The Templars' Last Secret

by Martin Walker

  Bruno understood. “I get it. You and I had never heard any suggestion that Jerusalem was not really a holy site for Islam. But now we have. And as that word spreads, fed by rumor and hearsay, Israel’s right to Jerusalem becomes stronger and the Arab claim weaker, even if this document never existed.”

  “Exactly. You can’t prove a negative. And that makes me wonder about what Leah was really up to.”

  “On the face of it, she was sending a warning. But you’re suggesting that she was trying to build this rumor, this myth of the existence of the Testament?”

  “It fits, Bruno. Remember what you told me about trying to solve a crime—you start by building a hypothesis and then try to disprove it. This hypothesis of mine holds up. Assume for a moment that this is all some subtle Israeli intelligence ploy and that Leah, despite being known as a peace activist, was really working for Israeli intelligence. That might explain why she died. If the Arabs found out, they’d have killed her for sure. It would also explain why she had set up a false French identity card and bank account over a year ago, long before all this started.”

  “You’ve been reading too many spy stories.”

  “Maybe you haven’t been reading enough. I’ll ask the British Museum if they really sent some expert scholar to Israel to examine a long-lost document from the siege of Jerusalem. I’ll bet they didn’t.”

  Chapter 20

  Bruno had learned in the army that there were few more pointless exercises than to hang around a headquarters getting in the way when nothing was happening. In those days he had taken such opportunities to catch up on his sleep, knowing that when something serious occurred sleep would be hard to come by.

  So with the roadblocks in place, the helicopters cruising and competent gendarmes manning the communications, there was nothing useful for Bruno to do. Rather than sleep, he needed the exercise and mental relaxation that he found on horseback. He collected Balzac and drove out, whistling, to Pamela’s riding school with his dog, smelling faintly of Amélie’s perfume, sitting alert beside him.

  Breathing hard after a gallop with Hector along the ridge, Bruno looked down on his town as it nestled in the valley he knew so well. In the afternoon sun, the honey-colored stone of the buildings and the arched bridge glowed all the more richly. The stone and the red-tile roofs and the fresh green of springtime in the trees and gardens were all reflected in the river’s smoothly flowing surface. He gazed, enjoying the scene until he heard the familiar panting of Balzac finally catching up with his master and his horse.

  How strange and offensive that such a picturesque and peaceful scene should be under the threat of terrorists who had already destroyed towns and communities in their own parts of the world. He had seen the newspaper photos and TV images of Aleppo and Homs. How could anyone seek deliberately to eradicate the monuments and the history of their own people? He felt sure they must fail. The past could never be wiped away with the arrogant sweep of a violent hand; the past always survived because memories remained and children grew up hearing their parents’ tales of them.

  He knew that St. Denis had known war within living memory. For centuries of the English occupation it had lived through war, and then suffered another century of France’s own religious wars. And yet it had survived and prospered with its essence intact, the geography of the river and the rolling landscape shaping its character as a trading point, the fertile land and temperate climate making it a region that could feed far more than its inhabitants. But even as it attracted invaders and soldiers, it could always hold out, endure, adapt and, if need be, rebuild. Like their people, towns were resilient.

  He nudged Hector with his knees, loosening the reins, and they set off down the trail through the woods at a gentle trot so that Balzac could keep up. When the woods thinned and the trail became a hunter’s path, he increased the pace to the kind of canter that Hector could keep up for hours. Then, struck by an idea, he turned up another trail that led to the cabin used by the hunting club of St. Cyprien, mostly formed of men he knew. Two of them were skinning rabbits on the big tree stump outside the cabin when he arrived.

  “You can’t be going hunting with that,” said one of them, pointing at the gun on Bruno’s belt. He was a man whose face Bruno knew, but he’d forgotten his name. Bruno shook his head, laughing.

