The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (25 page)

“I’m afraid so,” Adam said grimly. “And the casket as well, I think. Fortunately, before he became aware of me, Grizel and I were at least able to resolve half the puzzle. I still don’t know where the casket is, but the Sceptre is hidden in a secret vault at Rosslyn Chapel.’

“Rosslyn . . .” Peregrine murmured.

As an artist, he was familiar with Rosslyn as a treasury of Late Gothic stonework. Commissioned in the mid-fifteenth century by Sir William St. Clair, another scion of Adam’s own family, Rosslyn Chapel was renowned throughout Scotland for the unique richness of its carvings. The church in its entirety had never been finished; but perhaps it had never been intended as anything other than a hiding place for an even more valuable treasure.

“Adam, “ Peregrine said urgently, “you’ve just told us that Gerard knows where both the casket and the Sceptre are! If he can recover the Sceptre before we do, he’ll be better than halfway to recovering he’s coveted for centuries.”

“Probably never suspecting what’s
really
in the box,” said McLeod. “We’d better hope we can get to Rosslyn ahead of him!”

“Indeed,” Adam said grimly, letting the inspector help him to his feet. “Dear Grizel, I must thank you for accompanying me on the Astral. Your presence strengthened me. l owe you a great debt.”

There is no debt,
Grizel replied, smiling.
Do not forget that we were once of one blood, and one purpose.

“I am not forgetting,” Adam said, “not least, the fact that you have waited long enough for your liberty.”

As he spoke, his face was overcast once more by the ghostly change of aspect that signalled the emergence of his persona as Lady Jean. When he spoke again, it was with her voice.

“May the blessings of the Light be always upon you, Grizel, for all your pains and service. Whatever happens to us from this point onward, I shall rejoice in the knowledge that you at least are free.”

Grizel’s presence was fading even as he spoke. In the last instant, she reached out and touched translucent fingers to Adam’s lips.

Farewell, little sister,
came her fading whisper.
Be strong, for the sake of all we both hold dear.

Then she was gone.

A brief silence fell. Then McLeod drew himself up. “Well, what are we waiting for?” he muttered. “The game’s afoot!

Chapter Twenty-Four

ADAM DEPOSITED
the Crown in Peregrine’s art satchel for safekeeping. Then he and his two subordinates set swiftly about erasing all traces of their evening’s work before heading back down the Great Stair in search of Mr. Lauder. He came out of the Drawing Room with an expression of some relief, but they cut short their leave-taking with the excuse that Adam’s beeper had gone off, and he was required back in Edinburgh for a medical emergency.

“I took the liberty of calling in on that phone in the Douglas Room,” he told the castle keeper, “but I reversed the charges. Fortunately, we’d pretty much seen what we came to look at. I want to thank you again for letting us intrude on such a busy evening.”

Lauder made a gesture of disclaimer. “Think nothing of it. It’s the usual chaos around here, when we’ve got outside guests. I don’t suppose I can tempt you to delay long enough for a bite to eat? They always overcater these affairs, and we’ve got several pheasants going begging.”

“Ah, I wish we could,” Adam said with genuine regret, as much for Peregrine as for himself and McLeod. “Unfortunately, we’ve still got a three-to-four-hour run back to Edinburgh, and I don’t know how much the rain will slow us down. Thanks very much for your offer, though.”

Peregrine said nothing as they made their dash back to the car and piled in, but as Adam shrugged out of a now sodden blazer and handed it back to the artist to layout across the back, he gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Sorry about the missed meal, but we really shouldn’t eat now, even if we could spare the time.”

“I know that,” Peregrine said glumly, as Adam started the engine. “It’s just that, after breathing the aroma of roast pheasant off and on for several hours, my stomach did a momentary leap of joy when we were actually offered some.”

“Give yourself half an hour, and you may be glad there’s nothing in it,” McLeod retorted, consulting their road atlas. “Hand up that cellular phone, would you? I’m going to try to get us a chopper out of Aberdeen; and if I do, it’s bound to be a rough ride, in this weather. I can’t think of a faster way to Rosslyn, though. Head us toward the airport, Adam.”

The general availability of helicopters in the Aberdeen area was a given, since helicopters were widely used to service the offshore oil rigs, but whether or not they could find one this late, and willing to fly them down to Rosslyn in this weather, was another question. As they headed back through the village of Fyvie, McLeod spoke with directory inquiries, jotting down the numbers of several helicopter charter services operating out of Aberdeen Airport.

