The Lost Treasure of the Templars (16 page)

Dartmouth, Devon

Clearing the building didn't take long. Less than a minute later, Fulton reported that nobody else was in there and stepped back into the office while he waited for his colleagues to appear. Outside on the balcony, Chambers was also waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, with the crime scene secured, Fulton and Chambers, their weapons made safe, were standing in one corner of the office, talking to the inspector.

“This really doesn't make any sense,” Wilson said.

He pointed at the bulky man lying on the floor of the small office. Two paramedics from the ambulance were looking at the unexplained injuries to both his hands with puzzled expressions on their faces.

“That man was carrying an unloaded Beretta pistol and a suppressor in his jacket pocket, but without a magazine or any cartridges. The other one had no pistol, but he did have a magazine that fitted that Beretta and three loose rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition. But the other pistol you found at the bottom of the staircase was
fully loaded. The man outside had a mobile phone in his pocket, one that's identical to these two other mobiles we found sitting here on the desk, and all of them have the name of an Italian service provider on them, so they're probably either pay-as-you-go or prepaid phones. What the criminal fraternity here call ‘burners.' Those facts are bizarre enough, but the bigger question is even more puzzling.”

Fulton nodded. “Who incapacitated three heavily built armed men—according to the medics, the man outside the apartment has a dislocated shoulder—and then used cable ties to immobilize them? And then shot them in the head with a gun that we can't find? And what the hell did they do to that man's hands? It looks like they drove nails through the palm of his left hand and then more into the knuckles of his right. It must have hurt like crazy, and there's no way any man would have sat still while they did it. And why was it done? To make him talk or what?”

“I have no idea,” Wilson agreed, “but there obviously has to have been more than one other person involved. The other thing is what these men look like. All three of them have black hair and swarthy complexions. To me they don't look English, and the suits they're wearing are definitely Italian—I've looked at the labels. So if these three guys are Italian, like their phones and their pistols and what they're wearing, that obviously adds an international component, and that makes me wonder if what we're seeing is gang related, perhaps a punishment for something that one man did. Either that or maybe there's some kind of terrorist connection that we can't see at the moment. And I've also done a bit more checking on the owner of this apartment, and it turns out that ‘Robin Jessop' is a woman, not a man. This doesn't look to me like a woman's work.”

“And none of them are carrying any identification,” Chambers added, and pointed at the desk. “There are two identical wallets right there, next to the two identical mobile phones, both of them empty, and the man outside had no wallet in his jacket, but he was carrying the mobile phone, a suppressor that fits the pistol we found at the bottom of the staircase, and a set of car keys. It looks to me as if these three men had been sent out on a deniable operation, and each of them had been given exactly the same equipment, because otherwise surely at least one of them would be carrying
something
that would identify them, even if it was only a driving license or a credit card.”

“That makes sense,” Wilson agreed. “But whatever happened and whoever these three are—or were—the first thing we need to do is track down this Robin Jessop as a matter of urgency. Have you done anything with the car keys yet?”

Fulton shook his head.

“Not yet,” he replied, holding up an evidence bag containing a key with a plastic fob attached. “It looks to me like a hire car, and probably a Range Rover. If it's okay with you, sir, I'll go down and see if it's parked anywhere nearby. Perhaps there's something in it that will help identify these three.”

“Good idea,” Wilson replied. “Go and do it now.”

Fulton walked down the spiral staircase and crossed first to the BMW Armed Response Vehicle, opened the tailgate, and locked his Heckler & Koch MP5 away securely. Then he depressed the remote locking button on the car key and looked around expectantly. A short distance up the street, the hazard warning lights on a dark-colored Range Rover began to flash.

“Bingo.”

Fulton nodded in satisfaction and walked over to it, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves as he did so, to avoid contaminating any possible fingerprint evidence that might be found in the vehicle. He stopped beside it and for a minute or so simply peered in, the interior illuminated by the courtesy light, but saw nothing suspicious.

Then he pulled open the driver's door and checked all the various storage compartments. Tucked away in the back he found three identical small black plastic boxes with hinged lids that he immediately recognized as pistol cases. All of them were empty, which was not entirely unexpected. They'd only found two weapons at the scene, and as far as they could tell, none of them had been fired, so it was a reasonable assumption that all three men had been killed with the missing third pistol, which had then been removed from the scene by somebody else, presumably the person who had killed the three victims.

The glove box on the dashboard was the last place he looked, and what he found inside it both clarified and at the same time deepened the mystery of the identity of the three men.

