The Lost Treasure of the Templars

by James Becker

  That didn’t prove difficult, though getting coffee as strong as the three men liked it was more of a trial, the English drink tasting weak and insubstantial compared to what they were used to. But it was hot and it was wet, and that was better than nothing. They ordered a second pot while they demolished the basket of bread rolls and croissants that had come with the first cafetière, and then Toscanelli produced the road atlas that he had brought from the car and opened it on the table in front of his companions.

  “So I suppose now we start searching again?” Dante asked.

  “No,” Toscanelli replied quietly, both men speaking Italian, “we don’t. We wait for the call I’m expecting.”

  He used the end of his knife to point at Exeter on the map, then indicated the motorway network that extended around the city. “We’re here because we have no idea where Jessop and the woman went. This is a good location because there are fast roads leading in all directions out of the city, so as soon as we have a sighting we can get to the spot as quickly as possible.”

  “Sighting?” Dante asked.

  “The man I called last night is a senior British police officer, as well as being a lay member of the brotherhood. The police here have a clever camera system called ANPR that reads the registration plates of motor vehicles, as well as more surveillance cameras than any other country in the world. I have asked him to initiate a search for the Porsche. With the registration number, it can be tracked almost everywhere it goes, because it is almost impossible for any car to drive through a British city without passing at least one camera.”

  “So, why hasn’t he called already?”

  “Because it takes time to collate the information, and although I stressed the urgency of our quest—without telling him what we are doing here, obviously—he can only feed the tracking request into the system as a low-priority task. Otherwise questions would be asked. But I am sure that he will be in contact this morning, at the latest. Then we can track these people down and eliminate them.”

  “It’s a shame we don’t still have the other vehicle and the other team,” Mario said. “Six pairs of eyes would be better than three.”

  “I had no choice,” Toscanelli replied, in response to the man’s implied criticism. “I had no idea what had happened to the others until I stepped into that apartment. In fact, I still don’t know what happened, but Giacomo and Gaetano were both unconscious and immobilized with cable ties around their wrists and ankles. Giacomo was also bleeding badly from a number of puncture wounds on both his hands, and I have not the slightest idea how those injuries were sustained. But I could hear the police car approaching, and I knew that I didn’t have time to try to revive either of them, though I did try to bring Gaetano round. I certainly didn’t have time to cut them free and get them both down the staircase before the British police arrived.”

  He shrugged and shook his head, almost sadly. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, more confidential, and although they were speaking Italian in an English country town, he was still careful to ensure that none of the other patrons in the café could overhear what he was saying.

  “You both know the orders that we were given, and how important it is that no word of what we are doing leaks out. Because I couldn’t get the men off the premises, I only had one option to make sure that they would be unable to talk. To anyone. The only consolation, I suppose, is that they were both unconscious already, and so they would have felt nothing when the bullets hit them.”

  “And what about Valerio?” Dante asked.

  “I had the same problem. He was unconscious and it looked as if his shoulder had been dislocated. Just like the other two, somebody had immobilized him with more plastic cable ties. By that time, the police car had actually braked to a stop, and I was expecting the officers in it to approach the apartment within a matter of seconds. Once again, I didn’t have enough time to get Valerio down the outside staircase, and so I had no other option. I had to shoot him as well.”

  Dante shook his head and stared across the table at Toscanelli.

  “What?”

  “I know the importance of what we’re doing,” Dante said, “and that the operation must be kept completely secret, but I still think you could have got them out. If you’d taken the suppressor off the pistol and fired a couple of shots in the air, that would have stopped the police coming any closer. Then you’d have had time to revive Giacomo and the other two and get them down the stairs and out of the building. I think you acted too quickly, and without thinking it through.”

  For a few seconds, Toscanelli didn’t respond, just held Dante’s gaze until the other man looked away.

  “That’s why I’m in charge of this operation and you’re not,” he said eventually, his voice thick with controlled fury. “I did act quickly, but I did think it through first. If I had fired a couple of shots, as you suggested, then I quite agree that the police would have stayed well back. Unfortunately they would also have surrounded the building within minutes. Don’t forget that there’s a British Royal Navy training establishment just up the road, where weapons are certain to be held, as well as people trained to use them. So we would have had to contend with not only armed police, but also members of the British Royal Navy as well. By the time I could have revived those three, we would have had to try to fight our way out of a cordon of well-armed men around the building, and you know as well as I do what the result of that would have been.”

  He switched his glance from Dante to Mario and back again.

  “So if, Dante, I’d followed the strategy you’ve just suggested, the most likely outcome is that as well as our three companions being either dead or in police custody, I would have been shot down in the street. Then neither you nor Mario would have the slightest idea where to find Jessop and his secretary or his girlfriend or whatever she is, and you’d have had no option but to return to Rome, and you know what would be likely to happen to you there. Failure is not an option within the order, or in our quest for veritas.”

