The Lost Treasure of the Templars

by James Becker

  The traffic thinned out as they drove farther away from the center of Larnaca, and Mallory joined the A2 Motorway as soon as they reached the junction. Then he increased speed considerably, and they began covering the distance much more quickly.

  “Does this take us all the way to the north coast?” he asked.

  “No. In ten or twelve miles this motorway merges with the A1 and swings around to the north. Obviously we just keep on going all the way to Nicosia, which is where the motorway ends. Then we have to hack our way through the town and out the other side, but then we’ll only be fifteen miles or so from the north coast.”

  She looked down again at the map, then glanced back at Mallory.

  “Stupid me,” she said. “I knew that the castle of Saint Hilarion was on the north coast of Cyprus, but I’ve only just realized that means it’s in the Turkish area. Is that going to be a problem, crossing from the Greek sector to the Turkish sector, I mean?”

  “I really don’t know,” Mallory said, “and I hadn’t really thought about that. I think for a few years there was a wall separating the two parts of the island, so I suppose then it would have been a bit like the situation in Cold War Berlin. I hope it’s a bit easier now, though I suppose there will be regulations governing the movements of Cypriots. But we’re tourists, so hopefully we’ll just be able to drive from one sector to another, maybe with just a passport check or something in the middle.”

  The border crossing wasn’t that difficult, but it also wasn’t as easy as Mallory had hoped. Nicosia was crowded, and the traffic was moving so slowly that they decided to stop at a café for a drink and a snack while they were still on the Greek side, in case they had problems finding anywhere once they crossed the border.

  Mallory, inevitably, was carrying his computer case, and while they waited for their meal to be prepared he took out his laptop and surfed the Internet, using the free Wi-Fi system offered by the café. It didn’t take long to find a couple of sites that listed the procedure to be followed for vehicles crossing from the south to the north of the island.

  “It’s lucky we’re not going the other way,” he said after a few minutes, closing the lid of the laptop and putting it back in his case. “If you hire a car in the north of the island, you’re not allowed to drive across what they call the Green Line into southern Cyprus. The only vehicles allowed to cross the border in that direction are those owned by Turkish Cypriots. But going from south to north, we’ll be okay, with a couple of wrinkles, obviously.”

  “What kind of wrinkles?” Robin asked suspiciously.

  “The main one is that the car insurance isn’t valid in northern Cyprus, just like insurance bought in the north of the island is invalid in the south, so when we get to the border we’ve got to buy an additional policy.”

  “Typical,” Robin said. “That’s like an English driver having to buy insurance for Scotland once he gets to the border. Anything else?”

  Mallory nodded.

  “We also need visas,” he said, and held up his hand to forestall the objection that he could already see forming on Robin’s face. “But the good news is that getting these seems to be just a formality because we have British passports. We just have to fill in a form each.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “As far as I can see, yes. But there may be a fee or two to pay as well, in addition to the extra insurance we’ll have to buy.”

  “Oh well. It’s only money. And not even our money, come to that.”

  When they’d eaten they got back in the car and Mallory followed the instructions he’d read on the Internet and had taken the trouble to jot down. The site had told them to look out for road signs to “Keryneia,” which were not particularly plentiful or very clear, but they did eventually find their way to the Metehan crossing point.

  The Greek border guards seemed surprisingly relaxed, and barely even glanced at the vehicle as they drove past. The Turkish officials were equally casual, but they did halt the Renault to inspect their passports and vehicle paperwork.

  The visa form wasn’t particularly difficult to complete, requiring little more than their names, nationalities, and passport numbers, and obtaining the additional insurance that was a legal requirement didn’t take long. Less than fifteen minutes after Mallory had switched off the engine, he started it again and they drove on, into northern Nicosia.

  On the other side of the border, both the language used on the road signs and the flags were different, the familiar blue-and-white symbol of Greece being replaced by the crescent and star on the red flag of Turkey. But otherwise the Turkish part of Cyprus looked remarkably like the Greek sector. Just as in Larnaca, it soon became obvious that the northern part of the island also relied heavily upon tourism for its income, and there seemed to be just as many bars, cafés, restaurants, and hotels as they had seen in the south.

  “Under no circumstances let me go inside a place like that,” Robin instructed, pointing at the brightly lit window of a shop they were driving past in the late-afternoon traffic.

  Mallory glanced in the direction she was pointing and nodded. There was absolutely no doubt about the goods on sale. Arranged in different-colored pyramid shapes in the window were piles and piles of Turkish pastries, dusted with icing and probably handmade somewhere in the local area.

  “I reckon you’re looking at roughly a million calories in each heap,” he said. “God alone knows why all the Turkish girls don’t weigh about a quarter of a ton each. They must have the most amazing willpower.”

  “They probably daren’t go near the shops selling the stuff,” Robin said, then turned her attention back to the map. “Now we need to head for Girne, so keep your eyes open for a sign. We should be able to find a hotel somewhere there.”

