Read The Templar Archive for Free Online Page A

should be sitting in this seat, not me.”
    “I don’t dispute that for a moment,” Wilson said, exasperation evident in every syllable. “But trying to identify him from that image is virtually impossible. We’ve run a check through Interpol, but he’s not on any of their databases, and the Italian authorities simply aren’t talking to us. Either they genuinely have no idea who he is and don’t want to admit it, or their bureaucracy is even more chaotic than usual.”
    “There could be another reason,” Mallory suggested.
    “What?”
    “I think they could know exactly who he is and who he works for, but because his employer is a powerful organization, the authorities may not wish to reveal thisinformation, to you or to Interpol or anyone else. Just think about the timeline for a moment. Robin ran those searches on the Internet when she recovered the parchment, and within a matter of a few hours six—or however many it really was—Italian thugs turned up and started roaming the streets of Dartmouth carrying pistols and suppressors and looking for her. All three of the men who were killed at Dartmouth were holding diplomatic passports, according to you, so that in itself lifts this crime out of the usual league.
    “And all that implies—or at least it does to me—that some group in Italy is running sophisticated Internet analysis software, and is then able to dispatch a group of professional killers, probably in a private aircraft, to another country to recover the relic. This wasn’t some off-the-shelf operation run by a handful of amateurs. This was a professional operation, run by a professional group with very deep pockets. And that means your chances of finding them are pretty much nil.”
    “Then we’re screwed,” Wilson said bitterly.
    “In a nutshell,” Mallory agreed, “but I’m pleased to say that it’s your problem, not mine.” He stood up. “Now, unless you can think of some other reason to waste my time, I’m walking out of here.”

3
    Via di Sant’Alessio, Aventine Hill, Rome, Italy
    Toscanelli nodded.
    “I’ll be very happy to take care of them,” he said, relishing the thought of finally eliminating the irritating English couple. “I’ll get a flight organized, unless you’ve already booked something for me?”
    “Not yet,” Vitale said. “As I said, I do want them dead, but not necessarily immediately, not necessarily killed by you, and also not necessarily in Britain. We’ve had our experts looking at the chests ever since you brought them back from Cyprus, and none of them have so far found any clue or indication about where we should be looking next. It is just possible that if our people fail to solve this riddle, Jessop and Mallory might do the job for us. They’ve proved themselves to be quite resourceful so far, so it’s possible that they’ll see some marking or pattern in the design of the metalwork or elsewhere that haseluded us. And if they do, we have to be able to follow them and take whatever they find.”
    “But we have the chests,” Toscanelli objected, “and they don’t.”
    Vitale shook his head. “I almost wish they were working for me, because I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have to explain every single thing to them, the way I do with you. Don’t you remember something that happened in that cave when your men opened the chests? You even mentioned it in your report, though clearly you didn’t realize its significance.”
    Toscanelli looked blank, and then his face cleared.
    “The flash of light? Do you mean that?” he ventured.
    “Of course I mean the flash of light. What did you think it was? Some kind of incendiary device the Templars left there over half a millennium ago? Something like that? Eh? Work it out.”
    Toscanelli looked confused.
    “It was the flash from a camera, obviously,” Vitale snapped, losing patience. “Nothing else makes sense. One of them, maybe both of them, had either a camera or a camera phone, and I’m