  Both men facing him were silent as they contemplated the implied threat in what he had said.

  “The only good thing,” Toscanelli went on after a few moments, “is that we can at least be sure that this mission has not been compromised in any way. Nobody in this country, apart from the three of us, has any idea why we’re here or what we’re trying to achieve. I regret those three deaths, obviously, but if I had left any of those men alive, by now I’m quite sure that the British police would already be looking for us, because one of those men would certainly have let something slip under interrogation.

  “We also have a minor problem to take care of. The British police now have three dead bodies in Dartmouth, but what they also have is the other Range Rover. I didn’t have time to search any of the men for the key of the vehicle, so it was probably in one of Valerio’s pockets.”

  Dante shook his head.

  “I don’t see that that’s a problem,” he said. “We made absolutely sure that both vehicles were clean before we left the airport, and the only things in them are our pistol cases, and they don’t matter.”

  Toscanelli stared at him for a moment.

  “You’re not thinking,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice. “Both those vehicles were hired from the same place at the same time using the same credit card, which is in my pocket right now. Even an averagely stupid British police officer is going to eventually make the connection and realize that the people who were driving the second Range Rover could possibly be involved with the three dead bodies they are already investigating. As you know, that vehicle is in one of the parking spots in a side street down the road right now, and that’s exactly where it’s going to stay.”

  He glanced around the café again, then continued. “Sooner or later, some patrolling police officer will spot the car, but because we’re not far away from the Exeter Central Railway Station, leaving it here will confuse the is
sue to some extent because they won’t know for certain if we climbed onto a train and left the area, or if we did something else. On the way here I checked on the Internet”—he took out his smartphone and put it on the table in front of him for emphasis—“and there’s a car hire business located a short distance down this road. So when we drive away from here, we’ll be in a different vehicle, one that I’ll be hiring with a different credit card in a different name, and that should give us a bit of breathing space.”

  Before either of the other men could comment or disagree with him, Toscanelli’s phone rang, a shrill and strident sound that he silenced almost immediately, lifting the mobile to his ear.

  The conversation that followed was almost entirely one-sided, Toscanelli listening to what appeared to be a series of instructions from the caller, and responding only when necessary, usually replying with a monosyllable—sì or no—occasionally elaborated with another word or two.

  When he finished the call, Toscanelli glanced at his two companions.

  “That was Rome,” he said softly. “The orders stay the same, but the emphasis has changed. The recovery of the relic is now of secondary importance because I was right about the contents of that document on the computer. Our experts are already working on decrypting and translating it. If possible, we still need to find it, and either recover it or make sure it’s completely destroyed.”

  “So what’s our first priority now?” Mario asked.

  “Simple. We are to find Robin Jessop and the girl and kill them. If possible, we are to make it look like an accident, but however we do it, they are to die before we return to Italy. That is now our top priority.”

  Five minutes later, the phone rang again, and this time the conversation was longer, and conducted in English, Toscanelli making brief notes in a small book as he talked with the caller. When he finished, he glanced at the other two men.

  “We’ve had a bit of luck,” he said. “That was our lay brother in the police force. The analysis of the camera footage shows that the Porsche drove into Exeter last evening, but none of the cameras detected it leaving the city. That means they’re still here, and I have a note of the route the car followed. I still don’t know exactly where they are, but at least we now know where to start looking.”

  Just under thirty minutes later, the three men piled into a hired Ford sedan, Toscanelli giving directions to Dante based upon what the traffic cameras had recorded. His plan was simple: they would drive to the location of the last camera that the Porsche had driven past and start their search from that point.

  And when they found the two people, they’d kill them, and Toscanelli was already thinking of inventive and painful ways they could do that. He wasn’t going to bother even attempting to make it look accidental. After what had happened, Jessop and the woman were going to suffer. He would make sure of that.

  26

  Exeter, Devon

  “All that did happen, didn’t it?” Robin asked, pouring out coffee into two cups from the pot that had been delivered to her bedroom a couple of minutes earlier. “I mean it wasn’t all some complicated and utterly realistic nightmare that I’m just waking up from?”

  Mallory had decided room service might be a safer option than going down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. Keeping as far out of sight as possible just seemed to be prudent, in the circumstances. And he had another idea he wanted to suggest as well.

  “Unfortunately that was all very real, and we have a lot of questions that still need answering, so we need to get started sooner rather than later,” Mallory said.

  “Well, I definitely need to go shopping, and I have to call Betty. She’ll be worried, obviously.”

  “I still think you should keep your mobile switched off and the battery out of it,” Mallory said. “Otherwise the police will certainly be able to find out more or less where you are, and we definitely need to stay off the radar for a while until we find out what’s going on with this parchment and these Italian thugs. Don’t forget that we were involved in a gun battle in the streets of Dartmouth last night, and the cops take a very dim view of anything involving firearms, so I’m absolutely certain finding you will be a very high priority.”

