The Last Templar Read online

  Help, I’m in a cellar somewhere in the city.

  I think.

  Perfect.

  Still dazed, and with her heart thumping loudly in her ears, she darted nervous glances around the chamber, then remembered the shuttered opening she’d spotted by the table. On impulse, she cleared some of the clutter off its surface, scrambled up onto the table, and pulled wearily at the planks of wood covering the cavity, trying to loosen them. They wouldn’t give. She pounded at them helplessly, but they held tight. Then she heard a sound as the cellar door opened. Turning, she saw legs beginning to descend. She recognized the shoes. It was Vance.

  Her eyes quickly scanned the room and settled on the Taser Vance had discarded. It was lying there on the corner of the table nearest to her behind a stack of books. She grabbed it and leveled it at him, her hands shaking as his face emerged from the darkness, his eyes staring calmly into hers.

  “Stay away from me!” she yelled at him.

  “Tess, please,” he shot back with an urgent, calming gesture, “we need to get out of here.”

  “We? What are you talking about? Just stay away from me.”

  He was still moving toward her. “Tess, put the gun down.”

  Panicking now, she pulled the trigger—but nothing happened. He was now less than ten feet away. She turned the gun, glaring at it, her eyes straining to figure out if she had missed something. He was moving faster now, coming at her. Fiddling desperately with the gun, she finally spotted the small safety and flipped it up. A small red light flashed at the back of the gun. She raised it up again and saw that she had also somehow activated its laser, which was beaming a tiny red mark onto Vance’s chest. The dot danced left and right, mirroring her trembling hands. He was very close now. Pulse racing, she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger, which felt more like a rubber-coated button than what she imagined was the cold steel of a handgun’s trigger. The Taser came to life with a loud pop, and Tess shrieked as the two metal probes and their stainless steel barbs came blasting out of its front, trailing thin wires behind them.

  The first probe just missed its mark, flying past his chest and disappearing into the darkness, but the second bit into his left thigh. Fifty thousand volts of electricity seared into him for five seconds, overriding his central nervous system and triggering incontrollable contractions in his muscles. He jerked and arched upward as the burning spasms erupted through his body and his legs gave way. He collapsed on himself, helpless, his face contorted with pain.

  Tess was momentarily confused by the cloud of tiny confetti-like ID disks that exploded out of the cartridge as she fired the gun, but the groans of Vance, lying there writhing in pain, soon whipped her back to her immediate predicament. She thought of stepping past him and heading up the stairs, but wasn’t too keen on getting any closer to him. She also wasn’t sure who Vance had confronted up there and was too scared to find out. She turned again to the shuttered opening and kicked and pulled at the panels until at last one of them loosened. She yanked it off, used it to jimmy the others loose, and looked in through the hole she’d made.

  Beyond stretched a dark tunnel.

  With nowhere else to go, she started to climb through the opening, then looked back, saw that Vance was still writhing in pain, and saw the encoder and the sheets, the manuscript, lying there, within reach.

  They were beckoning her, too enticing to resist.

  Surprising herself, she climbed back in and snatched the pile of documents, stuffing them into her bag. Something else caught her attention: her wallet, lying among the pile of clutter she’d rashly thrown off the table. She took a step to retrieve it when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Vance stir. She hesitated for a nanosecond before deciding she had taken enough of a risk as it was and had to get out of there now. She spun on her heels, clambered back into the tunnel, and hurried forward into the darkness.

  CROUCHED LOW, her head brushing the top of the tunnel, she was perhaps thirty yards in when it opened up into a wider and higher shaft. She had a sudden, disconcerting flashback to an old Mexican catacomb she had visited as a student. The air smelled even damper in here, and looking down she saw the reason. A narrow stream of black water flowed down the center. Tess stumbled along its edge, her feet slipping on the damp, worn stonework. The bitingly cold water swirled over the tops of her shoes. Then the stream ended, the water cascading down maybe five or six or more feet into another, still bigger tunnel.

