The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “You’re probably right. And there’s something else. Have you noticed the air? It seems to be fresh, not musty, which is what you’d expect if this tunnel was sealed. There must be a way out of it somewhere ahead of us.”

  “I hope so,” Robin said. “I have what I hope is a long life ahead of me that I have every intention of enjoying. Ending my days trapped in an underground tunnel in Switzerland was never a part of any of my long-term plans.”

  “Then let’s hope that that blank wall I can now see in front of us doesn’t mean that we’re out of options.”

  Robin looked ahead, at where Mallory’s flashlight beam was illuminating a flat and largely featureless wall of rock, and muttered a curse.

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

  * * *

  The opening that Toscanelli and the other two men were trying to create was both very restricted and close to the roof of the cavern, but as far as he could see, it was the only way through the mass of fallen stones.

  When he’d climbed up onto the tumbled rocks, he was able to see the solid and undisturbed roof of the cavern only in one place. And that was where they were now directing all their efforts. The stones they were trying to move were cumbersome and extremely heavy and the space around them severely restricted, meaning that using the lengths of timber as levers was much more difficult than any of them had expected. But they were making progress.

  It was hot, sweaty, and exhausting, made that much more difficult by the extremely restricted space and having to work only by the light of their handheld flashlights. All three men were filthy, their clothes blackened by the dust and debris that coated the rocks, their hands bruised and bloody from their exertions. But they’d managed to shift more than half a dozen boulders already, painstakingly levering them far enough out of the way so that they could get past.

  They still had perhaps another five or six stones to move before they could climb all the way to the top of the pile of rocks and then—hopefully—find a way down the other side to the floor of the cavern.

  And when they got out, it would just be a matter of tracking down Mallory and Jessop, silencing them permanently, perhaps taking their time over the woman, and then recovering whatever the English couple had found.

  * * *

  They lowered the chest to the floor of the tunnel and looked around. The wall in front of them appeared to be depressingly solid, as were the side walls of the tunnel.

  “I don’t believe there isn’t a way out,” Mallory said bitterly. “What was the point of the Templars opening up this tunnel if all it does is lead to a solid wall?”

  Robin didn’t reply, just turned slowly through a complete circle, the beam of her flashlight covering the walls and floor. Then she shone the flashlight at the roof of the tunnel, which seemed just as solid and featureless as everything else around them. But then she stopped moving and glanced at Mallory.

  “You mentioned the air,” she said. “I think I can feel a very slight draft on my face. If I’m right, that means we must be fairly near the surface. If we can find out where the air is coming from, maybe we can open up whatever gap there is and get out that way.”

  “That could take a while,” Mallory said, “if it was even possible.” He looked around the end of the tunnel again, and pointed at the clear marks on the stone made by the chisels wielded by medieval masons. “But I can’t believe they would just have opened up this tunnel and done nothing else. I mean, what would have been the point? There must be something here that we’re not seeing.”

  They both stood in silence, shining their flashlights back down the tunnel and around the blank wall facing them.

  Then Mallory let out an exclamation and pointed.

  “I missed that,” he said, aiming his flashlight beam. “Or rather I saw it as we walked past it but I missed its significance.”

  “What? Oh, I see.”

  About twenty yards behind them a wooden arch had been constructed of ancient blackened wood, a length of heavy timber positioned vertically on each side of the tunnel with a horizontal crosspiece linking them at the top.

  “This is solid rock, possibly granite or something, so why would they have needed to build a wooden archway? And we haven’t seen any other timber structures like that since we walked into the tunnel.”

  They strode back to examine the wooden supports.

  At first sight, the vertical timbers looked entirely normal, but when they aimed their flashlight beams at the very tops of them, where the horizontal length of wood had been positioned, they both realized something at the same moment.

  “The crosspiece isn’t resting on both ends of these uprights,” Robin said, “only on one of them. The other end has been placed on a ledge cut into the rock. So at least one of these uprights must have another purpose. Another trap, maybe?”

  * * *

  Moving the last stones at the top of the pile didn’t take as long as Toscanelli had feared, precisely because they were at the top of the pile, with no other rocks or boulders resting on them and holding them in place. Salvatori had moved the final two rocks by the simple expedient of lying on his back in the narrow opening and pushing the stones out of the way by using his feet, sending them tumbling down the outside of the rock wall to land on the floor of the cavern.

  Moments later, he stuck his head out of the opening, his flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other, and quickly scanned his surroundings.

  “They’re nowhere in sight,” he reported, and climbed out onto the rocks and began making his way down the pile of stones.

  He was followed within seconds by the other two men. They moved cautiously around the mass of fallen rock, using their flashlights as sparingly as they could and talking as little as possible.

  The entrance to the tunnel that had been uncovered by moving the six chests was clearly visible, and it was immediately obvious to the three of them that that was the only way their quarry could have gone. There were no other possible exits, and they clearly weren’t hiding somewhere in the cavern.

