"Easy," Robin said.

"Really?"

"No, actually. I was making a small joke. But seriously, if that is the clue, then at least we know that we're looking for a person, for a name, rather than some vague concept or idea that we might never work out. So, who do you think that 'he who came before' might refer to?"

"I suppose logic would suggest that the writer is obliquely referring to somebody well-known in the order, and fairly obvious choices there will include people like Jacques de Molay, the last grand master, and maybe the first, Hugues de Payens, as well as some of the other famous names associated with the Knights Templar. Actually," he added after a pause, "probably not the first grand master, because there would have been nobody 'coming before him': by definition, he was the first. I think maybe we'll start with Jacques de Molay, because so much of the text has been dealing with him and what happened to him at the end in Paris. Perhaps the writer was assuming that we would assume, if you see what I mean, that he was the most important name ever to be associated with the Knights Templar. He's certainly the one person that everyone who reads about the subject knows."

Robin nodded.

"So, who came before Jacques de Molay?" she asked.

"I can't remember," Mallory replied, "but I'm sure that the Internet will supply the answer in a couple of seconds."

He opened his browser, typed in "Knights Templar grand masters," and started the search. Predictably enough, the very first search result was from Wikipedia. Mallory clicked on the link to open the page and then scanned down it until he reached the end of the list of names.

"There you go," he said. "The last grand master of the order before Jacques de Molay was Thibaud Gaudin. We can try that name and see if it gets us anywhere, but let me just check something else."

He quickly did another search.

"I thought so," he said. "If you look at the names of the list of Templar grand masters, you'll see that most of them are single names with an associated place-name. Bernard de Blanchefort, for example, or Bernard of Blanchefort. I think Blanchefort is a town or village somewhere in Southern France. Thibaud Gaudin was also known as Tibauld de Gaudin, so there are at least two different ways of spelling his name, and it can be with or without the de as well."

He entered another search term and looked at the results.

"There's nowhere in France just called 'Gaudin,'" he said, "but Tibauld was believed to have come from the Loire region, and there are a couple of towns in that area that include the word in their names. And of course one of them might just have been called 'Gaudin' in those days."

"I suppose we'll just have to try all the possible options," Robin said. "But what about this burden he was supposed to be carrying? Is there anything on the Web about what that could mean?"

Mallory scanned quickly through one of the articles on Tibauld de Gaudin. "I don't know if it would count as a 'burden,' but it looks as if Tibauld was one of the very few members of the Knights Templar order who managed to escape the fall of Acre in 1291. The night before the fortifications were overrun by the Mamluk besieging army, he sailed away with a number of noncombatants-women and children, presumably-as well as the entire treasure of the Knights Templar in the Holy Land. He wasn't stealing it, because he held the position of treasurer of the order, and he had been ordered to leave Acre by the marshal of the Knights Templar, a man called Pierre de Sevry, who was then in command of the fortress.

"I don't know all the details of the siege of Acre, but I do know that almost every Christian who had taken refuge in the Templar fort there was slaughtered by the Mamluks when they finally breached the walls. Reading between the lines, my guess is that de Sevry knew for sure that Acre was doomed, and didn't want the treasure to fall into the hands of the infidels, so he made certain that it was transported to safety before the final battle began."

"I think you could describe that as a 'burden,'" Robin said. "Presumably Tibauld would have been one of the last surviving Knights Templar in the Holy Land, and to be entrusted with the entire wealth of the order would be a massive responsibility. What did he do with it?"

Mallory read on. "The short version is that nobody actually knows. He sailed first to Sidon, and while he was there he was elected grand master following the death of Pierre de Sevry at the end of the siege of Acre. Although the Templars were determined to resist the approaching Mamluk army, they were too few in number to defend the entire city of Sidon, and so they retreated to what was known as the Castle of the Sea. It had been built in the thirteenth century as a fortification just off the coast of Sidon, and was approached by a narrow and easily defended causeway about one hundred yards long.

