The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “Understood. But remember that there are just the two of us, and there are now six people inside the cave and two more outside. We can pick them off one by one with the rifle if they’re in the open air—that wouldn’t be a problem and that was what we were contracted to do—but we would need different weapons if you want us to go into the cavern. As I told you a few minutes ago, we’re pretty certain that all of the Italians are armed with pistols because we’ve seen the four men who went to the cave carrying them. So at the very least we’ll both need pistols and either combat shotguns or machine pistols before we go inside. That’s nonnegotiable. And a couple of extra guys would be a help as well.”

  “That will take time to arrange.”

  “That’s your problem, not ours. What I’m telling you is that there’s no way we’re going to walk into a confined space like that cave carrying a long-distance sniper rifle to face four men armed with pistols. That would just be an interesting and unusual way of committing suicide. Either you get us what we need to do the job or we stay right where we are. Your choice.”

  * * *

  “What was that?” Robin said, turning to stare back the way they’d come.

  “A scream,” Mallory said, somewhat unnecessarily. “Wait here and I’ll take a look.”

  He strode away from the row of chests that they’d been examining and walked back down the tunnel and into the cavern and crossed to the point where the entrance tunnel started. He stepped over the hidden planks and went a few yards down the passageway, feeling his way with his flashlight switched off, until he could clearly hear the sound of voices—loud and angry Italian voices—and see the fitful light of their flashlights reflected off the rock walls.

  That was enough for him. For a couple of seconds he stood there, listening, but knew that his feeling had been right: they had been followed, presumably again by members of the Dominican Order, and they were again in immediate mortal danger. He had no doubt whatsoever that they would be killed out of hand by them if they were caught. He was going to have to do something about that, if he could.

  Mallory turned and walked slowly back to the narrowest part of the passage, using his flashlight as little as possible, though he guessed he was well out of sight of their pursuers. Then he reached up, plucked the crowbar out of the hole in the rock, and called out softly to Robin, who’d followed him across the floor of the cave.

  “Shine your flashlight down here, please,” he said. “I need light for this bit.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “It’s the best plan I’ve got,” Mallory said, interrupting her. “I heard at least two voices back there in the tunnel, and we know what will happen if they catch us. This might slow them down a bit. I think whatever was under that puddle took one of them out—that was the reason for the scream we heard—and hopefully this will do the same.”

  As he’d been talking, Mallory was walking back a short distance down the tunnel. Now he turned and took a couple of deep breaths, getting ready.

  “Aim the light at the ground,” he said, “and try not to dazzle me, because that really would write me off.”

  Robin did as he asked, then held her breath as well, not that doing so actually helped either him or her.

  Mallory sprinted the short distance down to the narrow section of the passage, and about a foot before the point where he knew the planks were situated he launched himself into the air, arms flailing as he tried to cover the maximum possible distance, his hands brushing the walls on either side as he jumped.

  He landed hard and stumbled on the rocky ground a couple of feet from Robin, who grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet as he did so.

  They both looked back, fearful that he might have tripped the trigger to unleash whatever hideous anti-intruder device the Templars had constructed, but all was silent.

  “You did it,” Robin said flatly. “Were you an athletics star at school? House captain, that kind of thing?”

  Mallory shook his head.

  “Not so’s you’d notice,” he said. “I did all the usual stuff, but I was never much good at any of it. But it’s amazing how the prospect of imminent death can improve your athletic performance. Now we have to try to find another way out of here, if there is one. And if there isn’t, we’ll have to find somewhere we can hide from these Italian killers.”

  * * *

  Nico’s body had slammed into the double row of sharpened stakes and rusty sword blades that projected from the bottom of the hole, each rooted firmly, wedged into holes chiseled into the bedrock.

  Toscanelli barely managed to stop himself from following Nico into the eight-foot-deep pit, and stared down in horror at the carnage, Mario and Salvatori beside him, their flashlight beams coldly illuminating the dreadful sight.

  The Italian’s body, the limbs still twitching fitfully, had been pierced by at least five of the lethal stakes, one of which had been driven straight through his chest, killing him instantly. That was the only mercy—he would have been dead the second he landed at the bottom of the hole. There was surprisingly little blood, because once his heart had been penetrated it would have stopped pumping, but as they looked down they could hear the faint sound of dripping as Nico’s lifeblood was released from his multiple wounds.

  Mario crossed himself as he stared at the dead man, a gesture repeated by his two companions.

  “Who did this?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with the rush of emotions he was feeling. “Was it the two we’ve been following?”

  “Of course not,” Toscanelli said. “This is old, really old. This trap was set for a very different group of intruders, many centuries ago. This was prepared by members of the Knights Templar order to protect their treasure. At least we now know for sure that we’re on the right track. And that nobody else has been in here since this trap was set.”

  “So how come the English couple didn’t end up like Nico? How did they get across the pit?”