  Glancing back, Tess listened. Was that just water she heard, or was it something else? Then a harrowing shout echoed in the darkness.

  “Tess!”

  Vance’s voice bellowed from behind. He was back on his feet and coming after her.

  Taking a breath, she lowered herself over the ledge until her arms were at full stretch, water pouring into one sleeve of her coat, soaking her clothing and her body. Now, thankfully, the outstretched toes of her shoes touched solid floor and she let go. Turning, she saw that this time, the stream of water was deeper and wider. A filthy sludge was being carried along on its surface from which rose a smell so foul that she knew she was in a sewer. After a couple of attempts to walk along the edge, she gave up. The curve was too steep, the surface too slippery. Instead, closing her mind to what she knew the water carried in its oily grasp, she went down the center, the water now almost to her knees.

  From the corners of her eyes, she suddenly glimpsed movement and color and turned her head. Small specks of reddish light gleamed in the darkness, moving, and she heard a chittering noise.

  Rats were scurrying along the edges of the stream of sewage.

  “Tess!”

  Vance’s voice thundered along the damp tunnel, bouncing off the walls, seeming to come from all sides at once.

  A few more yards, and she realized that ahead of her, the darkness wasn’t quite as intense. Stumbling awkwardly, she kept on moving as fast as she dared. No way could she risk falling facedown into this. When, at last, she reached the source of the light, it was coming in from above. From a sidewalk grille. She could hear people up above. Edging closer, she could actually see them, walking twenty feet overhead.

  She felt a surge of hope and started yelling. “Help! Help me! Down here! Help!” but no one seemed to hear her, and, if they did, they simply ignored her cries. Of course they’re ignoring you. What did you expect? This is New York City. Taking deranged cries from the sewers seriously was the last thing anyone from around here would do.

  Tess realized that her shouts were echoing down the tunnel ahead of her and behind her. She listened. Some sounds were closing in on her. Sloshing sounds, and heavy splashes. She wasn’t about to stand there and wait for him to reach her. She set off again, completely heedless now of the water and the filth, and almost at once reached a fork in the tunnel.

  One passageway was wider, but it was darker and looked wetter. Easier to hide in? Maybe. She chose that one. Barely fifty feet in and it looked as though she had made the wrong choice. There, in front of her, was a blank brick wall.

  It was a dead end.

  Chapter 37

  After he had repelled the intruder in the crypt, Vance had planned on using the tunnels as his escape route from the cellar, taking with him the encoder and the still incompletely decoded manuscript. But all he now had, clasped firmly in his arms, was the intricate machine. The papers were gone. He felt a cold fury envelop him and shouted out her name, his angry cry bellowing across the damp walls that engulfed him.

  He had no quarrel with Tess Chaykin. He remembered that he had liked her once, back when he was still capable of liking people, and he should have had no reason to dislike her now. Indeed, it had even crossed his mind to invite her to join his…crusade.

  But she had stolen the papers, his papers, and that infuriated him.

  Hoisting the encoder into a more comfortable position, he continued after Tess. If he didn’t reach her soon, she might stumble onto one or another of several escape hatches from this tortuous maze.

  He
couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Again he felt his rage rising but fought it back. He couldn’t risk moving or acting rashly.

  Not now.

  And especially not down here.

  TESS HAD TURNED from the dead end and was planning to go back the way that she had come when she saw an iron door encased in a side wall. She grabbed its rusted handle and pulled. It wasn’t locked, but it was jammed. With a despairing heave, she forced the door open and saw a staircase spiraling downward. Deeper and darker did not seem like a wise move, but she didn’t have much choice.

  Tentatively, feeling the angled rungs before putting her weight on them, Tess worked her way down the staircase and found herself in yet another tunnel. How many tunnels were there down here, for God’s sake? At least this one was even bigger than before and, even better, it was dry. For the time being. Whatever it was, at least it wasn’t a sewer.

  She didn’t know which way to run. She chose to go left. Ahead, she saw a glimmer of light. Moving, yellow light. More candles?