Unfortunately, the airport proved to be a dead end, for the companies servicing the oil rigs only ran commercial flights. But by the time they were passing back through Oldmeldrum, McLeod had been able to obtain the number of a small private charter service based farther north on the main road back to Aberdeen.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” McLeod said, as he began dialling the new number. “This one’s just beyond Pitcaple. You’ll want to go north on the A96 at Inverurie—if I can raise them at this hour.”

Grampian Helicopter Service apparently was hungry for business, because within the space of five minutes, McLeod had secured the promise of a chopper and pilot standing by for takeoff as soon as they arrived.

“Right, we should be there in ten or fifteen minutes,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

As he disconnected and began to dial again, he glanced at Adam and grinned.

“We’ve got one. They’ll even take a credit card. Now let’s see if all that training I’ve been putting into young
Donald Cochrane will pay off. Hello, Donald?” he said, when the call was answered. “Yes, sorry to ring you up at home, but I need a personal favor. Yes. I’ve been Hunting up by Aberdeen with Sir Adam and Mr. Lovat. We’re on our way to pick up a helicopter. We’ve had a tip that our Henri Gerard chap may be making for Roslin. Yes, down by Loanhead.

“No, I don’t want you to go there. The charter service tells us that the nearest helipad is at Dalhousie Castle. We should be there in about two hours. Can you be there with a car to meet us when we land? That’s right, Dalhousie Castle, at about midnight. No, no backup,” he added with a glance at Adam, who shook his head. “If our man is going to turn up, we’ll have a better chance of apprehending him if the police keep a low profile.”

“In other words,” said Peregrine, when the inspector had rung off, “you think Gerard may be too dangerous for a conventional police force to handle.”

“Too right,” McLeod grumbled. “If we blow this thing, and Gerard does set Gog and Magog on the loose, numbers aren’t going to matter except as potential casualties.”

* * *

Shaken by the revelation that he was being sought by adversaries other than the police, Henri Gerard had lost no time getting to the rendezvous point where he had arranged to meet his hired henchman. No one seemed to be there yet, but when Gerard flashed his lights and pulled into the agreed lay-by, just off the A 7 road to Galashiels, Ritchie Logan made a lithe run for the car. Seen by the glare of the headlights, he was wearing an artistically begrimed set of workman’s coveralls under a scruffy rain slicker, and carrying a heavy canvas tool-bag.

“Evening, Mr. Gerard,” he said, as he slung the bag into the backseat. “You’re right on time.”

“I could say the same for you,” Gerard replied coolly.

When Logan had piled into the front seat and slammed the door against the rain, he took a closer look at Gerard’s taut face, close-set eyes narrowing at what he read there.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

Gerard gave a testy shrug of his shoulders and rammed the car into gear. “Nothing that I care to discuss with you,” he said shortly, whipping their vehicle out onto the road again.

Logan gave him a sidelong look, obviously not impressed. “Look, Mr. Gerard. If your trouble’s something personal, fair enough. But if it’s got anything to do with this job tonight, I want to know about it.”

Gerard considered the demand, then gave a nod of brittle indulgence.

“Very well. If you really must know, I have just learned that we are being followed.”

Logan started up in his seat and darted an instinctive look over his shoulder.

“Who is it?” he inquired sharply. “The police?”

“No, a—competitor of mine.”

Logan turned to stare at the Frenchman in some incredulity. “A
competitor?
What is he, another historian like yourself?”

“I don’t know what he is,” Gerard said. “But he is after the same thing I am.”

“You mean you don’t even know his name?” Logan’s incredulity gave way to a snort of laughter. “That’s rich, that is. For a moment there you had me worried.” As he settled insolently back in his seat, Gerard gave him a scathing glance.

“You may scoff if you like,” he snapped, “but I have reason to believe that this man, whoever he may be, poses a far greater threat to us than the conventional authorities. He possesses a knowledge and training at least equal to my own, and a comparable degree of power. If you were any less ignorant than you are, you would understand what that means.”

“I know my job, Mr. Gerard,” Logan said with tolerant scorn. “But if you want to worry about him, you go right ahead. He’d just better not get in my way.”

“If he does,” Gerard said tersely, “you may not even be aware until it is too late.”

Logan settled into sullen silence after that, though more apprehensive than he had been. He had suspected from the very beginning that Gerard might not be too mentally stable. Since then, the Frenchman’s speech and behavior had become increasingly erratic. Logan thought it quite possible that Gerard was on his way to a breakdown—and Logan didn’t propose to be around when the man finally cracked. On the contrary, he intended to be as far away as possible, taking the lion’s share of the spoils with him.

