The Templar Legacy (45 page)

“Good luck,” Nelle said.

Then the American leaped over the side. He heard the rope go taut and a quick pop as the neck snapped. He brought the pad close to his eyes and in the faint moonlight read what Lars Nelle had written.

GOODBYESTEPHANIE

Nelle’s wife was named Stephanie. He shook his head. No clue. Just a final salutation from husband to wife.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

He’d decided that leaving the note with the body would ensure a determination of suicide. So he’d grabbed hold of the rope, pulled the corpse back up, and stuffed the paper into Nelle’s shirt pocket.

But had the words really been a clue?

“On the night Nelle died, he told me that he solved the cryptogram and offered me this.” He grabbed a pencil from the table and wroteGOODBYE STEPHANIE on a pad.

“How’s that a solution?” Claridon asked.

“I don’t know. I never even thought it was, until this moment. If what you’re saying is true, that the journal contains intentional errors, then we were meant to find it. I searched for that journal while Lars Nelle was alive, then after with the son. But Mark Nelle kept it locked away. Then when the son turned up here, at the abbey, I learned he was carrying the journal with him in the avalanche. The master took possession of it and kept it under lock until just a few weeks ago.” He thought back to Cassiopeia Vitt’s apparent misstep in Avignon. Now he knew it was no mistake. “You’re right. The journal’s worthless. We were meant to have it.” He pointed to the pad. “But maybe these two words have meaning.”

“Or maybe they’re more misdirection?”

Which was possible.

Claridon studied them with clear interest. “What precisely did Lars say when he gave you this?”

He told him exactly, ending with, “A clue to help you along. If you’re smart, you might even solve the puzzle.”

“I recall something Lars mentioned to me once.” Claridon searched the tabletop until he found some folded papers. “These are the notes I made in Avignon from Stüblein’s book concerning Marie d’Hautpoul’s gravestone. Look here.” Claridon pointed to a series of Roman numerals.MDCOLXXXI . “This was carved into the stone and is supposedly her date of death. 1681. And that’s discounting the O, since there is no such Roman numeral. But Marie died in 1781, not 1681. And her age is in error, too. She was sixty-eight, not sixty-seven, as noted, when she died.” Claridon gripped the pencil and wrote 1681, 67, andGOODBYE STEPHANIE on the pad. “Notice anything?”

He stared at the writing. Nothing stood out, but he was never good with puzzles.

“You have to think like a man in the eighteenth century. Bigou was the person who created the gravestone. The solution would be simple in one respect, but difficult in another because of endless possibilities. Break up the date 1681 into two numbers—16 and 81. One plus six equals seven. Eight plus one equals nine. Seven, nine. Then look at sixty-seven. You can’t invert the seven, but the six becomes a nine when turned over. So, seven, nine again. Count the letters in what Lars wrote to you. Seven forGOODBYE . Nine forSTEPHANIE. I think he did leave you a clue.”

“Open the journal to the cryptogram and try.”

Claridon leafed through the pages and found the drawing.

“There are several possibilities. Seven, nine. Nine, seven. Sixteen. One, six. Six, one. I’ll start with the most obvious. Seven, nine.”

He watched as Claridon counted across the rows of letters and symbols, stopping at the seventh, then the ninth, jotting down the character displayed. When he finished, there appearedITEGOARCANADEI.

“It’s Latin,” he said, seeing the words. “I tego arcana dei.” He translated. “I conceal the secrets of God.”

Damn.

“That journal is useless,” he yelled. “Nelle planted his own puzzle.”

But another thought surged through his brain. The marshal’s report. It, too, had contained a cryptogram, one obtained from the abbé Gélis. One supposedly solved by the abbé. One the marshal had noted was identical to the one Saunière found.

He must have it.

“There’s another drawing in one of the books Mark Nelle has.”

Claridon’s eyes were aflame. “I assume you’re going to get it.”

“When the sun rises.”

GIVORS, FRANCE 1:30 AM

MALONE STOOD IN THE SALON, THE SPACIOUS ROOM LIT BY LAMPS, the others crowded around the table. He’d awakened them all a few minutes ago.

“I know the answer,” he told them.

“For the cryptogram?” Stephanie asked.