  The main road ran more or less due north out of Nicosia, across the Mesaoria Plain and straight toward the Kyrenia Mountains, the long and narrow range that stretched east-west for roughly one hundred miles along the north coast of Cyprus, defining that part of the island. They only rose to about half the height of the Troodos Mountains in the center of Cyprus, but had historic importance because they’d provided locations for watchtowers and fortifications since the earliest days, offering unrivaled views across the Mediterranean.

  The transition from the level plain to the mountains was somewhat abrupt, but crossing to the other side of the range was easy, the road swinging almost due east to follow the path of a long valley before turning back to the north. As soon as they emerged from the end of the valley, they saw the lights of Girne in front of them, a twinkling carpet in the gathering gloom of early evening.

  “Pretty,” Mallory commented. “Do you want me to head for the town center, or what?”

  “Might as well,” Robin replied. “There’s a harbor and quite a few tourist attractions, according to this map, so finding a hotel shouldn’t be difficult. In fact, it looks as if there’s a large interchange on the outskirts of Girne. If you turn right there and head north, that should take us straight toward Kyrenia Castle—Kyrenia is the old name of the town—and that’s one of the most popular historic sites in the area.”

  “There was something about that in the tourist guide, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Robin said, opening the book that she’d occasionally been looking at during their drive and finding the appropriate page. “It was originally probably a Templar stronghold, but the fortification there today is much more recent. It dates from the sixteenth century and it was built by the Venetians, modified later by the Ottoman Turks and later still by the British. It’s apparently quite an impressive building.”

  A few minutes after Mallory made the turn off the main road, he stopped the Renault in the car park of a small hotel located in a back street between the castle and the harbor. The sign outside the building, written in rather better English than they’d seen back in Larnaca, promised not only vacancies but also en s
uite showers and toilets, plus free Wi-Fi for guests, and for a fairly low quoted price.

  Robin looked at the building with a certain amount of suspicion.

  “It looks very cheap for what it’s offering,” she said.

  “We’re staying here for one night, not buying the place,” Mallory pointed out. “If it’s no good we’ll find a better hotel tomorrow, but it’s getting late and I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening driving round the town looking for something else.”

  In fact, it wasn’t too bad once they got inside, though the showers and bathrooms were cramped and clearly fairly recent additions to the small adjoining rooms they took. But they were clean, and the receptionist who took Mallory’s cash and handed them the keys spoke good, though not fluent, English.

  They had a drink in the bar-cum-lounge situated just off the reception hall, sitting at a corner table while they planned what they were going to do the following day, the topographical map of the island unfolded on the table in front of them.

  “I don’t really have much of a plan,” Mallory said, looking at the entry for Hilarion Castle in the guidebook. “It all depends on what we find when we get up there.”

  Robin nodded. “I think our biggest problem is that the castle is a major tourist attraction and has been for quite a long time. That means people have been walking all over it and—probably—digging all around the area while work was being done on the place for several centuries. I know you’re convinced that we’re on the trail of this lost treasure, but I really don’t see how something that was hidden the best part of one millennium ago could still be lying there, just waiting for us to turn up and find it. Surely somebody would have found it already?”

  “I don’t know, and it’s very difficult to prove a negative. But I’ve read a lot about the Templars, and so far I haven’t found any indication that it was recovered. If somebody had stumbled across the hoard since the thirteenth century, I would have expected to see a reference to it somewhere. The Templar treasure definitely arrived here in the care of Tibauld and he certainly died here, and all references to the treasure seem to have died with him. But I take your point. Logically you would expect that the treasure had been recovered at some point. If it wasn’t, if nobody knew where he had hidden it, I can only assume that he concealed it really well, in some part of the castle that was hidden from view or that nobody knew was there.”

  Robin smiled at him. “And you really think that we’re going to be able to just walk in there and find it?”

  Mallory shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “The only clue we have is that piece of graffiti we found at the Sidon Sea Castle, and all that seems to say—assuming we’re reading it correctly, of course—is that Tibauld concealed the hoard at Hilarion. What it obviously doesn’t tell us is exactly where he hid it. And I don’t think there’s anything much we can do until we actually get up to the site and see what it looks like.”

  * * *

  “I’ll go inside and check,” Salvatore said into his Bluetooth headset. “I speak enough Turkish to ask for a coffee or a drink.”

  “If they’re not in the bar, don’t push your luck,” Toscanelli replied. “Don’t let them even guess that you’re watching them.”

  Toscanelli was still a couple of miles outside Girne, the car having got stuck in a line of traffic waiting to cross the border into northern Cyprus. Salvatore had had no such problems on his motorcycle, and Nico, in the second car, which was equipped with the receiver to follow the tracker attached to the target car, had driven across the border only three or four minutes behind the Renault. Nico had followed the targets, and Salvatore had followed Nico, and they had had no trouble at all in tracing Jessop and her male companion to the hotel they had chosen.

