Steve Berry - The Templar legacy

"Is that where everything is stored?" she asked.

Not waiting for an answer, she moved around him and had taken only a few steps when she heard Mark cry out, "No."

Then the ground slipped away.

MALONE STARED AT THE SIGHT ILLUMINATED BY THEIR COMBINED lights. A skeleton. Lying prostrate on the cavern floor, the shoulders, neck, and skull propped up against the wall.

"Let's get closer," he said.

They inched ahead and he noticed a slight depression in the floor. He grasped Cassiopeia's shoulder.

"I see it," she said, stopping. "It's a long one. Stretches a couple of yards."

"Those damn pits would have been invisible in their time, but the wood beneath has weakened enough to show them." They moved around the depression, staying on solid ground, and approached the skeleton.

"There's nothing left but bones," she said.

"Look at the chest. The ribs. And the face. Shattered in places. He fell into that trap. Those gashes are from spikes."

"Who is he?"

Something caught his eye.

He bent down and found a blackened silver chain among the bones. He lifted it out. A medallion dangled from the loop. He focused the light. "The Templar seal. Two men on a single horse. It represented individual poverty. I saw a drawing of this in a book a few nights ago. My bet is this is the marshal who wrote the report we've been using. He disappeared from the abbey once he learned the solution to the cryptogram from the priest Gelis. He came, figured out the solution, but wasn't careful. Sauniere probably found the body and just left him here."

"But how would Sauniere have figured anything out? How did he solve the cryptogram? Mark let me read that report. According to Gelis, Sauniere had not solved the puzzle he found in his church and Gelis was suspicious of him, so he told Sauniere nothing."

"That's assuming what the marshal wrote was true. Either Sauniere or the marshal killed Gelis to keep the priest from telling anyone what he'd deciphered. If it was the marshal, which seems likely, then he filed the report simply as a way to cover his tracks. A way for no one to think he left the abbey to come here and find the Order's Great Devise for himself. What did it matter that he recorded the cryptogram? There's no way to solve the thing without the mathematical sequence."

He turned his attention away from the dead man and shone his light farther down the passage. "Look at that."

Cassiopeia stood and together they saw a cross with four equal arms, wide at the ends, carved into the rock.

"The cross patee," she said. "Allowed to be worn only by the Templars thanks to a papal decree."

He recalled more of what he'd read in the Templar book. "The crosses were red on a white mantle and symbolized a willingness to suffer martyrdom in fighting infidels." With his flashlight, he traced the lettering above the cross.

"By this sign ye shall conquer him," he said, translating. "Those same words are in the church at Rennes, above the holy water fount at the door. Sauniere put them there."

"Constantine's declaration when he first fought Maxentius. Before the battle, he supposedly saw a cross on the sun with those words emblazoned beneath."

"With one difference. Mark said there was no him in the original phrase. Only By this sign ye shall conquer. "

"He's right."

"Sauniere inserted le after tu. At the thirteenth and fourteenth position in the phrase. 1314."

"The year Jacques de Molay was executed."

"Seems Sauniere enjoyed a touch of irony in his symbolism, and he got the idea right here."

He searched more of the darkness and saw that the passage ended twenty feet ahead. But before that, a metal grille locked by a chain and hasp blocked a path that led off into another direction.

Cassiopeia saw it, too. "Seems we found it."

A rumble came from behind them and someone shouted, "No."

They both turned.

DE ROQUEFORT STOPPED AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE RUINS AND motioned his men to flank out to either side. The site was uncomfortably quiet. No movement. No voices. Nothing. Brother Geoffrey stood beside him. He remained worried that he was being set up. Which was why he'd come with firepower. He was pleased with his council's selection of knights-these men were some of the best in his ranks, experienced fighters of unquestioned courage and fortitude-which he might well need.

He peered around a pile of lichen-encrusted rubble, deeper into the decayed structure, past billows of standing grass. The bright dome of sky overhead was fading as the sun beat a retreat behind the mountains. Darkness would arrive shortly. And he worried about the weather. Squalls and rain came without warning in the Pyrenean summer.

He motioned and his men advanced forward, clambering over boulders and collapsed wall sections. He spied a campsite among three partial walls. Wood had been arranged for a fire that had yet to be lit.

"I'll go in," Geoffrey whispered. "They're expecting me."

He saw the wisdom of that move and nodded.

Geoffrey calmly walked into the open and approached the camp. Still no one was around. Then the younger man disappeared deeper into the ruins. A moment later he emerged and signaled for them to come.

De Roquefort told his men to wait and only he stepped into the open. He'd already directed his lieutenant to attack if necessary.

"Only Thorvaldsen is in the church," Geoffrey said.

"What church?"

"The monks cut a church into the rock. They've discovered a portal beneath the altar that leads to caves. The others are beneath us exploring. I told Thorvaldsen that I was going to retrieve the supplies."

He liked what he was hearing.

"I'd want to meet Henrik Thorvaldsen."

With gun in hand, he followed Geoffrey into the dungeon-like cavity carved from the rock. Thorvaldsen stood with his back to them, gazing down into what was once a support for the altar.

The old man turned as they came close.

De Roquefort raised his gun. "Not a word. Or it will be your last."

THE EARTH BENEATH STEPHANIE'S FEET HAD GIVEN WAY AND HER legs were collapsing into one of the traps they'd tried so hard to avoid. What had she been thinking? Seeing the words etched into the rock and then the metal gate waiting to be opened, she'd realized that her husband had been right. So she'd abandoned caution and raced forward. Mark had tried to stop her. She heard him scream, but it had been too late.

She was already heading down.

Her hands went skyward in an attempt to balance and she readied herself for the bronze stakes. But then she felt an arm encase her chest in a tight embrace. Then she was falling backward, to the ground, which she struck, another body cushioning her impact.

A second later, quiet.

Mark lay beneath her.

"You okay?" she asked, rolling off him.

Her son raised himself off the gravel. "Those rocks felt lovely on my back."

Heavy footsteps sounded in the darkness behind them, accompanied by two orbs of waggling light. Malone and Cassiopeia appeared.

"What happened?" Malone asked.

"I was careless," she said, standing, brushing herself off.

Malone shone a light down into the rectangular hole. "That would have been a bloody fall. It's full of stakes, all in good shape."

She came close, stared down into the opening, then turned and said to Mark, "Thanks, son."

Mark was rubbing the back of his neck, working the pain from his muscles. "No problem."

"Malone," Cassiopeia said. "Take a look."

Stephanie watched as Malone and Cassiopeia studied the Templar motto she and Mark had found. "I was headed to that gate when the hole got in the way."

"Two of them," Malone muttered. "At opposite ends of this corridor."