It took them almost half an hour, but when they'd finished they were standing together at the end of the cave and surrounded by a kind of perimeter of boulders. At their feet, barely visible under a thick layer of dust and dirt, was a flat surface delineated by a number of straight parallel lines, the unmistakable shape of a wooden platform of some sort. But before they attempted to move it, Robin and Mallory shared the last of the lukewarm water in the first bottle. Despite their eagerness to shift the wood and find out what lay beneath, both of them knew the importance of avoiding dehydration.

"I don't know if these are individual planks or some kind of platform, the lengths of wood nailed together," Mallory said, "but we'll soon find out."

As well as the water and the flashlight in his rucksack, he had assembled a selection of tools that he'd thought might be useful in their quest, despite not knowing exactly how it would be likely to end. Two of the pieces of equipment he had selected were a small crowbar and a collapsible trenching tool, which combined both a shovel and a pick.

He took out the crowbar, used the point to locate the ends of the lengths of wood, slid it underneath what seemed to be the center of the platform, and pushed down hard. There was a faint creaking and cracking noise, but nothing else happened.

Mallory changed position, sliding the point of the tool under the end of the adjacent plank of wood. This time he placed his foot on the other end of the crowbar and pressed down firmly. With another creaking sound, this one much louder, the wood lifted a few inches. He abandoned the crowbar, slid his fingers underneath the end of the wood, and pulled upward. The wood was stiff and difficult to move, lifting only when he applied all his strength to the task, and it came free very slowly and with great reluctance. Giving a final heave, he wrenched the wood upward, and with a loud cracking sound it lifted clear of the ground and he was able to shift it to one side.

It wasn't a platform, he had realized immediately as he lifted the wood, but a number of thick wooden planks lying parallel to each other and covering a hole excavated in the floor. In fact, it was a double layer, because underneath the length of wood he had just moved were half a dozen other planks laid at right angles to the top layer, obviously intended to provide additional support to cope with the substantial weight of the rocks.

With the first plank moved, shifting the others was comparatively easy, and within a few minutes, with Robin's help, Mallory had lifted all the planks from the top layer and placed them to one side. He again used the crowbar to lift the end of one of the planks situated underneath and moved that length of the wood out of the way as well. That provided an opening that allowed him to look down into the cavity below.

"What can you see?" Robin asked.

"A whole lot of nothing at the moment. Pass me the flashlight."

Mallory shone the beam vertically downward into the hole, and they both stood there, staring down.

A visible tremor of excitement ran through Robin. Directly below them, through the gap in the wooden planking that Mallory had created, they could see the unmistakable shapes of two ironbound chests. They weren't very big, perhaps two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide, and about the same in height, though it was difficult to estimate that with any degree of accuracy from where they were standing. The iron on the top of each chest was chased into an intricate pattern, and large metal handles were fitted at their ends for ease of lifting and carrying.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke; then Mallory handed Robin the flashlight.

"I'll need to shift the rest of these planks before we can get them out," he said, matter-of-factly.

"Yes," Robin replied, equally calmly. "You will."

"I suppose the biggest problem," Mallory said, levering up another heavy length of wood and moving it to one side, "will be deciding what we should do with the stuff once we've got it out. I mean, I have no idea how Turkish law treats buried treasure. Do they have anything similar to the British law of treasure trove, which guarantees the finders either the object they've discovered or its cash value?"

Robin snorted in derision.

"I have no idea," she replied, "but from what I've heard about the Turks I think we'd be more likely to find ourselves thrown into jail and charged with looting important national artifacts while a bunch of local officials split the proceeds between themselves. Did you ever see that film Midnight Express? Well, I don't suppose that conditions in most Turkish slammers have improved much over the years. In my opinion, absolutely the last thing we do about this is tell anyone in authority. Our best bet will be to get it out of here and bury it somewhere ourselves, preferably on the Greek side because I think it's easier to get to from the outside world, and then take a number of holidays in Cyprus over the next couple of years, putting the odd gold bar or bunch of coins in our luggage before we leave the island."

"You're obviously assuming that these chests are full of treasure. They might be empty."

Robin shook her head.

"Not a chance," she snapped. "Nobody would go to this much trouble to hide a couple of empty boxes. Okay, I don't know what's inside them, but I'm prepared to lay money that they won't be empty."

"We'll soon find out," Mallory replied. "One thing does strike me, though," he added doubtfully, "because it really doesn't make sense. Those are just two quite small chests. Unless they're both stuffed full of really valuable stuff-gold bars and coins, that kind of thing-they're really too small to hold all the assets of the Knights Templar in Outremer. I was expecting chests about twice that size and perhaps half a dozen of them."

He shifted the last piece of wood planking and then lowered himself into the cavity. Robin passed him the flashlight and he looked around before touching either of the chests, and immediately made a surprising discovery.

"That's odd," he said, shining the beam toward the back of the cavity.

"What?"

"I'd more or less supposed that this was just a hole excavated in the floor of the cave, but it isn't. It looks as if there's some kind of underground passageway here, leading back into the mountainside."

