The Templar Archive by James Becker Read Free Book Online Page B

hope.”
    Mallory shook his head. “Right now it’s in a left-luggage locker at Exeter Airport, wrapped up in a track suit and inside a sports bag I found in a charity shop. I’ll collect it later and find a better place to hide it.”
    “Should we just dump it somewhere? Get rid of it completely?”
    “Not yet, because I don’t think this is anything like over. I like the idea of having a weapon or two available, just in case the Italians decide to pay us a return visit to try to finish off what they started. And we’ve still got that other Beretta stashed away, the one we brought back from France in the Cessna you kind of borrowed from your pal Justin when he wasn’t looking.”
    “I hadn’t forgotten. And you’re probably right. Beingarmed is no bad thing, bearing in mind what we’ve been through already. So what next?”
    “That all depends,” Mallory replied, “on whether we can work out the next clue Tibauld de Gaudin or Jacques De Molay left for us. If we can’t do that, then we’re going nowhere.”
    Robin nodded and turned her tablet computer round so that he could see the screen. On it was a detailed image of an ornate piece of metalwork overlying obviously old wood, the metal formed into swirls and curves and intricate shapes. “The good news is that the pictures we took of the lids of the two chests we found in Cyprus are surprisingly good quality, bearing in mind we were only using the cameras in our mobile phones. But the bad news is that the patterns just look like decoration—complex and intricate decoration, granted, but just decoration—to me. I simply don’t see anything that could be a clue to help us decipher the next section of the manuscript.”
    Mallory used his finger and thumb to alter the size of the image on the screen, zooming in to examine particular sections of it, and then widening the field of view to look at the entire image.
    “I’ve been going boss-eyed looking at those pictures ever since the rozzers let me walk out of the station,” Robin said, “and I can’t see anything useful in them.”
    “But there has to be something,” Mallory insisted. “Nothing else makes sense. The trail led us to that cave on Cyprus, and apart from the chests there was nothing else in there. No markings or signs of any sort. Which makes sense, because if there had been carvings orsomething, that might well have prompted other people to start exploring it years earlier. As it was, we only discovered the chests because you spotted that pile of weathered stones inside the cave. Stones that shouldn’t have been there. Most people—including me—would probably never have seen what you saw. The chests were so well hidden that if there really was a clue to the next part of the quest anywhere in that cave, it had to be either on or in those two wooden boxes.”
    “Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, we never got to see inside them,” Robin said. “But suppose the clue, whatever it was, was inside the chests? That would make sense, because the Templar knights who set the trap could then be sure that whoever found the chests would have to bypass the booby trap, those lethal blades, and get the chests open before they could decipher the clue or clues. It would be one more test that would have to be passed.”
    Mallory nodded slowly.
    “Maybe,” he agreed, “but there could be another way of looking at it. We know the chests were filled with rocks, and perhaps that means there probably wouldn’t be a carving or something on the inside of them, because the sheer bulk and weight of the rocks might damage it and make it unreadable. And I still believe whoever started this quest or whatever you want to call it intended that the trail should endure. He would have been hoping that the Templar order would somehow be revived, emerge from the darkness and disgrace forced on it by Philip the Fair, and resume its former power and authority. So perhaps he planned that a Templar who discovered the