  Before he answered, Toscanelli moved his flashlight and stared all around him. Then he pointed farther down the tunnel, the beam of light illuminating part of a straight dark brown shape leaning against the wall.

  “They used those,” he said. “Two or three of the wooden planks from the other cave. They must have laid them over the puddle, walked over it, and then removed them.”

  “But that means they must have known about the booby trap,” Mario said. “And known that we’d be following them.”

  “I don’t know too much about those two, but they do seem to be lucky. And cautious. They’ve seen Templar engineering before, so maybe they were expecting something like this. Some kind of protection device to be concealed in the tunnel. They can’t have known that we’d be coming along behind them, but they’re probably paranoid and shifted the timbers just in case anyone was following them. But either way, it doesn’t matter, because now we’re here in the cave system with them. There’s no way out, and we’ll finish them in here.”

  The three men returned to the cavern they’d left minutes earlier and walked back into the tunnel, each carrying one of the heavy timbers they’d seen there. They maneuvered the wood into position to form a substantial bridge over the lethal booby trap. With a last glance down at the twisted and torn body of Nico, they stepped onto the wooden planks they’d placed over the pit and walked down the tunnel. They were moving much more slowly and cautiously than before, alert for any fresh sign of danger, their pistols held ready in their hands, their flashlights showing the way.

  * * *

  Mallory had hoped that the large open area in the cave would be penetrated by enough tunnels and passageways that they could lose themselves and take refuge from the men who were even then audibly getting closer. But although they had quickly searched all around the perimeter of the cavern, all they had found was that wide single tunnel on the opposite side to that by which they had entered. And there were no hiding
places in that short passageway that either of them had spotted.

  “We’ve got two choices, as far as I can see,” Mallory said. “We can try to hide somewhere in this cavern, if we can find anywhere that offers some kind of cover, and hope like hell that they don’t spot us. The problem with trying to hide is that we already know the tunnel is a dead end and there aren’t a lot of options in this cave. The other option is that we confront them right here in this cavern and hope that we can take them out before they kill us.”

  Robin’s face was a pale oval in the darkness as Mallory swept his flashlight beam around the cavern once more, just in case they’d missed anything.

  “I’ll say this for you,” she said. “Life with you is never boring. Exciting, even terrifying, yes. And probably terminal. But boring, no. You seem to be offering a choice of different ways to die. Basically being hunted down like cornered rats somewhere in this cave system, or getting killed in hand-to-hand combat, but going down fighting. And if it’s all the same to you, I’ve never been much of a rodent. Let’s see if we can do these guys some serious harm.”

  Mallory wrapped his arms around her and kissed her firmly on the lips. Then he disengaged and took a step back.

  “I thought you’d say that,” he said. “The trick is going to be trying to find any weapons at all in here that we can use. I mean, we can lob rocks at them, and we might get lucky, but I wouldn’t put much money on our chances.”

  * * *

  The walls of the tunnel seemed to close in on the three Italians as they walked farther into the mountain. Their progress slowed as the opportunities for inadvertently tripping some ancient Templar booby trap became more obvious. In the narrowing passage, another hidden killing pit or something similar was a serious possibility.

  Salvatori was in the lead, Mario directly behind him, and Toscanelli, as the senior man present, a slightly more distant third. The beams from the flashlights of the men were never still, the circles of light moving from the ground, up the wall, across the ceiling of the passageway, and back down the opposite wall to the ground again, pausing only when some object or mark attracted the attention of one of the men.

  They had nearly reached the narrowest part of the tunnel when Mario tapped Salvatori on the shoulder to make him stop moving forward, and then turned to Toscanelli.

  “Are these two people likely to be armed?” he asked. “Because walking down this narrow passage carrying flashlights would make us sitting ducks if they’re waiting for us in the darkness up ahead with a couple of pistols.”

  “That’s most unlikely,” Toscanelli replied quietly. “They flew to France from England and then from France to Switzerland. It’s not that much of a problem to get a disassembled pistol, especially something like a Glock, which is mainly plastic anyway, onto an aircraft in the hold luggage. But according to Vitale, these two only had carry-on bags, and that makes it much more difficult. And in order to smuggle a gun onto an aircraft, you have to have a gun to smuggle, and in Britain that’s not easy.”

  “But not impossible. They could have bought one from a criminal contact.”

  “Yes, but unless I’ve misunderstood what’s happened, you and your men picked them up in France and you’ve had them under virtually constant surveillance ever since, so if they had managed to source a weapon from somewhere you would almost certainly have to know about it.”

  Mario nodded, still not entirely satisfied with Toscanelli’s answer, but recognizing the essential logic of what the other man had just said. He turned back and gestured for Salvatori to continue forward.

  A couple of minutes later, Salvatori stopped, the light from his flashlight illuminating an even narrower section of the tunnel beyond which a vast expanse of blackness seemed to extend in all directions, the flashlight beam seemingly being absorbed by the dark, fading away into nothing.

