The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  Mallory paused for a moment, considering the implications.

  “We don’t know what will happen if it’s triggered,” he said. “We could be locking ourselves in here for eternity.”

  “I don’t think so,” Robin whispered. “As far as I know, the Knights Templar weren’t big on suicide, so if this is a device to trigger the booby trap from inside the cavern, there has to be another way out. We just haven’t found it yet.”

  Mallory stared ahead at the entrance to the tunnel, where they could both hear the sound of approaching footsteps.

  “It’s make-your-mind-up time,” he muttered. “That sounds like the other two coming back with the planks. They’ll have the wood in position in a couple of minutes. So do we do this or not?”

  “We do it,” Robin replied quietly. “In my opinion, we really don’t have a choice.”

  “Okay. I’ll pull the round stone back a bit. See if you can shift that wedge.”

  He wrapped his arms around the stone and heaved. It was heavy—really heavy—and probably hadn’t been moved in over five hundred years, but he felt it give slightly. But the movement wasn’t quite enough to allow Robin to remove the wedging stone.

  “It’s not shifting,” she whispered urgently, very conscious of the sounds of activity in the tunnel, where the other two men were just coming into view, dragging lengths of timber toward the narrow section.

  “I’ll use my legs,” Mallory whispered.

  He let go of the stone and stepped around it. He lay down flat on his back and placed his feet against the stone, braced himself, and then pushed as hard as he could with the soles of his feet against the heavy rock.

  This time, he felt the stone move a fraction more than before, but still Robin couldn’t shift the wedge. He relaxed again, took a couple of deep breaths, and then pushed with all the strength in his legs.

  He heard the sound of stone moving against stone and then the rock shifted noticeably.

  “Got it,” Robin said, pulling the wedge-shaped rock out of position and moving it to one side.

  For perhaps a second, Mallory kept his legs in position, feeling the brutal weight of the rock pressing against his feet, then rolled sideways, away from the gully. And immediately the rock began to move, the rumbling sound as it gathered speed unmistakable in the silence of the cavern.

  Then the beam of a flashlight speared out from the tunnel entrance and bathed Mallory in light, and a moment later two rapid shots rang out, the sounds echoing deafeningly from the walls of the cavern.

  34

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  The mobile phone in a pocket on the spotter’s ghillie suit vibrated—for obvious reasons the ringer was set to silent—and he answered the call by touching a button on his Bluetooth earpiece.

  “Yes?”

  “Your orders are unchanged. Until we know exactly what these intruders have discovered, we intend only to watch them. However, we will be supplying the additional weapons you requested so that you will be able to act immediately should the situation change. They will be delivered to you within the next half hour or so. I’ll call again when I’ve heard from the courier.”

  “Understood.”

  “What is the situation now?”

  “Also unchanged. The English pair are still inside the cave, along with the four Italians. We’ve seen and heard nothing since they walked through the waterfall.”

  “Good. Keep me informed.”

  * * *

  Mario stared ahead into the darkness, hearing sounds that he couldn’t immediately identify.

  He’d swung the flashlight beam around the cavern, and at the instant the light had passed over a crouching figure he swung the flashlight back, raised his pistol, and snapped off two quick shots toward the target. Both had obviously missed.

  Then he saw the reason for the noise, the spherical rock rolling down the gully toward him, its speed increasing with every second, and for an instant he just stood there, trying to assess what he was seeing. It didn’t look dangerous. It was just a big rock rolling, and actually rolling fairly slowly, down the slope toward him. He could easily dodge it, just step to one side, so why had the targets set it in motion? Or had they just knocked it as they moved around in the cave and that had started it moving?

  And then he moved the flashlight beam to the area in front of the rock, and spotted the gully for the first time. Realization dawned.

  The groove in the rock floor that the stone was following ran arrow-straight toward the end of the tunnel where he was standing. It was nowhere near big enough to block the passage, but there was absolutely no doubt in Mario’s mind that the weight of the rock would be more than enough to trip the hidden trigger located at the end of the tunnel.

  He took one final glance at the oncoming, and certainly unstoppable, rolling rock, then turned tail and ran back down the tunnel toward the other two men.

  * * *

  Mallory had dived into cover the moment Mario started shooting at him. Both bullets had missed him, one only barely, smashing into a rock less than three feet from him and ricocheting away into the darkness.

  Then the Italian’s attention had obviously switched to the oncoming rock, and Mallory had taken the chance to get out of his line of fire, ducking sideways and jogging across to where Robin was waiting. She’d moved as soon as the boulder started to travel down the gully, putting as much distance between herself and the end of the tunnel as she could, because they had no idea what would happen when the rolling rock triggered the device left there by the Templars.

  “You okay?” she asked as Mallory appeared beside her. “Both shots missed?”

  “One of them came pretty close, but that was all,” Mallory replied.

  “Are we safe here?”

  “I’ve no idea. All we can do now is wait and hope, but we’re a good distance clear of the tunnel entrance. My guess is the booby trap will be a pit or something like that, which will block the tunnel completely and keep those Italians out of this cavern.”

