by James Becker
“It just looks like an empty cave,” Toscanelli said, his voice echoing in the confined space as he again shone the beam of his flashlight around the damp rock walls. Now that the other men were beside him, he placed his pistol on the ground and began to strip off his waterproofs.
“There’s obviously an exit somewhere in here,” Mario said. “We all watched the two of them step inside here this morning, well over an hour ago, and they haven’t come out since then.”
“Check all around the walls,” Toscanelli instructed, “and the floor as well. Look out for any traces of them.”
All four of the men moved to different parts of the walls of the cavern and began searching.
“There’s something over here,” Nico called out, and the other three men walked quickly across the floor of the cavern to join him.
“What have you found?” Mario demanded.
“There’s this kind of internal waterfall here,” Nico said. “I thought it was just water running down the wall, but there seems to be an opening behind it.”
He picked up an old gnarled root—actually the same object that Mallory had used the previous day to check what lay behind the curtain of water—and thrust it through the flow and into the hidden cavern. The root slid through without meeting any resistance.
“That must be it,” Toscanelli said. “We’ve got them.”
* * *
The narrow passage wound deeper into the mountain, twisting and turning every few feet. They made their way along it in single file because there wasn’t really room to walk abreast, Mallory leading the way. After a few yards, he paused and touched the rocks that formed one wall of the passage.
“That might be a good sign,” he said, turning back to face Robin. “The walls in that cave behind us were wet, or at least damp, but the rocks here are bone-dry. That’s another sign that this could have been—and hopefully might still be—the last repository of the Templar Archive. They would have needed somewhere with a cool and dry atmosphere so that the parchment wouldn’t just rot away.”
“That’s a good point. And this has to be natural,” Robin said, shining her flashlight at the rocks around them. “It would have taken years to hack this out of the living rock. You can see the hammer and chisel marks on some of the stones, but I think that’s just evidence of the Templars knocking off projecting bits and doing their best to straighten and widen the passage so that walking up and down it was a bit easier for them.”
“You’re right,” Mallory agreed, “and I think that they probably used some of the rock they chipped off to form the floor of this passage, because it’s remarkably flat and level.”
He shone his flashlight down at their feet to emphasize what he was saying. Then he shone the light in front of him again, where the passage narrowed slightly.
Mallory slowed as they neared the natural choke point, alert for any medieval booby traps or other hazards, shining the beam of his flashlight mainly at the ground, because that was the logical place for any trip wire or trigger to be positioned. But he saw nothing.
“Maybe they didn’t bother building any other defenses in here,” he suggested. “Perhaps they thought that the chances of anybody stumbling on this place by accident were virtually nil.”
“Well, we certainly wouldn’t have found it without having deciphered those clues,” Robin said, “so you may well be right. Having to walk through two different waterfalls and then shifting a couple of tons of rock and timber would be a pretty good defense.”
Mallory stopped walking and just shone his flashlight at the passage in front of them.
That narrow section of the tunnel was very short, perhaps only eight or ten feet in length, and they’d just reached the end of it. And in the flashlight beam they could see that beyond it the natural cave opened up again, the walls widening abruptly, and the roof above their heads climbing precipitously, almost vertically. The path they had been following virtually vanished, the floor of the cave flattening out into a level expanse before them. The new and wider section of the cave was like a cathedral compared to the narrow passage they’d just walked along.
Robin went to move forward, to explore what they’d found, but Mallory put his hand out to stop her.
“Not yet,” he said. “This is exactly where I would put a booby trap if there was something precious here I wanted to protect.”
He shone his flashlight at the ground, looking for evidence of a concealed pit or some other manufactured hazard, then shifted the beam to cover the roof and walls. He saw nothing but still didn’t move.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
“I don’t know, but as you said back in that first tunnel, this just seems too easy. We know the Templars were paranoid about protecting their assets, so why didn’t they construct some kind of defense here? It’s the obvious place for a mantrap or something. Or, if they did, why can’t we see it?”
Mallory carefully inspected the walls and floor again, then dropped to his hands and knees and began carefully feeling the ground directly in front of them.
“If there is some kind of trigger here,” he said, “it more or less has to be on the ground. A trip wire would probably have disintegrated centuries ago.”
The floor of the passage was, like the rest of it, covered in a layer of small stones, almost like gravel, and he was able to brush some of them away with his hand. Then he used the tips of his fingers to try to trace any obstruction or unnatural feature that might be hidden just below this top layer.
After a minute or so he stopped, then changed the direction of his search, running his fingertips from left to right rather than in the circular motion he’d used previously.
“Anything?”
“Yes, there is,” Mallory replied. “I don’t know what it is, or what the mechanism is, but I can feel straight lines, like the edges of wooden planks, just below this layer of stones. We’re lucky we didn’t go any farther.”
