The Templar Archive (The Lost Treasure of the Templars)

by James Becker

“Because they plastered our faces all over the Swiss television network,” Mallory said, “trying to cross the border probably isn’t going to work. They’re bound to have our mug shots there as well. Maybe we should have tried to do that last night after all. I think we should just try to get out of this town and head south or west while we try to figure out what to do next.”

  “Got it,” Robin said, and swung the car to the right at the T-junction. She increased speed only to the legal limit, again to avoid attracting attention, and then took the next westbound road she saw, the 388 signposted to Gruenfeld.

  Once again, Mallory was quietly impressed by Robin’s skill behind the wheel. The hire car was fitted with a diesel engine, and she used the gearbox the way the conductor of an orchestra uses his baton to keep the engine revolutions at the optimum level, the band where the motor would generate the most power and torque. The changes were so slick it was almost like being driven in a car with an automatic gearbox. The moment she cleared the town limits and drove onto the open road, she really wound it up, using the whole of the road where appropriate and safe to do so.

  “I think it was the racing driver Graham Hill who said that his job was basically straightening out corners,” Mallory said, “and for the first time I can see exactly what he meant.”

  Robin nodded, and a slight smile crossed her face, but she didn’t respond, her concentration absolute.

  A couple of minutes later, Robin saw the unmistakable flashing of the lights on a roof bar of a police vehicle some distance behind them, as the road swung around in a wide curve to the south.

  “We’ve got company,” she said, “but quite a long way back. Maybe half a mile or so.”

  Mallory turned round in his seat to look through the rear window of the car.

  “Can you lose them?” he asked.

  “That depends on the driver and what car he’s sitting in. This rental isn’t exactly the fastest thing on the road, and if he’s in a big-engined BMW sedan or something like that, he’s going to reel us in no matter what I do. But if he’s in an SUV, I’ll leave him eating my dust. But,” she added, “that’s not what I’m worried about. It doesn’t matter how good a driver you are or how fast a car you’ve got, the solid fact is that you can’t outrun the police. They can set up roadblocks, vector other vehicles to join the chase, and ultimately stick a chopper in the air and track you that way. We can’t outrun him, and I’m not sure we can outdrive him, so what we really have to do is lose him.”

  “And that,” Mallory responded, “means we have to opt for plan B. It’s sooner than I was expecting to have to do it, but we both know what’s involved. And right now I don’t see we have any other options.”

  “Got it. Let’s hope it works.”

  “We’re just coming up to the junction with the A3 autoroute,” Mallory said, just moments later. “Do you want to try losing him on that?”

  Robin shook her head. “Definitely not. Too few exits and it’s too easy to block that kind of road. We’re better off sticking to the back doubles.”

  * * *

  Toscanelli’s mobile rang, and when he snatched it up he saw that the caller was Silvio Vitale.

  “I hope he’s finally found something,” he said, swiping his finger across the screen to answer the call.

  “If you’re not in the car, get in it and start driving,” Vitale instructed. “One of our tertiaries working for the local police force has just reported that the targets have been seen driving away from a town named Richterswil near Lake Zürich and are heading south more or less toward you. The Swiss police are in pursuit, but they haven’t caught them yet. Keep this line open, and I’ll relay the position information as soon as I get it.”

  “We’ll be mobile in two minutes,” Toscanelli promised.

  Salvatori was the fastest driver of the three of them, so he took the wheel and steered the car out of Rothenthurm and took the main road heading north. And until Vitale came through with any further information, that was all they could do, and Toscanelli knew it.

  “The targets are southbound on the 388,” Vitale reported. “According to my contact, if they stay on that they’ll join Route 8 at a place called Schindellegi, and that road runs south direct to Schwyz, so if you start heading north there’s a good chance you’ll be able to intercept them, hopefully before the Swiss police do.”

  “We’re on that road right now. We weren’t at Schwyz. We moved north to Rothenthurm last night, and we’re just leaving the town. That puts us only about ten kilometers south of Schindellegi.”

  “Are you armed?” Vitale asked.

  “We were,” Toscanelli responded, sounding irritated, “but the Swiss group that intercepted us by the waterfall took our pistols. We haven’t had time to do anything about that yet.”

  “Well, the good news is that the targets probably aren’t armed, either, so it’ll be a level playing field. You’ll just have to improvise. Don’t forget you can use the car as a weapon. Force them off the road somewhere.”

  “And if the Swiss police are right behind them?”

  “Then that’s your problem. You’ll just have to work it out. But I can give you a name that will help. Another of our sympathizers is a minister in the Swiss government. He would rather his name wasn’t mentioned in this incident, but if there is no other way to obtain the chest, you are authorized to state that you are acting on behalf of Gunther Kleinmann, and he will confirm this if the police contact him. They will have access to a confidential directory that will list his telephone number. But whatever happens, don’t come back without that chest and the documents inside it.”

  * * *

  “He’s still there,” Robin said, “but I don’t think he’s any closer.”