  * * *

  Toscanelli and Salvatori heard two shots from just in front of them. Both men reacted instantly, dropping the lengths of timber they were dragging and pulling out their pistols as they stared ahead down the tunnel, their flashlights switched off so as not to make them easy targets.

  Moments later, they saw and heard Mario heading toward them, the beam of his flashlight bouncing wildly as he ran.

  “Get back!” he yelled.

  “What is it?”

  “They’ve triggered the booby trap. Used a heavy rock.”

  “Did you kill them?” Toscanelli demanded.

  “No. I missed. Now we need to get clear.”

  * * *

  A matter of just seconds later the rock, still slowly gathering speed, reached the tunnel entrance and rolled onto the hidden wooden platform. There was a cracking sound as the ancient planks gave under its weight, and then the rock dropped into a shallow cavity that had been dug underneath the floor of the tunnel.

  But the boulder didn’t disappear completely, just dropped about a foot below floor level on top of the shattered timbers, because this trap wasn’t a killing pit and didn’t contain spikes or blades to impale an intruder. This trap was something very different.

  For roughly a second or two nothing else seemed to happen. Then the cavern filled with an ominous rumbling sound, a noise that quickly became deafening. And then the entire roof of the cave near the tunnel entrance seemed to come apart, rocks crashing and tumbling to the ground as a massive rockslide began.

  The whole place seemed to shake with the repeated impacts of the heavy stones and a tremendous, deafening roaring filled the entire space.

  * * *

  The boulders smashed into the floor of the cavern like a black waterfall of rocks and rubble. Most of them crashed into the area around the tunnel entra
nce, but the trap had obviously been designed so that some fell into the tunnel as well.

  It probably took only a few seconds, but the utterly deafening rumbling and crashing sounds seemed to last for minutes. And when it finally stopped, the entire appearance of the interior of the cave had been irrevocably changed.

  Where the tunnel entrance had been was now hidden somewhere under a rock pile, a heap of boulders that in some places reached almost as high as the roof of the cavern. The entire area was shrouded in a cloud of dust created by the falling rocks, giving it a surreal and almost filmic quality in the light from Mallory’s flashlight.

  “Bloody hell,” Robin muttered.

  * * *

  “Did you hear that?” the sniper asked.

  “I felt it more than heard it but yes, I certainly did. What the hell was it?”

  “Could have been a distant explosion. If this was winter, it would most probably have been the sound of an avalanche. But in this valley, at this time of year, my guess is that something’s happened inside that cave. Maybe there was a bit of unstable rock and one of them trod on it and that started a rockslide.”

  “Or perhaps it was man-made, an explosion. More than a grenade, obviously, but maybe one of them had some C-4 or Semtex with them and triggered it. That would do it. I’ll call it in.”

  The spotter selected the contact number for their employer on his mobile and initiated the call.

  “There might have been an explosion in the cave system. We both heard a sound like distant thunder, but we’re pretty sure it came from the ground in front of us.”

  “Any visible indications on the surface? Is that Italian watcher still in place?”

  “No and yes. The Italian was sitting down on a fallen tree, but now he’s standing up and watching the waterfall through his binoculars, so I guess he felt or heard it as well.”

  “Keep watching and contact us as soon as anyone comes out of that cave. The courier with your close-quarter weapons will be with you in about twenty minutes. One of you needs to walk back down the valley to meet him. I’ll text you the grid reference.”

  “Copied. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  * * *

  “Beautifully put,” Mallory said. “I certainly didn’t expect anything like that.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing. There’s no way we’re leaving this place the same way we came in. If we leave it at all, that is.”

  “Have faith, Robin,” Mallory said, with a confidence that was built almost entirely on hope and faith rather than reason. “I don’t believe for a moment that the Templars would have trapped themselves in here with no way out. That rock and the groove cut in the floor must mean that they intended to be able to trip the rockslide from within the cave, to protect their assets in the cave if it ever came under attack. So somewhere in this place they must have built an escape route.”

  “So all we have to do is find it. And that sounds easy if you say it quickly.”

  “Yes. Let’s try to have a proper look around right now to make sure we can get out. Otherwise we’ll have to try shifting those bloody rocks, and that’s not something I want to even think about doing.”

  They walked all the way round the cavern, using their flashlights freely now that there was no danger of the Italians interrupting them. The perimeter was rocky and uneven, full of nooks and crannies that at first seemed to suggest the entrance to a narrow tunnel but none of which, as they’d already discovered on their first, hasty inspection just after they’d entered the cave, actually led anywhere.

  “It must be somewhere in the tunnel,” Mallory said, sounding uncharacteristically defeatist when they reached the edge of the pile of fallen rock, the farthest point they could search.

