Pt. 11
Alex sat in front of her computer screen, her eyes scanning the data she had uncovered on the people mentioned in the manuscript. She hadn't expected to find much. Documents which dealt with the time period in which Laurent Dubois had lived simply weren't found in great abundance in the Legacy's data bases or on the Internet. There were a few references in histories written about the time which referenced older, primary sources but of course none of those sources were available for long-distance viewing. There had, however, been more information on the Net about the Templars than she had expected. Different Web sites had housed lists of references and whole articles about the elusive order which she had downloaded for later review. She frowned at the screen as yet another search on the Dubois family name came back empty.
"Any luck?" Nick asked, sliding into a chair beside his friend.
"Nothing. This family might have had land and titles but as far as history goes, they might as well have not existed. There is nothing in the references I can find in the computer to tell me what might have happened to them." She closed the link to the Legacy's databases with a sigh. "I'm afraid that the only way to know anything more about them is to go to France in person and look up the ancestral estate."
"It doesn't sound like you're looking forward to that!" Nick commented.
"You remember what happened the last time Derek sent me to France. I found a dead body in an alley in Paris. Last I heard, the Paris House still hadn't recovered from its brush with the Dark Side." Alex reached back and took a printout from the laser printer behind her and started to read the information again. "But maybe there is another way. I have a friend, Nancy Arthur, who's doing a semester in the Sorbonne, getting a Ph.D. in Art History. She's an amateur genealogist so maybe if I tell her what I'm looking for she can go the area where the family came from and look up some primary documentation for me."
"Think she'd do it?"
"Nancy loves historical puzzles, especially ones that deal with family histories. This kind of a search will be right up her alley." She quickly logged into the Legacy's email service and sent off a message to her friend.
Nick fired up his computer and began again to try to trace where the journal had been shipped from. So far, the delivery company had been less than helpful. All anyone could remember was that the package had appeared in their offices with the Luna Foundation's address on it. No one could remember where it had come from or when it had first arrived. Nick and Philip had looked over the brown paper the journal had been wrapped in but had found nothing to identify where the shipping office was located. It was beginning to frustrate the ex-SEAL that he couldn't find the answer to this puzzle. With both their tasks taking up most of their concentration neither research noticed the figure standing in the darkest corner of the computer room, watching and listening as they proceeded with their quest.
In another part of the house, Philip was giving the shield another look, hoping to find something he and Nick might have missed before. "You've kept your secrets well." He mused to himself, brushing a speck of dust off the face of the wooden shield.
"Too well, I'm afraid." A voice from behind him agreed.
Philip turned, startled, to look into a pair of brilliant violet eyes. "How did you_?"
"Get in here?" Marianne finished his statement with a slight laugh. She was dressed as she had been when she had first seen Kat, in a short white tunic with half-moon's hanging from her ears. Her long hair was bound up away from her face, and she carried a quiver of arrows and a bow with her. "I guess I forgot to give Winston back his key when we were here last. Now there was a man with a problem! But that's a story for another time. Have you guessed yet what you're looking for?"
"No." Philip replied slowly, inching his way towards the intercom on the wall. "Why don't you just tell me what it is we're supposed to find?"
Marianne smiled sadly. "That would take all the fun out of it, now wouldn't it? Look at me, priest. Look into my eyes and hear only my voice." Her eyes seemed to glow suddenly with an unearthly light. The young priest found he could not tear his gaze away from their overwhelming power. "I was never here, priest. You and I never spoke. Go on with your work. This never happened." She melted back into the shadows, leaving the man in front of her staring at the spot where she had stood.
Philip blinked suddenly and looked around him. "Now, what was it I was going to do?" He thought, looking up at the intercom. "I must be more tired than I thought. Well, just one more go at it and then I'll turn in." He turned back to the shield and began his search again.
Arkady slammed the book shut and tossed it across the room in frustration. He had read this particular account of the Templar's history dozens of times, yet it still infuriated him. The author of the little known tome was his ancestor, one of the first of the family to traffic in the Dark Arts. He had been a wily character, this ancient historian of evil. Somehow he had been managed to worm his way into the confidences of the King of France's Chief Inquisitor and so had been allowed to assist in the questioning of the Templar leaders after the Paris House had been taken. Yet despite his added "assistance" none of the men had broken. The secret they had sent from the Holy Land remained a secret despite all attempts at persuasion. It had only been by the sheerest luck that his ancestor had discovered the journal and had been able to trace its author to the family of Dubois. But by then, the old man had disappeared with the item in his charge, leaving behind his lands and wealth.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Arkady?" His secretary asked, peering furtively into the office.
"Did I call for you?" Arkady asked coldly, turning to stare out of the window.
"No sir, but I thought I heard_"
"Don't think, that's not what I pay you for. Has Thomas returned from his errand?"
"No sir, not yet. Shall I send him to you when he does?" The secretary slowly backup up, closing the door as she went.