  In fact, Salvatore didn’t really need to go into the building at all, and he knew it, but he wanted to make absolutely certain that the two targets were there simply because he had lost sight of them on the journey across the island. And, if possible, he also wanted to get some idea about what they were doing.

  He ended the call without any further comment, tucked his headset into his pocket, switched his mobile to silent, secured his crash helmet to the motorcycle, and strode into the hotel. Inside the building, he walked casually into the bar, where about twenty people were sitting, drinks on the tables in front of them, the low buzz of conversation interspersed by occasional laughs, the riffle of cards, and the chink of glasses.

  Salvatore hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and was still uncertain what the evening would bring, so drinking alcohol was not an option. He ordered and paid for a coffee and a cake and took them over to a small round table on the opposite side of the room to where the two targets were sitting. He’d identified them the moment he stepped into the bar. Sitting down, he took out his now rather tatty newspaper and placed it on the table in front of him, then bent forward, appearing to read it while covertly studying Jessop and her companion.

  Five minutes later he finished his snack, picked up his paper, and walked outside. As soon as he was clear of the building, he called Toscanelli to update him on the situation.

  “They’re in the hotel,” he confirmed, “and my guess is that they won’t be leaving tonight. It looks to me as if they’re making plans for tomorrow. They’ve got a guidebook open in front of them and they’re studying what I think is a topographical chart, but I wasn’t close enough to confirm that. So my guess is that they’ll make an early start tomorrow.”

  “They’re working out where to start looking,” Toscanelli said.

  “Exactly. Nico can do the overnight surveillance, because I need to eat something and get some sleep. I’ll be back here, covering the hotel, tomorrow morning no later than six.”

  59

  Cyprus

  The castle was located on the northern side of the Kyrenia Mountains, and Robin had worked out that probably the fastest way to get there was to retrace their route of the previous evening and head back toward Larnaca and the south coast of the island, then head up into the mountains when they were on the south side of the range.

  Once they left the main road, their driving slowed as the narrow road wound its way up the steep side of the mountain and around hairpin bends, gaining height all the time. Mallory could see at least three cars in front of them, and about the same number behind, together with a couple of motorcycles.

  “According to this guidebook,” Robin said as they drove through some kind of military area, following the signs directing them toward Saint Hilarion, “the best time to visit the castle is early in the morning—as we’re doing now—and before most of the coach parties begin arriving. Apparently it’s very popular with Russians, for some reason, and they tend to arrive en masse. It’s a big place, by all accounts, but it can get very crowded during the tourist season. Which I suppose is more or less right now.”

  Mallory nodded. “If this level of traffic is anything to go by, this early in the morning, the guidebook is probably right. With any luck, we’ll be able to take a quick look round before it gets too crowded. And once we’ve done that, we’ll have a much better idea—I hope—about where we should be looking.”

  “Because wherever the treasure is,” Robin finished for him, “it won’t be anywhere that’s visited by tourists, obviously.”

  “Exactly. It’s certainly a hell of a long way up,” Mallory said, swinging the car round yet another tight corner. “I think when I looked at the history of the place it was reckoned to be almost impregnable.”

  “That’s right,” Robin said, looking again at the guidebook. “Obviously no castle can ever withstand a siege indefinitely, but Saint Hilarion’s Castle did a lot better than most. It was one of the last fortifications on the island to fall to the Knights Templar when they arrived here at the end of the twelfth century, and about forty years later it became the stronghold of the Lusignan king Henry the First in
his conflict with the Holy Roman emperor Frederick the Second, and it held out for four years, though it wasn’t besieged for that entire time. When there was finally an outbreak of peace in the thirteenth century, a lot of rebuilding work was done on the castle, and it became a summer residence for the rulers of the island.

  “But the most destructive enemy the castle faced never actually laid siege to it. When the Venetians took control of Cyprus late in the fifteenth century, they concentrated their defenses down on the coast, at fortifications like Kyrenia Castle, near where we stayed last night, and ignored the forts located higher up. It’s possible that they actually began dismantling Hilarion and the sister castles of Kantara and Buffavento, apparently to save the cost of providing a garrison for each of them.”

  Mallory nodded. “And that’s another reason why it’ll be a waste of time looking in the obvious places in the castle, because if the Venetians even partially dismantled it, they would certainly have found the treasure if it had been placed anywhere within the structure. That is if the hoard hadn’t already been found when the place was being rebuilt and expanded.”

  “And I didn’t know this,” Robin said. “The castle became a stronghold again, but much more recently. In the nineteen sixties it was used as the headquarters of the Turkish Cypriots, and they put a small garrison there that managed to defend the place against attacks by EOKA. That was the Greek paramilitary force that was trying to drive out the British as well as the Turks and basically make Cyprus a part of Greece. And another decade later, it became the center of a fight for control of the pass that runs through these mountains. It’s obviously seen more than its fair share of conflict over the centuries, and that must mean that the castle has been thoroughly explored by almost everybody involved.”

  Robin closed the guidebook and stared through the windshield at the narrow ribbon of road unrolling in front of the car.