by James Becker
“So what you’re saying is that if this figure was meant to represent Mary Magdalene or one of the French queens or somebody, then the name of that person might well be the clue to deciphering the encrypted text?”
“Possibly, yes,” Mallory replied, “but if it was the Magdalene, and I guess that’s the most likely contender, then I would expect at the very least the figure to have a halo, or for there to be some other reference or object that would confirm her identity.”
As he spoke, Robin picked up the photograph again and began looking carefully at the area above the figure’s head. After a few moments, she muttered an exclamation and pointed at two lines she had just spotted.
“Unless I’m guilty of wishful thinking,” she said, her voice high with excitement, “that could well be a circle behind her head. Not the kind of ring of light that’s characteristic of paintings done after the late medieval period, but the solid white object that was used to indicate divinity in those early days. So if I’m right and I’m not seeing things, this could well be Mary Magdalene.”
Mallory looked carefully at the marks she was indicating.
“You may be right, you may be wrong,” he said, “but Mary was one of the very few women who fulfilled any kind of role in the early Christian church, and so if the Templars were looking for a female figure who could be identified later and who might be associated in any way with the order, she would be a pretty good choice. It’s certainly worth a try,” he added.
He took a sheet of paper from his computer case on which he had transcribed the final and so far undeciphered section of the parchment Robin had discovered what seemed like months ago locked inside the medieval book safe. Then he took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out “Mary Magdalene” in a variety of different forms, including the spelling in Latin, in modern and ancient French, in Occitan, and any other language that the Knights Templars might have used at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
And then they began a process of trial and error, using the name of the Magdalene as they applied Atbash decryption—the oldest and simplest possible letter substitution encryption method—to the text.
But absolutely all they succeeded in doing was repeatedly turning one piece of gibberish into another, equally unintelligible, piece of gibberish.
“That’s not it,” Mallory said at last, throwing down his pencil in frustration. “And I suppose when you think about it, it’s not that likely a code word anyway, because even the English version contains the letter M twice, A three times, and E twice, which would make a code word of only thirteen letters pretty much unusable. Any code word where only three letters represent over half of the possible letters really isn’t going to work, because there’d be so much repetition. That figure may be Mary Magdalene—I suppose she is the most likely candidate—but what we’re looking for definitely isn’t just her name. We’re missing something here, and I don’t mind telling you I have no idea what it is.”
“Nor have I,” Robin said, “but what I do know is that there simply must be something on the other chest. Something hidden within the scrollwork that would make sense of the image. So all we have to do is find it.”
“It sounds easy if you say it quickly,” Mallory said, “but absolutely the only thing you found was that circle. If it is a circle, of course. But you’re right. The rest of the clue has to be there somewhere, so we need to take another look at it.”
For the next few minutes, they sat side by side at the small desk, both concentrating on the printed copies of the photographs in front of them. And then, at almost the same moment, they each found something that might possibly help clarify what they were looking for.
“You go first,” Mallory said.
“I’ve found a couple of marks that might be the shape of a box,” Robin said, almost doubtfully. “These two sort of small letter L shapes could be the bottom corners of it, though the corresponding marks of the top aren’t anything like as sharp, almost as if there’s something on top of the lid, or maybe the box is supposed to be open and those shapes are objects that are sticking out of it.”
They both stared at the marks she’d found. They were faint, and definitely subject to interpretation—and of course misinterpretation—but what convinced Mallory she was on the right track was the fact that the two small marks she’d found lined up precisely, one with the other. He still had no idea what it could be representing, but at least the marks appeared to him to be deliberate rather than accidental. And that was good news.
“What have you spotted?” Robin asked.
“It’s this circle shape,” Mallory began, a smile spreading across his face. “It’s not a lot, but I’ve found what looked like the marks of several other circles inside the outer one that you spotted first.”
Robin looked at him suspiciously.
“And that means something to you, does it?” she demanded.
Mallory nodded slowly. “Actually I think it does. The figure of a woman, most likely Mary Magdalene, and a drawing of what looks like a large number of concentric circles? Oh yes, that very definitely means something to me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s too late to head off today, but we should get back on the road first thing tomorrow morning. We’ve got a trip to make, and if my hunch is right, we might be able to read the plaintext of that parchment by tomorrow night.”
16
Via di Sant’Alessio, Aventine Hill, Rome, Italy
One of the more unusual aspects of the organization based on the Aventine Hill was that although it was a very secure unit, particularly the intelligence section located in the windowless basement, there was almost nothing in the building—apart from the computers and associated equipment—that would attract even the most sophisticated thief or burglar.
