The Last Templar Read online

  There was still no sign of the bottom. Tess switched on the light rig she held, its high-intensity discharge light taking a few seconds before reaching its full output and illuminating the eerie blackness ahead of her. Small particles danced in the water before her, slowly gliding by in the current, heading for the dam. She glanced at Reilly sinking down beside her as a small school of trout weaved in curiously before darting away into the dark.

  She noticed Reilly gesturing below and saw the bottom of the lake slowly coming into view. It was disconcerting at first: even with the years of silt and settlement since the dam had been built, it didn’t look like the seabeds she was used to. In fact, it looked just like what it was: a submerged valley, strewn with rocks and the bare trunks of long-dead trees. Thick, dark algae covered most of it.

  They swam side by side, spiraling out, scanning the bottom, then her trained eyes spotted it first. The old man had been true to his word; there, barely noticeable in this otherworldly landscape, were the ghostly remains of the town.

  At first, all that she could make out were clusters of eroded stone walls, then gradually she began to get some sense of shape and purpose and could see how the stones formed uniform, linear shapes. She led Reilly down further and now she could make out a street and some houses. They glided ahead, looking down at the remains of the old village, suspended over it in the stygian darkness like explorers hovering over an alien land. It was a surreal sight, the leafless branches of dead trees swaying in the faint current like the beckoning limbs of captive souls.

  A sudden movement swung her eyes to the left. A school of small fish that had been feeding off clumps of algae were scattering into the shadows. Turning back, she noticed that the houses gave way to an open space. Pushing toward it, she saw the black stump of a huge tree, the spindly remains of its rotted branches barely swaying. There it was: they had found the willow. She unconsciously let out a burst of air, a small cloud of bubbles coursing out of her regulator and racing up to the surface. Her eyes feverishly scanned the surroundings. She knew it had to be close. As Reilly joined her, she spotted it: the crumbled remains of what must have been the well, a few yards upstream from the stump. She pushed forward, the beam from her light penetrating the wall of darkness beyond the well. And there, just beyond, rising upward with a kind of melancholy grandeur, were the walls of the church.

  She glanced at Reilly. He was floating beside her, taking it all in, clearly as much in awe of it as she was. She kicked ahead, swooping down on the looming structure. Silt had built up against its sides, buttressing its walls. Its roof was badly gutted. As she played the light across the walls, she could tell that the condition of the church was so bad that it was most certainly in a much worse state than it had been seven hundred years ago, when the Templars had found it.

  With Reilly following her, Tess dropped down and, like a bird swooping into a barn, she swam through the church’s portal, where a massive door hung lopsidedly. Inside now, hovering fifteen feet above the church’s floor, they moved along an underwater gallery of columns, some of them collapsed. The walls had prevented too much silt from piling in, which bode well for finding the gravestone. They advanced in tight formation, the light creating a kaleidoscope of shadows in the deep recesses to their sides.

  Tess looked around, recording every macabre shape and shadow while trying to keep her racing heartbeat under control. With the portal now swallowed by the darkness behind them, she signaled to Reilly and dropped down to the bottom. He followed. A huge smashed stone slab lay there, which she guessed had been part of the altar. It was smothered with algae; tiny crawfish were skulking all over it. She checked the time and gave Reilly a ten-finger signal. They had to start their ascent in as many minutes; there hadn’t been enough air in the tanks to allow a long decompression stop.

  Tess knew they were now close. Gliding inches from the bottom of the church, she brushed the silt off the floor gently, trying not to create too much of a cloud. There was no sign of any flagstones. Just small debris and more silt, through which eels slithered. Then Reilly nudged her. He said something, his voice a garbled, metallic sound amid the bubbling water that escaped from his mouthpiece. She watched him reach down and whisk away some of the silt and stones off a small alcove. The floor revealed some faded carved letters. It was a grave marker. She was breathing fast now. Tracing the lettering with her finger she made out the name: Caio. She looked at Reilly, her eyes ablaze with excitement. His eyes smiled back. Laboriously and carefully, they cleared sand away from more stones. Her heart was now hammering deafeningly in her ears as, letter by letter, more names appeared. And then, through the silt, it appeared:

  Romiti.