"Interesting, but not helpful," Robin said. "Now stop messing around and lift those chests up here."

"Hang on a minute."

Mallory took out his mobile phone and snapped a number of pictures of both the chests, first showing where they were positioned in the cavity and then several more showing each close up. Then he bent down and seized the handles on the first chest and tried to lift it. He relaxed and glanced up at Robin.

"You win your bet," he said. "I don't know what's in them, but they're definitely not empty."

He bent down again, grasped the handles once more, and with a sudden expulsion of breath lifted the chest to waist height. "Christ, this is heavy."

Grunting with the effort, he lifted it higher still and maneuvered it sideways onto the floor of the cave, to where Robin was standing waiting. Then he bent down and repeated the operation on the second chest, which was at least as heavy as the first. Mallory pulled himself out of the cavity, and together they crouched down to examine what they'd found.

The wood seemed to be in quite good condition, bearing in mind its likely age, which was presumably due to the extremely dry conditions in the cavity under the floor of the cave. The ironwork was covered in a thin patina of rust, but seemed to have retained its strength, again almost certainly because of the lack of moisture in the air.

"They don't look to me as if they're seven hundred years old," Mallory said. "Those handles I was using are still really strong."

"They might not look it, but the evidence we have suggests that they really are as ancient as that."

"But the problem is they're too small. They simply can't hold the treasure of the order. I think these are something else."

"What?"

"I don't know. I just think we need to be really careful with them."

Mallory looked closely at the first chest. The wood on both the lid and the sides was covered in an intricate pattern of ironwork, complex and convoluted, which would probably also have helped give the chest even more structural strength. The sides were straight, while the lid was semicircular in cross section, supported by a hinge at the back that ran the full length of the chest, and secured at the front by a lock and a type of over-center catch.

"I don't suppose there's the slightest chance that it's unlocked," Robin murmured.

"I doubt it," Mallory replied, sticking the point of the crowbar under the catch and levering it open.

Then he tried the lid of the chest, but it remained firmly closed.

"I'll just try the other one," he said, "but I think it'll be the same result."

Again he used the crowbar, but his prediction was correct: although he had no trouble freeing the external catch, there was no movement whatsoever when he tried to lift the lid.

"I don't suppose that the key's down there?" Robin asked hopefully. "Tucked away in a corner somewhere?"

"Fat chance."

But he lowered himself back down into the cavity anyway and shone the flashlight carefully all around, searching for any kind of metallic glint or a box or anything that might contain the key. Unsurprisingly, when he stuck his head up again, he had found nothing.

"Nada," he said, climbing out of the hole. "No sign of it. But it wouldn't have been the brightest of ideas to lock the chests and then hide them with the key in the same place, and we're pretty certain Tibauld de Gaudin wasn't stupid."

Robin stared down at the two ironbound chests. "I don't want to damage these, because they're probably quite valuable in their own right, so how are we going to get them open?"

At that moment a shadow moved across the entrance to the cave and an unwelcome voice called out: "I think we can help you with that."

62.

Cyprus Robin spun round immediately, but Mallory was looking in that direction already.

Two men stood silhouetted in the entrance to the cave, their faces and bodies in shadow and unrecognizable. But Mallory didn't need to see the face of the man who'd spoken to know who he was. His voice was an extremely unpleasant reminder of the last contact they'd had with him, back in Devon. Even more unpleasant was the realization that both men were carrying pistols while he and Robin were completely unarmed.

The pistol and ammunition that Mallory had acquired were tucked under the seat of the Renault Megane rental car, and that was sitting in the long-term car park at Paris Orly. He'd known there was no possibility of getting the weapon onto the flight and, in any case, he had hoped he wouldn't need it anymore.

"What did you do with my car?" Mallory asked.

"I dumped it, but that should be the least of your worries right now," Toscanelli responded.

"How did you find us?" Robin sounded almost more curious than afraid. "You can't have followed us all the way from Devon."

Toscanelli shook his head as he and the other man each moved slightly sideways, away from the entrance, still aiming their pistols directly at Robin and Mallory.

"No. The trail went cold as soon as you managed to shake us off in Exeter. I had no idea where you'd gone, but fortunately my masters possess the ability to track almost anybody, almost anywhere, these days. Once you used your passport to take that flight to Beirut, we knew exactly where you were going, and we were able to anticipate your actions. We were too late to follow you on the ground at Sidon, so we didn't know what you might have found there, but as soon as you booked a flight to Larnaca, whatever you had discovered became irrelevant.

"We had expected that the trail would end here on the island, simply because this was where Tibauld de Gaudin died. One of my men picked you up at the airport, and my people have been following you ever since. Right now I have two men guarding the end of the track you drove along to get here, and another watching the cave entrance from the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the ravine. It was all really quite simple."

"Obviously," Robin said bitterly.

"And your men arrived on the island by boat, I suppose, which is why you have weapons?" Mallory asked.

"No, by air. Our diplomatic passports make sure we aren't ever stopped or searched." Toscanelli gestured with his pistol. "You make me nervous, standing there," he said to Mallory. "Get back down into that hole."