There were a lot of old and even ancient books stored in the basement, books written in Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and even more stored as collections of scanned pages on the massive hard drives of the secure local area network, which was both physically and electronically secure because no part of it was connected to the Internet. But none of these volumes, actual or virtual, had any particular value on the open market. The only people likely to be interested in them were academics working in various somewhat obscure fields, and in any event the contents of most of the books were already out there in the public domain.
But despite this, security was extremely tight, which was why Marco Toscanelli never even attempted to take his unregistered personal mobile phone into the building: the portal scanners would have detected it the moment he tried to gain entrance. Instead he carried only his “official” mobile, the one issued to him by the organization, and left the other mobile locked securely in the glove box of his car.
Ever since he’d made the call to one of his contacts in Britain, he’d been expecting a text confirming that his orders had been carried out, and had made a point of leaving the building for lunch every day and checking his phone on his way to or from the restaurant of his choice.
That day, when he checked his mobile, there was a text message, but the content wasn’t what he had expected to read. Instead of a brief “Job done” or something similar, the text was an equally terse two-word message: “Call me.”
Toscanelli checked his watch. He had time to call the man before he needed to return to the building, so he called another unregistered mobile, this one with a British number.
“You asked me to ring you,” he said, without preamble.
“Yes, I did. There’s been a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Terminal, really,” the other man replied. “The team we contracted to do the job failed. One of them didn’t make it, and the other one is in custody.”
Toscanelli muttered a particularly foul Italian oath.
“What about the targets?” he asked.
“As far as I know they walked away, or rather they drove away,
after the contact.”
Toscanelli repeated the oath with even greater emphasis. “Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to talk to the member of the team who was wounded, because he’s still in intensive care at the hospital. He may not even survive. Contact took place at a parking area on a road in Devon, and by triangulating the main target’s mobile we’d established that she was in a hotel in Okehampton, a few miles west, earlier that day. Presumably she and the man then left, the team followed them and forced them to stop on the road, and then it all went wrong. I’ve no idea if the targets’ car was damaged or if they were injured, or where they went.”
“Can you find out?” Toscanelli demanded.
“I’m trying, but right now I have almost no sources of information I can use. The woman’s mobile is still off the network, and so far I’ve not been told her car has been spotted by any traffic cameras. That information takes a long time to collate unless it’s a high-priority investigation, and because I’m not officially involved I have to tread carefully. I can’t show too much interest in an investigation that I’m not a part of.”
“So what you’re telling me,” Toscanelli said, “is that until she surfaces, both of them are off the grid?”
“Exactly. Until then, there’s nothing more I can do.”
Toscanelli was briefly silent, considering his options, then issued another request.
“Can you do that?” he asked.
“Yes, but it will have to be low priority, which means I might not get the information until a day or so later.”
“That will have to do. Put it in place.”
Toscanelli ended the call a few moments later. His mood, when he walked back into the building, was dark.
17
Chartres, France
“Are you absolutely certain about this?” Robin asked, for at least the fourth time since they’d caught a morning flight out of Gatwick Airport.
They’d flown to Paris, experienced virtually no delays at the arrival airport because they were each carrying only a cabin bag, and Mallory had quickly hired a car. They’d cleared Paris and picked up the A10 autoroute, L’Acquitaine, at Palaiseau on the southwestern outskirts of the city and headed straight for Chartres. At Ponthévrard the autoroute had divided, L’Acquitaine turning south for Orléans, while they continued southwest on the A11, L’Océane.
Mallory didn’t reply for a few moments, just pointed ahead through the windshield of the hire car at the green copper roof of the cathedral, which was then clearly visible.
“The short answer,” he said, “is no. I’m not sure, but the only thing that made sense to me from trying to interpret those two pieces of carved metal was that the female figure most probably was Mary Magdalene, and the cathedral at Chartres is dedicated to Notre Dame, to Mary. Obviously there are lots of other cathedrals and churches dedicated to or named after the same person, but it was the circles that clinched it for me.”
“You still haven’t explained what you think that is,” Robin complained.
“Actually I thought you would have guessed it by now. As far as I know, there’s only one church anywhere in the world where there’s a pattern of concentric circles. Quite a famous pattern, in fact.”
Robin’s face clouded as Mallory glanced at her. Then she suddenly brightened and snapped her fingers as realization dawned. “You mean the Labyrinth?”
“Exactly. It’s one of the most famous features of that cathedral, and both the building and the Labyrinth predate the purging of the Knights Templar order by about a hundred years, so the man who manufactured the scrollwork would almost certainly have known about both.”
