by James Becker
They walked back to the hotel, put all the bits and pieces they’d bought in the car, and then set off for the valley, pausing only at a small general store on the way out of the town to buy a couple of large bottles of water and half a dozen alleged energy bars that they hoped would keep them going throughout most of the day.
Less than an hour after they’d driven away from the hotel, they were standing at the end of the valley and looking again at the roaring waterfall in front of them. This time, they’d seen no cars in the car park, and there was no sign of anyone else in the valley around them.
“Let me go first,” Mallory suggested. “I’ll do a quick check and just see if there’s anything there. If I don’t come back, it means I’ve found something, or at least that I think the place is worth exploring.”
Robin nodded her agreement and watched as Mallory took the cape out of his rucksack, then slung the pack back over his shoulder before pulling the cape on over his head. The bulk of the rucksack made it look as if he had an impressive hunchback, and the cape rode much higher on his body than before, but it would still offer adequate protection for his clothes.
Mallory gave Robin a quick peck on the lips, then turned away toward the waterfall. He stopped when he heard the unmistakable sound of suppressed laughter from behind him, and turned back to look at his companion.
Robin was giggling almost uncontrollably.
“What?” Mallory asked.
“Forget the Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Robin said. “What you remind me of is a kind of giant snail, with that thing on your back. Anyway, don’t just stand there. Get on with it.”
Mallory walked the last few feet to the waterfall around the edge of the pond, and when he reached the rock face he just stood there for a few moments, trying to see if there was anything visible behind the tumbling water.
There wasn’t. There also wasn’t any easy or obvious way of stepping behind the waterfall. The rock beside him was a sheer cliff, with no visible hand- or toeholds, and was in any case soaking wet with the spray from the waterfall and appeared treacherously slippery. It looked as if the only way to achieve his objective was to literally go against the flow: to go from the pond to the waterfall and climb up into the falling water. That wasn’t going to be easy, and he knew immediately he was going to get very wet, but as far as he could see there was no other way.
He was wearing jeans and a pair of trainers with socks underneath the cape, and for a moment he contemplated taking them all off and stowing them in the rucksack, in the hope that they would end the journey through the waterfall in a relatively dry state. That did make sense, and so he lifted off the cape, lowered the rucksack to the ground, and unlaced his trainers.
“Probably a good idea,” Robin said, watching him then take off his socks, “but my advice is you wear your trainers when you walk into that pool, because we’ve got no idea what’s on the bottom, and the last thing you want is to tear your foot open on a piece of broken glass or a sharp rock.”
“I was going to,” Mallory said, undoing the belt on his jeans and slipping them off. “I feel like a bit of a lemon, dressed like this,” he admitted, glancing down at his underpants, “but it’s probably the best option. What we should have done, with hindsight, was to have scoped out the access on this side yesterday, and maybe picked up a couple of wet suits or something.”
With his jeans and socks in the rucksack, and the trainers back on his feet, he again pulled on the cape and then stepped into the water at the edge of the pond.
“Jesus Christ, that’s cold,” he said.
He started wading the short distance toward the waterfall, the water getting deeper all the time, albeit very gradually. When he stepped close enough to the falling torrent to reach out and touch it, the water was only just over his knees.
Mallory had no idea what to expect, so he glanced back over at where Robin was standing watching him, gave her a thumbs-up, then took a deep breath and stepped forward.
It felt as if he had stepped into the worst rainstorm in the history of the world. The water crashed down on his head and his shoulders in a never-ending torrent, the flow given impetus by the hundreds of feet it had fallen from the spring or lake high up on the mountainside that provided its source. That was one thing. The other was that he could see nothing in front of him, nothing apart from the falling curtains of blue-black water. He took another cautious half step forward, which changed nothing. He did it again, and this time he clearly felt the force of the water lessen significantly, and he knew he was almost clear of the waterfall.
Another half step, and the pressure on his head and shoulders ceased completely, though his rucksack was still dragging on its straps as the rear of it remained inside the waterfall itself.
The other thing that struck him immediately was that it was very dark. For a moment, he wondered if he was actually looking at a stone wall, just inches in front of him, but when he stretched out his hands he felt nothing at all. Just empty space. He realized that the wall of water behind him was simply filtering out virtually all the light, and that the only way to see where he was and where he should go was to use one of his flashlights.
He had taken the precaution of putting one in the pocket of his jacket, though the other flashlight and spare batteries were all in his rucksack. He reached under the cape, took out the flashlight, and switched it on.
* * *
Paolo pulled the hire car to a halt in the car park, stopping only a few feet away from the target car.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Mario stared intently toward the path that wound away from the car park and deeper into the valley but saw no sign of the two people he was following.
“Change the tracker,” he instructed, “while I check the valley.”
The tracker had long-life rechargeable batteries, but these only gave it a total useful life of three or four days, so replacing the unit while they could was a sensible precaution.