"One thing I don't understand," Robin interrupted as Mallory climbed back into the cavity in the floor. "When David and I left my apartment in Dartmouth, your three men-I'm assuming that you were in charge of them-were alive. A bit battered, certainly, but they were all still breathing. Somebody then visited the place and killed all three men, shooting them through the head, as if they were executions. Did you order that to be done, or did you do it yourself? And why?"

Toscanelli inclined his head.

"That was my work," he replied, "because my orders were absolutely specific. All three of those men knew exactly why we were in England, and my masters had told me it was imperative that the purpose of our mission should remain secret. There wasn't enough time to get them out of the apartment, and I knew that the police would arrive at any moment. I couldn't take the risk that they'd talk, so killing them was the only option I had left."

"You shot three of your own men in cold blood just to preserve a secret? What kind of monster are you?"

In the gloom of the cave, Toscanelli smiled, a thin and humorless expression.

"Not a monster," he replied. "Just a man acting in the best interests of his masters."

"And who are your masters, exactly?" Mallory asked.

Toscanelli inclined his head slightly, almost a bow. "Like my colleagues, I have the honor to serve as a member of the Ordo Praedicatorum."

"I should have guessed," Mallory replied. "The Dominicans, Domini Canes, the Hounds of the Lord. The Black Friars and the pope's personal torturers. The parchment even warned us against you. Your order carried out the interrogations of the members of the Knights Templar, interrogations that remarkably few people survived, and most of those who did perished in the execution fires afterward. I'm frankly surprised that you're still around."

"The eradication of heresy is just as important now as it was in the Middle Ages. The Templars may have suffered pain during their earthly trials, but we know we saved their immortal souls when we put them to the cleansing flame."

"And you believe that crap, do you?"

Toscanelli shook his head.

"My beliefs are no concern of yours," he said. "We are part of a small group, a special section of the Dominican order, if you like, and our function today is unchanged. We act to protect the pontiff and the Holy Mother Church by whatever means are deemed necessary."

"So why are you searching for this buried treasure?" Robin asked. "It's got nothing to do with the Catholic Church."

Toscanelli shook his head. "That's where you're wrong. Members of our order were charged by the pope with recovering the assets of the Knights Templar so that their wealth could be redistributed to other medieval orders that were untainted by heresy. This is simply unfinished business that my masters wish to bring to a close."

"I don't understand," Robin said.

"I think I do," Mallory said, filling the pause that followed her remark. "Philip the Fair of France purged the Templar order because he was bankrupt. The entire purpose of his actions was to seize the Templar treasury, and he coerced the pope into supporting him. Once Philip had taken what he could, because most of the treasure disappeared before the raids in October 1307, the pope ordered the remaining assets held by the Poor Knights of Christ to be handed over to the Knights Hospitaller. The Dominican inquisitors were instructed to find the hidden Templar assets, and that was why the most brutal tortures were applied so enthusiastically. But the Templars never told you, did they? The treasure was never found."

"That is exactly the point. We were given our orders over seven hundred years ago, but the passage of time is irrelevant in our eyes. We have been searching for both the Templar assets and the lost treasure for almost a millennium, and we will continue to do so until both are recovered."

Mallory glanced at Robin.

"What do you mean about the assets and the treasure?" he asked. "Surely they're one and the same thing?"

Toscanelli smiled suddenly.

"You really don't know?" he asked, his tone disbelieving. "The assets were what you'd expect-bullion, coin, and the rest-but the treasure is a single object the Templars revered beyond all price."

"What object?" Robin demanded.

"You'll never know," the Italian replied, "not now."

Robin pointed at the two wooden chests standing on the floor of the cave by her feet.

"And now you think you've found it?" she asked.

Toscanelli shook his head.

"Probably not," he replied. "We believe that those chests contain one part of the Templar treasure of Outremer, but that is simply a tiny fraction of the total wealth that the order was known to possess. Our present search for the hidden assets of the Templars has only just begun, but the real treasure probably lies elsewhere, a long way from this place."

"How did you find out that we were involved?" Robin asked.

"We embrace and employ the latest technology. Our technical staff monitors Web sites, blogs, and the search strings used on the major search engines. The moment you searched the Web for information about the Ipse Dixit relic, we knew that you must have found something significant. In fact, we already knew of the existence of the parchment you found, but it had vanished from sight sometime in the fifteenth century, and no copies of the text were known to exist. Once we had established where you were from your IP-Internet Protocol-address, I was sent to England with a team of men to recover it."

"But you didn't do a very good job of it, did you?" Robin asked. "You had the relic, and the two of us, in your possession for only a few minutes before we got away, and the body count on your side was quite impressive. You shot three of your own men, David killed another in self-defense, and the fifth member of your little group ended up slightly broken as well."

Toscanelli shrugged. "Shit happens, as you English sometimes say. But no matter. We have these chests now, thanks to your efforts, and we have no further use for either of you. You can both go back into the hole that the treasure chests came out of. That'll give the archeologists of the future something interesting to investigate."

The sentence of violent and painful death, so casually pronounced, sent a chill through Robin.

"So what now?" Mallory asked.