The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

  “Confirmed,” the spotter said, glancing at the dark green bag he’d collected a few minutes earlier from a man wearing camouflage clothing and waiting at the coordinates he’d been given. Then he ended the call.

  * * *

  On the opposite side of the rockfall, Toscanelli stared at the vast pile of boulders that completely blocked the tunnel and cursed fluently and lengthily in Italian.

  As soon as they’d realized what was happening, he and his two companions had run back along the tunnel, retracing their steps to get as far away from the ancient Templar trap as possible. Once they were satisfied that the last stone had fallen, they stopped and walked back cautiously.

  Unlike with the rockfall they’d managed to find a way round in the main cavern, this time the tunnel was completely blocked, floor to ceiling, and without even trying to move any of the stones, the three men knew that they were just too heavy to shift without specialist equipment.

  “So that’s it,” Mario said. “To get through that lot we’d need winches and hydraulic jacks and ideally a forklift truck, and you know as well as I do that there’s no chance of us getting anything like that down here. Let’s go.”

  Toscanelli nodded slowly, his flashlight beam quartering the area in front of them, looking for any possible way through the rockfall, and finding nothing.

  “When we saw those two before the rocks fell,” he said, “did either of you notice if they were carrying anything? Or was there anything near them in the tunnel?”

  “The man—Mallory—had a rucksack on his back,” Salvatori said. “Was that what you meant?”

  “No. I was thinking of a chest or a box, something of that sort. Something that they might have recovered from the cavern and were taking with them.”

  “I was trying to get a decent shot at them,” Mario said, “but I think I did see some kind of box behind them, right up in the end wall of the tunnel. It could have been a chest, I suppose, but I was looking at them, not at it. What I do know is that it was nothing like the size of those chests we saw back in the larger cave. They were probably too big and heavy for those two to carry with them, so maybe they’d just left them and were only looking for a way out.”

  “So there might have been a smaller chest as well,” Toscanelli said. “That isn’t what I was hoping to hear, but at least we know where it is, and if Vitale wants us to recover that as well, we’ll just have to come back with the right sort of tools to get through that rockfall. And we’ll check those other six chests before we leave.”

  “The targets might have opened them,” Salvatori suggested, “and removed some documents from them. That is what you think is in them, isn’t it? Old documents? The Templar Archive?”

  “Probably.” Toscanelli took another look at the impenetrable pile of rocks and shrugged. “If it were me,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d rather take a couple of bullets than wait to die of hunger and thirst behind a rockfall in a cave. Still,” he added, “knowing that they’re rotting away behind those tons of stone is the best news I’ve had all day. At least we know they won’t be bothering us again.”

  With a final look behind them, the three Italians turned away and again retraced their steps down the tunnel and into the larger cave, their flashlights lighting the way. They stopped beside one of the chests, and Mario tentatively eased open the catch.

  “It’s not locked,” he said, “but I’m not opening it from the front. I know what happened with those chests you found in the cave on Cyprus.”

  “Stand on one side of it,” Toscanelli instructed, and gestured for Salvatori to walk to the opposite end of the chest. “Don’t use your hands,” he added, “just in case. I gave you knives. Use them instead.”

  While Toscanelli stood in front of the chest, but a safe distance away, and shone his flashlight at the ancient wooden object, Mario and Salvatori each produced a switchblade and clicked the button to open it. The single-edged five-inch blades sprang out and locked in place. Each man jammed the point of the blade into the side of the wooden lid of the chest and then slowly lifted it.

  Nothing happened, except that the lid opened on its metal hinges to reveal a mass of documents placed haphazardly within the chest. Toscanelli strode forward, looked carefully inside the chests to ensure that there were no booby traps inside it, then picked up one of the folded sheets of parchment. He looked at it in the light from his flashlight, then shook his head.

  “What?” Mario asked.

  “I’ve no idea what it is,” Toscenalli confessed. “I can only read the odd word or two, but I’m fairly sure that this is Latin.”

  He picked up another piece of parchment and looked at that as well.

  “It’s old, obviously,” he continued, “but that’s all I’m certain of. Check the other chests. Use the same method to open them, just in case.”

  Mario and Salvatori followed his instructions, and as each chest lid creaked harmlessly open to reveal another collection of ancient documents, he gave them a cursory glance and a brief inspection. But the contents of all the chests were remarkably similar: piles of old documents written in Latin.

  “One of our experts is going to have to look at these and see what we’ve got,” Toscanelli said, a note almost of triumph in his voice, “but this looks to me as if it really is the Templar Archive. I mean, what else could it be?”

  “So what do we do with it?” Mario asked.

  “We get it out of here and back to Rome, obviously. That’s not going to be easy, but we don’t have any choice. We’ll carry these chests over to the tunnel entrance, and then we’ll just have to work at widening the path we made until we can fit the chests through it.”

