonar trace from a submarine, and worked in much the same way. Radar was used to map out the rock and any other solid structure below the surface of the ground that would reflect back radio waves – metal, different types of soil even… He left Venture and Harper with Sven as they plotted the results of the radar trace over the map.

  ‘You really think it’s in there somewhere?’ Matt asked Robin.

  She was standing just inside the staked-out area, sheltering from the worst of the wind behind one of the enormous diggers. They had looked so small from the helicopter, which was itself perched like a metal fly on the clifftop a hundred yards away.

  She shrugged, pulling her coat more tightly round her. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘You been on a dig before?’ Matt asked her.

  She looked at him with ill-disguised sympathy. ‘Just a few.’

  They huddled into their coats and watched as Katherine directed the diggers into position, relaying instructions from Harper and Venture. Before long, the first chunk of grassy earth was bitten out of the ground and moved aside, revealing the rich, dark soil beneath.

  Harper had transferred the data from the radar into his laptop and used it as the basis for a computer model of the mound. It showed densely packed material – rock or stone – forming two intersecting double-lines through the mound. A cross. They set the diggers to work at either end of one of the lines.

  ‘Why not just dig down in the middle?’ Matt wondered. He was getting bored watching. The diggers seemed to have been at it for hours, peeling back layer after layer of topsoil. It was amazing how delicate the huge machines could be.

  ‘We want to preserve the context,’ Venture told him. ‘We dig along, making a trench, then we can see the history and what else is going on. The radar image shows what looks like two parallel lines forming each of the arms of the cross. I’d like to know what they are.’

  ‘What do you think they might be?’ Matt asked.

  Venture’s reply was interrupted by a shout from one of the men supervising the diggers. They ran to see what had been uncovered.

  It was an opening – a rectangular hole leading into the darkness. Weathered stone walls on either side formed a corridor into the very heart of the mound. Venture smiled and nodded as if this was exactly what he had expected. Perhaps it was, Matt thought – it made sense. A way into the treasure house. There was a shout from the other side of the mound, and Matt guessed that the other digger had uncovered something very similar.

  Sven brought torches. Harper inspected the tunnel opening, rubbing his hands together in delight. ‘I suggest we approach the problem from both ends,’ he said. ‘Julius, perhaps you and Robin would like to explore this tunnel, while Sven would you take the other end?’ he turned to Matt. ‘I assume you’d like to go with him, and see what your father has been searching for so diligently, hmm?’

  ‘Of course,’ Matt agreed. He felt both excited and nervous at what they might find inside. Would there be treasure, or just a short tunnel ending in a wall or earth?

  ‘What about you?’ Robin asked Harper.

  ‘Oh I’ll wait here for you to report back.’

  ‘You don’t want to see for yourself?’ Matt asked, astonished.

  Harper was already sitting down on the raised edge of the mound and opening his laptop. ‘I’ll see soon enough, and I should hate to miss the excitement by being in the wrong tunnel. If you find anything, come straight back and tell me. And after all, you’re the ones who’ve done all the real work here.’ He turned his attention to the screen. ‘I shall write up my account while events are still fresh in my mind, unpolluted by memory and emotion.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Venture asked him.

  ‘Hurry back.’

  Venture nodded. ‘See you in the middle,’ he told Matt and Sven, and together with Robin he stepped into the tunnel.

  Sven walked quickly to the other end of the mound. It was about fifty yards, and Matt had to almost run to keep up with the tall man. ‘They’ll be there before us,’ Matt said. Sven did not answer, but Matt could see his eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  They reached the very similar opening on the other side, the other end of the tunnel. Sven switched on his torch and shone it into the darkness. The walls, floor and roof of the tunnel were all made of stone. But between the stones, Matt could see the thin, dark lines of earth trying to break through.

  ‘I think, from what Mr Harper says, that you deserve to go first,’ Sven said.

  Matt was surprised. ‘Thank you.’ He wondered if Sven was willi
ng to let him take the lead as the tunnel looked about ready to collapse under the weight of the soil and earth above. But he switched on his torch and stepped into the tunnel without protest. Immediately the air felt damp and stale, the fresh wind cut off. He had to stoop slightly to avoid bumping his head. Glancing back he could see that Sven was bent almost double.

  ‘Have you worked for Mr Harper for long?’ Matt asked as he moved slowly forward into the gloom.

  Sven laughed, the sound echoing in the tunnel. ‘Since his people called me at six o’clock this morning,’ he said. ‘I am curator of a small museum in Dorpfelt, about fifty miles away as the blackbird flies.’

  They made their way slowly forward, Matt shining his torch on the uneven ground ahead. The floor was lined with slabs, but they were old and uneven. In places, the stone had lifted and the ground seemed to be forcing its way through into the tunnel. The walls were the same – old and broken. Here and there stones had fallen or crumbled away leaving debris on the floor and holes for earth to trickle through.

  Matt ran his hand along the wall, to steady himself as he picked his way over a pile of debris. He could feel the old, damp texture beneath his fingers – indentations, flaking stone, and then, suddenly, a straight edge. Surprised, he stopped and shone his torch directly at the wall.

  ‘Look at this,’ he breathed.

  ‘What is it?’ Sven was shining his own torch at the same spot. At the indentation in the wall where a small cross had been carved out of the stonework. ‘There’s another one here,’ Sven said, shining the torch further along, ahead of them.

  ‘And another,’ Matt realised, looking back towards Sven. ‘All along the wall.’ He turned and examined the opposite side of the tunnel. ‘Both walls,’ he realised. ‘Leading us onwards. Marking the way.’

  The torchlight seemed to be swallowed up by blackness when Matt shone it ahead of them. As they moved forward again, he saw why. A whole section of the tunnel roof had collapsed. The passageway ahead of them was nearly filled with earth and debris, creating a huge mound, that reached almost to the remains of the ceiling.