  “But supposing I just made one call? I really need to tell her that I’m okay and tell her to keep the shop open and everything running. Apart from anything else, there are a couple of orders that need to be sent out quite urgently.”

  “Even one call is one too many,” Mallory emphasized. “Mobile phones work by staying in contact with the masts that are dotted around the country. That’s obvious, if you think about it. The system has to know where you are so that an incoming call can be routed to you, and the same applies to calls you make: the phone has to be linked in to the system. The downside is that if the police or security services want to find you, the masts can be used to triangulate your location. In the country it’s not very accurate, but in a town or city your phone can be located to within just a few meters. So if you do turn on your mobile and make a call, I’d be prepared to lay money that within about ten minutes there’ll be a police car on the scene and a bunch of cops looking for you.”

  “So we need to use a public phone somewhere? Because I really must talk to Betty today.”

  Mallory nodded. “That’s the best option, just in case the police have also placed a tracer on the landline that goes into your shop, which they probably have. Obviously they’ll know within minutes where you’re making the call from, but if we pick the right spot we can be long gone before they can get somebody to the phone box. The other thing we should do is pick up a couple of pay-as-you-go mobiles, just in case we get separated and need to contact each other. But obviously we won’t use them to ring any number that would be known to the police, like your shop, for example.”

  Robin took a sip of coffee and a bite of toast.

  “I know I’ve asked you this before,” she said, “but do you actually have a plan? And if you have, what is it?”

  Mallory shook his head.

  “I haven’t, to be completely honest,” he admitted, “because at the moment we don’t really know what’s going on, and it’s difficult to decide on any course of action when you have no information about what the opposition are doing. So the only plan I have, the only way forward that I can think of—apart from keeping you out of the hands of British police, of course—is to decipher what the parchment says.”

  “And then?”

  “That depends on what’s in the text, obviously. What I’m hoping is that when we do manage to read the message or whatever it is, then it will become very clear why it’s still so important, even today. And I have got some ideas that I’d like to investigate, starting with trying to work out the meaning of that strange symbol on the parchment.”

  “Why do you think that’s important?”

  “Frankly,” Mallory replied, “I have no idea whether it’s important or not, but I do think that it’s peculiar, and I simply don’t believe that it’s a doodle or something like that. The shape is too precise and accurate. Whoever drew that on the parchment put it there for a reason, and I’m hoping that if we can find out what it means, that will give us a clue that will help us to decipher the rest of the text.”

  He leaned slightly sideways and opened the flap of his computer bag, which of course he had carried into Robin’s room when she opened the door to him that morning, and took out one of the photocopies of the parchment. He laid the page flat on the table between them, and they both stared down at the mysterious symbol for a few seconds.

  “About the only thing I’ve ever seen that looks like that is one of the old Viking runes,” Robin said. “They were almost all, as far as I know, based on a central vertical line, and then other marks were added to one side or the other of that line, and frequently on both sides, to indicate different letters or sounds. This isn’t a subject I know too much about,” she went
on, “but I do know that the earliest runes have been dated to around one fifty AD, and that, of course, is almost certainly more than one millennium earlier than the date of the parchment.”

  Mallory looked interested.

  “Were runes still being used in the Middle Ages?” he asked.

  Robin nodded. “Yes. There was an established medieval runic alphabet used in Scandinavia, where each symbol represented one phoneme—one sound, if you like—for each letter used in the Old Norse language. And in fact, a different collection of runes—they were known as Dalecarlian runes—were still in use in some isolated parts of Sweden until the nineteenth century, though by the end of this period the runic alphabet being used also included a number of Latin letters, like B, D, and M. There was also some doubt as to whether this alphabet had actually evolved since medieval times, or if the Swedish residents who were found to be using it had learned about it from books and began using it very much later.”

  “So you think it could be a runic letter, then?”

  Robin looked doubtful. “As I said, I do know a bit about it, but this really isn’t my field. The fact that the symbol does have a central vertical line suggests that perhaps it could be runic, though I have to say I’ve never seen any rune with quite as complex a shape as that. The two lines at the bottom of the symbol are the sort of marks you do find on runes, but the kind of sideways capital letter L at the top just doesn’t look right.”

  “But it might be a good place to start?” Mallory suggested.

  “As good as anywhere else, I suppose, yes. But what you need to remember is that each rune normally only represented a particular sound, so even if that symbol does turn out to be a rune, all it’s likely to mean is the sound of one letter of one of the Scandinavian alphabets. Some runes did also represent a word or an idea, but again this was only a single concept, so I don’t know how much information you’ll be able to get from that symbol, assuming that it is a rune.”