  “Why can’t we just empty the chests and carry the documents out of the cave?” Salvatori objected.

  “Because the chests themselves might be important. There might be clues embedded in the pattern of the metalwork or inscribed inside them. The chests have to go with us. And the sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll get out of here.”

  Grumbling under his breath, Salvatori grabbed the handle on one end of the chest and waited until Mario was ready to lift it. Then, with Toscanelli leading the way and illuminating the path with his flashlight, they carried the heavy object toward the place where they’d forced their way through the rockfall. Once all six chests were there, Toscanelli climbed up the slope and looked down at the passage they had forced, measuring heights and widths by eye.

  “It’s not too big a job,” he announced, climbing back down into the cavern. “I reckon there are four rocks we’ll definitely need to move, and two or three others that would make the job easier. We’re probably only looking at a couple of hours’ work.”

  * * *

  Surveillance is one of the most boring tasks imaginable, but sitting in a car with nothing to read and nothing to look at, and with only a radio for company, is even worse.

  Paolo had got fed up with just sitting there, trying to get comfortable, and walking around the small parking area was little better, so after he’d eaten his sandwich lunch—which he’d spun out as long as he could—he locked the vehicle, took a couple of candy bars from the trunk, and walked through the patch of woodland to where Carlo was watching the valley and waiting for Toscanelli and the other three men to return. At least he would have someone to talk to, if nothing else.

  Once he got there, he and Carlo lounged on a fallen tree that offered them both a good view up into the blind end of the valley, ate the chocolate bars, and talked. It wasn’t a scintillating conversation, but it did pass half an hour or so. Then, with not the slightest sign of the other men returning, he ambled back to the car, unlocked it, and climbed back inside.

  He switched on the ignition and lowered all the windows far enough to provide a through breeze, but not so far that anyone could put their hand or arm inside and unlock the doors. Then he locked the doors, reclined the seat, and closed h
is eyes.

  A few minutes later, he roused himself, his subconscious mind kicking him awake, and he sat up and looked around the parking area.

  He hadn’t checked the target vehicle, which was the main reason he had been told to stay there.

  Grumbling under his breath, he got out of the car and walked over to the other side of the cleared area until he could see the other car.

  “They’re not going anywhere,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t know why I even bothered looking.”

  He walked back to his own car, climbed in, lay back again, and closed his eyes. Within five minutes, the interior of the car reverberated to the sound of his snoring.

  37

  Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

  The two-hour estimate suggested by Toscanelli to open up the route through and over the rock pile proved to be somewhat optimistic.

  The problem, predictably enough, was the rocks. Their weight was brutal, and just lifting one far enough to get one of the lengths of timber underneath it to act as a lever sometimes took the combined strength of all three men. Add to that the extremely restricted space within which they were working and the absence of proper light, and it was perhaps not surprising that they had struggled for almost three hours before they managed to open up a big enough space to move one of the chests through.

  In fact, the three of them only worked at it for about half an hour before Toscanelli realized that they needed help, and sent Mario back out of the cave to summon Paolo and Carlo to assist them. Even then, the space in which they were working was so tight that they couldn’t all fit in it at the same time. But at least having the extra two men meant that they could spell each other when they got tired, and also meant that one of them could hold a flashlight, and that greatly helped to illuminate the area where they were working.

  The other problem that hadn’t been immediately apparent was that on several occasions they had to move a number of rocks before they could shift the one that was actually blocking their path. And every rock that they freed then had to be rolled and tumbled out of the way, to keep the widened passage clear.

  But eventually Mario and Salvatori picked up one of the chests by the metal handles at either end and slowly managed, with a great deal of inventive cursing and considerable effort, to get the first of the chests through the opened-up rock pile and into the narrow end of the tunnel. That, in fact, was the most difficult part of the whole maneuver, because they had to work the chest around a virtual right-angle bend, which necessitated standing the object on its end to make the turn. The sheer bulk and weight of the chest made this impossible until they had shifted another three rocks from that location.

  The first chest, inevitably, was the most difficult of the six to shift, and moving the remaining five proved to be substantially easier. Working in relays, they carried each chest down the tunnel, into the cavern, and through the internal waterfall and then left it before going back to collect another one. When all six chests had been positioned there, they took a breather while Toscanelli decided what to do next.

  “We can’t lug these chests around,” he said. “The Swiss are an observant nation, and if we’re seen with an obviously medieval wooden chest in the back of a car—and that’s assuming it would fit—I’m quite certain the police or some other official would stop us and start asking awkward questions. So what we need to do is hire a closed van or truck big enough to hold all six chests and keep them out of sight. Then we can simply drive over the border into Italy and deliver them to our headquarters in Rome.”

  “So you think this is the Templar Archive?” Mario asked. “The second most important part of the assets of the order that our ancestral brothers were looking for seven hundred years ago? But we still have no idea where to find the lost treasure of the Templars itself? Or their wealth?”