"But before the Mamluks arrived, Tibauld de Gaudin got back into his ship and sailed off into the Mediterranean, an act that could easily have been interpreted as cowardice, and which was certainly not what most Templars would have expected their new grand master to do. The other way of looking at it is that de Gaudin knew that the number of defenders in the castle was wholly inadequate to resist the vast Mamluk army, and his plan was to sail to Cyprus to raise enough reinforcements to allow him to return to the Holy Land and drive out the infidels. And, probably, to get the order's treasure to a place of safety.

"What followed was by all accounts something of a shambles. The Templars who had remained behind in the Castle of the Sea fought as bravely as members of the order invariably did, but when Mamluk engineers began constructing a new and wide causeway to link the castle with the mainland, they accepted that they had no choice but to retreat. They took to their ships and sailed to the city of Tortosa, in Syria. But even that proved too big and too difficult to defend, and later that year both Tortosa and the castle of Athlit were evacuated, the Templars assembling at the small sea fort of Ruad, about two miles off the coast of Tortosa, as their final redoubt. But when Sidon was abandoned, that realistically marked the end of the presence of the Knights Templar in the Holy Land."

"I take it that Tibauld didn't raise any reinforcements, then?" Robin asked.

"Correct. He apparently did almost nothing on Cyprus. In fairness to him, he did have other problems, including trying to defend the Kingdom of Armenia from Turkish forces, and there were domestic difficulties on Cyprus as well, because of an influx of refugees. He was probably also not a well man, because he died the following year, 1292, and it looks as if all mention of the Templar treasure of Acre died with him. Interestingly, at the same meeting of the hierarchy of the Knights Templar that confirmed Tibauld's appointment in October 1291, a senior knight named Jacques de Molay was named marshal of the order, succeeding Pierre de Sevry. He, of course, then became the grand master of the order after Tibauld's death."

"Well, de Gaudin sounds to me like a pretty good candidate for 'him who came before and carried the burden,' so unless you've got any better ideas, why don't you try using his name as the cipher text?"

"I'm already doing it."

But despite trying numerous different combinations and spellings, none seemed to work, just converted gibberish to different gibberish, and eventually Mallory sat back, frustrated.

"I have no idea where to go now," he admitted. "I think I've tried just about every possible combination."

Robin was again looking at the section of the parchment text that they'd already deciphered. And suddenly she saw three words that hadn't really registered with either of them before.

"Look," she said, pointing at the translation. "It says 'Rely two times.' That has to mean something."

Mallory looked at it for a moment. "I just thought it was an emphasis, you know, meaning you could really rely on him, something like that. Now I wonder . . ."

His voice trailed away; then he looked up at Robin, who was standing beside him.

"Unless that's a kind of oblique instruction about the decryption," he suggested. "A double transposition rather than just a single one? If so, it's probably the earliest example ever."

"But it's worth a try?"

"Definitely," Mallory said, taking a fresh sheet of paper.

Working out exactly what spelling of the man's name to use took a bit of trial and error, and Mallory tried numerous different combinations, together with the other word or words that would have to follow the name to make up the required twenty-six letters.

He prepared another table, as he'd done before, and entered the alphabet and the cipher text underneath it: "Are you sure that'll work?" Robin asked.

"No," Mallory said, "but that seems the best fit for the twenty-six letters. That's the shorter version of Tibauld's name, his abbreviated title-he was the magister generalis, the Latin for 'grand master,' and the last five letters are the initials of the full name of the order, Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici. Anyway, we'll find out when I try it."

Then he noted down the letters that encrypted the same expression and wrote the result under the alphabet: And finally that combination worked, which meant that it was a double transposition cipher, which incidentally meant the history of cryptography would have to be amended.

There were quite a number of duplicate letters in the cipher text, which inevitably caused delays in the decrypting, or more accurately the translating, of the Latin plaintext, but steadily the two of them worked their way through the remainder of the text. Everything yielded apart from the very last section, twenty or so lines of cipher text. Nothing Mallory tried seemed to work on it, and eventually they reluctantly decided to just ignore it.