  “Seen any strangers around here?” he asked, after shaking hands and accepting a small glass of wine from an unlabeled bottle. He’d have preferred water, but wine was the custom. “You may have heard, a gendarme got shot at Siorac by two guys in a white van, and you’ll see a lot of helicopters and roadblocks, but this time the cops won’t be stopping you to check if you’ve been drinking. We think they’ve tried to hole up somewhere in the area. They’re armed and dangerous, so don’t get close, don’t confront them, but let me know and we’ll check the place.”

  The two men shook their heads but said they’d pass on the word to let him know. Bruno shooed Balzac away from the pile of rabbit guts, mounted Hector once more and trotted back to the stables at the riding school. Back at his office he began calling all the hunting clubs in the area. Mostly, he had to leave a message, but usually he knew someone in each club and could track them down. He asked them all to let him know if any strangers were spotted, or a white van, or if any remote vacation home or gîte suddenly seemed to be inhabited.

  “Networking the hunting clubs sounds like a good idea for other village policemen,” Amélie said, writing in her notebook. “That’s another recommendation for my report, like your e-mail system to all the local hotels and campsites.”

  “I’m afraid your report has been overtaken by events,” he said, smiling at her.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s been really interesting, giving me an insight into police work that I’d never usually get to see.” She bent down to stroke Balzac, who was nuzzling at her knee. “I hope I’ve been useful.”

  “More than useful, you’ve been a godsend,” he said. “You’ve got a gift for this, not routine police work but tackling this kind of emergency. I know you’re planning on becoming a magistrate and building a political career, but I think you might find detective work more congenial.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “An English friend once told me of some statesman who said that all political careers were doomed to end in disappointment and usually in defeat. I imagine all politicians start off as idealists, hoping to achieve something, but politics is a rough game. I think you’re impatient to achieve things, but you’re likely to be endlessly frustrated. You must have thought about that.”

  “Of course I have. But with a legal qualification, I’d have a second string to my bow if politics didn’t work for me. And I think I have a talent for it.”

  “No question, but you also have a talent for police work, for detection, or even for security, intelligence.”

  “That’s not me,” she said firmly.

  “Maybe not, but I’m sure you’ve realized that we in Europe are in for a long struggle. London, Madrid, Paris—they’ve all been attacked. This isn’t going to stop, and we’re going to need a better, more subtle kind of security to defend ourselves against it, fresh minds, new thinking, people like you. It’s your country, too.”

  “Are you sure about that, Bruno? One reason why I think politics makes sense for me is that it’s one career where the color of my skin works in my favor. They need people like me because a lot of us have votes. Would I be as desirable to a police force? To an intelligence agency? To a bunch of detectives who find it hard enough to accept female colleagues, let alone a black one?”

  “I can’t challenge that, but have you felt the slightest whiff of racism here in St. Denis?”

  “No, but St. Denis is unusual, you have a good mayor and it’s a small town. Believe me, it’s not like this in Paris or Marseille.”

  “But you accept the possibility that it could be if we do things right.”

  “Yes, I do accept the possibility, but I think
I can do more to bring that about through politics than I ever could in the security services.”

  “You could be right, but it’s their loss.”

  “Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment. And don’t forget I have another week to follow you around and watch you work.” She grinned. “You may have changed your mind about me by then.”

  He grinned back. “We’ll see. Now I’d better head off. I have to cook Horst’s bachelor dinner and then be back at the gendarmerie at eight tomorrow morning for another security meeting. I’ll see you here when I’m done.” He handed her a spare set of keys to the mairie and his office. “And enjoy your dinner with Florence. Give her and the children my love.”

  He collected the salmon from Ivan, who had kindly gutted it and removed the scales, picked up the young asparagus and lemons from Marcel and the tarte au citron from Fauquet. He drove home to feed his chickens and to collect his cooking knives, the new potatoes and some herbs from his greenhouse and mâche from the garden. Then he headed with Balzac for the baron’s house, where the red wines had been decanted and the table had been set for ten. Jack Crimson and the baron were already drinking champagne in the kitchen, where Bruno unwrapped the fresh salmon and invited the two men to admire it.

