The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “Now, as I see it, there are only two possibilities here. Either the Knights Templar, or at least some members of the order, did settle in Switzerland and simply introduced their tried-and-tested banking system once they were established in the area. That seems to me to be the simplest explanation for what took place, and makes logical sense in view of what had happened to the order. The Templars had been dissolved at the instigation of the King of France and on the orders of the pope, but destroying the order obviously would not have eliminated the people who were a part of it. They would have retained the knowledge and abilities that they had learned while members of this group of warrior monks, and they would have had to set up home for themselves somewhere, and ideally in a country over which neither the French ruling house nor the Vatican would have any particular authority. And this area of high mountain passes virtually in the center of Europe would have fitted that bill admirably.

  “The alternative is that the Templars had nothing whatsoever to do with the emerging nation of Switzerland and somehow this collection of uneducated laborers and peasant farmers came up with a banking system virtually identical to that used by the Templars entirely on their own. That is, of course, also possible, but in my opinion it’s extremely unlikely.”

  “And the second piece of circumstantial evidence?” Robin asked.

  Mallory grinned at her. “That’s the very visible symbol that everybody knows about, but which very few people manage to connect with the order. The Templars went into battle wearing the bloodred croix pattée on their white surcoats, a design that is nothing more than a cross with arms of equal length, the ends of which are splayed outward. Remove the ends of the arms, and what you’re looking at is the flag of Switzerland.”

  For a few moments, Robin didn’t respond. Then she smiled at Mallory.

  “You know,” she said, “I genuinely never thought of that, but you’re absolutely right. I suppose it could be a coincidence, but in things like this, the simplest explanation is very often the right one.”

  “Well, it makes sense to me,” Mallory said. “At the time of that conflict with the Habsburgs, Switzerland didn’t exist as a country. In fact, technically it still doesn’t. The country we call Switzerland is actually a confederation of separate cantons, not a unified nation at all, though for all practical purposes that doesn’t matter. But at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Austrian forces were opposed by the people of three cantons that had banded together. They were the cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden and in those days they were called confederates, rather than cantons, which is why I asked if that Latin word could mean a confederation.”

  As he spoke, Robin picked up the page on which she had written the Latin text and began scanning it.

  “I thought so,” she said. “There’s a word here that wasn’t in any of the Latin dictionaries, and which I guessed might be a proper name. It’s probably not exactly the same spelling, but it’s really close to Schwyz.”

  She paused for a moment, then looked at something else on the sheet.

  “What is it?” Mallory asked.

  “What was the name of the Austrian king, or whoever it was who was in charge of the Habsburg army when they clashed with the Swiss peasants?”

  “Leopold, if I remember rightly.”

  “You probably do remember rightly, as you put it. There’s another phrase here that might help confirm the story. It talks about the eversio of a ruler named Leopold, and that does seem to me to be a fairly definite reference to what happened, because that Latin word means ‘destruction’ or ‘expulsion,’ something catastrophic like that. So unless Leopold’s forces were in the habit of being destroyed on a regular basis, that probably does mean the battle you’ve just described.”

  “His troops weren’t, as far as I know.”

  Robin nodded and looked at Mallory. “So I suppose this means that now we have to go to Switzerland?”

  Mallory nodded again. “Yes. That works for me.”

  25

  France

  “You still think it’s best if we keep moving?” Robin asked as Mallory steered the hire car northeast along the autoroute that would take them back to Paris. “I wouldn’t have minded spending another night in that hotel. Chartres looked like a really interesting place to explore.”

  “It probably is, but the answer is yes. I think our safety does depend on being mobile. Don’t forget, we’ve been leaving a clear electronic trail all the way from England. The hire car in Exeter, the plane tickets at Gatwick, and this hire car and the Chartres hotel. We had no real option but to pay for those with credit cards, and if those Italians have access to records of electronic transactions—which I think they definitely do—they will be able to follow our movements from one country to another. The only saving grace is that there should be a delay of at least a few hours between one of us using a credit card and them getting access to the information.”

  “So they should always be playing catch-up?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Mallory replied, “but right now I’m not sure that they haven’t moved a lot quicker than I expected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we seem to have picked up a tail. Or two tails, to be exact. When we drove away from the hotel, we had to stop at the traffic lights a short distance down the street. I was keeping a close eye on the mirrors and I noticed a car pull out of the parking garage about two minutes later, and it turned in the same direction as we were heading.”

  “That could be a coincidence,” Robin suggested.

  “It could well be, but it’s still behind us now, seventy or eighty yards back. There’s another car keeping pace with it, and every few minutes they swap places with each other. That’s a basic surveillance technique to avoid the target seeing the same car in his rearview mirrors all the time. I’ve deliberately been varying our speed, just to see what they’d do, and each time I’ve slowed down or sped up, they’ve done the same. It looks like deliberate surveillance to me.”