  Aimard’s letter was real. The decoder built by the FBI had been accurate and, most gratifying of all, her assumptions were correct.

  They had found it.

  Chapter 59

  Moving quickly now, they began clearing debris and sand from all around the gravestone.

  Reilly tried to edge his fingers into the crack and pry it open, but the poor lever and his own buoyancy prevented him from being able to apply enough leverage. Tess checked her watch; five minutes left. Looking around frantically for something to use as a tool, Tess spotted some twisted pieces of metal sticking out from one of the columns. Swimming up to it, she tugged on the protruding rod until it came loose in a cloud of tiny particles of stone. She swam back down as fast as she could and, back on the floor of the church, Reilly took it from her and slid one end into the crack around the stone. Together, they heaved downward on the free end.

  Suddenly, there was a creaking sound. Not below them, but above. Looking hurriedly upward, Tess saw small pieces of debris falling from where she had dragged free the ironwork. Was it just movement of the water, or was the upper section of the column sliding off its base? She looked urgently at Reilly. He jabbed his finger at the rod, signaling another attempt to pry the stone loose. She nodded and grabbed hold of it; again, they applied all their strength to the lever. This time, the grave marker moved. Ever so slightly, but it moved, though not enough to get a hand underneath. Again, they heaved on the iron bar. Once more, the marker moved, then tilted upward, allowing a huge air bubble to burst out at them. It brushed violently past them before escaping upward and disappearing through a hole in the rotted ceiling.

  From above came another creak.

  Looking up, Tess saw that the upper section of the leaning column was definitely inching off its base. The iron bar she’d hastily dislodged had somehow unhinged the column and loosened the precarious structure. Above her, puffs of dust burst in the water like silent explosions. She turned back to Reilly, who was struggling with the stone marker and was pointing down. She saw that there was now enough space for her hand to sneak through. She reached down, cringing as she flashed back to an old movie where a diver’s hand had been grabbed by a ferocious eel. Forcing the picture from her mind, she plunged her hand inside the grave. She felt around desperately, shutting her ears and her mind to the echoing cracks and the precariousness of the ancient walls around her. Then her fingers felt something. It felt bulky. Her eyes pleaded at Reilly, urging him to lift the marker even more to make room for it. He slid his hand around the bar for a better grip and let out a huge burst of bubbles as he strained to widen the opening. Tess tugged at the object, trying to squeeze it through the hole without damaging it.

  Reilly gave it a final pull, and the stone lifted enough to allow the object to slide through. It looked like a leather pouch with a long strap, around the size of a small backpack, bulging with something that was solid and seemed heavy. As Tess pulled it through the gap, the iron bar suddenly snapped and the gravestone slid down, narrowly missing the pouch as it slammed against the cavity in a dull echo and kicked up a cloud of silt. From above, another creak was followed by the sound of stone scraping against stone as the top section of the column edged slowly off its base, the roof caving in above it as it fell. Tess and Reilly exchanged urgent glances and head
ed for the portal, but something pulled Tess back. The pouch was stuck, its strap caught beneath the stone.

  As she desperately pulled on the strap, Reilly’s eyes scoured the bottom, looking for something else to use as a lever, but found nothing. Debris was now raining down on them, floating down in an ever-thickening cloud of silt. Tess tugged on the strap some more. Reilly’s alarmed eyes met hers, and she shook her head. It was useless. The church was about to collapse around them, and they had to get out of there, but that would mean leaving the pouch behind. Her fingers were still clasping the battered leather. She wasn’t about to give it up.

  Reilly moved quickly. He sank back down and ran his fingers along the edge of the slab, then positioned his legs on either side and pulled at it in a last-ditch attempt to free the strap. A large rafter floated down, landing inches from his leg. With a supreme effort, the rock moved imperceptibly—but it was enough to free the strap. He let go, pointed at the portal, and he and Tess headed for it, kicking furiously as bits of the roof plunged down around them. Avoiding them, they weaved in and out through the pillars and falling stone until, at last, they raced through the portal and emerged into clearer water.

