The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Page 4

Yusuf lifted his cup to his nose and inhaled deeply. “They say that nothing brings a memory to life like a scent, and this smell takes me to a different time and place.” He sipped from the cup. “My memory is a weak tool compared to the reality,” he said.

  Salvatore lifted his cup and drank. Like his host he was taken to a faraway place, to his home, where this wine had been made, Tuscan wine from the lands around his family home of Radda. Since leaving he had never tasted it, and it had taken a week of searching in Pisa for him to find the small cask that the Mason had instructed him to bring.

  “You enjoy the wine from my country?” said Salvatore.

  Yusuf nodded and motioned for his guests to sit.

  “I never drank wine until I was sent by my father to the city of Siena.”

  “You have been to Siena?” said Salvatore.

  “Only once, and that was many years ago. Your priest bishop there was anxious to own some of this Holy Land, so my father sold him a hundred spans in the Valley of the Figs. When we were drawing up the contracts I had dealing with one of his secretaries, a very… intelligent young man who was of your family name. His name was Massimo.”

  Salvatore failed to stop himself from flinching at the mention of his brother’s name. It was a tiny gesture, but he saw that Yusuf had noticed it.

  “My brother,” said Salvatore. “He has now left the service of the bishop.”

  “So I understand. He is one of those priests who helps improve the piety of Christians by burning people, yes?”

  “He is part of the Inquisition,” said Salvatore, forcing himself not to look away. A silence fell over the group until Yusuf spoke again.

  “We never understood why he wanted to buy some farmland, but who are we to question the wishes of kings and bishops?”

  “Who indeed,” said the Mason. “Our lot is to do the bidding of our leaders.”

  “Really?” said Yusuf. “That may be true for us, but I think kings and bishops listen carefully when Templars speak, especially you, Brother Mason.”

  “If I could speak to a king, what would I say?” said the Mason lifting his hands as though to show his lack of importance.

  Yusuf laughed. “Always a question with you,” he said. “I have seen you in combat and you fight like a lion, but when you speak you talk like a snake. Here is what you should tell your kings and bishops. Tell them that we want you to be happy, to be rich and to grow old and fat. One day you will see sense and you will all become good Muslims, but for now live in peace, but live in your own homes back across the sea. You are welcome as guests, but, with swords and crosses in your hand? Not so. That is what you should tell your leaders.” He sighed and lifted his cup and sipped the deep red wine. “But who would expect them to listen?”

  The men all drained their cups. Yusuf’s companions made no attempt to speak, but seemed relaxed enough. They were, after all, thought Salvatore, in the heart of their own quarter in a city at peace with its neighbors.

  “But what of your leaders?” said the Mason.

  “My leaders do not speak to me,” said Yusuf, “but their thoughts are clear. The thing that frightens all of us is not a few thousand infidels hiding in Acre, but the Mongols to the north. They want everything, the whole world, and mean to make us their next conquest.”

  “No sign of peace with them?” asked the Mason.

  “We do not talk with them. We know that you do though. We know that you send them emissaries and letters. We know you dream of an alliance with those animals. They are worse than locusts, they do not stop until they have killed everyone they can lay their hands on, but you Christians want them as allies. And that is why Qalawun listens to those who want you gone. What if we ride out to face the Mongols and find that we have a Christian enemy in our rear? They are the threat, but you and your people are still a worry.”

  The room fell quiet. Yusuf had said too much and the mood had changed.

  “But we should not talk about war and worry,” said Yusuf, clapping his hands. “We should enjoy our evening together and taste more of this excellent Tuscan wine.”

  The cups were refilled, the mood lightened and the men drank again.

  In the Genoan quarter, only two hundred paces away, throats were being slit.

  Storm

  Captain Shauna Lomax stubbed out her cigarette and heaved open the heavy door to the control center. The dark of the room and the over-strong air conditioning were a welcome relief from the heat of a Tel Aviv summer. Smoking was forbidden inside and if she didn’t smoke she would not have had to go out at all. She was going to stop smoking soon.

  The cold was required to stop the computer systems overheating. The fact that the temperature meant that staff had to wear sweaters at their desks, or that they were plagued with sinus troubles was not the problem of the Israeli Defense Force. Of all the things the IDF had to think about, the running noses of their staff was not a priority.

  Shauna looked at the screens in front of her; everything flying in the eastern Mediterranean was here and every one had an icon showing what it was. So long as she knew what it was, Shauna was happy. There were too many air forces guarding too many hot borders for her to accept any unidentified air traffic.

  She switched to the weather satellite feed. The normal hot winds from the Sahara were keeping the southern skies clear and blue, but an unseasonal storm from the central Eurasian landmass was tracking towards eastern Turkey. It was far enough away to avoid undue disturbance to Israeli airspace, but close enough to put a blanket of cloud over much of the land to the north. Shauna liked bad weather, it kept aircraft on the ground, particularly military traffic.

  The meteorology team was forecasting that the storm would bounce off the southern warm front and cross the coast over Lebanon then west to Cyprus.