When they'd finished, Robin read through what she'd written down, made a few small changes to make it sound rather better, more like modern English, and then read out the whole of the translated text to Mallory, who listened with great care to every word she said.

"Well, that's a bit of a bugger," he said when she'd finished.

52.

Rome To say Silvio Vitale was annoyed barely hinted at the level of his irritation, and the proximate cause of his anger was the man standing in front of his desk: Marco Toscanelli.

"I had expected far better from you," he snapped. "I would have thought that a team of six experienced operatives, all of you armed and with the clearest and most specific of instructions, would have been able to eliminate a harmless British bookseller and recover the object that we sought. Instead you have returned to Rome outwitted and outmaneuvered by this same man and his secretary, or whatever that woman turns out to be. Four of our operatives are dead, three of them killed by your own hand-"

"I explained that to you," Toscanelli interrupted. "The first police car had just arrived and I knew that-"

"Never interrupt me when I am speaking," Vitale said coldly, and Toscanelli immediately fell silent. "Irrespective of the reasons that you decided justified your action, the fact remains that you yourself killed three of the men under your orders, and I am far from satisfied that you were correct in doing this. And even if there genuinely had been no other possible course of action, your execution-and that realistically is the only way to describe what you did-meant that our masters were asked a number of questions by an official representative of the British embassy here in Rome, questions that we would far rather have never had occurred to anyone. Obviously the answers given were very carefully prepared and worded to avoid the order becoming incriminated in any way, but the fact remains that what we had intended to be an entirely covert operation ended up attracting a huge amount of publicity in Britain-not only the local papers but also the national dailies there are running the story even now, trying to work out exactly what happened in that quiet seaside town-simply because of what you did."

Vitale paused for a moment and glared across the desk, his hostility almost palpable. "And then, to make matters even worse, when you and the remaining two men finally located and captured the two targets, and that in my opinion was more a fluke than an indication of any kind of coherent plan, they not only managed to get away from you, but also probably took the relic with them, though I note that you never even bothered checking that it was actually in their possession. They also took back the computer that you had removed from the flat in Dartmouth, and in the process maimed one operative and killed the other. If Dante talks, make no mistake: I will issue a termination order against him, and another one against you. You might have done better to kill him as well, because while he still breathes, your life is in serious jeopardy."

Vitale stopped talking for a moment, his cold black eyes never leaving Toscanelli's face.

"In fact," he continued, "throughout that entire operation, absolutely the only thing you actually did right was upload the data from that computer to our servers here in Rome, during the extremely brief period while you had it in your possession. That is the only reason why you're standing in front of me now. If you had not got that information to us, I would already have had you killed. In fact, I would probably have done it myself, and I promise you it would not have been a quick death."

Vitale fell silent again, and after a brief pause Toscanelli decided he had to respond. The trouble was that every single statement made by the head of the order was absolutely true. It had been, by any standards, a catastrophe, the team selected by Vitale and led by Toscanelli failing to achieve any of the objectives for which they had flown to Britain. And the death toll was simply unacceptable, given the opposition-if such a word could actually be used to describe the two people they had encountered in Dartmouth. But Toscanelli was certain there was more to it than Vitale seemed prepared to accept, and he was determined to make his views known.

"That man Jessop might just be a bookseller now," he began, "but the way he reacted to the situation he found himself in proves to me that he is far more competent and experienced in close combat than we had any reason to expect. I strongly suspect that he has some kind of military background, and if we had known that before we landed in Britain, we would have approached him in a very different manner. And the other-"

But before he could continue to elaborate the excuses for his team's failure, there was a sudden peremptory knock on the door.

"Come," Vitale called out.

The door opened almost immediately, and a black-clad man stepped into the room and crossed immediately to the desk, where he handed Vitale a folded sheet of paper.

The leader of the order opened it and read the information written on it. Then he glanced at the messenger.

"What's the source for this?" he demanded.