  Toscanelli lifted the lid of one of the chests and picked a document—a folded piece of parchment—at random, then opened it.

  “I don’t read Latin,” he said, by way of answer, “but even I can see that the seal at the bottom of this piece of parchment is Templar in origin. So yes, I do think we’ve found the archive. As for the rest of it, I have no idea where that trail will lead us.”

  He tossed the parchment back inside the chest and closed the lid. “Salvatori and I will go and hire a van right now. The rest of you, stay here until we get back. We’ll be as quick as we can, but it’s bound to take us at least a couple of hours.”

  “What about Nico?” Mario asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Do you want to just leave him there? Or should we try to bury him?”

  “He’s already buried,” Toscanelli replied, with a wintry smile. “He just needs covering up, and there are plenty of stones and rocks in this place that you can use. You can say a prayer for him as well. But before you do,” he added, “one of you needs to climb down into that pit and recover his pistol and spare ammunition, and anything else he has in his pockets. It might be a hundred years before anyone else comes in here and stumbles on his remains, but it’s not worth taking a chance.”

  Minutes later, Toscanelli and Salvatori stepped out of the cave and through the waterfall.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high in the sky as the two men walked briskly down the valley toward the stand of trees that led to the car park.

  On the hillside above them, the spotter watched their progress while talking to their anonymous employer on his mobile.

  “They’re definitely not carrying anything?” he asked.

  “Not unless it’s small enough to fit into a pocket of their trousers or jackets,” he replied. “I think,” he added, “that these two are a part of the original group of four men who went into the cave after the British couple, but I can’t be certain of that.”

  “Right. Keep watching.”

  “I’m getting fed up with this,” the spotter murmured as the call ended. “I’ve no idea what the hell is happening inside that cave or who these men are. Or even who the voice at the end of the phone belongs to.”

  “You talk too much,” the sniper said equably, well used to his colleague’s grumbling and complaining. “Just remember we’re being paid well for this, and so far we’ve not even had to kill anyone.”

  * * *

  Salvatori backed the car out of the parking space as Toscanelli clicked the buckle of his seat belt into place.

  “Head back to Schwyz,” he instructed. “There should be a vehicle hire company somewhere there.”

  On the way down the hill toward the town, Toscanelli pulled out his smartphone and switched on the tracker.

  Pulsing steadily on the screen was a single return, confirmation—not that any was needed—that the target’s car was still where it should be, tucked in among the trees at the end of the road.

  After a couple of false starts, the two Italians stopped outside a small commercial vehicle hire company on the outskirts of the town. Toscanelli went inside and a little over a quarter of an hour later he drove out of the yard that abutted the office building at the wheel of a medium-sized white closed van. The logo on the back said that it was called a “Jumper.”

  He stopped the vehicle by the curb and waited for Salvatori to walk over to him.

  “There’s no need for us to take both of these back up to the valley,” he said. “Lock the car and come with me. We’ll pick it up later.”

  About twenty minutes later, Toscanelli pulled the van off the road and parked it so that the rear of the vehicle would be easily accessible. Then he and Salvatori walked through the patch of woodland and headed toward the forked waterfall at the end of the valley.

  * * *

  When the two secondary targets had left, the spotter had left the sniper in place, covering the entrance to the cave behind the waterfall, while he himself had retraced his steps, walking back along the hillside
until he reached a position from which he could see the rudimentary parking area beside the woodland. And there he had remained until he saw the white van approaching. He waited until he was sure of the identity of the two occupants—they were the same two Italians who had earlier driven away in one of the hire cars—and then reported in.

  “Two of them drove away in a car,” he told their employer, “and they’ve just driven back in a white van, probably another hire job. My guess is that they found something bulky inside the cave, something too big to fit in a car, and they’re about to bring it out and put it in the back of that van.”

  “Excellent news,” the anonymous man replied, his voice tinged with excitement. “We’re on our way. Whatever happens, do not let those men put anything in the back of that vehicle. How far is it between the waterfall and the parking area?”

  “Probably a couple of hundred meters, and it’s very secluded.”

  “Good. Try to intercept them somewhere in that valley. We’ll be with you within the hour. Use whatever force is necessary, but try not to damage the van. We may need to use that ourselves.”

  * * *

  Once Toscanelli and Salvatori stepped back through the waterfall and into the cave, they quickly organized the removal of the chests. The most awkward part of the operation was clearly going to be lifting them through the waterfall itself, because the weight of the water falling onto the chests would effectively increase their mass significantly, meaning that it would be impossible for only two men to carry one.

  “We’ll use those timbers,” Toscanelli said. “We’ll take a couple of the shorter ones and use them as a kind of stretcher for each of the chests. The wood is heavy, but doing that means we can have four people doing the lifting, and we can bring the chests out sideways, so that they’ll be under the waterfall for the shortest possible period of time.”