  “Do you want to use that for the salmon?” the baron asked, pointing to the top of the wall cabinets where a meter-long copper poaching pan for fish had been gathering dust, unused for years.

  “No, thanks. I’m planning to bake it.” He began to wipe the inside and the skin of the salmon dry with a paper towel.

  “I don’t have a roasting pan big enough.”

  “I’m going to do it on a rack, wrapped in foil. And I’ll put more foil on the bottom of your oven to catch any drippings.”

  He chopped the tarragon and parsley and mixed the herbs with the zest of three lemons, a head of finely chopped garlic, a tablespoon of olive oil and salt and pepper. He used his favorite knife to score eight deep slashes into each side of the fish, stuffing a generous portion of his herb paste into each slash. He then sliced two of the lemons and used them along with half of the herb paste to stuff the salmon’s stomach cavity. He spread a thin film of Dijon mustard over the top of the salmon and then added the remainder of the herb paste and squeezed the juice of two lemons on top.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said as he finished wrapping the fish in foil. “When the guests arrive, I’ll put it into a very hot oven for about fifteen minutes, then turn it down to medium heat while we eat our asparagus and cook the new potatoes. Now I just have to prepare the asparagus and the salad and make a vinaigrette.”

  “The chef deserves a drink; champagne, scotch or wine?” Crimson asked.

  “A glass of champagne, please,” Bruno replied. “Do you know all the men who are coming?”

  “All the locals, of course, and Horst, and I’ve also run across another of his guests, an English friend named Manners. He’s a former soldier like you, retired as a colonel and now a bursar at one of the Oxford colleges.” Crimson poured out a glass of Monthuys for Bruno and refilled his own and the baron’s.

  “I knew his father as well, also a soldier, who served around here with the Resistance during the war, on one of the Jedburgh teams,” Crimson went on. “They were dropped into France before D-day to organize parachute drops of weapons and to train the Resistance fighters.”

  “Was that when that second important cave was found?” Bruno asked.

  “I think so. They also got caught up in some of the infighting between the Communists and the Gaullists in the Resistance. It was a difficult time. But you’ll like Manners, and his American wife, Lydia, who was with him when they and Horst found the new cave. She’s a stunner, now also at Oxford, a curator at the Ashmolean Museum.”

  “So with you and me, Horst and the baron, Gilles and the mayor and Manners, that makes seven. Who are the other three?”

  “One British and two German archaeologists,” the baron replied. “I think the two Germans arrived today, the ones who will be staying at your place. The British one is staying with Crimson, a Professor Barrymore. He’s upstairs changing. He got here about an hour ago, very excited about this new cave the seismic experts have found at Commarque. He said Horst was so enthusiastic about it he wasn’t sure he’d get here in time for dinner.”

  “He’d better,” came a voice from the kitchen door. It was Gilles, carrying a big cheese platter in both hands. He greeted his friends and accepted a glass of scotch.

  Bruno began washing the asparagus while the baron trimmed it, bending the stem of each one until it snapped naturally. Gilles washed and chopped the salad, all of them working companionably side by side as they had done often before at hunting feasts and their own dinners.

  By the time the mayor arrived and Barrymore came down to join them, the salad and vinaigrette had been prepared along with the bowl of ice water that Bruno would use to blanch the asparagus once it had boiled for three minutes. Crimson was opening a bottle of sparkling rosé wine as young Lespinasse dropped off Horst, Manners and the two Germans. Bruno set the oven to 250 degrees C for the fish, checked his watch and put the kettle on to boil for the asparagus.

  Even without being told, Bruno would have known that Manners had been a professional solider. He stood erect but relaxed, a half smile playing on his face as he strove to be pleasant to a group composed mainly of strangers. He watched and listened carefully to the others and thought before he spoke. When he did say something, it was short, to the point and in good French. He also seemed comfortable talking German to Horst’s friends. In Bosnia Bruno had come into contact with British officers forged in a similar mold, or perhaps a similar school. They were invariably polite to their men, attentive to their sergeants and usually ready to take responsibility. But then, he thought, the British had ended conscription and returned to its tradition of a small professional army before Bruno had been born. The French army by contrast still retained the heritage of the levée en masse that went back before Napoléon to the revolutionary wars.