"The local newspaper in Dartmouth. We are monitoring each edition as soon as it is published on the Internet. According to the report we read, that information was released by the British police yesterday."

Vitale dismissed the man with a gesture, and as soon as he had left the room, he switched his attention back to Toscanelli.

"So you think the bookseller might have spent some time in the British army, do you?" he asked.

"That or some other branch of the military, yes," Toscanelli replied.

"Interesting. Because according to this news report, the detectives investigating the triple murder in Dartmouth have now confirmed that the apartment and the antiquarian bookshop that was on the ground floor of the building were owned by the same person, Robin Jessop."

Toscanelli looked puzzled.

"We knew that," he said. "In fact, we knew that before the aircraft took off from Rome."

"Yes," Vitale replied, "but up to now the authorities in Britain had not released the name of the owner of the property. They simply referred to it as a bookshop in Dartmouth with an apartment located above it, without confirming the name of the owner."

"I still don't see the significance."

"The significance is that the British police have now identified Robin Jessop as the owner of the bookshop, and stated that she lived in her apartment on the second floor of the building. 'She' and 'her,' Toscanelli," Vitale emphasized. "So not only have you been comprehensively outwitted by a British bookseller, but it now turns out that she's a twenty-eight-year-old woman, not some hulking former soldier."

For a few moments, Toscanelli didn't reply, processing the new and unexpected information.

"But I thought Robin was an English male name," he finally spluttered.

Vitale permitted himself a brief smile.

"Actually," he said, "so did I, but apparently it isn't exclusively masculine. So who exactly was the man who was with her? Her boyfriend? Or a minder, a bodyguard? And if so, why would she have a bodyguard?"

"I have no idea," Toscanelli replied. "So how does this affect our mission?"

"I don't actually think it does. If you see them again, either of them, your orders are quite clear: you kill them. If possible, try and make it look like an accident, but if you can't, just kill them anyway. And if you do run into them, make absolutely sure that you either recover the relic or totally destroy it."

Vitale pulled open the top drawer on the right-hand side of the desk and reached inside it. Toscanelli tensed, wondering for the briefest of instants if, despite his last remarks, Vitale had changed his mind and was reaching for a pistol to shoot him, there and then. But then he relaxed when the other man simply extracted a buff envelope and held it out for him to take.

"These are your orders. We have had a team working on decrypting the text ever since you uploaded it, and although they haven't quite finished it yet, we believe it is clear that what we seek must lie somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean."

"Based on what?" Toscanelli asked, feeling on firmer ground now that the threat of his immediate execution had diminished somewhat.

"On the name Tibauld de Gaudin, the man who was the second-to-last grand master of the Knights Templar. There's an oblique reference to his name in the text that has already been decrypted. He ended his life in Cyprus, and it therefore seems likely that the object of our quest was in his possession when he arrived there, and as far as we know from checking our own records of the interrogations and all other relevant contemporary sources, we can find no evidence to suggest that it was ever removed from the island. That appears to have been the last place it was ever sighted."

"I'm sure the orders you have given me will explain everything," Toscanelli said, "but can you provide me with a quick summary of what you want me to do?"

Vitale nodded. "There's a diplomatic passport in that envelope. Pending the full decryption of the text, you are to fly to Cyprus and wait there for further instructions. The professor believes that the text will explain in some detail exactly what Tibauld de Gaudin did with the objects that were placed in his care. Otherwise we have no idea why the parchment should have been prepared in the first place. Once we have succeeded in cracking the code for the final section, I will contact you on Cyprus using our encrypted e-mail facility-obviously you will take a laptop with you-and tell you precisely what you are to do and where to look."

"How big a team do I have this time?"

"Team? Team?" Vitale almost laughed aloud. "What team? You left Rome with five other men, and within forty-eight hours or thereabouts four of them were dead and one was in the hospital with a broken arm. Members of our order are used to obeying orders immediately and implicitly, but given your record so far in this matter, how many people do you think would be prepared to accompany you on this mission? To save your brain overheating, I'll tell you, because I did ask some of our operatives. None is the answer. Not one. In fact, I was only asking the question as a matter of interest, because I never intended that anybody else would get involved in this phase of the operation.