  She typed a brief summary of the storm path, adding some words of warning to shipping in the area and sent it to the dozen or so agencies, both military and civilian, that looked to the Israeli Air Force for forecasting.

  Just as she hit send, her phone rang.

  “You see the weather?” said the voice of the watch commander of the Israeli search and rescue service known by the call sign “Bahad 16”.

  “Looks like it should stay to the north,” said Shauna. “Shouldn’t be a problem for any of our people.”

  Love and consequences

  It was a very urban love affair, a small thing. Glances held too long at a banquet, accidental encounters that were no accident, the brushing of fingertips, a murmured conversation.

  They shared a kiss, then shared a bed. It was the sort of affair that happened in every city and was running the normal course of such things, until her husband discovered them.

  The husband was a silk merchant from Toulon, his wife’s new lover the son of a corn merchant from Aleppo. The lover’s name was Ibrahim and his throat was slit by a wild, lucky slash of the husband’s dagger a few moments after he found them naked in his bed. The wife screamed and screamed until the Toulon merchant, his eyes nearly blinded by furious tears, dragged his blade across her throat.

  It was a very urban story, the sort of thing that is a scandal for a season until it fades into folklore. But these were not ordinary times.

  Young Ibrahim was his father’s pride and his pain, a constant source of worry, but a good man, a son a man could build his family on.

  When Ibrahim’s bloody corpse was brought to his house his father wept, tearing his clothes, throwing off his sandals and turban. The boy was buried by his grieving family before nightfall as Muslim law dictated.

  The father spent the next day in prayer, then, as the sun began to set, he and a dozen of his family and friends went in search of justice. They carried no weapons except for the small daggers that every man in the city wore in their belts. They wanted justice, not revenge, so they did not go to the house of the Toulon merchant, but to the building where the Sheriff of Acre sat as judge on the city.

  The sheriff, a placid man, more at ease in civil
disputes over contracts than with crimes of violent passion, listened patiently to the father of Ibrahim. All that was sought was justice. Ideally the merchant would be handed to the family of Ibrahim, but if the Christians insisted on delivering justice, then that would be acceptable. Murder is murder and there is only one way to punish a murderer. It mattered little to Ibrahim’s father who executed the killer.

  The sheriff nodded his most judge-like nod, he understood the case and the path of justice was clear. But…

  He held his hands up. The killer lived in the Genoan quarter and was under their authority. He could only be tried by a judge from Genoa. A runner was sent to the Genoan authorities and the assembly sat down to wait.

  As they waited news of the case drifted through the streets, and the courtyard outside the sheriff’s chamber slowly filled with Christians with little better to do. Off-duty men at arms passed bottles of wine around and shared versions of the story, each more salacious than the last. Some of the many Muslim citizens of the city came to the narrow courtyard so that soon a hundred men stood there, talking, muttering and often drinking, buying wine from the hawkers now attracted by the growing crowd.

  Two hours passed and darkness began to close in. The messenger returned with a verbal message, not even a written response: There had been a brawl between two men and one had died, but the reply was, “There is no case to answer,” said the Genoan governor. The matter was closed.

  Ibrahim’s father had been quiet until now. He had sought justice in the proper way. He had placed his dignity and that of his family in the hands of the Christian authorities and now he was humiliated, his son’s death was brushed away as a common brawl. He remonstrated with the sheriff who tried to explain the legal complexities of jurisdiction. Ibrahim’s father began shouting so the sheriff stood and made to leave.

  Ibrahim’s father laid his hand on the sheriff’s sleeve.

  The sheriff’s sergeant-at-arms stepped forward. There was shouting and some pushing; somehow the sheriff was knocked over and the sergeant-at-arms swung his staff at the group of Muslims, one of whom pulled out his dagger. Before either could make another move, they heard the cry from the courtyard outside. “Murder! Murder! The Arabs are killing everyone. The sheriff is dead!”

  Before the echo of the voice had died, the killings had begun.

  TLC

  “Peter, I really hope you’re not expecting any sympathy,” said Tilly as they walked through the gathering gloom of an Edinburgh evening. “I mean,” she began counting on her fingers, “you’re rich enough to never have to work again, you have a fantastic flat in Switzerland, you have a real, and mean it, a real talent as a historical researcher and, most of all, you’ve got me.”

  “I’m surprised you put yourself last on the list,” he said.

  “My only real defect is my modesty,” she said. “Right, I’ve got an idea. I am up to my neck in budget meetings in the office for the next few days, plus I need to have a wee chat with the Director General about the idea of me taking leave of absence if I do this television program. Why don’t you take a drive up to the visitor center at the Vault? It opens at the end of the month, but I can call the manager and get you a sneak preview tour.”

  Sparke focused on the pavement in front of him. On one hand he really had no reason not to take a look at the center that Scottish National Heritage had built to display some of the artifacts from the Vault he had discovered. He knew from what Tilly had told him that the staff at the center had some real experts on the Templars amongst them, and it would be good to see what they had been doing.

  “OK, I’ll go, get out of your hair,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said I’ll go and see the visitor center.”

  “Of course, I thought we had agreed that,” said Tilly.