"Yes, immediately." Arkady continued to stare at the skyline in front of him until he heard the click of the lock. Then he rose and retrieved the book he had been reading. He turned back to the section which spoke of the journal and smiled grimly. The volume had been one of the prizes of the family's collection of artifacts until recently. No one in his employ could say with any certainty when it had disappeared from the vault in which it had been kept. Nor could anyone tell him who had sent it to the Luna Foundation. "No matter." He thought, "This will turn out in my favor. Derek and his little group of do-gooders will finally solve the secret of the Templar's treasure, and then I will reap the benefit of their work. And I will finally have me revenge on Rayne and the Legacy." He sat basking in the glow of his evil thoughts.
As the mists curled around the Legacy House, the two figures which had been prowling its hidden corridors met in the garden, each carrying information for the other.
"Well, little sister?" Damien asked, moving to stand in the fading light of the setting sun. "What did you learn from the priest?"
"That they are no closer to finding their destination then they were when this game began." Marianne replied, leaning against the sturdy old tree which graced the garden's perimeter. She laid her small horn bow against the tree's trunk and released her silky hair from it's bindings. Damien watched in appreciation as the woman's hair fell like a gleaming cloak over her white tunic.
"You always did have such lovely tresses." He mused, shivering as the light began to dim. "I had better luck with the woman, Alex. She has a friend in Paris to whom she has given a task. The task ia to look up the Dubois family and perhaps find where they might have sought sanctuary when the trials began."
"That will take weeks!" Marianne replied crossly, pulling an shaft from her quiver and peering down its length, her bright eyes unaffected by the fading light. "We haven't that much time. Arkady may already be digging for the treasure. We should just go and fetch it back to Avalon."
"We can't little one. It doesn't belong to our world. All we can do is make sure that it's put in the care of those who will not abuse its power until the time of the coming. And Arkady isn't any closer to the sanctuary then these people are. If he were, we would know. But you're right about one thing. It will take weeks, maybe even months to trace the family of the Templar who carried the secret. We can take no direct action in this matter, but perhaps a little indirect action_?"
"You are so devious, my brother. I wonder where you acquired that trait?"
"One picks up many talents over the millenniums, dearest." Damien replied with a laugh, his form slowly melting back into the shadows. Marianne gave the darkened house one final glance before she buried her arrow, head first, into the damp grass and strode off into the night, leaving her bow to be retrieved another day.
Alex walked into Derek's office the next evening, a frown on her face. "I've done as much of a search on the Dubois family is possible at long distance." She began, worriedly scanning her mentor's tired face. "Are you sure you're up to this?"
"I'm fine." Derek replied, putting aside the translated version of the journal he had been reading. "What did you find out?"
"Laurent Dubois had an older brother who died while Laurent was in the Holy Land. His father Maurice survived both his sons by some years. The family fled France when the Templars were arrested because they were specifically targeted by the Crown. By order of the King they were to arrested because of charges that the Dubois were shielding the Order."
"Where did they go?" Nick asked, slipping quietly in to the office behind his partner.
"No one knows but there are rumors that many of the Templars took the order's treasure to Scotland. There have been stones found there that bear marks similar to those found in Templar castles. Maybe that's where they took whatever it was that they were protecting."
"The armour and the shield were the keys to that treasure?" Nick asked.
"Part of the key." Philip answered, entering the office with a ledger in his hands. "There is still one more piece to the puzzle missing. The message encrypted into the shield and armour seems to be directions to a place, a vault of some sort, but there is no clue as to what was in the vault. There have always been legends about what the Templars found in the Temple of Solomon when they took it for their headquarters in the Holy Land. Some of those legends formed the basis for the charges of witchcraft that were leveled against them later by the King of France." Philip rubbed his tired eyes, then retrieved his notes. "Pity we don't know what this important item was."
"But we do know." Derek replied calmly.
Nick stared at his Precept in surprise. "What do you mean_?" he began, than stopped and looked at the pages of translated notes in front of him.
"The Templars were housed in what was the Temple of Solomon." Derek replied, his eyes fixed Nick. "Somewhere in it's depths they found a relic, an item so important to their faith they were willing to die to a man to protect its secret. I suspect that some of them went even further. They had been exposed to knowledge of arcane arts in the Middle East that they had never experience before. Manuscripts and wisdom that had been protected and added on to for ages was suddenly there for those among them who had the desire to study. When the battles began to go against them, when the Templar leadership began to see that their cause was lost, I think they used that arcane knowledge to call ancient spirits from the mists of time to aid them in guarding the one thing that they would have gladly given all their wealth and power to protect."
"You're thinking of the Legend of the Grail." Philip commented.
"I thought that the link between the Templars and the Grail was only a literary one, from the story "Parzival" by von Eschenbach." Alex replied. She looked up and smiled at the startled look on her Precept's face. "I decided to do some basic research on the Templars while I was waiting for the computer to finish it's search on the Dubois family. It mentioned that author and the story in one of my reference books."
"Very good Alex." Derek replied. "But many such legends have a basis in fact."