Both men were wearing casual hiking clothes to blend in with the people they might expect to meet in the mountains, clothing that was nothing like their normal dark suits, and Mario was carrying a pair of compact binoculars to complete the outfit.
He walked quickly along the narrow path that led into the valley, keenly aware that the targets had stopped their car over fifteen minutes earlier, and that they could have covered a considerable distance in that time. Vitale would be unimpressed—at best—if he failed to find out where they’d gone.
Once he cleared the edge of the vegetation, he could see the whole of the valley in front of him. More important, he could see a single figure in the distance, standing beside a pool that had formed at the base of an impressive waterfall. He stopped, lifted the binoculars up to his eyes, and focused on the distant image.
It wasn’t Mallory, as he had expected, but the woman Jessop, and she appeared to be getting undressed, which was not at all what he had expected. As he watched, she slid out of her jeans or trousers, then sat down on a rock and pulled on a pair of shoes—they looked like trainers or hiking boots—before placing her discarded clothing in a rucksack. She hoisted the rucksack onto her shoulders, pulled a cape on over that, and then walked toward the end of the pool nearest the waterfall and stepped into the water.
As Mario watched, she actually walked into the waterfall itself, and then seemed to step right through it. In an instant, she completely vanished from sight, as if she had never been there.
Mario waited for a few seconds, staring through the binoculars at the waterfall in case she suddenly reappeared, but he saw nothing. Still keeping his attention directed toward the far end of the valley, he lowered the binoculars, took out his mobile phone, and used the speed dial to ring Silvio Vitale in Rome.
He explained exactly where he was and what he had just seen.
“I assume that Mallory went through the waterfall first,” he said, still watching the end of the
valley, “and that the woman then followed him.”
“Interesting,” Vitale said. “At least we now know what they’re looking for. Or where they’re looking for it, at any rate, which is almost as important. Stay where you are and watch what happens when they come out again, and especially check to see if they’re carrying anything. And make a note of the time that they’re in there.”
* * *
The blackness vanished instantly, and Mallory found himself looking at a wide cleft in the rock, rather than into the cave that he had been expecting. The top of the opening appeared to be about fifteen feet above his head, and the opening gradually widened until the floor of the cleft was perhaps eight or nine feet in width, the floor rocky and uneven.
Mallory reached out and rested the flashlight on the rocks, leaving it switched on, and then used his arms and legs to lever himself up out of the icy water and into the opening. Then he removed the cape yet again, swung the rucksack off his shoulders, and lowered it to the ground.
He picked up the flashlight and shone the beam all around him to see if anything looked unnatural—man-made rather than created by the geology of the mountains—but saw nothing. However, it was immediately apparent that the cleft ran deep into the rock, and that was obviously the place where he would now have to explore.
“Have you found anything?”
The voice was loud in his ear, clearly audible over the noise of the waterfall. He jumped involuntarily and then span round.
Robin stood in front of him, her cape and rucksack on the ground beside her, and her bare legs wet from wading through the pond outside.
“I decide to follow you straightaway,” she said, pressing her mouth close to his ear so that he could hear her. “I was only about thirty seconds behind you. Bloody noisy in here, isn’t it?”
“You got that right,” Mallory said. He had heard nothing over the thunderous roar of the waterfall until Robin had spoken. “And no, I haven’t seen anything yet, because I haven’t even started looking.”
Mallory bent down, opened the top of his rucksack, and took out a towel, which he handed to Robin. She quickly dried her legs with it, then passed it back to Mallory, who copied her action.
“We don’t know how long this is going to take,” Robin said, pulling her crumpled jeans out of her rucksack, “and I don’t know about you, but I’m quite cold, so I’m getting dressed again.”
“That’s probably sensible,” Mallory said. “Exploring a dark cave full of sharp rocks and slippery boulders when you’re half-naked doesn’t seem to me like a good idea.”
They left their capes near the waterfall, but hoisted the rucksacks onto their backs. Then they both shone their flashlights around the walls of the cavity they had discovered, checking for anything that seemed out of place. Something gleamed whitely on one side of the cavern, and Mallory strode over the tumbled rocks to look at it.
“It’s a skull,” he said, shining the beam of his flashlight directly at the object.
“You don’t mean human, I hope?” Robin asked.
“Definitely not. It looks like a big rat. The rest of the body is here as well, just fur and bones, really.”
Satisfied that there was nothing in the cavern entrance that could be what they were looking for, they made their way deeper into the cave, Mallory leading with Robin a few feet behind him.
“It’s bigger than it looks,” Robin said as the cleft narrowed significantly and then opened up almost immediately into a much wider cave.
They both shone their flashlights around the walls, the bright white beams dispelling the blackness. The floor of the wider part of the cavern was more or less level, but virtually covered in boulders and lumps of rock, which had presumably fallen from the roof of the cave as a result of geological movements, or possibly caused by nothing more than the action of water. Certainly, in about half a dozen places within the cave, trickles of water ran down the walls, and in one location a fairly steady stream, somewhat reminiscent of a weak shower, emerged from the roof and splashed into a shallow depression on the floor. It was a remarkably bare and depressing cave, the stone a dull and dark uniform color, and with none of the different shades caused by minerals and ore in the rocks, or any sign of the stalactites and stalagmites that characterized other caves they had both visited in the past.
