The Lost Treasure of the Templars (12 page)

Dartmouth, Devon

Mallory hesitated for the barest fraction of a second. Who the man was he had not the slightest idea, but the stranger exuded an almost palpable air of menace. And because he had approached Mallory, he was clearly not acquainted with Robin herself and hadn't realized that name could be used by a woman, so what he wasn't going to do was place her in the firing line.

“Yes, I'm Robin Jessop,” Mallory said, before Robin could reply. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

The man in black didn't reply, just nodded almost imperceptibly and with a casual grace that belied his size, he reached into his jacket pocket with his other hand and pulled out a small automatic pistol, which he pointed at Mallory.

“You have something we want,” he said, and gestured for Mallory to climb up the staircase in front of him.

Mallory was no coward, but he was unarmed and facing not only one man carrying a pistol but two armed men, he realized a moment later, as he took a couple of
steps toward the staircase. Another man, with the same heavy build as the first stranger and dressed in a similar kind of dark suit, had just stepped into view, and he, too, was holding a pistol.

And then Mallory discovered that the odds were stacked even higher against them. The second man half turned away and raised his left arm. As he did so, the headlights on a large SUV—it looked to Mallory like a Range Rover or maybe a Toyota Land Cruiser—parked a few dozen yards up the street flashed once briefly in acknowledgment. He and Robin were facing a group of at least three men, and he knew that two of them—and quite probably all three of them—were armed.

Robin looked down at him, a shocked expression on her face, and opened her mouth as if to speak, but Mallory shook his head decisively and she turned away and continued climbing up the staircase to her apartment.

Mallory was thinking furiously, running different scenarios through his mind, but the problem with all of them was the fact that he was only one man, and facing two other men both of whom were bigger than him, plus another one in the SUV. Even if the two he could see hadn't been carrying pistols, he knew perfectly well that if it came to a straight fight he would probably lose.

He glanced back, wondering if by some chance he could swivel on the spiral staircase and kick out to knock out the man behind him, but it was immediately apparent that this wouldn't work because the stranger was keeping well back, and certainly out of kicking distance. He was still aiming the gun directly at Mallory's back, and would be able to fire it at the first sign of any resistance. Something told Mallory these were not the kind of people to make idle threats: the mere fact that they'd both produced firearms suggested they would be quite prepared to use them.

Whatever plan he managed to come up with—assuming he thought of anything, of course—Mallory knew it would have to wait until they were in the apartment, where the small and cramped rooms might just possibly provide him with an opportunity to disarm at least one of the strangers. Beyond that strategy, which was vague in the extreme, he really had no idea what he could do.

“Open the door,” the first man demanded when the three of them reached the metal landing outside Robin's apartment. The other man was following them and was already halfway up the spiral staircase.

Robin glanced at Mallory, but both of them knew they had absolutely no option but to obey. She slid the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open.

“Now wait.”

The man gestured with his pistol, forcing Robin and Mallory to stand to one side while the second man walked into the apartment, his weapon held out in front of him. It wasn't a big flat, and in less than two minutes the man returned to the door, where he exchanged a couple of sentences in high-speed Italian with his companion.

“You get inside now.”

Again Robin and Mallory had no option but to obey, and in a few seconds all four of them were standing around the desk in Robin's tiny office.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Mallory demanded again, and this time the man replied.

“You have relic, codex or perhaps scroll, that is property of my employer,” he said, staring at Mallory, his English not fluent but understandable and heavily accented.

Mallory had never been a believer in coincidence, and he was already quite certain that he knew exactly which item in Robin's stock of ancient volumes the man was after. From what he'd seen when they walked through
the shop downstairs, everything she had for sale was a book of some sort, not a codex or scroll. The man's next words confirmed it.

“You call it
Ipse Dixit
when you sent question on Internet. That is relic we come to collect.”

“How did you find out about it?” Mallory asked, his professional curiosity aroused.

“We have good monitoring of Web. Hand over relic now, and we leave.”

“And what about us?”

