The Templar Heresy

62

‘Maintenant!’ Bronson shouted. ‘Vite!’

He jumped to the side, putting his body between Angela and the two armed men.

Khaled and Farooq pulled the triggers of their pistols virtually simultaneously, the double report thunderous in the confined space.

Bronson staggered backwards as the two bullets slammed into his chest, knocking him down. His fall took Angela with him. She tumbled on to the stone floor, cracking the back of her head, and lay still as Bronson’s dead weight awkwardly covered her body.

Neither Iraqi got a chance to fire a second time. Even as they were shifting the aim of their weapons, two black-clad men stepped down the staircase, silenced sub-machine guns in their hands. When they fired their weapons, the reports sounded like flat metallic slaps, but the effects were devastating. Khaled and Farooq danced briefly and clumsily as the subsonic nine-millimetre bullets slammed into them, before both collapsed to the stone floor.

From the chapel above, similar sounds could be heard, silenced weapons firing followed by the heavy thud of bodies falling to the ground.

One of the newcomers walked over to the splayed bodies of the two Iraqis, the muzzle of his weapon aimed straight at them, while the other one strode across to where Bronson and Angela lay in an untidy tangle of limbs.

His face pinched with concern, he bent over the two silent figures.

‘Monsieur Bronson,’ he said, and reached out to feel the Englishman’s neck, checking for a pulse.

Then he straightened up again, a slight smile crossing his face as Bronson groaned and struggled to move, his hand rubbing his chest. He sat up, clearly trying to catch his breath, then glanced down and behind him at Angela.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, panting as he gasped for air, and relief flooded through him when she nodded, before both of them climbed very shakily to their feet.

Bronson grabbed her and held her tight, the sensation spoiled more than somewhat by the bullet-proof Kevlar vests that both were wearing under their outdoor clothes, protective garments that they had donned in the lay-by outside Saint-Martory earlier that morning. The French had insisted on that before agreeing to Bronson’s somewhat risky scheme.

And in the event, it had been a wise precaution.

Then they turned to look at the slim figure standing beside them, clad all in black with a holstered sidearm and carrying his sub-machine gun.

The man smiled again.

‘Was that how you wanted it done, Monsieur Bronson?’ he asked.

‘Merci, Capitaine,’ Bronson replied, shaking the gunman’s hand, and now speaking almost normally. ‘That was exactly how I wanted it done. We — and you, I suppose — really needed to hear those two Iraqis incriminate themselves.’

‘Your chest?’ the Frenchman asked. ‘The vest worked, obviously, but are you okay?’

‘It hurts like hell,’ Bronson said, ‘and I’ll be bruised for a month. But that doesn’t matter.’

He turned and introduced Angela. ‘My former wife, Angela Lewis,’ he said. ‘Angela, this is Captain Bouvier of the GIGN, the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale. The GIGN is a specialist anti-terrorist intervention unit based at Maisons-Alfort, just to the south-east of Paris. He and his men have been in position, hidden here in this chapel and waiting patiently, since before five o’clock this morning.’

Angela shook Bouvier’s hand too, trembling a little as she did so, the shock of her own vulnerability and the sudden death of the two Iraqis hitting her.

‘Thank you so much, Captain. I only agreed to this madcap scheme because Chris assured me that we would have proper professional help.’

‘In my opinion, madame, you have had the best professional help available anywhere.’ Bouvier was clearly nothing if not proud of his unit’s performance. ‘And thanks to the questions you asked this man’ — he dismissively kicked Khaled’s inert body with his left foot — ‘we’ve recorded what amounts to a full admission of what happened at the camp in Iraq and in Milan.’

‘Are they all dead?’ Bronson asked.

As if in answer to his question, they heard a single thud from the chapel above, the unmistakable sound of a silenced weapon being fired in single-shot mode.

‘It would seem so,’ Bouvier replied, ‘and it’s much better that way. No loose ends, no awkward questions, no arguments, and no need for a messy and expensive trial. They were armed and resisted arrest, with this unfortunate but inevitable result. And I’d like to think that the French archaeologists that these animals slaughtered at the dig in Iraq would approve of that decision.’

Bouvier glanced round in satisfaction, and then issued crisp orders to the man standing behind him.

‘And now, Monsieur Bronson, it’s time for you to leave, so that we can get this mess cleaned up. I don’t think you’ll want to hang around. Oh, please take off the vests before you go.’

‘Could you just give us five minutes, please?’ Bronson asked, as he and Angela started to remove the ballistic vests. ‘We’ve followed the trail to this place all the way from the Middle East, and we’d very much like to see exactly what was concealed in that chamber.’