  For a few moments, they floated there, watching as the church collapsed on itself, huge chunks of masonry and stone crashing down in a balletic flurry of cloudy, bubbling water. Tess’s heart was still pounding furiously. She concentrated on slowing her breathing down, conscious of the limited supply of air they carried and of the long, slow ascent ahead of them. She glanced at the pouch, wondering what it contained, wondering if it was still intact after all these years, hoping the exposure to the water hadn’t ruined it. As she took a farewell glance at the well, her mind briefly drifted to Aimard and to that fateful night. Not in his wildest dreams could he have possibly imagined, seven hundred years ago, that the valley would be flooded by a man-made barrage and that his secret hiding place would end up submerged under a hundred feet of water.

  Reilly was watching her. Their eyes met. Even through the distortion of the mask, her elation was clear. She checked her watch. Their tanks would be running out soon. She jabbed her finger upward. Reilly nodded his agreement and they began the slow ascent, making sure they rose no faster than the smallest bubbles breaking out from their regulators.

  Around them, the water slowly cleared as the swirling dust clouds were left behind. The climb seemed to take forever until finally, the light started to break through. Looking up to where the sunlight streamed downward, Tess’s blood drained from her face as she suddenly noticed that something was different. Reaching out her free hand, she seized Reilly’s arm, but from the tension in his muscles, she realized that he had seen it, too.

  Above them, instead of the shadow of one rowboat, there were now two shadows.

  Someone else was there, but there wasn’t much they could do as their air supply was about to run out. They had to resurface. Tess’s eyes hardened. She knew who it must be. And as they broke surface, she saw that she was right.

  Rüstem was still there, just as they’d left him, only he had a scared and plaintive frown on his face. Sitting in the second boat, watching them with a look of muted delight—almost like a professor acknowledging the success of a bright pupil, Tess thought—was William Vance.

  He was cradling a shotgun.

  Chapter 60

  As he helped Tess clamber into Rüstem’s boat, Reilly shot a quick glance toward the shore. A brown Toyota pickup truck was now parked by their SUV. Two men were standing at the edge of the lake, and neither of them was the engineer, Okan. The first was much taller and bulkier than the small engineer, and the second, although wiry and no taller than Okan, lacked his thick nest of black hair. Reilly also spotted something else: both men were holding guns. From this far out, they looked like hunting rifles, but Reilly couldn’t be sure. He guessed that Vance had bought himself some local muscle along the way. He wondered if any of them had thought to check the Pajero and, if so, if they’d found the Browning he’d tucked into the stow box under the seat.

  Reilly studied Vance, seeing him in the flesh for the first time. So this is the man behind this whole mess. He thought back to the murdered horsemen in New York, trying to reconcile the man before him with all the events that had brought them to this remote place and gauging the professor’s mind-set. The threatening announcement that Reilly was, in fact, an FBI agent hadn’t fazed Vance in the least. Watching his calm, controlled disposition, Reilly wondered how this sophisticated man, this respected academic, had evolved into the fugitive sitting across from him with a shotgun in his lap; how someone with his background had managed to put together that raiding party and, more to the point, how he had gone on to kill off his hired guns, one by one, and with such efficiency and ruthlessness at that.

  Something didn’t fit.

  He noted that Vance was fixated on the pouch in Tess’s hands.

  “Careful,” Vance told her as she settled into the boat. “We wouldn’t want to damage it. Not after all this.” His tone sounded strangely detached as he stretched his hand out. “Please,” he beckoned.

  Tess looked at Reilly, unsure of what to do. Reilly turned to Vance who, with the other hand, swung the shotgun out slowly until it was pointing in their direction. The expression on the professor’s face was almost rueful, but his eyes were unflinching. Tess stood up, reached over, and handed him the pouch.

