The Templar Heresy

56

One of the obvious problems Bronson had was not knowing precisely which step he should use to begin counting. There were about half a dozen steps leading from the level of the path in the castle itself to the entrance to the staircase proper, but he figured that if he started looking for some kind of carving or inscription from about the fiftieth to the seventieth step that ought to cover all possible permutations.

So he included those first six steps in the total number in his mental count as he strode as quickly as he could down the broken and uneven stone stairs that angled away from the castle and towards the location of the cistern or well. The light from his torch illuminated his path well enough. Constructing the tunnel had clearly been a major undertaking, hacking a route through solid rock, and the marks of the picks were still visible on the walls and roof of the narrow passageway. In several places, he had to duck when the roof level was even lower than elsewhere, a reminder that adult males of the twenty-first century were appreciably taller than their mediaeval counterparts.

As well as avoiding cracking his head on the stone, Bronson was also checking for any kind of marks or carvings on the walls, but apart from a handful of initials near the tunnel entrance within the castle itself — and they were most probably comparatively recent judging by the lettering — he saw nothing.

It didn’t take long for him to reach the nominal start of his search, the fiftieth step below the level of the path, and immediately he slowed his progress to a virtual standstill, playing the light of his torch over the walls and ceiling in search of whatever it was that the anonymous mediaeval scribe had carved there. He advanced one step at a time, making sure that he looked at every square inch of the walls on both sides, but all appeared to be featureless stone, the only marks those obviously made by the masons when they had first constructed the passageway.

After a few steps, when he assumed he would be getting close to the sixty-second tread on the staircase, he shone his torch further down the passageway, illuminating the wall and ceiling below him. But still he saw nothing — no indication of letters or of a carving or anything else that could possibly be the clue he was seeking.

Bronson’s frustration and irritation grew with every step that he took. They had to have been reading this right. The only possible interpretation of the phrase they had deciphered had to apply to this one unique and immovable staircase, the only stones that could not have been moved because both the steps and the walls had been hacked out of the solid rock. There was nothing else at Shobak Castle that fitted.

He carried on for another half-dozen steps, with precisely the same lack of any concrete result.

And then he heard the unmistakable sound of movement in the passageway somewhere above him, and an authoritative-sounding voice called out to him.

‘Sir, sir, this area is out of bounds to visitors. You must leave now and return to the castle above. At once, please.’

Two things gave Bronson immediate pause. First, why had the man spoken in English and not Arabic in the first instance, unless he somehow knew Bronson’s nationality? And, second, and just as significant, why didn’t the man have a torch? Or, if he did, why wasn’t he using it? Would a guide really risk his neck by climbing down an uneven staircase in total darkness just to tell a visitor that he was in the wrong place?

Bronson decided to reply, but in French, just to see what would happen.

‘Je suis desolé, mais je ne comprends pas.’

At the same moment, he swung the beam of his torch around to shine back up the passageway down which he had descended.

And as he did that, he realized exactly why he hadn’t found what he had been looking for, because he’d been looking in the wrong place.

Virtually at his eye level, neatly and accurately carved into the riser of a step that simply had to be the sixty-second from the top, was a series of letters.

The second reason for shining his torch up the passageway had obviously been to try to get a look at the man who had called out to him, but the moment Bronson saw the carving he temporarily forgot about him, pulled the digital camera from his pocket, pressed the button on the side of the casing to deploy the flashgun, and then took six shots of the carving in as many seconds, the flash strobing off the old stone walls.

Beyond the flash, in the beam of the torchlight, Bronson saw a dark-skinned man wearing a dark suit and looking straight down at him. He didn’t look like a guide, but he could easily have been one of the two men who had been walking round the castle behind him and Angela just a few minutes earlier. Bronson moved the beam of the torch very slightly, and in that same instant, he saw the torch in the man’s left hand and the unmistakable shape of a compact semi-automatic pistol in his right.

Bronson slid the camera back into his pocket, reached behind him and took the Browning from the waistband of his trousers. He clicked off the safety catch and, keeping the torch beam focused on the man above him, began silently backing down the staircase, testing each tread as he went.

He could see the indecision on the face of the other man, but then the stranger apparently made up his mind and raised his right hand, the hand holding the pistol.

Bronson made a split-second decision: he switched off his torch, aimed in the general direction of the man above him and squeezed the trigger.

The report of the nine-millimetre bullet firing was utterly deafening in the confined space, the sound echoing off the walls.

But outside the tunnel, almost nobody even noticed the sound, apart from Amir who was waiting by the entrance to the staircase and heard the shot clearly. To everybody else at the site, the noise was muffled by several feet of solid rock. It sounded like a distant thump, perhaps from a piece of heavy machinery like a pile-driver.