Fulton left the plastic boxes inside the vehicle, but opened another evidence bag and placed the contents of the glove box inside it before returning to the apartment and showing Wilson what he had found.

The inspector also pulled on a pair of latex gloves before he examined the three diplomatic passports and an international driving license that matched one of the names.

“Well, that buggers things up nicely,” he said, flicking through the first document. “All three of them had diplomatic immunity, which means that they could have walked pretty much as soon as we got them back to the station, despite the firearms we found on them. But of
course they can't, because they're dead. And that of course raises the other obvious question: just what the hell are three armed Italian diplomats doing being tied up and then shot dead inside a deserted flat owned by a female bookseller, for God's sake, in Dartmouth?”

“If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun,” Fulton remarked, just loud enough for Chambers to hear, then raised his voice slightly. “Well, sir, we'd best sort out our reports and then get back on the road, so if there's nothing else we'll get out of your way.”

Wilson nodded distractedly. “Yes, and thanks for getting here so quickly.”

Then he turned his attention back to the scene in the apartment, wondering just what on earth he'd stumbled into.

Devon

Mallory knew beyond the slightest shadow of any doubt that they were safe, at least for the moment, though in dealing with the gang of thugs they'd encountered, the word
safe
was only a relative term. And even though he was certain that they couldn't possibly be following them, that didn't stop him glancing in his rearview mirrors every few seconds as he pushed the Porsche hard, covering the ground as quickly as he could to put some distance between them and the inevitable pursuit.

Robin, sitting next to him, was confused. And worried, constantly twisting around in her seat to look behind the car.

“You told me yourself,” Mallory said as she spun round yet again. “They're stuck on the wrong side of the river.”

“I know, I know, but I'm still worried. And so are you, judging by the number of times you've checked the mirrors.”

Mallory nodded.

“You're absolutely right. Look,” he went on, “we need to talk about this, obviously, and I have a question for you.”

“Just the one?”

“Well, no, several, actually. That move you made against the man on the balcony. That wasn't karate, so I suppose it was an aikido move? It's not a martial art I know much about,” he added.

Robin nodded. “Exactly. Aikido is really a defensive technique, and that was one of the most basic throws, designed to be used against an attacker with a knife or a gun, or even a punch, and if you follow it through completely you incapacitate him as well, just by not letting go of his wrist. But could I just ask you something? What's your plan now? In fact, let me ask you an even more basic question than that: do you even have a plan?”

“I'd only really thought as far as getting out of Dartmouth, to be ruthlessly honest,” Mallory replied, “and now we've managed that. I think what we need to do now is get ourselves somewhere safe and then decide exactly what we're going to have to do about what's happened.”

“So no plan, then?”

“Not really, no. I'd just like to try and work out exactly what we're up against, and especially why somebody should be so concerned about a thousand-year old bit of parchment that they were prepared to send three armed men out to get it back, and most likely to kill us—or rather you—in the process. Because one thing we do know is that it was the parchment they'd come for. What that man said made that absolutely clear, and that raises a whole lot more questions, like how they found out about it.”

“So, where are we going now?” Robin asked.

“Northish,” Mallory replied. “I'm kind of heading for Exeter. That's the nearest big city where we can lose
ourselves and lie low for a while. Obviously we can't go back to your apartment, because it'll be heaving with cops and forensic guys for hours, maybe days, while they try and work out just what the hell happened up there. And they'll certainly be looking for you to supply some of the answers because it's your property. Is your mobile phone switched on?”

Robin shook her head. “No. I turned it off before we went into the restaurant.”

“Good. You should pull out the battery, because you can be traced through the phone as long as it's powered on, and sometimes even if it's turned off.”

Robin looked at him, then opened her handbag, took out her smartphone, slid off the back, and removed the battery, replacing the three components separately in her bag when she'd finished.

“Well, what about your place, down in Helston?” she asked. “I'm not trying to force myself on you,” she added, “but we do need somewhere to sleep tonight.”

Mallory shook his head.

“I'm not even sure if that would be safe,” he replied. “Whoever those three people—and we know there are at least three of them because we saw two of them in that Range Rover, plus the man who was shooting at us—are working for, they have impressive resources. If they were able to pick up your search string on the Internet, I think it's reasonably certain that they can also hack into your e-mail. And if they can do that, then it won't take them very long to work out that I might be involved with you. And if they can do that, then my house will be the next place they'll look. No, I think our best bet is to pick a random destination because if we don't know where we're going, obviously nobody can predict where we'll turn up.”