Mallory steered the hired Citroën off the autoroute and stopped at the tollbooth to pay the fee. Then he drove on toward the center of the city, passing the Aérodrome de Chartres-Métropole on his right. Flying directly to Chartres would have been more convenient, but the flight times simply hadn’t worked out.
He drove in toward the city center, the sat nav built into his smartphone navigating him perfectly competently. They were both keeping their eyes open for a convenient parking place, and when they turned down the Boulevard du Maréchal Foch Mallory spotted at least half a dozen spaces on the opposite side of the street by the bank of the river L’Eure. He waited for a gap in the traffic coming toward him, then swung the car across the road into an unoccupied space.
“And I suppose now you’re going to tell me that that was the easy bit,” Robin said as they climbed out and Mallory locked the doors. “Just getting here, I mean.”
He nodded.
“It probably was,” he said. “We’ve got the obvious problem of discovering precisely where we should be looking. I’m pretty certain we’re in the right place, because of those two carvings, Mary Magdalene or Notre Dame, and a simple outline of the Labyrinth. It’s the next step that’s going to prove the tricky one, trying to find out exactly which bits of carved text or whatever we are supposed to be looking at.”
The vast bulk of the cathedral loomed in front of them as they made their way toward it.
“It’s a big place,” Robin said, “and I suppose right now you don’t have any idea where we should start looking.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Mallory replied. “I haven’t. I’ve never been here before, and to me the obvious way to tackle this is to have a wander around the entire building, inside and out, and just see if anything strikes us. Then hopefully we can try to narrow down the search area.”
Robin nodded agreement and walked on a few steps before she slowed to a halt to look up at the vast bulk of the cathedral.
“What?” Mallory asked.
“I was just thinking,” she replied. “This building’s been here for a long time, right?”
“Yes. I think it’s tenth century or thereabouts.”
“So whoever prepared that clue to be incorporated on the lids of the chests would have known about the building. That’s obvious. And he would also have known, I presume, that in a place of this size there are going to be dozens, perhaps even hundreds or thousands, of carved inscriptions decorating the walls, the tombs, and no doubt all sorts of other bits.”
She glanced at Mallory, who nodded agreement. What she was saying exactly mirrored his own opinion.
“And your point is?” Mallory asked.
“My point is that if that anonymous Knight Templar who started this hare running knew all that, he must surely also have known that he would need to provide more information or better directions to show anyone following the trail where they should be looking.”
“That makes sense. So?”
“So I think that outline of a box or whatever it was in that scrollwork must be significant. That must be the final clue. The outline of the woman, Mary Magdalene, told you the name of the place you should be looking, and the drawing of the Labyrinth confirmed the precise location, the cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres. The image of the box must mean something, and we need to work out exactly what so that we don’t waste time looking in the wrong places.”
“Good thinking. But I still think it would be helpful to take a look around the cathedral before we do anything else, just to get a feel for the place.”
“Absolutely. I agree. We need to do a quick visual survey, and pick up a decent guidebook written in English, then find a hotel for the night because it’s already late afternoon. Then we should do our best to work out which bits of the place we ought to be looking at when we come back here, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I do like a woman with a plan,” Mallory said, grabbed Robin’s hand, and led her toward the entrance of the imposing cathedral.
It was already late afternoon, but despite that the building was still crowded, groups of tourists being shepherded from one area to another under the watchful eyes of their tour guides and t
he various uniformed security guards stationed at intervals throughout the echoing interior of the cathedral. Notre Dame had always attracted a wide variety of visitors from around the world. The Japanese tourists were unmistakable, festooned with cameras that they were using at every opportunity, and chattering away excitedly as each new feature was pointed out to them. A party of uniformed schoolchildren, possibly Dutch, walked past Robin and Mallory in an orderly crocodile, one teacher holding a flag as she led them across the stone floor while another teacher followed behind, presumably checking for stragglers and strays. And as they began their own survey of the building, Mallory heard four American tourists conversing in subdued whispers, clearly somewhat overawed by both the immense size of the structure and its very obvious age.
Robin and Mallory didn’t make the slightest attempt to study any part of the building, just concentrated on identifying the principal features so that when they began looking at the guidebook—which they hadn’t yet bought—they would have a much better idea of what was being described in it.
Their quick walk-around over, they spent some minutes looking at the publications on offer in the shop before settling on two different large-format books, both containing a text written in English and both illustrated with what they hoped were accurate plans and diagrams of the building and numerous photographs.
By the time they stepped out of the building, the afternoon was virtually over, so as soon as they got back to the hire car, Mallory used the sat nav system on his smartphone to identify the hotels in the area.
“That’s handy,” he said. “If this is right, then there’s a hotel pretty much just around the next corner. That should put us about the same distance from the cathedral as we are now.”