  He led the way toward the comparatively wide entrance to the tunnel they’d briefly explored already, and where they’d found the wooden chests. They walked side by side along the tunnel, carefully examining every inch of the walls. The sides of the tunnel, although fairly straight, were deeply fissured and cracked, just like the walls of the cavern, but every opening they saw proved to be a disappointment, extending only a maximum of a few feet, and sometimes only a few inches, into the bedrock around them.

  “The only thing I’ve seen,” Mallory said, “is a length of old timber that seems to have been jammed into the rocks on that side of the tunnel about halfway along”—he aimed his flashlight at the object he was talking about—“but I really don’t see what . . .”

  He broke off as another thought struck him.

  “What is it?” Robin asked.

  “Why did they leave the chests here at the end of the tunnel instead of somewhere in the main part of the cavern? If they needed access to them, to get documents out or put others inside, it would make better sense to have them in the cave, where there’s plenty of room. This tunnel is narrow. That’s why they’ve had to pile them up on top of each other. Or at least, I think that’s one reason they’re stacked like that.”

  Robin looked at him.

  “What are you driving at?” she asked.

  “Just thinking out loud, and putting together the way those chests are positioned and that piece of timber on the side wall of the tunnel.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” Robin asked.

  “Maybe. Yes, maybe there is. Just think about the route we had to follow to get here. The entrance to the cave was invisible because it was behind the waterfall. Then there was the internal waterfall that led to the second chamber, and in there the other entrance was completely hidden by those heavy timbers and piled-up rocks. We saw one booby trap, and tripped another one, and now we’re standing here at the end of a short tunnel that leads nowhere, looking at a collection of chests.”

  “So the cave was very well hidden and protected internally, but isn’t that pretty much what you would have expected?”

  “Yes, but it also reminds me of a kind of phased retreat, moving deeper into the mountain. I think that length of timber we saw could well be another—a final—trigger for a last line of defense. Probably another rockfall that would block this tunnel and stop any attackers reaching this end of it, and getting access to the chests.”

  “But that would trap the defending Templars at this end, in this tiny space. And we know they weren’t suicidal.”

  “Exactly. So I think we’re looking at the way out of here.”

  “We are?” Robin demanded. “Where?”

  “Hidden in plain sight. We just move the chests and I think we’ll find another tunnel behind them. That’s why they’re piled up like that. They’re hiding the entrance.”

  35

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  Toscanelli and his two companions moved carefully forward through the clouds of dark dust that the rockfall had produced, heading toward the narrow entrance to the cavern. They had all tied handkerchiefs around the lower part of their faces in an attempt to keep the worst of the dust out of their mouths, but even with the cloth in place, they all seemed to be breathing as much dust as air.

  “This is just a waste of time,” Mario said. “That rockfall must have blocked the entrance completely, but at least it’s saved us having to kill the two targets. They’ll just die a long and painful death inside the chamber.”

  “We’re going to check it anyway,” Toscanelli snapped. “And those two seem to have the luck of the devil, so until I see their dead bodies we’re going to assume that they’re alive and that there is another way out of that cave. This job isn’t finished until I say it is.”

  As they’d expected, the narrow part of the tunnel was now blocked with rocks, but because the entrance into the larger cavern was so narrow, they were all fairly small, apart from the large boulder that had been used to trigger the booby trap. But only about half of that rock projected above the floor, the remainder having sunk into the pit excavated by the Templars centuries ear
lier, and stepping around or over it was easy enough.

  “Shift enough of the smaller rocks so we can move around here,” Toscanelli ordered, and the three men set to work, lobbing or rolling rocks out of the narrow section of the tunnel and into the wider area down which they had just walked.

  It was hot, hard, and dusty work, but within about twenty minutes they had cleared a path all the way to the end of the tunnel, and for the first time they could see the full extent, and the impressive effectiveness, of the trap the Templars had constructed.

  * * *

  Shifting the chests was heavy work, but the prospect of getting out of the cave added strength to their arms.

  Mallory positioned his flashlight on one side of the tunnel, where the beam illuminated the pile of chests, and then he and Robin grabbed hold of the ends of the chest on the top left of the group. The wood was old—obviously—and the metal strengthening bands that ran around it were speckled and discolored by rust, but the structure itself was perfectly sound. Mallory maneuvered the end of the chest far enough for Robin to be able to grab the other end, and together they manhandled the heavy container out of position and lowered it to the ground.

  Then they both turned to look back at the section of the tunnel wall they’d exposed, Robin taking out her flashlight to illuminate it.

  There, now visible that the chest had been moved, was the upper part of a dark semicircular opening, very obviously the entrance to another, much lower and narrower tunnel that promised a potential escape route from the cave.

  “Now, that is a beautiful sight,” Robin said, altering the position of her flashlight to shine the beam into the exposed opening and deeper into the cavity. “It looks like it goes more or less straight, but we’ll only be able to see properly once we shift the rest of these chests.”

  “No sign of daylight at the other end, I suppose?” Mallory said, hopefully peering into it.

  “Not that I can see,” Robin replied, briefly extinguishing her flashlight and also looking down the tunnel.