Bronson had no idea whether or not his shot had been on target, but a moment later the other man fired his own weapon. Bronson instinctively ducked to the side, though his action would have been far too late if the shot had been accurately aimed, and heard the bullet ricochet off the wall of the tunnel somewhere above his head. Two further shots followed, but both missed.

Bronson aimed his weapon up the staircase, sighting it from memory in the blackness, and fired three times. He dared not use his torch, because that would give the other man an immediate point at which to aim.

Then he crouched down, getting as low as he could to make himself the smallest possible target. He had two choices, and he didn’t much like either of them. He could either stay in the tunnel and try to shoot down his opponent or risk ending up like a rat in a trap and carry on down the tunnel, all the way to the end, in the hope that he could force the door on the small building that marked the location of the water source for the Crusader castle.

Bronson flipped a mental coin and, moving as silently as he possibly could, began making his way further and further down the ancient staircase.

He heard the sound of movement somewhere above and stopped, turning round and pointing his pistol back the way he’d come, waiting for a shot or for the beam of the other man’s torch to pick him out. But his unidentified opponent clearly knew that switching on his own torch would immediately make him a target, and the passageway remained as dark as the grave.

Every step that Bronson took was hopefully moving him another couple of feet clear of the other man, increasing the distance between them and getting him out of the accurate range of a pistol. And then he received help from an unexpected source. The mediaeval masons who had laboured for months to create the hidden staircase had driven it quite straight down through the bedrock, but as Bronson slowly felt his way along the wall with the outstretched tips of his fingers, he was suddenly aware of a slight bend. The wall turned very slightly to the right, and continued to do so for perhaps another dozen steps.

And he hoped that would be enough.

A quick mental calculation suggested that there should now be solid stone between himself and the man pursuing him, a rock wall created by that gentle curve in the path of the staircase. As long as he stayed close to the right-hand side, anyway.

Bronson took out his torch again and for the briefest of instants flicked it on to show the staircase ahead of him. As he extinguished the light, the sound of another shot crashed against the walls of the tunnel, but the bullet hit somewhere on the left-hand side of the passage. Bronson guessed that the man above him could see the loom of the light from his torch, but couldn’t see him.

He switched on the torch again, and left it on, using the sudden flare of brightness to cover the remaining ground as quickly as he could.

Three more shots sounded, but they too hit somewhere on the left-hand wall, and Bronson knew that unless he was unlucky enough to be taken down by a ricochet, he should be safe enough. At least for the moment.

In fact, if the other man continued following him all the way down, at some point Bronson would have all the advantages, because when his opponent reached the bend in the staircase, Bronson could simply switch on his torch and place it well away from him, and then shoot down the other man the moment he stepped into view.

But that didn’t sit well with him. It was too much like shooting fish in a barrel. He would far rather just walk away, now that he had — he hoped — the last piece of information that they needed.

Bronson kept the torch switched on as he covered the last few dozen feet to the end of the passageway. There, he found himself in an underground chamber at the bottom of which he could clearly hear the sound of running water. Somewhat incongruously, a modern steel ladder had been bolted to the stone side wall of the ancient chamber.

Bronson checked that the other man wasn’t in sight up the staircase, then slid the Browning into his pocket and shimmied up the ladder through a circular opening in a concrete slab. Above was another small square chamber, clearly of fairly recent construction, formed from stone walls and a flat roof, the only opening to the outside world a slightly rusty steel door.

He gave the door a firm push, expecting it to be locked, and he wasn’t disappointed. But the pressure he applied showed him where the external lock was positioned, and that was what he really needed to know.

There’s a certain amount of science involved in forcing open a locked door, and Bronson knew that the one way that almost never worked, despite being shown on numerous television shows, was to shoulder-charge it. What was needed was a powerful, focused strike as close as possible to the lock.

Bronson stood back, balanced himself on his left leg and kicked the door with all the force he could muster.

The steel door bent, but didn’t open, so he repeated the treatment twice more. The third kick slammed the door open, all the way back against its hinges.

Moments later, Bronson climbed out of the opening and looked around. He was on the southern side of the castle, close by the almost unmade road that ran around that part of the base of the hill.

Almost the first thing he saw was the Renault hire car, Angela at the wheel, parked more or less in the middle of the road at the bottom of the valley between the castle and the visitor centre. He could also see what looked like one of the guides walking down towards it, perhaps to remonstrate with her.

Bronson didn’t wait, he just ran a few steps along the road towards the car, waving his arms.

Angela spotted him, put the car into gear, turned the wheel hard to the right and accelerated along the road towards him.

Within seconds, they’d changed positions, Bronson in the driving seat and Angela checking the map, and the Renault was travelling quickly along the poor-quality road that led away from the castle.

‘What happened in there?’ Angela asked. ‘Did you get it?’

Bronson looked across at her and smiled.

‘After all that,’ he said, ‘I bloody well hope so.’