  “No, sweetheart, you agreed that, and now I have.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work isn’t it? Couple make decisions for each other. You decide that I should do this television thing and I decide that you should go and see the visitor center we spent two and half million pounds building just to display your discovery. You were married before for three years, isn’t that how it worked for you and your wife?”

  Sparke remained silent, and his brow furrowed as he thought.

  “No, not really,” he said eventually.

  “Must have been a strange marriage,” said Tilly.

  The next morning Sparke woke at six, kissed Tilly on the forehead and walked down the three flights of stairs and out into the street where his car was parked.

  When the finder’s fee cash had come through from the Crown Office, he had thrown virtually everything he owned away. He bought the apartment of his dreams on the edge of Lake Geneva in a town called Morges, and the car of his dreams, a Range Rover Vogue.

  Being Swiss specification the steering wheel was on the wrong side for Scottish roads, but since he sat two feet higher than other drivers that was less of a problem.

  Rather than take the more direct route, west through Glasgow, he turned north and crossed the river on the Forth Road Bridge, mainly so that he could look at the Victorian railway bridge that it ran parallel to. As an engineer by training, Sparke saw the soaring span of iron girders as a thing of beauty.

  He stopped for coffee at Kinross then cut across to the west coast. He was quickly in the low foothills that lead to the Scottish Highlands, driving through long glens, barren of anything except wild grass and heather. At Crianlarich he turned north and began looking for the spot where he expected to find the center.

  The signage was still covered by a green tarpaulin and he almost missed it, but he recognized the spot where he had first turned his rental car off and set out on foot when he had travelled this way in search of the Vault. The building itself was invisible from the road and had been built so that it blended almost totally into the landscape. The Scottish Government is jealous of the vast areas of wilderness that makes up much of the country, and gleaming modern buildings are not part of their vision.

  He parked next to the only other vehicle in the car park and walked to the entrance of the building. The door was unlocked and he stepped inside. Directly facing him was a facsimile of a newspaper that had announced the discovery, blown up to over six feet in height. His face stared back at him from the front page.

  “Peter, you must be Peter,” said a woman’s voice. “I’m Alice.”

  Sparke turned and looked at the young woman. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s a bit strange to see a picture of yourself two feet across, especially this early in the morning.”

  “Must be a bit weird,” laughed Alice. “Tilly never warned you then?”

  “No, her idea of a nice surprise, I expect.”

  “Come on through, the coffee is on,” said Alice. They walked through the deserted foyer, stepping over some loose wires that were in the middle of being installed. “Watch your feet. Electricians are still wiring up some of the lighting, they’re never happy unless the place looks like a bomb site.

  “You see what we’re doing? On this side we set up a section all about how you actually made the discovery, and over there, in the main part, we have some of the artifacts and a replica of the inside of the Vault itself.”

  Coffee in hand, Sparke and Alice strolled through the exhibition spaces until he reached the mock-up of the Vault.

  “Normally, this is as close as visitors can go,” said Alice moving a rope to one side, “but I guess that you should have some special access rights.”

  Sparke stood in the middle of the mock-up. The floor was strewn with dummies dressed in Templar uniform, the last guardians of the Vault who had chosen to entomb themselves with the horde they had been entrusted to guard. Along one wall were dozens of carved niches about two feet high, each holding one of the strange metal containers. It was these that had held the gold coins that made up the last treasury of the Templars. Many also held written archives.

  “What do the documents tell you?”
asked Sparke.

  “We’ve barely started working on them. It will take decades to review them all. Most are in reasonable condition, thanks to being sealed up in those lead containers. A lot are parchment, which is good, but the papyrus scrolls are a lot more delicate.”

  “Papyrus?” said Sparke.

  “Oh yes, a lot of these are Middle Eastern in origin. Some from the first century BC.”

  Sparke looked at the replica of the flat-topped stone at the far end of the Vault. On top if it stood a copy of the wooden chest that he had found.

  “And this?” he asked.

  “All we say is that it contained a stone box featuring many carvings typical of Hebrew artifacts of the fourth century BC. It’s not our job to make any further claims,” said Alice, using a form of words that sounded as though they had been well thought through and repeated often.

  Sparke nodded. He knew that many scholars claimed that this was, in fact, the artifact known as The Arc of the Covenant, and that an industry had grown up around attempts to either prove or disprove the claims. Scottish National Heritage had chosen not to take any part in the debate.

  “What do you think?” said Alice.

  Sparke looked at the replica of the Vault and tried to remember what it was that had driven him to find it in the first place. He looked at the dummies dressed in faded Templar uniform. This small handful of men had been all that remained of the massive international empire created by the Order.

  Some small group of them had managed to transport this huge horde into the Scottish Highlands as most of Europe was tearing their organization apart. They had dug the Vault into solid stone, then obliterated every mark of their presence.

  He was a crisis manager by training, he knew what disaster planning looked like, and from the perspective of a medieval organization at war, it looked like this.

  His eye drifted over the metal containers in the niches.

  “Those were made through 3D printing after being scanned,” said Alice. “As far as technology allows, they are virtually perfect replications.”