  Hesitantly, she edged forward.

  The light went out.

  Tess froze. Then she realized it wasn’t out; someone had stepped in front of it.

  There were still noises behind her. Whoever was standing there ahead of her couldn’t possibly be Vance. Or could it? Maybe he knew his way around these tunnels. He said he’d been living down here. Still, she forced herself forward and could now see not one but two figures a few yards along the tunnel. She didn’t think either of them was Vance. Men or women, though, she had no idea, but down here, neither one was likely to be good news.

  “Hey, baby,” a hoarse voice called out. “You lost?”

  Instantly deciding that hesitation would be bad for her health, Tess picked up her pace, awkward in the near-total darkness.

  “Looks like your lucky day, man,” another voice said, this one high-pitched.

  They didn’t sound particularly friendly.

  Tess kept going. Behind her came a louder noise. Her heart jumped. She was close to the two figures now. Their faces were still masked by the darkness. In the dim candlelight behind them, she could make out a clutter of cardboard boxes, rolls of what looked to be carpet, bundles of rags.

  Tess thought fast. “There are cops coming,” Tess snapped as she approached them.

  “What the fuck do they want?” one of them grumbled.

  As Tess pushed past the two men, one of them reached out and grabbed at her coat.

  “Hey, come on, doll—”

  Instinctively, Tess swung around, slamming the inside of her clenched fist across the side of the man’s head. He stumbled back with a startled yelp. The one with the high-pitched voice was about to try his luck, but must have seen something in Tess’s eyes, glinting in the yellow light, and backed off.

  Tess turned away and put as much distance as she could between herself and the two bums. She ran, tired now, gasping for breath, the bleakness of the stygian underworld now starting to overwhelm her.

  She reached another fork in the tunnel. She had no clue as to which way to go. This time, she went right. Stumbling a few more yards, she saw a recess in the wall, a grille that opened when she pushed on it. Another runged ladder going down. She needed to go up, not down. But she had to get away from Vance and decided to go for it, hoping he wouldn’t follow.

  Now she was in a much bigger tunnel, this one dry again, with straight walls. It was much darker here, and she advanced cautiously, running a hand along the wall for guidance. She couldn’t hear Vance’s footsteps anymore or his shouts. She breathed out. Great. Now what? Then after what was probably less than a minute but seemed like an eternity, she heard a sound behind her. Not rats this time, and not a human pursuer. What she heard was the rumble of a train.

  Shit. I’m in the subway.

  A faint, flickering light was bouncing off the walls as the screeching train approached. It lit up the rails on the ground. She ran, desperately trying to keep the live rail in sight, hoping she wouldn’t hit it. The train was closing in fast, its rhythmic clatter bouncing off the tunnel walls. It had almost reached her when, cast into relief by the train’s headlights, she saw a slim cavity in the wall and threw herself into it. As she squeezed into the curving space, the train hurtled past, only inches from her trembling body. Heart racing, her arms curled around her face defensively, her eyes shut tight but still aware of the strobing light as the train flashed by, she waited. The hot, sooty air pushed against her, covering every inch of her body, snaking into her mouth and nostrils. She backed herself even tighter against the wall. The noise was deafening, overwhelming all her other senses. She kept her eyes shut and, as the lights were finally past her, a wailing squeal sheared the air as the train’s sparking brakes bit into the wheels. Her heartbeat still throbbing in her ears, she felt a surge of relief.

  A station. I must be near a station.

  Tess drew on her last reserves of energy and stumbled the final, desperate few yards and, as the train moved off again, she came out into the bright light and dragged herself up onto the platform. The last few passengers were disappearing up the stairs. If anyone saw her, they didn’t react.

  For a moment, Tess remained there, alone, on her hands and knees at the edge of the platform, her heart still racing with fear and exhaustion. Then, wet and filthy and still shaking, she pushed herself upright.

  Wearily and on rubbery legs, she followed the others up into civilization.