Assuming, of course, that Gerard was onto something of real value. Logan had not ruled out the possibility that tonight’s venture was anything other than a madman’s wild-goose chase. But since he was being well paid for his services, and had profited handsomely from the jewels taken in their last job together, he was prepared to play the Frenchman’s game for now, secure in the knowledge that he himself could change the rules anytime he chose. Either way, he stood to make a killing at Gerard’s expense.

Gerard, for his part, maintained an austere silence for the rest of the drive. Logan’s patent skepticism mattered far less to him than the memory of that brief, betraying episode of mind-touch with a rival intellect—an intellect tainted, moreover, with the stamp of Templar wisdom and the clear intention to know the location of the casket. Once before, the Templars had balked him of fulfilling his ambitions. He was determined that history should not repeat itself in the present.

It was in a mood of rising tension that he and Logan drove quietly through the sleeping village of Roslin. The signs pointing to Rosslyn Chapel were hard to spot in the mist, but eventually they found the correct turn.

The chapel itself lay just beyond the village, perched on the west bank of the Esk behind an encircling wall. Quietly Gerard eased the car into the unpaved car park that bordered the wall on one side and turned it around before parking in the shadow of some overhanging trees. He was wearing what he fancied a cat burglar should wear—a black leather jacket over a black polo shirt and black trousers and running shoes—and he noted that Logan was dressed much the same, once he had zipped out of his coverall and donned a black nylon windbreaker from his tool-bag.

Gerard had a kit-bag too, and slung it over his shoulder as he silently followed his hired professional toward the wall. He found himself casting around him in the darkness for any psychic traces of his earlier adversary, but he found none. Still, the silence did nothing to abate his own sense of urgency.

They had to climb the wall to get into the grounds surrounding the chapel, and then kept to the wet grass as much as possible, to avoid the sounds of footsteps on gravel. All the doors were locked fast as expected, but Logan decided that the one at the chapel’s western end would yield most readily to his skills. The dull clunk of ancient mechanisms moving sounded preternaturally loud in the surrounding hush, but the door swung open almost silently.

“After you,” Logan murmured, waving his employer forward with sardonic deference.

He left Gerard to close the door behind them while he rummaged in the bag for a powerful electric lantern to augment the smaller pocket torch he had used on the lock.

“Here,” he whispered, handing the lantern to Gerard. “Just keep the beam low, away from the windows.”

The two men made their way stealthily up the central aisle between two rows of stone columns, Gerard leading. The discoloring flare of their lantern slid like a greasy hand over carvings intricate and exquisite as lace. Skirting to the right of the sanctuary, Gerard led the way around the base of a fat column carved in a lacy spiral—Rosslyn’s famous Apprentice Pillar, legendarily embellished by an apprentice stone-carver whose master subsequently had murdered him out of envy. Beyond the pillar, hard against the south side of the chancel, a flight of stone steps descended into the chapel’s crypt. With a little gasp of excitement, Gerard led the way down, shining his torch left and right as they went.

“All right,” said Logan in a low voice. “Where’s the entrance to this vault of yours?”

“There. “ Gerard shone the lantern to the left, following into an opening that led into a small, vaulted room with a dirt floor. As he played his light over the far wall, Logan was able to make out a telltale discrepancy in the screening brickwork indicating the former presence of a narrow, oblong opening.

“You did warn me we were going to have to do some excavating,” the thief allowed sourly. “All I’ve got to say is there’d better be something more worthwhile than dead men’s bones on the other side of this wall. I’m not about to dig it out by hand, either.”

He threw open his tool-bag and lifted out a small tackle box, together with a mat of bunting. The upper tier of the box contained shaped quantities of plastic explosive. The compartments beneath held an assortment of detonators.

“Go back upstairs and wait for me,” he told Gerard. “I’ll join you as soon as I’ve rigged the charge.”

“No, wait!” Gerard sounded peremptory. “Let me ward the chamber first so that the noise won’t carry.”

“There isn’t going to
be
much noise—”

“There won’t be
any,
if you’ll just stand aside for a moment. Do it!”

To Logan this sounded like sheer lunacy, but he acceded with a shrug.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Gerard.”

While the thief looked on in mute cynicism, Gerard opened his own bag and took out an assortment of implements including a plastic bottle of swine’s blood, an aspergill of boar’s bristles, and a small bowl hammered out of iron. Muttering invocations darkly to himself, he poured a measure of the blood into the bowl and offered it round the four corners of the room. Then, wetting the aspergill in the blood, he bent to paint a warding symbol on the floor at the base of three of the four walls. He left the wall with the door from the stair until last.