  Mallory didn’t respond immediately because he was using the GPS and mapping facility built into his smartphone to try to work out a way of losing the police car.

  “At the end of this straight piece of road,” he said, “there’s a gentle right-hand bend, looks quite fast. Then the road straightens up and there’s a gentle left-hand bend. Maybe a hundred yards after the first bend there’s a turning on the right. If the cops aren’t in sight, take that. The road gets narrower and ends up winding its way into the hills, and there are lots of turnings up there where we can lose ourselves.”

  “Understood.”

  As they reached the first bend, Robin checked the mirror, but the police car was not in sight. She braked firmly but gently so as not to leave obvious skid marks on the road, then made the turn onto a much narrower road and accelerated hard. After a couple of hundred yards, the road bent quite sharply around to the left, and once they made that turn they were completely out of sight of the other road.

  “Now that we’ve got some breathing space,” Robin said, slowing down slightly, “what do we do next?”

  “Keep going,” Mallory said. “It won’t take the Swiss plods long to realize that we must have turned off somewhere. They’ll start backtracking and punch a chopper into the air, and sooner or later they’ll find us. So we need to make sure that when they do reach us, it’s at a place of our choosing, where we still have some control.”

  Mallory studied the map on his phone for a minute or so while Robin concentrated on keeping the car moving as quickly as possible along the road he had told her to take.

  “This area is a warren of roads following the valleys and leading up into the mountains,” he said. “We’ve got two choices, as I see it. We can keep dodging the police, getting ourselves deeper and deeper into the Swiss countryside and eventually being cornered, or we can pick our own spot to end this and just wait for them to find us. Hopefully we’ll be able to walk away if we do it right.”

  “We talked about it,” Robin said, “and I still think it’s the only option we have. Let’s do this on our terms.”

  Mallory nodded.

  “Right,” he said. “In
a minute or two you’ll come to a Y-junction. Take the left fork. It might be signposted to a place called Hütten. When we get to that village, we’ll turn left and start climbing. That’ll take us over a river and up into the hills. Then we can pick a spot and just wait.”

  A few minutes later, they saw a scattering of houses that marked the beginning of the village. Robin slowed down and they both started looking for the junction Mallory had described.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the left-hand side of the street, where a narrow road angled off toward the higher ground.

  Robin indicated and took the turning. This road followed the contours of the land, meaning that it was rarely straight. After about a quarter of a mile, and just after a sharp bend to the right, they saw a bridge over the river Sihl right in front of them. They crossed it and immediately the road turned back on itself, and then swung the other way again almost immediately. There was a left-hand junction on that bend, but Mallory pointed to the right and they followed the road around the side of the hill.

  From this vantage point, significantly higher than the land they had just left, they could see some distance behind them.

  “I can see flashing lights again,” Mallory said, looking back over the valley. “I didn’t think it would take them long to find us.”

  He leaned forward and peered through the windscreen, looking up into the sky.

  “There’s a helicopter,” he said, pointing. “Probably two or three thousand feet above us. That’ll be relaying information to the local control room and probably direct to the cars on the ground as well.”

  “This road’s a dead end,” Robin said. “I just saw a sign. Where do you want me to stop?”

  “Somewhere open, where we can see anybody approaching us, so ideally above the tree line.”

  A couple of minutes later, Robin steered the car off the road and onto a rough track that petered out after only a few yards. Beyond it, the ground climbed gently toward the nearest peak.

  “Will this do?” Robin asked.

  “It’s pretty nearly perfect,” Mallory said. “Let’s get moving.”

  He opened the trunk of the car, lifted out the bulky soft bag, and strode away with it up the slope. Robin followed a few feet behind him carrying the other purchase they had made the previous evening.

  When they got about a hundred yards clear of the car, they stopped on a slight rise that offered them a clear view of their surroundings. Mallory lowered the soft bag to the ground, released the zip, and lifted out the contents, the ancient wood of the chest glowing in the sunlight.

  Then they just stood there, waiting.

  * * *

  “They’ve stopped,” Vitale said. “I’m getting the feed through our tertiary at the same time as the police on the ground. Stand by for a location. Right, it’s a dead-end road above a village called Hütten.”

  He passed Toscanelli the correct grid reference.

  “We’re less than two minutes away,” the Italian said, checking the map, and urged Salvatori to drive even more quickly.

  “According to the crew in the helicopter,” Vitale added, “the two targets have left the vehicle and have walked up the hill where it’s parked. Mallory is carrying some kind of box.”

  “That must be the chest with the deeds. But what the hell is he doing? He can’t get away.”

  “No doubt you’ll find out in a few minutes,” Vitale said. “And according to my source, the helicopter is carrying a sniper team, and they’ll be dropping them off anytime now.”

  * * *

  Mallory watched intently as the helicopter came to a low hover a couple of hundred yards away to their right. A single figure disembarked from the aircraft and immediately vanished from sight.

  “The Swiss are playing for keeps,” he said. “I think that chopper’s just dropped off a sniper.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, but I can’t think of anybody else likely to be wearing a ghillie suit, carrying a rifle, and being ferried around in a Swiss military helicopter.”