  “You know more about this than I do,” Robin said, turning in her seat to look out of the rear window of the hire car, “so I’m sure you’re right. And I see the two cars you mean. But there’s not a lot they can do to us here, is there? With all this traffic? Unless we pull off the autoroute into a service area, and even then there’d be a lot of people around.”

  “I can’t be certain,” Mallory said, indicating left and pulling out to overtake a group of three articulated lorries all traveling at the same speed in the right-hand lane, “but I don’t think the men in those cars have any immediate hostile intent. They’ve been behind us ever since we left Chartres, and there were several places where they could have tried to force us off the road if they’d wanted to, well before we even reached the autoroute, but they just kept their distance. The drivers seemed to be more concerned about keeping us in sight than in getting close enough to stop us. I think we’re just being watched.”

  Robin nodded thoughtfully. “So, do you think those two cars are full of Italians, trained killers from the Dominican Order? Or have we just somehow come to the attention of the French police, and those are a couple of unmarked Frog police cars?”

  “I don’t know too much about the French police force, but to the best of my knowledge they don’t use unmarked cars the way the British cops do, so I think that’s pretty unlikely. And in any case we’ve done nothing over here that would interest the police. My best guess is that those are Dominicans, but I still think they’re just watching us, not planning to kill us. At least, not yet. And that does suggest something fairly obvious.”

  “You mean they’re not just playing catch-up in following us, but trying to identify and interpret the clues we’re following?”

  Mallory nodded. “Remember what happened on Cyprus. They had no idea where they should be looking because they hadn’t cracked the clues that we’d solved, and the only re
ason they turned up in that cave was that they’d been following us. Maybe this time it’s the same situation. We’ve worked out the next clue from our photographs of the metalwork on those two chests we found, but perhaps the Dominicans haven’t seen what we saw, despite the fact that they have the actual chests themselves.”

  “So to make sure that they stay in the race, they’re following us again to see where we go and what we do. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Robin asked.

  “Exactly. So I don’t think they’re going to attack us at the moment, because we’re still following the trail, but I’m pretty certain they’ll turn up to spoil the party once we find whatever lies at the end of this quest. And we’re going to have to work out what to do about that.”

  * * *

  “I think they’ve spotted us,” Paolo said, staring through the windshield at the Citroën sedan they were following. “The driver keeps on altering his speed and he’s traveling a lot slower than almost every other car on the road.”

  “He could just be a really bad driver,” Mario suggested.

  “I doubt it. According to Vitale, the man Mallory was a trained police driver, and the girl holds a competition racing license. They’re not altering their speed because they’re not competent, but because they’re trying to flush us out. Or that’s what I think, at least.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We don’t do anything. Vitale’s instructions were just to follow them, and keep him updated with their movements. So that’s what we’ll do. In fact, you can give him a call right now and tell him we think they’re heading for Paris, probably back to the airport.”

  “Why the airport?”

  “It’s a guess,” Paolo admitted, “but think it through. Vitale told us they hired a car in that town in Devon, drove to the London Gatwick Airport, and then flew to Paris. From there, they hired another car, drove to Chartres, and spent the night in a hotel, and now they’re heading back toward Paris. The simplest explanation for that is that they found some information in England that pointed them to Chartres. They went there, found whatever new information they were looking for, or perhaps even discovered some object, and now they’re either on the way back home again or heading to wherever the new clue has pointed them.”

  “Yes, that does make sense,” Mario agreed. “I’ll call Vitale.”

  The head of the order listened intently to what Mario told him, then fell silent for a few seconds. Then he obviously made a decision.

  “You’ve got a tracker on their car?” he asked, his voice clear enough on the speaker of the Italian’s smartphone. “And a good link?”

  “Yes,” Mario said. “We have a clear signal from it on our mobiles.”

  “Good. That means they can’t get away. Leave the other car to keep following them,” Vitale ordered, “but you can overtake them and get to the airport before they do.”

  “Which airport? You told us that they flew in to Charles de Gaulle, but the closest airport to us now is Orly. That’s on the south side of Paris.”

  “A moment.” Vitale was silent for a few seconds, making a decision. “Go to Orly,” he said, “but don’t leave the car until you’re certain that’s where they’re heading. If they carry on past that airport, get to Charles De Gaulle as quickly as you can.”

  “Understood.”

  “Then you leave the car and wait in the departures hall until they appear. When they do, get close enough to find out what flight they’re booking and then take the same flight if you can, or the next flight to the same destination if that’s not possible. Keep me informed. At the very least, call me when you know where they’re going, before you board your flight, and again when you reach whatever destination they’ve chosen.”

