The Lost Treasure of the Templars (18 page)

Devon

They woke up with daylight, because they hadn't realized the car was parked facing toward the east and as soon as dawn broke the vehicle was filled with the brilliance of the morning sun, a light simply too bright to sleep through. The leather seats of the Range Rover were comfortable enough to sit in, but had never been designed as beds, and although Dante and Toscanelli had reclined the backs as far as they would go, while Mario stretched out across the backseat as best he could, they all awoke with stiff and aching limbs and very short tempers.

They barely even discussed what they should do that morning, because all three of them first needed something to eat and some hot and strong coffee to drink. Dante started the engine, powered the Range Rover out of the copse, its four-wheel-drive system making short work of the muddy track, rejoined the main road, and headed north into the center of Exeter itself to find a café.

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 issue 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.

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.”

“I see what you mean,” Mallory said, his enthusiasm waning slightly. “But if you haven't got any better ideas, it's still something that I think is worth checking out.”

He glanced around the bedroom.

“Look,” he said, “this isn't a bad hotel, and I still don't think that anybody could possibly have followed us here, so why don't we stay here for one more night and then go somewhere else tomorrow?”

“That's fine with me, but I still need to make that phone call, and both of us need to find a clothes shop somewhere, if only to buy some more underwear.”

Mallory nodded.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Why don't we go now, then come back and start working on the parchment?”

On their way out of the building, Mallory confirmed with the receptionist that they would be staying for one more night, and then they walked the quarter mile or so to a shopping complex and went inside. They hit the shops, paying cash for everything they bought. When they'd both replenished their wardrobes, and also bought a couple of soft bags to put the clothes in, and two cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phones from two different and busy shops, they had a snack lunch in one of the cafés.

“There's another thing I think you should do,” Mallory said as they finished their meal.

“And that is?”

“Buy a wig, or maybe even a couple of wigs. The first thing most people—including policemen—look at on a woman is her hair, so if you pick up a long blond wig and change your makeup slightly, you'll completely alter your appearance.”

Robin nodded. “Okay, if you really think it's a good idea.”

They found a shop selling wigs and hairpieces, and Robin bought a light blond wig and another that was midbrown, one long, the other medium length. At another shop that sold a wide range of cosmetics, she picked up some lipsticks and a set of plain contact lenses that would change her eye color to light blue.

“Now we're set,” Mallory said as they walked out of the shop together.

The last thing they were going to do in Exeter, Mallory had decided, was make the phone call to Robin's bookshop in Dartmouth. And she was going to do that well away from the hotel where they were staying.

Rather than risk getting the Porsche out of the garage,
they took a bus across to the other side of the city center, but only after Robin had vanished into a ladies' loo and emerged fifteen minutes later looking so different that Mallory barely recognized her, the blond wig and blue contacts completely altering her appearance.

They rode the bus almost to the end of the line, then got off and walked about a hundred yards to a small shopping arcade that linked two streets, and outside which were a couple of public phones.

“Be as quick as you can,” Mallory warned, “because I'm pretty sure there'll be a tracer running on your business telephone line. Identifying the originating phone will take about two minutes, and my guess is that it'll then take the police between five and ten minutes to get a patrol car or motorcycle to this spot. So to be on the safe side, just in case a police car happens to be driving down this street when they complete the trace, please make sure you end the call no more than four minutes after you dial the number, and then come straight into this arcade so we can walk through it to the other street. Okay?”

“You're the boss,” Robin said.

“If only that were true,” Mallory murmured as he watched her walk the short distance across the pavement toward the nearest booth.

Just over three and a half minutes after she had picked up the phone, Robin walked swiftly across to the entrance to the arcade, her face white and strained. But there was no time for Mallory to ask her anything, because at that moment they both heard the sound of an approaching siren, and just moments later a marked police car squealed to a stop near the two phone booths. They didn't stop to watch what happened, just continued walking through the arcade to the other side.

That street was crowded with people, which would help keep them out of sight. But more important, there were a couple of taxis parked by the curb on the opposite side. Mallory didn't hesitate and crossed the road, Robin right beside him, and climbed into the back of the first one.

“City center, please,” he instructed the driver, then glanced at Robin. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not really, no. I'll tell you later.”

They got out of the taxi some distance from the hotel, deliberately, because Mallory didn't want to leave any obvious trail that could be followed, then walked the rest of the way.

Robin didn't speak again until they were back in her room. Then she sat down heavily on the bed, her head cradled in her hands.

“Tell me,” Mallory said softly.

“They're dead,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“What?”

“Those three men. The Italians. Betty told me they're dead. Somebody shot each of them in the head.”

For a few moments Mallory didn't reply, his mind racing. For the first time he realized he genuinely had no idea what was going on.

“What the hell have we got involved in, David?”

Mallory shook his head, trying to organize his thoughts.

“I have no idea,” he said, his words echoing his confusion, “but now we're going to have to be really careful, because we'll be at the top of the ‘most wanted' list for the police, as well as having whoever shot those Italians after us as well.”

“But we didn't do anything!”

“That probably won't make much difference. Those
three men were killed in your apartment—I presume that's what happened—and that will obviously make you a prime suspect, just because of that fact. The old murder triangle is means, motive, and opportunity, and while you don't have any obvious motive, the mere fact that it's your apartment is more than enough to put your name right up at the top of the list as far as opportunity is concerned, and in ink rather than pencil. We don't have an alibi, except for each other, and that wouldn't wash because the cops would just assume we were just trying to protect each other.”