The Templar Heresy

9

Within about half an hour, Bronson had managed to cover all the bodies, and had weighed the material down with stones to stop it blowing off or being pulled away by the carrion birds.

By the time he’d finished, Angela and Stephen were visibly traumatized, but Angela’s mood was now dominated by fury as much as by terror and sorrow.

‘This is such a senseless waste of human life,’ she said. ‘I worked with all of these people, and I liked every one of them. Why the hell would anybody want to kill a bunch of archaeologists? It makes no sense, whether or not it was a terrorist action.’

Stephen had walked off to clear his head as soon as the last body had been covered, but about ten minutes later he came back, a puzzled expression on his face.

‘I’ve just found something else that’s rather peculiar,’ he said. ‘I went back and had a look at both the trenches, and then I climbed the ladder down into the temple.’ He paused for a moment, his gaze flicking between their faces. ‘I don’t know why it’s happened, but the inscription has gone.’

‘What do you mean it’s gone?’ Angela demanded. ‘It’s carved into the stone of the wall.’

‘I mean it’s not there any more. Somebody has chipped it away with a hammer and chisel, and all that’s left is a clean smooth wall.’

The three of them immediately walked over to the second trench and climbed down the ladder and into the underground chamber, Bronson and Angela carrying torches that they’d picked up on the way.

‘See what I mean?’ Stephen said, shining his own torch at the wall in front of them, now entirely featureless.

Bronson shone his torch down at the floor of the temple, and moved the beam around, as if searching for something.

‘What is it?’ Angela asked.

‘There’s nothing here at all,’ he said, puzzled. ‘That means that after they chipped it off the wall, they collected all the debris and took it away, and the only reason they could have for doing that is to make absolutely sure nobody could reassemble the carved text after they’d destroyed it and all evidence of it was gone. It makes me wonder if this — this obscure inscription — is the reason these killers appeared here in the first place. Apparently whatever that encrypted carving means was clearly worth killing for.’

Although the air was stale and stuffy, and the temperature was if anything even higher than it had been on the surface, Bronson spent a couple of minutes looking around. He examined the carved human face above the altar as well as the altar itself, and also looked at the carved depression in the stone floor that Angela thought might have been something to do with a baptism ritual. Then he walked over to the ladder and climbed out of the temple to rejoin his two companions.

‘This makes no sense,’ Angela said again. ‘Even if it was important, why was it necessary not only to obliterate it but also to kill everybody who had seen it?’

‘Well, at least we know one thing now that we didn’t before,’ Bronson said, gesturing towards the shrouded bodies lying a few yards away. ‘We now know that this wasn’t just a random terrorist attack or a senseless massacre. This was a deliberate act and the crux of this matter was the inscription. That was their primary objective. That was why they obliterated it and took every camera and computer they could find from the camp that might have an image of the inscription on it.’

Angela opened her mouth to speak, but before she could reply Bronson’s attention shifted and he fixed his eyes on the horizon over to the north.

‘What is it?’

‘I can see a dust cloud over there,’ he replied. ‘There’s a vehicle approaching.’

Angela followed his gaze, but then shook her head.

‘There’s a track that runs out to the west of us. I think it links a couple of villages. It’s probably just some local going about his business.’

‘That’s a pity,’ Stephen said. ‘I was hoping it might have been the police already, because then we could give them our statements and get back to Kuwait.’

‘Not a chance,’ Bronson retorted. ‘We only made the call to the police in Baghdad about an hour ago and it’ll take a lot longer than that for them to get here. Even if they’re only coming here from Basra, which is the nearest big town, they’ll still be at least another hour or two. There’s no way they could have got out here so quickly.’

Stephen studied the dust cloud for a few seconds, then turned back to Bronson.

‘You could be wrong,’ he said. ‘They could have used helicopters to get to Basra and then switched over to 4x4s for the last part of the journey.’

Bronson shook his head.

‘If the police had access to helicopters, why wouldn’t they land right here? No, I don’t know who that is, but it isn’t the Iraqi police.’

Bronson looked again towards the slowly moving cloud of dust and sand and shook his head. It was a shame it wasn’t the police; he was about ready to get out of this place.