“And then what?” Robin asked.

“We'll find a hotel,” he replied.

“I'd already guessed that. What I meant was, once we've thought this through and tried to work out just what the hell's going on, what do we do then?”

“Right now I have no idea. I'm just hoping that somehow we can discover what the rest of the encrypted text on the parchment says, because once we know that we'll have a much better idea about why it's so important. And that might tell us why these people are so desperate to get their hands on it. Before we can do anything else, we need information, much more information.”

Robin didn't respond for a minute or so; then she shook her head. “You said we need more information, but have you any idea at all who you think we're dealing with here?”

Mallory shrugged. “I don't know, but there are some pointers, I suppose. Those men are Italian, that much I think is obvious, or at least two of the three men who went to your apartment were—the two who spoke, I mean. And they clearly belong to some kind of large organization.”

“How do you know that?” Robin asked. “And what organization could it be?”

“Again, I don't know,” Mallory admitted, “but the one I think was named Giacomo talked about the relic having been taken from them years ago, something like that, and to me that obviously suggests a group of people, not an individual. If it was just him looking for it, he would have said ‘taken from me,' because his English was good enough for that. And I got the feeling that whoever he works for has been looking for that piece of parchment perhaps for decades, not just a year or two, which again most probably means a long-lived group or organization.”

Robin nodded. “That makes sense and it would tie up with what little I know about the history of the object. I always try and find out what I can about the provenance of any book that I buy, just in case there's some interesting or unique feature in its past that would help increase its value or make it easier to sell.”

“So a Bible definitely owned by Oliver Cromwell, for example, would be a lot more valuable than another anonymous Bible from the same period. That kind of thing?”

“If you can find me an undisputed Cromwell Bible, I'll pay you handsomely,” Robin replied. “Yes, exactly that kind of thing. Anyway, according to the man I bought the book safe from, it was part of a large collection that had been sitting on a shelf in the library of a private house somewhere up in the wilds of Scotland for centuries. Even allowing for a bit of artistic license on the part of the man who sold the collection to me, I think it's quite possible that nobody had actually seen that book safe—or at least realized what it was—for well over a century. And you're right, obviously. That does mean these two must be working for some group or other. But you've still no idea who, or what kind of group?”

“Not a clue, but whoever it is definitely has considerable resources. They were obviously monitoring Internet search engines, or at least the one that you used when you entered the
Ipse Dixit
question, and traced you from that.”

“They can do that?” Robin asked, sounding surprised.

Mallory glanced across at her and nodded.

“You'd better believe it,” he said. “You'd be amazed at the degree of monitoring that goes on these days. Ever heard of Echelon? Or Carnivore? Or PROMIS or PRISM?”

“PRISM, yes. That was in the news not that long ago,
I think. Isn't it a kind of surveillance operation mounted by the American government that gives them access to stuff on Facebook and Google?”

“Exactly.” Mallory paused for a second or two and glanced over at Robin. “Are you sure you want to talk about all this now?” he asked.

“No,” Robin replied. “I'm sure it's fascinating stuff, but right now I'm not in the mood for a lecture. I'm more interested in trying to work out who these people are and what they want.”

“We know what they want,” Mallory said. “They're desperate to recover that parchment and, incidentally, to kill us presumably because we know about it. In fact,” he added, “that's not strictly true. It's not the parchment they want, but the encrypted text.”

“That seems obvious now that you say it,” Robin replied. “The parchment is essentially worthless: it's just a bit of ancient animal skin from a calf or a goat. It has to be whatever information is contained in the encrypted text, so that's what we have to decipher.”

They fell silent for a few moments as they came up behind another car traveling much more slowly. Mallory waited until the road ahead was clear and he could see that it was more or less straight, and accelerated past the other vehicle.

“I still find it difficult to believe they could have tracked me just because I entered a search term on the Internet.”

“Trust me,” Mallory said, “they can. As long as they have the resources, the technology isn't that difficult to implement. They would just have to put a piece of monitoring software in place and provide it with a lookup table containing the words and phrases they're interested in, rather like eBay does.”

“You can do that on eBay? I didn't know.”

“Yes, really easily. You just enter details of whatever it is you're searching for and save the search. Every time an item matching that description is offered for sale, eBay will send you an e-mail telling you about it and providing a link to the product. It's quite old technology now, but still very effective.”

“So that's what you think they did?” Robin finished for him. “Set up some kind of monitoring software on that search engine?”

“Almost certainly. And probably on a lot more than just that one. Whoever these people are, they're organized and powerful.”