“Do you see anything?” Mallory asked.
“I see lots of things,” Robin replied. “But if you’re asking if I can see some kind of doorway that might have been constructed by the Knights Templar, the answer is no. Do you?”
“No,” Mallory said shortly. “What I see is a fairly small cavern, without any entrances or exits apart from the one we’ve just walked through, and with no sign that any human being has ever set foot in here before us. At any period of time. I can’t see any signs of modern debris, like empty cans or bottles, food wrappers or cigarette ends, nothing like that. But what I also don’t see are things like burn marks on the walls where medieval explorers might have placed candles or firebrands so that they could see what they were doing. And more than that, obviously, I don’t see anything that could possibly be considered to be a door. Do you know what I think?”
“I think I can guess, yes. You think we’re in the wrong place, and I think you’re right. And quite apart from anything else,” Robin added, “and thinking about the practicalities of it, getting into this cave wasn’t the easiest maneuver I’ve ever attempted, and that was just carrying a small rucksack. If the Templar Archive occupies a large number of chests, which is what you would expect, the logistics of getting them into a place like this, bearing in mind that they would need to be kept absolutely dry because water and parchment or paper don’t readily mix, would be extremely difficult.”
Robin’s conclusion was both irritating and depressing but, they both acknowledged, was almost certainly right. It looked as if they had jumped to a conclusion, and although the location they had identified seemed to fit the description in the encrypted text, it was now clear that either they had misinterpreted it or, and perhaps this was more likely, there was more than one location in the hills and valleys of the Schwyz canton that matched the clue as they had deciphered it.
Mallory took one final glance around the cavern, allowing the beam of his flashlight to play over the solid rocks that surrounded them. Then he made a complete circuit of the perimeter, not an easy task because of the tumbled rocks on the floor of the cave, making one final check that they hadn’t missed anything.
“There’s nothing here,” he said bitterly. “There’s no hiding place in here big enough to conceal a shoe box, far less several wooden chests. We need to take another look at that clue to make sure we were reading it right and then, if we were, we need to study the map again and find another location that matches this one.”
* * *
When he saw the figure emerge from the curtain of water that tumbled down into the pool, Mario shrank back into the tree line, though he was fairly sure he was much too far away to be noticed, and his clothes were a discreet blend of greens and browns that would make him effectively invisible against the vegetation at that distance.
He watched through the binoculars as first the man, and then the woman, reappeared and made their way to the edge of the pool. What he was particularly looking for was any sign that either of them was carrying anything, but as far as he could tell they weren’t. As they both stepped onto the ground beside the pool and began toweling themselves dry, he checked his watch and called Vitale again.
“There were in the hidden cave for just under half an hour,” he reported, “and they weren’t carrying anything when they came out.”
“That probably means they were in the wrong place,” Vitale said. “Either that or they might have found what they were looking for, but they’ve worked out that they need other tools or equipment to get access to it. You’ve done well on this job, and I won’t forget it. No
w, keep watching them, and make sure that they don’t see you. And keep me fully informed.”
Mario waited until the two targets began walking back toward him, then slipped silently back into the patch of woodland that separated the valley from the parking area. A couple of minutes later he walked over to where Paolo was standing waiting beside their hire car.
“You’ve replaced the tracker?” he asked.
“Yes, with the fully charged batteries it should be good for at least three days. What did you see?”
“They walked through a waterfall into what I assume was a cave. I’ve told Vitale, and his best guess is that they’re following a definite clue, and that whatever they’re looking for is hidden in a cave somewhere in Switzerland. So our orders are to keep following them and keep watching where they go and what they do. Now get us out of here before they walk out of the wood.”
* * *
The return journey through the waterfall was quicker, but just as wet, especially for Mallory, because as he was walking away across the pond his left foot plunged into some kind of hole in the bottom of the pond and he tumbled in up to his waist before he regained his balance. That soaked his underwear and most of his shirt, and he wasn’t in the best of tempers when he finally made it to dry land again.
“Right,” he said, squelching his way back toward the car in his sodden trainers, “I’m not doing anything else until I’ve got some dry clothes on.”
On their way back to the hotel, Robin studied the clues again and then suggested something, almost tentatively.
“This first clue,” she said, “we translated it as ‘seek where the serpent roars, his mouth agape,’ and I still think that the serpent has pretty much got to be a stream of water working its way down the side of a mountain, and the roaring has to mean a waterfall. And I freely admit I kind of ignored the phrase about the serpent’s mouth gaping open. I just assumed that meant the waterfall where the stream drained into a pond or whatever. But there’s an alternative meaning that would actually fit rather better than that.”