  Vance simply stowed it by his feet and motioned toward the shore with the shotgun. “Let’s get back on solid ground, shall we?”

  As they climbed off the boats at the shore, Reilly could now see that Vance’s men were indeed carrying hunting rifles. The taller of the two, a rough-looking man with a neck like a tree stump and a steely stare, was pointing his rifle at them, directing them away from the boats. The rifle didn’t look new, but it was threatening enough. It was an odd kind of weapon for a hired thug. It occurred to Reilly that Vance almost certainly had had to make do with whomever he’d been able to find at short notice. That could work to their advantage, he thought, especially if the Browning was still in the Pajero. For the moment, though, they were too exposed, standing there dripping in their wet suits.

  Vance found an old, rickety table in Rüstem’s yard and rested his shotgun against it. He glanced at Tess, his face brightening slightly. “I guess I’m not the only fan of Al-Idrissi. I really did want to be the first to get to it, as you can imagine, but…” He trailed off, placing the bulky pouch on the table. He stared at it reverentially, his mind seeming to drift away for a moment. “Still,” he added, “I’m glad you came. I’m not sure the local talent would have brought it up as efficiently as you did.”

  His fingers reached out and settled on the pouch’s bulge, feeling it gently, trying to divine what secrets it held. He started to lift its flap, then stopped, his head cocked with a sudden realization. He turned to Tess. “You should join me for this. In many ways, it’s as much your discovery as it is mine.”

  Tess glanced at Reilly, clearly conflicted. Reilly nodded for her to go ahead. She took a hesitant step forward, but the wiry, balding man tensed up, raising his rifle. Vance blurted some quick words in Turkish and the man relented, stepping aside to let her through. She joined Vance by the table.

  “Let’s hope this wasn’t all for nothing,” he said, as he reached for the pouch and lifted its flap.

  Slowly, and using both hands, he pulled something out from inside the pouch. It was an oiled skin. He laid it on the table. His brow furrowed in apparent confusion as he studied the shrouded shape. With hesitant fingers, he unwrapped the skin, revealing an ornate brass ring around ten inches wide.

  Its rim was intricately graduated with minute, regularly spaced notches, and it had a two-pointed rotating arm in its center, with a couple of smaller, secondary hands underneath.

  Reilly’s eyes darted from the object to the big Turk, who was also glancing back and forth from the table to Reilly and Rüstem, struggling to keep his curiosity at bay. Reilly’s muscles tens
ed as he saw a potential opportunity, but the big man had the same idea and stepped back, raising his rifle menacingly. Reilly pulled back, noticing that Rüstem had sensed his move and now had beads of sweat peppering his scalp.

  At the table, Tess’s eyes were riveted on the device. “What is it?”

  Vance was busy examining it carefully. “It’s a mariner’s astrolabe,” he said with a surprised look of recognition. He looked up briefly and saw her confused expression. “It’s a navigational instrument, kind of like a primitive sextant,” he clarified. “They didn’t know about longitudes then, of course, but…”

  Known as “the slide rule to the heavens,” the astrolabe, the earliest of all scientific instruments, had been around since 150 BC. Originally developed by Greek scholars in Alexandria, its use had eventually spread into Europe with the Muslim conquest of Spain. Widely used by Arab astronomers to help tell the time by measuring the altitude of the sun, astrolabes had evolved into a highly prized navigator’s tool by the fifteenth century, with Portuguese sailors using them to locate their latitude. The mariner’s astrolabe was crucial in helping Prince Henry the Navigator, the son of King John of Portugal, earn his nickname. For many years, his fleet kept its use a closely guarded secret and was the only fleet able to navigate open waters. It proved an invaluable tool throughout the Portuguese age of discovery, which culminated in Christopher Columbus’s setting foot in the New World in 1492.

  It was no coincidence that Prince Henry was the Governor of the Order of Christ from 1420 until his death in 1460. A Portuguese military order, it traced its origins back to none other than the Templars.