  Toscanelli shone his flashlight at the wooden chests as they approached the tunnel entrance.

  “Those are probably what Mallory and Jessop came for,” he said. “We’ll check out the contents once we’ve dealt with the two of them.”

  And then he began moving slowly and cautiously down the tunnel in front of them, his pistol ready.

  * * *

  Mallory and Robin shone their flashlight beams at the upright on one side of the tunnel. As far as they could see, it was completely solid, the base of the length of timber set into a cavity in the tunnel floor, and the top wedged behind a projecting piece of rock on the roof. When Mallory stuck the end of his crowbar in the narrow gap behind the timber and tried levering it, absolutely nothing happened.

  “It’s completely solid,” he said.

  Robin nodded, her eyes following the beam of the flashlight as she ran it up and down the wooden pillar.

  “What about the other one?” she asked.

  They crossed the few steps to the other side of the tunnel and repeated their inspection of the other length of timber.

  “The bottom of this piece of wood is in a hollowed-out cavity,” Mallory said, “just like the first one, but the top isn’t locked in place as far as I can see.”

  He lifted up the crowbar and repeated the treatment on the second length of timber. This time, the heavy balk of wood moved very slightly as Mallory applied pressure to the end of the tool. He removed the crowbar and looked up thoughtfully toward the roof of the tunnel.

  “I’m wondering,” he said, “if this upright is acting as a kind of hinge, or maybe a release for the horizontal timber above us.” He shone his flashlight at the roof of the tunnel again. “If you pulled that vertical timber out of place, then there’d be nothing supporting the end of the horizontal length of wood.”

  “You m
ight be right,” Robin said, “but what we don’t know is what would happen if you did that, and I’ve got no intention of standing underneath this kind of wooden archway if you’re going to experiment. Bearing in mind what happened in the other part of the cavern, that could just literally bring the whole roof down on top of us. This could just be another Templar trap.”

  “It could be,” Mallory agreed, “but I don’t think it is, because there’s one very clear difference between what we’re looking at here and what we saw in the cavern. Back there, the trigger was carefully hidden and positioned so that almost anyone entering the cavern from the narrow tunnel would trip it. This is completely different. In order to move that timber you have to actually lever it away from the wall, a very deliberate act. I don’t think that this is a booby trap at all. I think this could be the location of the last hidden exit from the tunnel system that the Templars prepared in case they were ever trapped inside this cave.”

  “You might be right, but do you really think it would be a good idea to stand here, stick the crowbar into position, and shift that timber?”

  “No, I don’t. And I very much doubt if the Templars would do so, either. Think about it. There are three pieces of timber here, one supporting another one and the third one doing absolutely nothing apart from being waged firmly into position on the opposite side of the tunnel. That was done for a reason, and my guess is that it was to provide a fulcrum, a way of pulling the other upright out of position from a distance.”

  “But a lever wouldn’t work,” Robin objected, but then she smiled in the darkness. “Right. Now I see what you mean. Not a lever, but a rope.”

  Mallory nodded and pointed at the fixed length of timber.

  “When we were looking at that,” he said, “I noticed that about two-thirds of the way up there’s a gap between the wood and the rock behind it, and the back of the timber looks very smooth, almost as if it had been planed so as to provide a gentle curve. No rough edges or sharp bits sticking out.” He shifted the beam of his flashlight to point at the other upright. “And in about the same position on this timber is another gap between it and the rock, where you could tie the end of a rope. And rope is something that we have.”

  Mallory opened up his rucksack and took out a coil of climbing rope, thin and tough but immensely strong.

  “Before you do anything else,” Robin said, “you need to work out where you’re going to stand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you’re right about using that upright as a fulcrum, or rather as a kind of rudimentary pulley, then obviously you could pull the rope from either side, either the cavern side of where we’re standing or the dead end of the tunnel. So what you need to decide is what the Templars were thinking when they constructed it. Which side of the structure is going to be the safest.”

  “I think that’s fairly obvious,” Mallory replied. “This had to be a last-ditch location, somewhere they would only use if they’d been beaten back all the way through the cavern system. That means they’d trigger from the end of the tunnel, which is where they would make their last stand.”

  “Then let’s hope that your logic is the same as the Templars’. Let’s get on with it.”

  The locations that he had identified on both timbers were higher than he could comfortably reach, so he unraveled the end of the rope and passed it to Robin, then hoisted her up onto his shoulders so that she could thread it through the gap that he had identified. Then he simply walked across the tunnel to the other upright with her still on his shoulders so that she could tie the end of the rope around the timber.

  “Make it a good knot,” Mallory said.

  “I did think of that,” Robin snapped. “I tied a clove hitch. If it’s strong enough to moor a boat, it should be strong enough for what we need.”

  She clambered down off his shoulders, and together they moved the chest all the way down the tunnel to the wall at the end. Then Mallory uncoiled the remainder of the climbing rope and walked with it to the tunnel end. He took a firm grip on the rope with both hands, winding some of it around his arm to ensure that it wouldn’t slip out of his grasp.