“All we want is relic. We no interest in you or girlfriend.”

The words were reassuring, and the man's tone of voice neutral. But there was a veiled and lethal silent threat behind the dialogue that was quite unmistakable to Mallory, and when he glanced over at Robin, who had so far not said a word since the two men appeared, he was certain that she had picked up on it, too. He met her eyes and saw her give a barely perceptible shake of her head. It looked as if she was reading exactly the same subtext that he was.

“Where is it?”

At that moment, Mallory realized that the only possible weapon they had was the book safe itself, and he thanked whatever god watched over adventurous IT specialists that he'd decided to reset the antitheft device before Robin replaced the relic in her safe.

“It's locked away in the safe in the corner,” Mallory replied, pointing at the square dark green metal box. “Mary—she's my secretary—has the key.”

He nodded at Robin, though as she was the only woman in the room he didn't think either of the two thugs would be in any doubt exactly who he was referring to.

The man immediately switched his attention to Robin and then pointed toward the safe.

“Open it,” he snapped.

Robin still had her apartment keys in her hand, and without responding she walked across to the safe, bent down in front of it, and unlocked the door.

The moment the door swung open, the other man slipped his pistol into his pocket, stepped across to her, pulled her upright, and shoved her roughly back toward the desk. Then he bent down to inspect the contents of the safe.

The biggest thing in it was the
Ipse Dixit
book safe, and he immediately pulled it out and read the faded inscription on the front cover. Then he spoke in rapid Italian to his companion, who gestured for him to place the object on the desk. Mallory picked up a name from the dialogue: it sounded as if the first Italian—he recognized the language they were speaking—apparently the leader, was called Giacomo.

Giacomo—assuming Mallory was right—issued another order in his own language, and the second man took out his gun again and aimed it at Mallory. Satisfied that the situation was under control, Giacomo slid his own weapon into his jacket pocket, then picked up the book safe and examined it carefully.

“What in it?” he demanded. “Scroll? Codex? Parchment?”

Mallory looked at him.

“If that object really had been stolen or taken from your employer,” Mallory asked mildly, “surely you would already know what was inside it?”

“Answer question. I no have patience.”

“It's an old scroll,” Mallory said. “We haven't been able to decipher it, and we put it back inside the box for safekeeping.”

The Italian turned the relic over in his hands a couple
more times, then held it close to his ear and shook it. The box safe was of course locked—Robin had done that after Mallory reset the antitheft device—and almost immediately he looked at Mallory and asked the obvious question.

“How you open it?”

Mallory again glanced at Robin before he replied, because he knew this was the only chance they were going to get, the only way they had any possibility of walking out of that room alive.

“There's a small slot on the side of the relic opposite the spine. You have to slide a metal object inside it and then push firmly to unlock it. You need something like this letter opener.”

Mallory took a step forward and stretched out his hand toward the pen holder on Robin's desk, but immediately the man raised his arm.

“No touch,” he said threateningly.

Mallory stepped back and just waited, because now there was nothing else he could do.

“The mechanism is stiff,” he said, “so you need to push quite firmly.”

The Italian nodded, then leaned forward and picked up the paper knife, a flat steel blade with a wooden handle. He looked closely at the book safe, slid the point of the paper knife into the slot opposite the spine, took a firm grip on the relic with his left hand, and then pushed the blade firmly home.

Dartmouth, Devon

There was a faint metallic click, followed almost immediately by a heavy thud, and then a brief moment of silence before the Italian started screaming as the medieval booby trap was triggered for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Half a dozen of the metal spikes slammed through the palm of his left hand. And as a brutal bonus, the blade of the letter opener was so short that three of the spikes on the opposite side of the book safe drove deep into his closed right fist. At least for a few moments, the man was completely incapacitated, both hands pinned to the ancient relic.

As Giacomo's scream echoed around the small room, Mallory took two quick strides forward to where the other Italian was standing, his mouth open in shock, his pistol now pointing toward the floor.

But then something totally unexpected occurred: Robin beat him to it.