  “You heard the man,” Mario said, ending the call, then dialed the mobile number of their colleagues in the car behind them to explain the change of plan.

  Paolo checked his mirrors, then pulled out into the overtaking lane and steadily accelerated. As they passed the target car, neither man so much as glanced at it, keeping their gaze straight ahead.

  * * *

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Mallory said, watching the other car steadily disappear into the distance on the arrow-straight autoroute in from of them. “Maybe the driver just wasn’t in any hurry before and now he is. But the other one is still there, a distant shadow a long way behind us,” he added, glancing in the interior mirror.

  “Or maybe you were right and he’s getting in front of us for some other reason. Now we’ve possibly got one car in front of us with a couple of the opposition in it and another one behind us, and I’m not too keen on that idea. It might be worth getting off this autoroute when we’re a bit closer to Paris.”

  That seemed to Mallory like a good plan, and when they approached Paris, he took the exit just beyond Saint-Jean-de-Beauregard onto the N118 signposted to Orsay. He took his time slowing down, waiting for the suspect car to pass them, which it did, staying on the autoroute and continuing toward the French capital.

  “I think I must be getting paranoid,” he said as the other vehicle passed them.

  “I know it’s a cliché,” Robin said, “but just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. And one thing we do know about these bloody Italians is that they’re definitely out to get us. Anyway, whether or not that was a false alarm, that vehicle is no longer behind us, and that’s what matters.”

  Mallory headed almost due north up the N118, but when they got close to Saclay he turned east toward Palaiseau, effectively driving around two sides of a triangle. They’d flown from Gatwick to Charles De Gaulle Airport the previous day, because there were no afternoon flights to Orly, but for the trip to Switzerland, Orly was the ideal departure airport. Mallory had already checked the flight schedules in the hotel in Chartres, but hadn’t booked their tickets because they hadn’t been sure what time they’d arrive at the airport.

  To minimize any chance of encountering either of the two cars again, Mallory stuck to the minor roads all the way to the airport. Handing back the hire car took longer than he’d expected, just because the desk was really busy, but after about twenty minutes they were able to join the queue at the easyJet ticket counter.

  * * *

  “They’re definitely going to Orly,” the passenger in the second car confirmed to Mario on his mobile phone, looking carefully at the tracker application on the driver’s phone. The display showed the target car moving steadily east along the N118, heading for the southern approach road to the airport. His vehicle was about half a mile behind the target car, having come off the A10 just north of Palaiseau. They had parked there to watch where the other vehicle went using the tracking system after they had lost visual contact with it.

  “If they’d been going back to Charles De Gaulle,” he continued, “they’d have carried on around to the west of the city, or maybe headed for the center to pick up the Périphérique. I think they drove off the autoroute to try to flush us out. I still have a good contact with them. That’s now confirmed,” he finished. “The car has just turned north onto the N7, and about the only place that road goes to from here is the center of Orly Airport.”

  “Good,” Mario said. “I’m already out of the car outside the terminal building. Paolo will leave it at the rental desk, and we should get to the departure hall well before the two targets arrive. I’ll call Vitale and update him. We’ll see you both in the departure hall in about twenty minutes.”

  26

  Lucerne, Switzerland

  “The biggest problem we have, I guess,” Robin said, “is knowing where the hell we should start looking. I mean, Switzerland isn’t a huge country, but it’s certainly big enough to hide any number of wooden chests or whatever the Templars used as a repository for their archive.”

  “That’s going to be the problem,” Mallory said, “because the clues we found in that trans
lation of the last section of the text on the parchment seem to me to be pretty vague.”

  It was late morning the following day, and they were sitting at an outside table in a pavement café near the center of Lucerne, virtually on the banks of the lake, trying to plan their next move.

  They’d bought their tickets at Orly the previous evening, and both had maintained full awareness of their surroundings all the time they were at the airport. That hadn’t been easy, because the departures hall was heaving, full of people and with queues almost everywhere and for everything. Even getting a couple of cups of bad French coffee and some snacks had taken Mallory over a quarter of an hour. But they’d seen nobody who looked like the men in the car that had followed them, and not one of the horde of people had seemed to be paying them the slightest attention. Not even, in fact, the clerk who sold them their tickets, who was casual to the point of indifference.

  They’d taken the evening easyJet flight from Paris Orly to Geneva entirely without incident. It had landed on time just before ten, and then Mallory had hired a car to drive them into the heart of the country, where they hoped to find what they were looking for. They’d stayed off the fast roads and instead had followed the west bank of Lac Leman, stopping after driving only about four miles in a town called Versoix, because it was getting late. They’d taken a room in a small motel rather than a hotel and had had a fairly comfortable night, reasonably certain that nobody had managed to follow them.