  Robin shivered involuntarily.

  “I hope to hell this works,” she said.

  They could now both see and hear the approaching police car winding its way up the hill road, siren blaring and lights on the roof bar flashing a sporadic accompaniment. Just before it turned up the short path that Robin had taken, the helicopter swooped low over the limited area of level ground by the road and then landed.

  The sound of the twin jet engines died away to a whine as the rotor disk visibly slowed its rotation. As soon as the rotors came to a stop, the rear doors opened and three men appeared. One was also wearing a ghillie suit, but he was carrying what looked to Mallory like a combat shotgun rather than a sniper rifle, and he guessed that it was a two-man team—a sniper and a spotter—but because of the close range and open terrain the sniper was able to work alone. The spotter, he assumed, would probably be in radio communication with his partner, and would be there to quite literally call the shots.

  Somewhat incongruously, the other two men were both wearing dark suits. All three stared up the hill to where Mallory and Robin were standing, the ancient wooden chest in front of them. The crew of the police car stepped out of their vehicle at that moment, and one of the men wearing a suit walked over to them, appeared to show some form of identification, and then issued instructions to them.

  * * *

  “I can see a helicopter,” Salvatori said, “just around the next corner. It looks like a military bird. And there’s a police car parked a few meters off the road as well. What do you want me to do?”

  Toscanelli hesitated for a few moments, then nodded.

  “I’d hoped to beat them to it,” he said, “but now we really have no choice. Drive up and park next to the police car and we’ll try to talk our way into getting the chest.”

  Salvatori swung the car off the road and braked it to a stop. The three men climbed out and strode briskly toward the two waiting police officers. But they never got there.

  “I thought I told you to get out of Switzerland,” an unpleasantly familiar voice said, and Marcel moved into view from the other side of the helicopter. “What are you doing here? And how did you find out what was going on?”

  “We have contacts,” Toscanelli said. “High-level contacts in your government. We’re working on behalf of Gunther Kleinmann. If you check with him, he will confirm that. He has authorized us to take possession of the chest that the English couple found in the cavern.”

  “Has he, now? The bad news for you is that I outrank Kleinmann and, more important, I’m here on the spot, so it’ll be my decision. But you’d better get used to the idea that you won’t be taking possession of that relic. And I’ll be talking to Gunther about this.”

  Marcel shook his head, then motioned one of the policemen forward. He spoke to him in rapid German, then turned back to Toscanelli.

  “You will stay here while we resolve this situation. If you move from this spot, I’ve instructed this officer to shoot you. Do not make the mistake of thinking that he will not do so. Here, I am the law, and he will obey me.”

  Then Marcel turned away and walked back to where his companion and the spotter were waiting.

  * * *

  “This looks like the reception committee,” Mallory said, looking down the hill to where the two men dressed in suits were walking steadily toward him, the spotter in the ghillie suit a few paces behind, his combat shotgun held ready for any trouble.

  He bent down and, out of sight of the approaching three men, released the cap on the metal container that they had purchased in the garage in Zürich the previous evening.

  “Are you doing it now?” Robin asked.

  “No, not yet. I’m just getting ready. We’ll stick with what we planned.”

  When the men were about fifty yards away, Robin leaned over and gave Mallory
a brief kiss full on the lips.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, then turned and walked down the hill to meet the approaching trio.

  The moment she started moving, the three men stopped and just watched her. The spotter murmured something into the earpiece he was wearing, and immediately the bright red dot of a laser designator appeared on Robin’s back and held steady as she walked down the slope.

  “You must be Robin Jessop,” one of the men wearing a suit said. “My real name is unimportant, but you may call me Marcel.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to have a long enough acquaintance to get to know each other on Christian name terms,” Robin replied sharply.

  “Perhaps not. First, let me congratulate you on locating the Templar Archive. We’ve been searching for it, off and on, for about the last five hundred years. I presume you found some clue that everybody else had missed?”

  “More like a series of clues, really, but how we found it isn’t nearly as important as what we should do with it. I’m a bookseller. I specialize in antiquarian works, and what I’ve read in those deeds has convinced me that the entire archive is of immense international importance.”

  “Maybe, but I—” Marcel said, but Robin immediately interrupted him.

  “Please, let me finish. As I said, it’s a hugely important archaeological find, one that would add enormously to our understanding of the medieval period and specifically clarify the way that the Knights Templar conducted their financial business. On the other hand, and I hate saying this with every fiber of my being, it’s an incredibly dangerous collection of records. In the wrong hands, it could create havoc throughout Europe.”

  She paused briefly and pointed down the hill at where Toscanelli and his two companions stood, glowering up at her. “I can see that you’ve already encountered some of the Italians who’ve been dogging our footsteps. When I mentioned the ‘wrong hands,’ those were exactly the kind of people that I had in mind. I don’t know what they would do with the archive if they got possession of it, but I’m quite sure that studying it properly and scientifically would come quite a long way down the list.”