“Get the other one,” she said urgently, and then moved.

She stepped towards the second Italian, pivoted on her left foot, and lashed out with her right. The sole of her shoe—she was wearing a pair of comfortable pumps—connected violently with the Italian's right wrist and there was an audible crack as something broke in his arm. The gun went spinning across the floor to land under the desk. She continued her fluid and well-practiced movement, landing on her right foot and swinging her left leg around in a short and lethally targeted arc, her heel slamming into the left side of the Italian's face. He crumpled to the floor in an untidy and unconscious heap.

The moment Mallory realized that Robin was perfectly capable of handling the second man, he switched direction and dived around the desk. The other Italian—Giacomo—was still screaming, still trying to pull his hands away from the spikes, but the noise stopped moments later when Mallory's right fist, driven by all of the considerable power of his right arm, and given added impetus by the combination of fear and rage that he was experiencing, crashed into his chin.

Once he was certain the man posed no further threat to them—at least until he woke up—Mallory looked over to his right.

“Are you okay?” he asked, though even as he formed the words he realized the question was superfluous.

Robin was not only okay, but had already turned the Italian onto his face and pulled both his arms behind him.

“Perfectly,” she snapped. “Now don't just stand there gawping. In the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk you'll find a handful of plastic cable ties held together with an elastic band. Fish them out and let me have them, please. And another thing,” she added, “much as I appreciate your chivalrous action in pretending to be me, if we find ourselves in the same kind of situation
again, can you please think of a more attractive name for me than Mary?”

“First name that came into my head,” Mallory replied, stepping back around the desk and opening the drawer. “It was my mother's name, actually, or the first part of it, anyway. She was called Mary Anne.”

“Sorry.”

It was, Mallory thought as he rooted around in the drawer, a somewhat surreal conversation, bearing in mind what had just happened in the room over the last few seconds, and he had a number of obvious questions he wanted to ask, but they could all wait. He found the bundle of cable ties and tossed them over to her.

The second Italian was still lying unconscious on the floor, but they had no idea how long that convenient state of affairs would last. Robin stripped a cable tie out of the bundle, looped it around the unconscious man's left wrist, and pulled it tight. Then she dragged his right arm close to his left, threaded the second cable tie under the first, and pulled it tight around his right wrist. For good measure, she took two more of the ties and repeated the process, then lashed his ankles together in a similar fashion, pulling each plastic tie as tight as she could. When the Italian did finally wake up, he would be completely immobilized.

Giacomo was also still unconscious, and the first thing Mallory did was reach into his jacket pocket and take out the automatic pistol that the Italian had threatened the two of them with when they arrived at the apartment. He searched his other pockets as well and pulled out a cheap mobile phone, a spare magazine for the pistol, fully loaded, and a suppressor to screw onto the end of the barrel. That simply reinforced Mallory's belief that he and Robin had not been intended to survive the evening. He placed the
weapon and equipment on the desk, removed a slim wallet from the Italian's inside jacket pocket, and then turned his attention to the man's hands.

They were, not to put too fine a point on it, a mess. Six of the needle-sharp spikes had been driven right through the man's left hand, and the wounds were bleeding steadily. In fact, there was rather less blood than Mallory had expected, probably because the spikes themselves were to some extent plugging the wounds. He couldn't tell for sure whether or not any of the spikes had shattered the bones in the man's hand, but he reckoned that was quite probable. He certainly wouldn't be playing the violin any time soon.

There was no such doubt about the injuries on Giacomo's right hand. He had obviously been holding the paper knife firmly in his closed fist in order to push the knife into the lock mechanism, and three of the spikes had been driven deep into his hand, one into the web between his forefinger and thumb, and the other two had slammed through the bones of the knuckles of his first and middle fingers.

“That looks really painful,” Robin said, with not an ounce of compassion in her voice, as she leaned over Mallory and looked down at the Italian's hands.

Mallory nodded.

“Your hands and feet are often the most difficult parts of the body to repair, because they're full of small bones. He's going to have serious problems sorting out his hands.”