He nodded. “Mark told me about Saunière’s personality. Bold and brash. And I agree with what you said the other day, Stephanie. The church in Rennes is not a signpost to a treasure. Saunière would never have telegraphed that information, but he just couldn’t resist a little pointing. Trouble is, you need a lot of pieces to assemble this puzzle. Luckily, we have most of them.”

He reached for the book Pierres Gravées du Languedoc, still open to Marie d’Hautpoul’s gravestones. “Bigou is the fellow who left the real clues. He was fleeing France, never to return, so he hid cryptograms in both churches and left two carved stones over an empty grave. There’s the wrong date of death, 1681, the wrong age, sixty-seven, and look at these Roman numerals at the bottom—LIXLIXL—fifty, nine, fifty, nine, fifty. If you add those together you get one hundred sixty-eight. He also made reference to the painting Reading the Rules of the Caridad in the parish register. Remember, in Bigou’s time the date was not obscured. So he would have seen 1681, not 1687. There’s a pattern here.”

He pointed to the drawing of the gravestone.

“Look at the spider carved into the bottom. Seven dots were intentionally placed between the legs, with two spaces left blank. Why not just include a dot between them all? Then look what Saunière did in the garden outside the church. He takes the Visigoth pillar, turns it upside down, and carves Mission 1891 and Penitence, Penitence into its face. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I just dreamed the connection among all these.”

Everyone smiled, but no one interrupted him.

“Last year, Henrik, when Cai and all the others were killed in Mexico City—I dream about it from time to time. Tough to get those images out of your brain. There were a lot of dead and wounded that day—”

“Seven dead. Nine wounded,” Stephanie muttered.

The same thought seemed to rush unbidden into each of their minds and he saw understanding, especially on Mark’s face.

“Cotton, you might just be right.” Mark sat down at the table. “1681. Add the first two and last two digits. Seven, nine. The carving on the pillar. Saunière turned it upside down to send a message. He erected it in 1891, but invert that date and you have 1681. The pillar is upside down to lead us in the right direction. Seven, nine again.”

“Then count the letters,” Malone said. “Seven in Mission. Nine in Penitence. That’s more than a coincidence. And the one hundred sixty-eight from the Roman numerals on the gravestone. That total is there for a reason. Add the one to the six and eight and you get seven and nine. The pattern’s everywhere.” He reached for a color image of station 10 from inside the Church of Mary Magdalene. “Look here. Where the Roman soldier is throwing the dice for Christ’s cloak. On the dice face. A three, four, and five. When Mark and I were in the church I wondered why these particular numbers were chosen. Mark, you said Saunière personally oversaw every detail that went into that church. So he selected these numbers for a reason. I think the sequence is what’s important. The three is first, then the four, then five. Three plus four is seven, four plus five is nine.”

“So seven, nine solves the cryptogram?” Cassiopeia said.

“One way to find out.” Mark motioned and Geoffrey handed him the rucksack. Mark carefully opened the marshal’s report and found the drawing.

He then started applying the seven, nine sequence, moving through the thirteen lines of letters and symbols. As he did, he wrote each selected character down.

TEMPLIERTRESORENFOUIAULAGUSTOUS

“It’s French,” Cassiopeia said. “Bigou’s language.”

Mark nodded. “I see them.”

He added spaces so the message made sense.

TEMPLIER TRESOR EN FOUI AU LAGUSTOUS

“Templar treasure can be found at lagustous,” Malone translated.

“What’s lagustous?” Henrik asked.

“I have no idea,” Mark said. “And I don’t remember any mention of such a place in the Templar archives.”

“I’ve lived in this region all my life,” Cassiopeia said, “and know of no such locale.”

Mark appeared frustrated. “The Chronicles specifically say that the carts carrying the Devise came south to the Pyrénées.”

“Why would the abbé have made things so easy?” Geoffrey calmly asked.

“He’s right,” Malone said. “Bigou could have built in a safeguard so that just solving the sequence would not be enough.”

Stephanie looked puzzled. “I wouldn’t say this has been easy.”

“Only because the pieces are so scattered, some lost forever,” Malone said. “But in Bigou’s time, everything existed, and he erected the tombstone for all to see.”

“But Bigou hedged his bet,” Mark said. “The marshal’s report specifically notes that Gélis found a cryptogram identical to Saunière’s in his church. During the eighteenth century Bigou served that church, as well as Rennes, so he hid a marker in each.”

“Hoping that a person of curiosity would find one of them,” Henrik said. “Which is precisely what happened.”