  “Are you sure about this?” Robin asked.

  “Frankly no. But as far as I can see we’re right out of other options.”

  And then they both heard the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps and muffled voices from somewhere down the tunnel and knew that, against all the odds, somehow the Italians had managed to find their way around the rockfall.

  “Kill the lights,” Mallory said urgently as he and Robin extinguished their flashlights.

  But then other flashlight beams speared toward them, the Italians looking for targets, confident that they had now finally trapped their quarry, unarmed and helpless at the end of the tunnel.

  Mallory braced himself and started to heave on the rope, knowing that their only possible chance of survival lay in the hands of the medieval carpenters and masons employed by the Knights Templar.

  Then the light from one of the flashlights picked him out and immediately the tunnel echoed to the sound of a shot, the bullet missing him by a matter of inches rather than feet before smashing into the solid rock wall behind him.

  And as the other flashlight beams converged on Mallory, Robin ran to his side and grabbed hold of the rope that was already pulled taut, and then both began heaving as if their lives depended on it.

  36

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  Time seemed almost to stand still.

  For several long seconds—or at least that was what it felt like to Mallory and Robin—their frantic heaving on the rope produced no results whatsoever.

  Another flashlight beam picked them out, and Mallory knew that behind the light one of the Italians was moving steadily forward and taking careful aim with his pistol, closing the distance to be sure of his shot.

  And then, at the very instant when they both guessed that their lives were at an end, the rope moved slightly. They pulled even harder, exerting every ounce of strength that they possessed, their shoes scrabbling for grip on the rock floor beneath them.

  They both heard a loud creak from the wooden structure and suddenly the rope went limp, causing them both to collapse backward onto the ground. A volley of shots rang out at the same moment, the bullets accurately tracing lethal paths through the spaces that their bodies had occupied just a split second before.

  But then they all heard an ominous rumbling, the sound of stone striking stone, and the Italians switched their attention to the roof above them, their flashlights illuminating the dark rock.

  As the vertical length of heavy timber moved out of position, pulled by the rope that Robin had attached to it, it freed the end of the horizontal beam running across the roof of the tunnel. And behind that, held in place behind a massive wooden platform, as dark and almost as solid as the rocks themselves, tons of stone had been carefully positioned ready for precisely this eventuality.

  Freed from its vertical support, the end of the horizontal beam swung swiftly downward in an arc, pivoting about its other end. In the intermittent light of the flashlights, Mallory could see a black and ominous shape—the wooden platform itself—emerge from the rock ceiling. And behind it the first of a virtual torrent of stones and boulders tumbled into view, seeming to move almost in slow motion.

  “We’ve got to move—now,” he shouted, scrambling to his feet and reaching down to help Robin.

  She was already moving, and the two of them fled deeper into the blackness of the tunnel, heading for the dead end where they’d left the wooden chest. They already knew that there was no escape that way, but at least they hoped to avoid being crushed by the falling rocks.

  Behind them the roaring and crashing sounds increased as yet more rock poured out of the roof of the tunnel. When they reached the end, they turned round and looked back, Mallory clicking on his flash
light as they did so.

  “The light,” Robin began. “We’re targets. They’ll see us.”

  Mallory shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re too far away now for accurate pistol shooting. And they’ve got other things on their minds right now,” he added.

  The beam from Mallory’s flashlight shone on swirling clouds of dust that almost filled the tunnel like a vast plume of black smoke. Beyond the dust, and as far as he could see completely blocking the tunnel, was a tumble of dark boulders, more stones falling from somewhere in the mountain above them.

  As they watched, the noise died away as the last stones fell, to be replaced by complete and utter silence.

  For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then Robin coughed to try to clear some of the dust from her mouth and sighed deeply.

  “Well, that certainly seems to have stopped the Italians,” she said, a catch in her voice. “It’s just a shame that we’ve buried ourselves alive in the process.”

  * * *

  “I wish we knew what the hell is going on inside there,” the sniper murmured. He was studying the forked waterfall at the end of the valley, a waterfall that appeared completely unchanged, despite the second unmistakable rumble of what sounded like an explosion from somewhere underground.

  “I’ll call it in,” the spotter replied, “but I bet we’ll just be told to keep watching. I just wish they’d make their mind up about what they want us to do.”

  He was right. Their anonymous employer listened with interest to his report and then rang off, apparently to consult with his colleagues.

  He called back about five minutes later and instructed the two-man team to continue with their surveillance.

  “What about these explosions, or whatever they are?” the spotter asked. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “We’re not certain,” their employer replied, somewhat reluctantly. “Our best guess is that the people in there are opening up locked chambers, and possibly using explosives to do it. We have an interest in what those chambers might contain, so contact me again the moment you see any of the targets emerge, and take special note of anything they may be carrying. We may want you to act immediately if the targets bring out large boxes or anything of that sort. Confirm that you now have the weapons you requested.”