‘Take ten minutes,’ Bouvier said, ‘but then you really will need to leave. And please be careful. Whatever is in that hidden room belongs to France.’

‘Of course.’

Bronson and Angela walked forward almost reverently into the chamber — the hidden chapel that had obviously been the Knights Templars’ most important place of worship in the long-vanished commandery. As they’d glimpsed earlier, standing in pride of place on the stone altar was a wooden box, perhaps eighteen inches tall, twelve inches wide and about the same deep. It was a very plain and simple design, in keeping with the strict rule by which the Templars had lived, and their vows of poverty and obedience.

The wood was hard and brittle, blackened by the ages. On the front were two small square handles made of gold, and embossed on each was an outline of the Templars’ croix pattée.

Angela glanced at Bronson, but he gestured for her to go ahead and do the honours. They’d risked their lives for this moment. She grasped each handle and pulled open the door, the unlubricated hinges protesting audibly. And then for a few moments they just looked.

Behind the twin doors was a painting that looked remarkably familiar. A noble, patrician face, marked by a heavy beard and with long hair, stared back at them.

‘It’s pretty much a dead ringer for the carving in the temple in Iraq,’ Angela said quietly.

Bronson pointed at the top of the box, at another small gold handle, and she carefully lifted that as well, the lid of the box creaking open.

Inside was a complete skull, as far as they could tell without removing it from its resting place, which Angela wasn’t prepared to do.

‘My God,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t believe it. We shouldn’t even be touching this — it will need specialist conservation.’

‘So what do you think?’ Bronson asked her. ‘Is that really the head of John the Baptist?’

‘It looks old enough,’ she replied, ‘and a forensic anthropologist could confirm whether or not the body was decapitated, assuming enough of the neck vertebrae are present, but the reality is that we have no way of knowing if this skull truly belonged to the man known as John the Baptist. But what I can tell you is that the box seems to have been designed so that originally the face of the skull would have been visible behind those two doors. I think the painting was a later addition, added once the flesh on the skull started to really decay, and all that at least implies that the object could have been worshipped. So the short answer is that we’re probably looking at the notorious idol, at Baphomet itself, the disembodied head or painted face that was so much venerated and revered by the Templars.’

She looked down at the top of the skull once again.

‘But if you want my guess, my gut feeling, then I think the answer’s “yes”. I think we’re looking at the skull of John the Baptist. And there’s this as well,’ she added, pointing at the wooden face of the box directly below the two doors.

Written in a horizontal line in small but carefully carved letters were two words that they could just barely read.

‘Yohanan Mamdana,’ Bronson said. ‘John the Baptist.’

‘That’s not proof, of course, but it’s indicative. At least the person who carved that had no doubts about the contents of the box. Now let’s get out of here.’ She closed the wooden doors on the box carefully, leaving it looking exactly the same as when they’d first seen it.

‘I’d forgotten about that phrase you quoted at Khaled,’ Bronson said as they walked out, ‘but it does make sense now. Tibauld de Gaudin, or more likely Jacques de Molay himself, the nobleman who succeeded de Gaudin as the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, must have decided to send the assets of the order in Outremer somewhere completely different. In fact, bearing in mind that pretty soon after de Molay returned to France he probably found out about the plot Philip the Fair was hatching against the order, he would almost certainly have had the wealth concealed in another country altogether.’

‘And you think it’s still there, somewhere, just waiting for somebody to stumble across it?’

‘Knowing the Templars, I doubt very much if anyone will ever stumble across it, as you put it. Wherever it is, I’m certain it’ll be extremely well concealed in a secure location, and it’ll only be found by someone who finds a clue somewhere and follows whatever trail has been left. But, yes, I do think it’s still out there, the massive hoard that represents a significant part of the riches of the order, because there’s never been any suggestion that it’s been found, at any time in history. Maybe we should carry on looking.’

Angela shook her head and gave a small smile.

‘Not me, or not right now, anyway. What I want is something to eat and drink, followed by a good long sleep without worrying if some man with a gun is going to try to kill me while I’m in bed. And then I’ll be quite happy to go back to my office at the British Museum and get stuck into some really dull and boring, but really, really safe work.’

She paused for a moment as a thought struck her.

‘But if you do ever happen to stumble across any kind of clue that might lead you to the treasure of the Templars, just make sure that I’m the first and only person you tell about it. Okay?’

Bronson smiled back at her and nodded.

The café-restaurant a few yards up the road, by the traffic-light controlled junction, was just opening its doors and Angela pointed at it.

‘Coffee and a croissant?’ she asked. ‘It’s probably all they’ll have available at this time of the morning.’

‘Sounds good to me. In fact, that’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time,’ Bronson said. He took her firmly by the hand, and led the way across the street and into the early-morning sunshine.