“So how do get across whatever booby trap that is?”
“I don’t know, but there must be a way. Even on that book safe you bought, the device that started all this, if the right size and shape dagger blade was inserted, the mechanism was locked so that the safe could be opened. There must be something like that here.”
Mallory stood up and shifted the flashlight beam to examine the solid rock walls on both sides of them.
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything that would take a key or locking bar or something of that sort. Perhaps a hole or a slit in the rock, that kind of thing.”
They both studied the area around them, but it was Robin who saw what they’d both missed up to that point.
“Could this be it?” she asked.
She pointed at a natural-looking hole in the rock to their right, at about head height and partially concealed by a projecting ledge.
“Could be,” Mallory said, shining his flashlight toward it. “I can’t see down into it. Can I lift you up so that you can check it out?”
Mallory slipped his flashlight into his pocket and grabbed Robin around the hips, lifting her almost straight up.
“Stop,” she said. “Right. Now I can see down into it. It’s quite deep, and seems to run almost straight down into the rock. The opening is rough and quite wide, and looks natural, but the hole itself is much narrower, maybe two inches wide or so, and is very straight. And it looks like it was drilled out, somehow.”
“Do you see any sign of wood in the hole? Splinters or anything like that?”
“Yes, actually. There are a couple of small pieces just inside the entrance to the hole. Yes, I see where you’re going with that. You’re thinking that’s the keyhole, and the key or whatever you want to call it was a length of stout wood that was shoved down into it.”
“Exactly,” Mallory said, lowering Robin to the floor again.
“
So what do we do? How do we lock it?”
“How deep did you think it was?”
“Not very. Maybe seven or eight inches or so.”
“Then I think the crowbar should do it.”
Mallory dropped his rucksack to the ground, opened it, and took out the tool, then reached up and slid the straight end of the bar down into the hole, making sure it went all the way to the end.
“Will that do it?” Robin asked.
“I hope so, but we won’t just blunder on and hope for the best.”
He motioned Robin to stand a few feet behind him, then carefully rested his right foot on the edge of what he had assumed were planks of wood hidden beneath the gravel on the floor.
“They feel a little loose,” he said, slowly increasing the pressure. “There’s some give in them.”
Then they both heard a faint click and the end of the crowbar moved very slightly as some concealed mechanism began to operate.
Mallory immediately stepped back, away from the hidden planks, but nothing else happened, except that there was another click. He reached up and grabbed the end of the crowbar, almost expecting it to be jammed in place, but the tool was loose in the hole in the rock and moved freely. It looked as if the concealed mechanism was triggered by weight or pressure on the planks, but when that pressure was released it reset itself.
He repeated the process, stepping on the planks and hearing the click, then the second faint click, which proved to him that the hidden mechanism was working, and that the end of the crowbar had successfully jammed it.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we can carry on. Slowly and carefully. I’ll go first, just in case. Listen for the second click. It’ll be interesting to know how big this trigger really is.”
Mallory gingerly rested his left foot on the hidden planks, waited for the click, and then stepped forward. He took four swift strides, and on the first three he could feel a very slight give below his feet, but on the fourth step it seemed that he was back on solid ground. Almost immediately Robin confirmed his guess.
“The second click came when you lifted your foot after your third step.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Moments later, Robin stepped right beside him, and they both looked back at the end of the narrow passage.
“I wonder what it does,” Robin mused.
“It’s probably better that we never find out,” Mallory said. “Now let’s see what we have here.”
He swung his flashlight, the beam fitfully illuminating different parts of the open space in which they were standing. He wasn’t surprised, though he was definitely disappointed, when their quick visual search suggested that the large chamber was empty of everything except rocks and more rocks.
“Have we been beaten to it?” Robin asked.
“I hope not, after all this. Hang on. What’s that, over there?”
He shone his flashlight beam across the cavern toward a large dark oblong. There were shadows all around them, but that looked like something else. Something different.
They walked briskly across the cave floor, shining their flashlight in front of them.
“It’s a tunnel,” Mallory said. “A wide tunnel. Let’s see where it leads. Maybe there’s another chamber beyond this one.”
The start of the tunnel was easily wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side, and had a firm floor that sloped gradually upward.
“There’s something at the far end,” Robin said. “Something metallic, I think.”
As they neared the end of the tunnel, perhaps fifty yards from the cavern, they found themselves facing a blank stone wall. And positioned in a neat line against that wall, on a patch of level ground, were half a dozen ironbound large wooden chests, three resting on the stone floor and the other three positioned on top of them. Beside the two right-hand chests was a much smaller box, again reinforced by bands of metal.