“Shame. You do know they were going to kill us, don't you?”

“That was my guess. Where the hell did you learn to kick like that?”

“I'll tell you another time,” Robin replied. “First, I
want that book safe back, so you're going to have to pull his hands off the spikes, and the best time to do that is right now, while he's still unconscious.”

Together they turned Giacomo until he was lying on his left side, and then Mallory trod firmly on the Italian's left wrist, seized both ends of the book safe, and pulled, trying to slide the spikes out of the man's hand. The Italian moaned in pain, but didn't come round, and with a sudden jerk the ancient relic came free.

Robin bent down, looped a couple of the cable ties around his wrist, and pulled them tight.

“Two birds with one stone,” she murmured. “As well as acting like handcuffs, these will also function as a tourniquet.”

When the spikes had pulled free, they had both noticed that the flow of blood from the wounds increased significantly.

Mallory rolled the unconscious Italian onto his right side and tried to repeat the process, but because two of the spikes had been driven deep into the bone of the knuckles, he couldn't simply pull them out.

“I need a lever,” he said, “something to use to free the spikes.”

The letter opener was still sticking out of the slot in the side of the book safe, and Robin bent down and pulled it out.

“Here,” she said. “Try this.”

Mallory slid the steel blade into the narrow gap between the edge of the book safe and the bleeding knuckles of Giacomo's right hand and then levered firmly.

This time, the pain must have been far worse, because the Italian moaned and grunted, and then his eyes flicked open. He started to move, trying to roll onto his back, the movement pulling the book safe out of Mallory's grasp.

Robin stretched her right arm around Mallory and, apparently quite gently, pressed the web of her hand against the Italian's throat. Almost immediately he stopped moving and his eyelids flickered again before he slumped back into unconsciousness.

“Before you ask,” she said, “that was called a push choke, and he'll be out for at least ten minutes, so you've got plenty of time.”

Mallory didn't reply, simply grabbed hold of the book safe again, taking care to avoid the protruding spikes, placed his foot on Giacomo's wrist to keep his arm steady, and redoubled his efforts with the steel blade of the letter opener.

It was messy work, the man's hand sticky with the blood leaking out of the puncture wounds, but after another minute or so of levering and moving and pulling, there was a faint cracking sound and the book safe suddenly came free.

“I'll take that,” Robin said, reaching down for the medieval relic and taking it from him, using a tissue to avoid touching the blood that had been splashed liberally over the leather cover. Then she dropped the bundle of ties beside Mallory. “Get another couple of these around his wrists,” she said, “and don't forget to do his ankles as well.”

He rolled the unconscious Italian onto his side, pulled both his arms behind his back, and quickly lashed them together and then secured his ankles with another four cable ties.

As he did so, Robin placed the book safe on one end of the desk and then bent down to reach under it, stretching out her hand to retrieve the second pistol.

“Hang on a minute,” Mallory said. “Don't touch it.”

Robin stopped, her outstretched fingers just inches away from the butt of the semiautomatic weapon.

“Why not?” she asked. “We can't just leave it there.”

“I'm just thinking ahead. We don't want to leave our fingerprints on that pistol. Use your cotton gloves and then put it on the desk, well away from the other one.”

“When you say ‘the other one,' you mean the one you took out of his pocket using your bare hands? That one?”

Mallory grinned at her briefly. “That's exactly what I mean, and before I did that I should have waited and thought it through.”

Robin stood up, pulled on the white cotton gloves she had been wearing earlier, then bent down again and retrieved the pistol, placing it at the opposite end of the desk to the one Mallory had already recovered. Then, still wearing the gloves, she searched the other man, removing his wallet, mobile phone, and a second suppressor and spare magazine: the two men had been carrying precisely the same hardware. She placed everything at the end of the desk, then slumped down in her chair and stared across at Mallory, who'd just finished immobilizing Giacomo.

“So, who the hell are these two comedians?” she demanded. “And what do we do now?”