The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “Try me,” Mallory said.

  “Suppose that the gaping mouth means exactly that. Not just a waterfall, as I thought, but two waterfalls, the stream coming down the mountain but then being split by a rock or something at the bottom, so that it actually looks like the open jaws of a snake. I can see it in my mind’s eye.”

  “Seeing it mentally is one thing,” Mallory said, slightly grumpily, “but actually finding it might be another matter altogether. You’re going to have to look really carefully at the map, but I think the biggest problem is going to be that the map probably won’t show you what any of the waterfalls look like. So we’ll have to get back on the road again and start checking every valley that looks like a possibility.”

  At the hotel, they went up to their room and both of them showered and changed into dry clothes before going down to the coffee shop on the ground floor. They felt in need of hot drinks rather than alcohol, and Mallory ordered a couple of coffees to both warm and revive them.

  “I read somewhere,” Robin said, “that the idea that the caffeine in coffee acts as a stimulant is a bit of a myth. But the article did say the people could become addicted to the drink, though getting unaddicted is apparently quite easy. Just pointing that out,” she added, watching Mallory take a mouthful of the hot drink.

  “Actually,” he said, reaching out for one of the ham sandwiches that he’d ordered along with the drinks, “I don’t really care. I just like the taste. Now that I feel a bit more human, let’s take a look at the map.”

  Robin spread out the topographical map on the table-top, and they both studied it in silence for some minutes. Then Robin stabbed her finger at one particular point on it.

  “That could very well be what we’re looking for,” she said.

  The point she was indicating was at the head of a valley—the curved contour lines made that perfectly clear—and Mallory could see the blue line, indicating a stream or a river, running down those same lines.

  “Why there in particular?” he asked.

  “Because of this label,” Robin replied. “The German word is Stimmgabel, and I’m reasonably certain that Gabel means a fork. I don’t know what the combined word Stimmgabel translates as, but it’s obviously some kind of fork or a split, presumably in that stream.”

  “Hang on,” Mallory said, taking out his smartphone. “This coffee shop has a Wi-Fi system. I’ll look it up.”

  He input the code that was displayed on the wall of the room, opened up an Internet browser, and used the search engine to find a German-English dictionary.

  “You’re right,” he said, looking at the result of the translation. “A Stimmgabel is a tuning fork.”

  “That would fit well,” Robin said, “if you think about it. The shape of a tuning fork is a single handle that splits into two separate arms. If that stream does divide into two like that, you can absolutely see why it might have become known as ‘the tuning fork.’ That name is marked on the map right at the bottom of that stream, so it pretty much has to be referring to either the waterfall or the pond. I can’t think of any way that a pool of water could end up being described as a forked stick. A river, maybe. So that just leaves the waterfall.”

  Mallory nodded slowly, put the last piece of the ham sandwich into his mouth, and then wiped his lips with a napkin.

  “That does make sense to me,” he conceded. “How far away is it?”

  Robin studied the map for a moment before she replied.

  “Probably about five miles as the crow flies, but because of the roads we’ll have to take, my guess is between about ten and fifteen miles.”

  “Good enough. Let’s go.”

  29

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  There wasn’t a proper parking area at the end of the valley, just a number of open spaces on both sides of the place where the road petered out, each surrounded by trees, shrubs, and undergrowth, where a car or van could be left, virtually out of sight. As far as they could see when they drove up, there were no other vehicles there.

  Mallory picked the spot that offered the most seclusion, then locked the car. They walked through a broad stand of trees into the valley itself, and when they reached the other side there was no doubt that they had located a place that almost exactly matched the deciphered clue.

  In front of them, a stream curved and twisted its way down the blind end of the valley, but before the water tumbled into a large and almost circular pond, the flow split, the water being forced to run on either side of a massive outcropping of obviously hard rock that jutted out from the hillside. From a distance, the resemblance to an enormous snake with its mouth open was unmistakable. Even the movement of the water down the hillside, the shimmering and flickering light that it produced, was remarkably like the sinuous movement of a giant serpent.

  “What do you think?” Robin asked.

  Mallory glanced at her and smiled.

  “It fits,” he said. “It certainly fits, which is actually a slight surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the description we deciphered must have been written over half a millennium ago, and I would have expected the landscape here to have changed to a certain extent during that period of time. Though, to be fair, I suppose changes to the terrain, especially changes caused by something like water or wind, would only become apparent fairly gradually, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at all.”

  “Whatever,” Robin said. “Anyway, it definitely matches the description, so let’s see what we can find behind those two waterfalls.”

  Carrying their rucksacks, they strode up the valley, following the course of the stream, which drained the pond at the bottom of the waterfalls. The closer they got to it, the louder the noise of the falling water became, until it was quite difficult to hear each other speak.

  As he had done before, Mallory picked up a couple of rocks when they got close to the pond and threw them, one after the other, at the two waterfalls. Both rocks flew through the tumbling water and vanished from sight.