“Could that really be it? The long-lost Templar Archive?” Mallory asked. “If it is, it’s a lot smaller than I was expecting, but we’re still going to need a biggish van or a truck to haul it all away.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Robin said, and started walking over toward the chests. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
* * *
Toscanelli strode briskly across the cavern to where they had dropped their waterproofs, picked up one of the jackets, and slipped it on.
“Follow me,” he said, and waited while the other men donned their protective clothing and prepared themselves. Then he walked back over to the vertical column of falling water and stepped straight through it, his pistol held ready for whatever he might be confronted with on the other side.
He switched on his flashlight the moment he stepped clear of the water.
He found himself in another chamber, noticeably larger than the one he had just left, and carved out of the same dark and damp rock, but equally as empty. Or at least, empty of their quarry and the treasure Toscanelli still believed he was close to recovering.
But there was one obvious difference. Whereas the outer chamber had no obvious exits, on the far side of this inner cavern was an arched opening. In front of it were several lengths of stout timber and a scattering of heavy stones.
As the first of his men stepped through the waterfall that concealed the archway between the two chambers, Toscanelli walked over to the opening. He shone his flashlight up the passageway that lay beyond, then turned back to look at the fallen timbers.
“They must have gone down that tunnel,” Mario said, walking over to him.
“Obviously,” Toscanelli snapped, then pointed at the stones and timbers. “I think these planks were probably used to hide this archway, the wood placed against the wall and then the stones used to cover up the timbers. It would probably have looked quite natural. I wonder how they knew it was here?” he mused.
“Does that matter?” Mario asked.
“No. Of course not. Let’s go. What we seek must be at the end of this passage. Have your weapons ready,” he instructed, raising his voice.
The four men began striding down the tunnel, Nico in the lead with Toscanelli virtually beside him, both men focusing their attention on what lay ahead of them, upon the possible danger posed by their quarry.
What they weren’t focusing on was the floor of the tunnel they were hurrying down.
Nico reached the large pool of water in a few seconds and stepped into it without hesitation. The instant he did so, the double layer of thin planks of old wood, which Robin Jessop had assumed was rock, the seams caulked to make them watertight and lying just below the surface, shattered and split apart. The water cascaded down into the pit that opened up beneath it, and Nico’s body inexorably followed.
He screamed as he fell, but the sound was cut short almost immediately.
33
Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland
“The two English people have been in the cave system for over ninety minutes,” the spotter said quietly into his mobile phone, “and the Italians followed them inside about fifteen minutes ago.”
“All of them?”
“No. The last time we observed them, there were two Italians or Dominicans here, one watching the valley and the other waiting in a car. This time, six of them appeared, in two cars, and four of them are now inside the cavern. One’s watching from the tree line below us, and the other man is waiting in one of the cars. Have you confirmed their identity yet?”
“That is not your direct concern,” the deep-voiced man the spotter had called replied, “but according to the car hire company records the vehicle you obtained details of yesterday was rented at the airport by an Italian. Flight records show that he flew to Switzerland from France on the same aircraft as the principal targets. Interestingly he was one of four Italian citizens on that flight traveling on a diplomatic passport.”
“No. Not everybody traveling on a diplomatic passport is a diplomat. Some are just people that their government or host organization wants to insert into another country without having them or their luggage searched. In this case, the passports weren’t issued by the Italian government but by the Supremus Ordo Militaris Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani Rhodius et Melitensis, more commonly known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.”
“Who the hell is that?” the spotter demanded.
The man he’d called chuckled before he replied, “It’s a very ancient Roman Catholic religious order. It was originally headquartered in Malta, hence the name, but now it’s based in Rome, in the Palazzo di Malta, the Magistral Palace, on the Via Condotti near the Spanish Steps. More important, it’s the modern continuation of the even more ancient order of the Knights Hospitaller, which was of course contemporary with the Knights Templar.”
The spotter shook his head, obviously confused.
“I thought they were supposed to be Dominicans,” he said. “What have the Hospitallers got to do with all this?”
“Quite a lot, but only indirectly. Really briefly, the Hospitallers were supposed to be given all the recovered assets of the Knights Templar, but the Dominicans—who were the pope’s personal torturers and tasked with interrogating the Templars—failed to find anything much. Nobody outside the two orders knows for certain, but the probability is that the Hospitallers have been helping the Dominicans track down every Templar asset that’s been discovered over the last half a millennium simply because those assets actually belong to them. So providing diplomatic passports to a bunch of Dominican enforcers isn’t really all that surprising.”
“Okay, I see that, but the more obvious question is what you want us to do now. Keep watching, go home, or what?”
“We haven’t decided yet. For the moment, stay where you are and maintain surveillance. Call me immediately if anything else happens, but be prepared to move quickly if necessary. We may decide to send you into the cave to finish this.”