"You are the only member of our order who has actually seen Jessop and the man who was with her in Dartmouth. If they also manage to decrypt the text, as I believe they almost certainly will, then they will probably end up in Cyprus as well, and when they do you will find them and kill them. You will also locate the objects that we seek and when you have done so, then and only then will you contact me to arrange the recovery operation. You will also find and either recover or destroy the relic, the parchment."

Vitale's gaze bored into Toscanelli. "This is a solo operation. You can complete this by yourself, or simply do not bother ever returning here, because if you fail you will die. Whether by my hand or the hand of somebody else does not matter, but failure is not an option we are prepared to tolerate, and especially not a second failure."

The head of the order stood up, rested his hands on the desk in front of him, and leaned forward. "You will be traveling to Cyprus alone and operating independently. But I will also be sending another team of operatives to the island-in fact, they have already set out-and their entire responsibility will be to monitor your actions and, if they feel it necessary, eliminate you. This is your last and only chance to redeem yourself. Fail me, and you will die.

"And if you believe that you can simply get lost somewhere in the world and never make it to Cyprus, just remember the reach of this order. Wherever you go, we will find you. And when we do I can promise you that you will wish you had never even been born."

53.

France "So, actually, I was right in the first place," Mallory said, pointing at the sheets of paper lying on the desk. "This really is a treasure map, of a sort, anyway. I mean, it's not actually a map, but it does state that clues were left on the ground to help somebody find these two objects. Are you sure that you're reading the Latin correctly?"

Robin nodded.

"I'm quite sure that I'm right," she replied. "The text claims that Tibauld provided markers-I suppose that's the best translation-that could be followed if they can be interpreted. That's the obvious meaning of this phrase 'read the signs to know the path.'"

"Don't forget that there's that one last part of the text we still haven't managed to unscramble," Mallory said. "Maybe that would tell us exactly where to start looking."

Robin shook her head. "Actually I think it's the other way round. The last sentence says 'search for truth at the end of the path to begin anew.' I know that's not specific, but I think it means we follow the trail Tibauld is supposed to have left and when we find what he concealed we'll also find a clue to allow us to read the last section of the text."

Robin looked down at the translation she'd prepared. "I'm still puzzled about the way the writer refers to two separate things: the 'treasure' and the 'wealth.' Or the 'assets,' I suppose, would be an alternative translation. But even when they're mentioned in the same sentence, he seems to be making it clear that they are two different things, not two different words being used to describe the same object. And that is peculiar. I think most people would assume that the treasure of the Templar order was also its wealth. I really don't understand why the writer is adamant that the two things are separate."

"I suppose he could be talking about two different treasures," Mallory suggested. "In fact, that might be it. Tibauld de Gaudin would have been in charge of the treasure of the Knights Templar in Outremer, the Holy Land. That's the lost treasure of Acre, the hoard that vanished from the historical record in the confusion surrounding the order at the end of the thirteenth century. But they wouldn't have had all their assets in one place. Their main headquarters was in France and it would make sense for the Paris preceptory to hold the bulk of their assets, because that would probably be seen as the most secure and well guarded of all their properties. In 1307, of course, it became very clear that being based in the French capital city offered them no security whatsoever when the king of France turned on them."

"That's a good point," Robin conceded, "and you might even be right. But that still doesn't really explain why the writer of this text consistently uses two different words: treasure and wealth. If he was referring to a cache of Templar assets secreted away in the Holy Land, and another second group of assets located in France, then I would have expected him to call one 'Outremer assets' and the other one 'French assets' or something similar. But whatever these two things are, what we have to do now is to decide what we're going to do about them, bearing in mind what's happened so far with these murderous Italians. Do we really want to get involved any further in following a kind of medieval treasure trail that has already nearly cost us our lives? Twice," she added.