  “This last section of the tunnel is really narrow,” the Italian said. “If the Templars constructed another booby trap, this is the most likely place for it.”

  The three men stopped about a dozen feet from the tunnel exit and began searching everywhere with the beams of light from their flashlights, looking for anything that seemed out of place or that could possibly function as a trigger.

  “I don’t see anything,” Mario said. “Maybe that killing pit at the other end of the tunnel is the only one they built.”

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Toscanelli said. “The two targets aren’t going anywhere. We’ve got plenty of time to check this thoroughly. I’m not stepping out into that next chamber until I’m certain it’s safe to do so. We’ll examine every centimeter of this tunnel before we move on.”

  But even after five minutes of searching, none of them had seen anything that suggested there might be any kind of hidden hazard.

  “I think we’re just wasting our time here,” Mario said. “There’s nothing to fear. Let’s get the job done and finish this.”

  * * *

  Mallory had crept closer to the entrance to the narrow tunnel, his flashlight in one hand and the crowbar in the other, Robin a few feet behind him. This was not so that he could hear what was being said, because he didn’t speak or understand Italian, but so that he could hopefully ambush any of the men who survived the Templar booby trap when he or they stepped into the chamber. Assuming, of course, that the Italians tripped the device. And obviously also assuming that the device still worked.

  After a couple of minutes, he realized that they were checking every part of the narrow section of the tunnel, and that meant they would probably find the same group of hidden planks on the ground that he had detected. If that were the case, then they’d also most likely find the hole into which the length of wood or metal needed to be inserted to disable the mechanism.

  Once they’d done that, the three Italians—probably three armed and very angry Italians—would be able to walk into the cave and Mallory and Robin would be completely at their mercy. Even with the benefit of surprise, there really was no way that two basically unarmed people—because crowbars and rocks didn’t really count—could tackle three men carrying pistols.

  He was going to have to try to do something else.

  * * *

  “Wait,” Salvatori said urgently.

  He was on his hands and knees in the most constricted section of the tunnel, feeling the ground directly in front of him.

  “There’s something under the surface right here. Something that’s not rock. It’s more like wood, planks or timbers of some sort laid across the path.” He leaned forward slightly and pressed gently on the wood with his hand. “There’s some give in it. I think it’s probably connected to something. Some mechanism.”

  Mario and Toscanelli peered over his shoulder at the area on the ground that Salvatori was investigating.

  “Are you sure?” Toscanelli asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m not going to walk on this, but if you want to get in front of me and stamp all over it, you be my guest. I’ll just stand back and watch.”

  Toscanelli took a couple of steps backward and looked around. “If there’s a trap here, there must be a way of disabling it or bypassing it. Can either of you see a lever or anything? If we can’t find it, we’ll have to haul a couple of those planks up here from the other cavern and put them over whatever it is.”

  But although they all checked both sides of the tunnel, for some reason they either didn’t see the hole drilled into the rock, or didn’t associate it with the hidden device, and after a couple of minutes Toscanelli lost patience.

  “It’ll be quicker if we just get the wood,” he said to Mario. “You stay here, just in case the two targets try to get out of that cavern. If they do, shoot them. In fact, shoot them if you see any sign of them. Salvatori and I will go back and collect a couple of planks.”

  * * *

  Mallory stood silently in the utter blackness of the cavern watching
the activity in the tunnel entrance about twenty yards away. When two of the shadowy figures abruptly left and headed back down the passageway, he whispered to Robin, who was standing right beside him, “I think they’ve spotted the trigger for the booby trap and they’ll probably haul along a couple of lengths of wood to bridge it. And if they do that, we’ll have nowhere to hide and nowhere to run.”

  “So that’s it? They’ll just walk in here, kill us, and take the boxes?” Her voice was calm but determined.

  “If they can, yes, but we’re not dead yet. We can try to ambush them when they come out into this cave.”

  “At the precise moment when they’ll be expecting an attack, you mean?” Robin didn’t sound encouraging. “Two of us and a couple of crowbars against three armed and irritated gunmen? Forget it. I think I’ve got a better idea.”

  “What?”

  “You’re standing right beside it. I spotted it when we first walked in here, but it didn’t make any sense then. Now I think I’ve worked out what it is.”

  She took his hand and forced him down into a crouch, then pressed his hand down on the ground.

  “Feel that?” she whispered.

  Mallory’s hand traced a smooth groove in the stone floor, like a very shallow dish or the bottom part of a wide tube or pipe. He ran his hand around the carved rock, trying to get a feel for the overall shape of whatever Robin had found.

  “It’s like a gully or a channel for water,” he murmured.

  “Shit hot, Sherlock. It is a channel, but not for water. There’s a pretty big stone in the gully right where we’re standing. It’s almost completely round, like a big bowling ball, and there’s a smaller wedge-shaped rock positioned right in front of it. Move that away, and the larger rock will roll all the way to the tunnel entrance.”

  “It’s a second trigger, you mean?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, yes.”