  “It looks like there’s a cavity behind each of them,” Mallory almost shouted to Robin, making sure that she could hear him. “In fact, there’s not too much distance between the two falls, so maybe there’s just one large cave that runs behind them both. Let’s go and find out.”

  He walked around the pond to the edge of the left-hand waterfall. As with the previous waterfall they had examined, there was no obvious way to get behind the torrent of water flowing down the hillside except by doing the same thing all over again: climbing into the pond, walking through the torrent, and then clambering up into whatever cavity was hidden in the rock behind it.

  “Let’s try the other side,” Mallory suggested. “Maybe that’ll be a bit easier.”

  It was, but not by very much. At the very edge of the waterfall was a boulder, soaked in spray and looking potentially extremely slippery, but which might possibly allow them to step from it and straight through the falling water, rather than having to gain access by wading through the pond. That assumed, of course, that their feet didn’t just shoot from underneath them the moment they tried to climb onto the boulder.

  “I think that’s worth a try,” Mallory said, pointing at the glistening black surface of the rock. “The worst-case scenario is that I’ll slip off it and fall into the pond.”

  “Possibly breaking your neck or your back as you do so,” Robin suggested brightly. “So just be careful, okay?”

  Once again, Mallory removed his trainers and stripped off his socks and jeans, placing them in the relative safety of his rucksack.

  “I hope this is the last time I’ll have to do this,” he said, pulling on the cape.

  He walked to the rock, lifted his leg, and placed the sole of his trainer experimentally on the surface of the stone. To his surprise, he felt no obvious sensation of slipping. Presumably the pattern of the sol
e of the shoes worked well on that particular surface, despite the amount of water on it.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said, and clambered up onto the top of the boulder, where he stood for a few moments looking carefully at the wall of water tumbling down the hillside in front of him. Then he extended his left leg into the torrent, pressing downward and feeling for any kind of hard surface behind the water. The sole of his trainer touched something solid, and that, Mallory decided, was enough. He wriggled his shoe to try to ensure that he had a good grip on whatever unseen ledge was lurking behind the waterfall, then simply stepped forward with his right leg and passed straight through falling water and into the blackness beyond.

  * * *

  “It’s very similar to the place they explored yesterday,” Mario said from his vantage point at the much wider and open end of the valley. He was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree at the edge of a patch of woodland, watching the scene at the end of the valley through his binoculars and talking to Silvio Vitale on his mobile. He was using a Bluetooth headset and was keeping his voice low, though there was nobody else anywhere near him.

  He had already used the camera in the phone to capture an image of the far end of the valley and sent that to Vitale, so that the head of the order could more easily understand what he was describing.

  “The biggest difference is the shape of the mountain stream,” he went on. “This one is split into two by a rocky outcrop, so there are two separate waterfalls feeding into the pool.” He broke off for a few seconds, concentrating on the two figures he was studying through his binoculars. “The man—Mallory—has just stepped through the water on the right-hand side of the waterfall.”

  “Are you sure it was the man?”

  “Yes, I can still see the woman quite clearly. She’s getting undressed ready to follow him.”

  “Undressed?” Vitale asked.

  “Yes. Not completely, obviously. They both have capes that cover their upper bodies, but to avoid their trousers getting soaked when they step through the waterfall, they take them off as well as their socks and put them in their rucksacks. Then they put their shoes or boots back on to protect their feet. It’s probably a good idea.”

  He broke off again as he watched Robin Jessop preparing to step through the waterfall and follow Mallory.

  “And now the woman is getting ready to follow the man,” Mario said.

  “Do the same as before,” Vitale ordered. “Keep a note of the length of time they’re in that hidden cave, and pay especial care when they come out. If either of them is carrying anything, I need to know about it, just in case we can end this today.”

  “We still aren’t armed,” Mario reminded him. “The two other men you’re sending haven’t arrived yet.”

  “Nor are the targets armed, and there are four of you and only two of them, so I’m sure you’ll be able to mange to take them out. If I do order that before you get your pistols, tell your men to watch the woman, because she’s the more dangerous of the two in close combat.”

  * * *

  On the hillside above the patch of woodland two men lay side by side, one studying the lone female figure by the waterfall through binoculars, while the other had his attention focused on the man in the wood. They were both wearing professional camouflage clothing, ghillie suits, that broke up their outlines and made them virtually invisible at any distance greater than a few feet. Beside one of the men lay an Accuracy International L115A3 sniper rifle chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum round, fitted with a bipod, a Schmidt & Bender 3-12x50 PM II telescopic sight, and a slim but efficient suppressor on the end of the barrel. Long-distance snipers didn’t usually employ suppressors, because the noise of the shot often wouldn’t reach as far as their target, and would in any case arrive sometime after the bullet itself, but they were useful for work performed at closer quarters, allowing selected targets to be eliminated without any of their surviving companions knowing precisely where the killing shot had come from.