  The conversation ebbed and flowed as the meal unfolded, the fresh asparagus in melted butter, the salmon and new potatoes with the Jaubertie white wine. The mayor, Horst and the baron chose the merlot from Château Laulerie instead. Horst had decreed that the language of the evening would be French, and the St. Denis contingent was entertained by reminiscences of archaeological digs in Scotland, Germany, France and the Holy Land until Bruno cleared the plates and brought in the salad. The cheese board circulated as the mayor asked about the impact of DNA upon their profession.

  “I recall your lecture at the museum in Les Eyzies, on the way the DNA had proved there had been interbreeding between the Neanderthals and their Cro-Magnon successors,” the mayor said to Horst. “Have there been new developments?”

  “Tell them of Professor Sykes, your Oxford colleague,” Horst said to Barrymore. He was small and dapper with curly red hair, brushed into order with hair oil. He had slipped into a pocket the tie he had been wearing until seeing that the others were all casually dressed.

  Bryan Sykes was a genetics professor at Oxford, Barrymore explained, one of the world experts in the field who had worked on the five-thousand-year-old DNA of the so-called Iceman found frozen in the Alps, and had traced a direct descendant, a woman living in modern Britain. He had also used DNA to prove that the bodies found in Ekaterinburg in 1991 were indeed those of the czar of Russia and his family, slaughtered by the Bolsheviks. More recently, he had explored the mitochondrial DNA through the female line back to the original Eve.

  “Not Adam’s consort of the Bible,” Barrymore added. “This Eve was an African woman who had lived between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years ago and was our most recent common ancestor, the woman from whom all known human beings are descended. Sykes explored the DNA further to establish seven subgroups from whom almost all modern Europeans are descended and called them ‘the seven daughters of Eve.’ The most important, whom he called Helena and w
ho had lived in this very region of southwestern France, was the direct ancestor of around forty-five percent of modern Europeans.

  “The next-most-important ancestress had been named Jasmine; she came from modern-day Syria or Israel and was ancestress to around seventeen percent of modern Europeans,” Barrymore added. He raised his eyebrows and looked around the table mischievously. “I suppose I should write a letter to the Times suggesting that this could mean lots of those poor Syrian refugees are simply rejoining their family members long ensconced in Europe.”

  Bruno was charmed by the idea that almost half of Europe’s population came from a single woman who had lived in his part of France. But why name her Helena? he wondered. It sounded Greek to him. Why not name her Francette or Marianne, or even Europa?

  “Is there any map or graphic that could give some indication of where Helena’s and Jasmine’s descendants had spread?” Bruno asked. He had long considered the various wars of the twentieth and earlier centuries as so many civil wars between the various European tribes. Even more than that, he thought, the conflicts were family quarrels!

  “You’ll find various attempts on the Internet,” said Barrymore. “One of my postgraduate students is trying to do something more detailed. And I know our friend Horst, after his latest work on the Venus figurines, is wondering whether there is any connection between our great ancestress Helena and her sisters.”

  “I’ve been looking in particular at two rare examples of Venus found near here,” Horst said. “One comes from the cave of Laugerie Basse. She was dubbed by her finder La Vénus Impudique, or ‘the Immodest Venus,’ since unlike most of the classic Greek Venus figures, she made no effort to conceal her breasts and vulva with her hands. She’s slim and athletic, a striking contrast to the overblown matrons being carved in the same period. The other was also a slim young woman, whom I know to be a particular favorite of Bruno, carved at a time about midway through her pregnancy. Known as the Venus of Abri Pataud, she came from the cliff behind Les Eyzies, where she was found in 1958, so named because Pataud had been the family that owned the land.”