“Gélis actually solved the puzzle,” Mark said. “We know that. He told the marshal. He also said he was suspicious of Saunière. Then a few days later he was murdered.”

“By Saunière?” Stephanie asked.

Mark shrugged. “No one knows. I always thought the marshal might be suspect. He disappeared from the abbey within weeks of Gélis’s murder and specifically didn’t note in his report the solution to the cryptogram.”

Malone pointed to the pad. “Now we have it. But we need to find out what lagustous is.”

“It’s an anagram,” Cassiopeia said.

Mark nodded. “Just like on the gravestone where Bigou used Et in arcadia ego as an anagram for I tego arcana dei. He could have done the same thing here.”

Cassiopeia was studying the pad and her gaze beamed with recognition.

“You know, don’t you?” Malone asked.

“I think I do.”

They all waited.

“In the tenth century a wealthy baron named Hildemar came to know a man named Agulous. Hildemar’s relatives resented Agulous’s influence over him, and, in direct opposition to his family, Hildemar turned over all his lands to Agulous, who converted his castle into an abbey that Hildemar himself joined. While kneeling in prayer inside the abbey’s chapel, Agulous and Hildemar were slain by Saracens. Both were eventually made Catholic saints. There’s a town there still. About ninety miles from here. St. Agulous.” She reached for the pen and converted lagustous into St. Agulous.

“There were Templar sites there,” Mark said. “A large commandery, but it’s gone.”

“That castle, which became an abbey, is still there,” Cassiopeia made clear.

“We need to go,” Henrik said.

“That could be a problem.” And Malone cut a glance to Cassiopeia. They’d not told the others about the men outside, so he did now.

“De Roquefort will act,” Mark said. “Our hostess, here, allowed him to have Dad’s journal. Once he learns the thing is worthless, his attitude will change.”

“We need to leave here unnoticed,” Malone said.

“There’s a lot of us,” Henrik said. “Such an exit would be a challenge.”

Cassiopeia smiled. “I like challenges.”

7:30 AM

DEROQUEFORT THREADED HIS WAY THROUGH THE FOREST OFtall pines, the ground beneath him silvered with white heather. A honey scent hung in the morning air. The rocky clefts of red limestone surrounding him were shrouded by a wispy fog. An eagle soared in and out of the haze, on the prowl for breakfast. He’d eaten his with the brothers, the meal taken in the traditional silence as Scripture was read to them.

He had to give Claridon credit. He’d deciphered the cryptogram with the seven, nine combination and unlocked the secret. Unfortunately, the message was useless. Claridon told him that Lars Nelle had found a cryptogram within an unpublished manuscript by Noël Corbu, the man who’d promulgated much of the fiction about Rennes in the mid-twentieth century. But had Nelle changed the puzzle or had Saunière? Was the frustrating solution what drove Lars Nelle to suicide? All that effort and when he finally deciphered what Saunière left, he was told nothing. Was that what Nelle meant when he’d declared There’s absolutely nothing to find ?

Hard to know.

But he was damn well going to find out.

A horn blared in the distance from the direction of the castle. The workday was probably about to begin. Ahead, he spied one of his sentries. He’d communicated with the man by cell phone on the trip north from the abbey and learned that all was quiet. Through the trees he caught sight of the château, a couple of hundred meters away, bathed in a filtered morning glow.

He approached the brother who reported that an hour ago a group of eleven men and women had arrived on foot from the construction site. All period-dressed. They’d been inside ever since. The second sentinel had reported that the rear of the building remained quiet. No one had entered or left. Plenty of inside movement came two hours ago—lights on in rooms, servant activity. Cassiopeia Vitt herself emerged at one point and walked to the stables, then back.

“There also was activity around oneAM, ” the brother said to him. “Bedroom lights came on, then a downstairs room was lit. About an hour later the lights went off. Seems they all woke up for a while, then went back to sleep.”

Perhaps their night had been as revealing as his own. “But no one left the house?”

The man shook his head.

He reached for the radio in his pocket and communicated with the team leader for the ten knights he’d brought with him. They’d parked their vehicles half a mile away and were hiking through the forest toward the château. He’d ordered that they quietly ring the building, then await his instruction. He was now informed that all ten were in place. Counting the two already here and himself, thirteen armed men—more than enough to accomplish the task.