  An almost identical weapon, in the hands of a British Corporal of Horse, a soldier in the Household Cavalry, had been responsible for one of the longest-ever recorded sniper kills, at over twenty-seven hundred yards, in excess of a mile and a half, in Afghanistan in November 2000. It was a serious long-distance weapon, though really overkill in the present circumstances and at the distances they would encounter in the valley below them. If the order came through to take out one or both of the targets, the sniper would hardly even need to use the telescopic sight. Anything less than about five hundred yards, with that rifle, was effectively point-blank range.

  The other man—the spotter—was using a tripod-mounted telescope to study the man lurking at the edge of the patch of woodland.

  They were freelance operators, working as a team and selling their expertise in long-distance killing to the highest bidder, and the contract they were at present employed on had been negotiated and agreed at very short notice, with only the simplest and most sketchy of briefings.

  They were talking quietly together in German as each man watched his respective target.

  “Who is that man in the wood?” the sniper studying Robin Jessop asked.

  “I have no idea. He’s obviously watching the same targets that we’ve been given, but he’s not wearing proper camouflage clothing, just casual hiking gear. It looks to me as if he’s been told to mount surveillance on them, nothing more. There’s no indication that he’s carrying a weapon. My guess is that his backup, or whoever the other man is that we saw when we walked in here, is still waiting in the car they’re using.”

  “You’d better call it in. We weren’t expecting to encounter a second team on this operation, and we need to know what to do about it.”

  His companion nodded and slid a mobile phone out of his pocket. There was only one number programed into it, and his call was answered almost immediately.

  “We have a possible complication,” he began, then explained what they were looking at in the valley below. “We have no idea who either man is,” he finished, “the driver or the observer, but the man who’s watching from the wood is obviously focused on the same two people we were given as targets.”

  “I also don’t know who they are,” the man he’d called replied, “but I’ll see what I can find out. Use your camera and try to get some pictures of both of them, because that will help with identification. And get the registration number of the car they’re using.”

  “Understood.”

  “In the meantime, just observe the targets and await further instructions.”

  * * *

  To Robin, standing about ten feet away, it was as if Mallory had simply vanished. One moment he was there, and the next moment he wasn’t. She nodded to herself and sat down to unlace her trainers, determined to follow him inside immediately.

  In the darkness on the other side of the waterfall, Mallory shook the cape and then pulled it off over his head before reaching into his jacket pocket for a flashlight. He switched it on and quickly ran the beam around the chamber that, somewhat irritatingly, looked quite similar to the one they been standing in only a couple of hours earlier. It was marked by the same dark rock and in a number of places he could see water trickling or falling from vents and cracks in the ceiling above him. Then he turned back toward the waterfall to wait for Robin to appear, as he was quite certain she was going to.

  Just a few seconds later he saw a dim shadow on the other side of the waterfall, and then Robin stepped through the torrent and straight into his arms.

  “I can usually manage that kind of thing by myself,” she said, “but thank you for being there, all the same. Now, what have we got this time?”

  Mallory turned the beam of his flashlight in the opposite direction to illuminate the chamber in which they were standing.

  “Disappointingly,” he said, “it looks to me very much like the other one, at least at first glance.”<
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  Robin muttered a most unladylike expletive under her breath, then dried her legs, pulled her jeans out of the rucksack, and swiftly put them on.

  “I’d hate to think we’ve come all this way for nothing,” she said, “so let’s see what we can find. I can’t believe we’re not in the right place this time.”

  Together, they shone the beams of their flashlights around the cavern, which was definitely larger than the previous cave, though the stone walls and tumbled boulders looked almost identical.

  “Obviously the geology of this cave is the same as the other one,” Robin said, “but at least it’s bigger and getting into it was a lot easier. At least that might suggest it’s a more likely location for the Templars to have concealed their archive.”

  “Yes, but I still don’t see any sign of anything man-made in here, so if this was where they hid it, where is it?”

  “I have no idea.” Robin played the beam of her flashlight over the walls of the cave. “I think we can forget the floor. It looks to me like solid rock, not like the earth and soft stone of that cave we found in Cyprus. I doubt if even the Templars would have been able to dig out a hiding place in this stuff,” she added, tapping her foot on the stone floor for emphasis. “You’d need a jackhammer or a pneumatic drill to get through it.”

  “That just leaves the walls,” Mallory said. “Maybe there’s some concealed cavity or opening into another space.”

  “Exactly. So we’re looking for a hidden door or something of that sort.”

  They walked side by side toward the back of the cave, checking both the walls for any unusual marks and the floor so that they didn’t lose their footing on any of the loose stones and rocks that littered it.

  “Anything?” Mallory asked when they came to a stop by the rear wall.

  “No.”