  Chapter 38

  Wrapped in a blanket and cradling a huge mug of hot coffee, Tess sat in Reilly’s car across the street from the subway station on 103rd and shivered. The cold had thoroughly penetrated her soaked clothing. From the waist down, she was frozen, and the rest of her didn’t feel any better.

  He’d offered to take her to a hospital or straight home, but Tess had insisted that she wasn’t hurt and didn’t need to go home just yet. She felt she had to fill him in on her findings first.

  As she watched teams of police officers entering the station, she told him about her run-in with Vance. How Clive had suggested she consult the professor, how she’d actually met Vance years ago, how she’d taken a chance at the cemetery, hoping he could help her find a connection to what had happened at the Met. She went over what Vance had said, about his wife dying in childbirth and about how he blamed their priest for it, and about how he had said he wanted to “make things right,” which seemed to intrigue Reilly. She told him the story about the dying Templar and the monk whose hair had turned white, and explained how Vance had shot her, how she’d found herself in the cellar, how they were interrupted by someone, the gunfight she’d overheard, and finally how she had escaped.

  As she talked, she envisioned the search parties fanning out into the various tunnels, looking for him in that underground nightmare, although she knew the odds were he’d be long gone. Thinking about the tunnels again made her shudder. It wasn’t somewhere she was keen to revisit, and she hoped she wouldn’t be asked to do so. She had never been so scared in her life. At least, not since the raid on the Met, which was less than a week ago. She was on a roll, a pretty unpleasant one at that.

  When she finished, Reilly was shaking his head.

  “What?” she asked.

  He was just eyeing her silently.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she insisted.

  “’Cause you’re nuts—you know that?”

  She exhaled wearily. “Why?”

  “Come on, Tess. You’re not supposed to be running around chasing clues and trying to solve this thing on your own. Hell, you’re not even supposed to be trying to solve it, period. That’s my job.”

  Tess managed a grin. “You’re worried I’m going to make you all look bad, is that it?”

  Reilly was having none of it. “I’m serious. You could have been badly hurt. Or worse. You don’t get it, do you? People have died because of this thing. It’s not a joke. I mean, for God’s sake, you’ve got a daughter to think of.”

&nb
sp; Tess stiffened visibly at his mention of Kim. “Hey, I thought I was meeting a history professor for a little academic chitchat over a cup of coffee, all right? I didn’t expect him to zap me with his—” Her mind went blank.

  “Taser.”

  Whatever. “—his Taser, stuff me in the back of his car, and chase me through rat-infested sewers. He’s a history professor, for God’s sake. They’re supposed to be mild-mannered, pipe-smoking introverts, not—”

  “Psychos?”

  Tess frowned and looked away. Somehow, she didn’t think the term was appropriate, despite everything that had happened. “I’m not sure I’d go that far, but…he’s definitely not in good shape.” She felt a twinge of empathy for the professor, which threw her, and she heard herself saying, “He needs help.”

  Reilly studied her, pausing for a moment. “Okay, we’ll need to do a proper, in-depth debriefing as soon as you’re comfortable; but right now, I need to make sure we find where he took you. You have no idea where you were being held, where that cellar is?”

  Tess shook her head. “No, I told you. When I came to in the car, I was blindfolded, and getting out of there was just one big, dark maze of tunnels. But it can’t be that far from here. I mean, I walked it.”

  “How many blocks, if you had to guess?”

  “I don’t know…five?”

  “Okay. Let’s get some maps and see if we can find this dungeon of yours.”

  Reilly was about to walk off when Tess reached out and stopped him. “There’s something else, something I didn’t tell you.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” he chastised. “What is it?”

  Tess reached into her bag and pulled out the roll of sheets she’d taken from Vance’s desk. She spread them out for Reilly to see, and now, in the light, she could see them properly for the first time. The documents, ancient vellum scrolls, were beautiful despite having no illustrations on them; they were just simply and oddly packed, virtually edge to edge, with a continuous stream of impeccably drafted letters. There were no breaks, no spaces between words or paragraphs.