"The Grail?" Nick asked, doubt creeping into his voice. "This I'd have to see to believe."
"Is it so much easier to believe in the growing of a demon from a bit of horn than to believe that the cup of Christ exists?" Derek asked quietly.
"You know that was different, Derek." Nick replied stubbornly.
"Why was it different?" Derek asked, leaning across the desk to stare at his young friend.
"Because the damn thing was standing right in front of me, that's why. I could see it. Hell, I could even smell it. It was real."
"The cup may be as well." Philip commented, moving to stand beside the desk. "Can you image what forces, what power it might grant whoever possess it?"
"There is also the possibility that the treasure this family was guarding was more earthly in nature." Alex interjected, looking down at her notes. "According to the web site I scanned while looking up information on the Templars, the Treasurer of the Order disappeared with many of their ships and the order's coffers before the King was able to seize the main house in Paris. No one has ever been able to account for the fortune that once belonged to the Templars, although there have been the occasional stories of priests in small French towns digging up vast sums in their church's basements. Arkady wouldn't turn his nose up at profiting from the recovery of such lost treasure."
"So what's our next move?" Nick asked impatiently. "Do we go to France or Scotland or what?"
A muffled knock on the door interrupted the debate before it could begin. Dominick, the house's ever watchful butler, entered and handed Alex a message then move quietly out, whisking a discarded drinking glass out of the room with him.
"What's that?" Nick asked, quizzically.
"Remember I told you I was going to ask my friend at the Sorbonne to check on the history of the Dubois family for me? Most of what I needed to search that would pertain to them wouldn't be in material available to the computer. I didn't expect to get a reply so soon." She read through the short note. "This is strange. My friend says that papers dealing with the Dubois family showed up on her doorstep hours after she read my message. She's not sure if the documents are genuine or not, but that much of what I told her was in the computer was verified by these pages. According to what was in those documents, the family packed up what they could carry and moved to Spain, where the order was not persecuted and had changed its name to the Knights of Christ. There is mention of a little town named "Las Rosales", where an old church is supposed to have certain symbols painted on graves in its cemetery that have been linked to the Templars." Alex quickly ran a search on the computer, locating information on the city in question. "It appears to be a rather remote village in northern Spain, near the border with France. Nothing but mountains, caves and sheep from that I can tell from this description. Why would they have taken the treasure there?"
"Many Templar churches in Spain were built beside deep caverns. Perhaps that's why Dubois chose this place, out of all the area the Templars controlled, to take prize." Derek's eyes quickly scanned the information Alex had called up, paying particular attention to the geographical description included in the article.
"This smells like a trap." Nick stated, his body suddenly tense.
"How would anyone known that I had asked my friend for help?" Alex asked practically, handing the faxed pages to Nick.
"Maybe our mysterious friends have been watching us again. I have a feeling they have their own agenda that we're just being used to complete."
"Or maybe they are just as anxious for Arkady not to find this treasure as we are." Philip suggested, playing Devil's advocate.
"So do we go and check out this church or do we continue to do more research?" Nick snapped impatiently, annoyed with the young priest's peaceful viewpoint.
"We go to Las Rosales." Derek answered decisively. "Nick, get the helicopter ready. We'll take a Legacy jet to Spain and hire a car to take us to the village. Alex, call Rachel and tell her where we'll be going. Kat's been ill so I doubt she'll be able to go with us." The group quickly scattered to their respective rooms, packing swiftly for their unexpected trip. Nick logged into the Legacy network and quickly called up a jet to take their group across the ocean. It would take a few hours to get it from its hanger in Toronto to San Francisco and get it ready for its long trip. But at least they wouldn't have to be at the beck and call of the commercial airlines. He called the private airport the Legacy used to board its various aircraft and made the necessary preparations for the arriving jet.
"Yes, Mr. Boyle. We'll have the jet ready for you as soon as possible." Jeff Armstrong replied, making notes on the pad in front of him. The call to refuel the incoming flight had caught him just as he was preparing to leave for the evening. He hung up the phone and reviewed the set of instructions he would be leaving the next shift. The plane probably wouldn't get here for another few hours and by then he expected to be sound asleep in his comfortable bed.
"There a problem, boss?" Jimmy Taylor asked, wiping his filthy hands on an equally filthy cloth.
"No, just a plane coming in that needs a quick turn around. Whole nine yards, checkout and refueling, that sort of thing. Looks like some people from up at the Luna Foundation are making a trip to Spain."
"Lucky them." Jimmy tossed the greasy cloth in the nearest trash bin then walked out side towards the parking lot. Just around the corner, and out of sight of the office, was a pay phone. He quickly dialed the number that his old friend McComb had given him, hoping the old man hadn't been exaggerating his employers generosity.
Arkady's assassin Thomas laid the receiver back on its cradle, a cold smile on his face. His employer would be very interested to hear that someone from the Luna Foundation was making a trip abroad. He hummed to himself as he made the call, absently making note of the name of the man who had provided the information. He wondered if anyone would notice another accidental death by drowning.