The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure

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Prologue

THE YORKSHIRE HOME
of Professor Nathan Fiennes was fitted with the latest in household security systems. Ritchie Logan even knew what kind, because the company installing it had seen fit to publicize the fact by fixing a bright red box to the gable end of the house, marked with their company logo. Such displays were intended to deter casual thieves—and maybe they did deter amateurs and opportunists—but Logan was a professional. As far as he was concerned, knowing in advance that the house was wired only served to make his job easier.

But then, the promise of easy pickings had been one of the attractions of this job. Besides being offered a handsome cash retainer merely to breach the house’s security and open the safe, Logan had been assured that he might have his pick of the jewelry and other valuables kept there. The man who’d engaged him for this job, sitting in the passenger seat of the rented Volvo, was after something else entirely—some kind of archaeological artifact.

Logan cruised slowly past the cul-de-sac where the house lay, and noted with satisfaction that nothing had changed. Half an hour before, from a vantage point on the main road, he and his employer had watched the owners and their dinner guests leave, all of them dressed for the theatre as anticipated. If no one returned in the time it took to make one more long orbit around the city walls, Logan felt reasonably confident that the house would remain empty for at least another two to three hours. As he swung into Monkgate, heading toward the city, he stole a sidelong glance at the man sitting next to him.

He still had not figured out Monsieur Henri Gerard. The Frenchman looked nothing like the sort of man likely to hire a professional cat burglar. Had Logan seen him on the street, he would have pegged Gerard as someone hoping one day to make a name for himself in law or politics—conservatively well dressed and respectable-looking, probably approaching forty, with sleek, dark hair brushed straight back from a high forehead and a dapper moustache trimmed pencil-thin in a style reminiscent of a young Maurice Chevalier. This Gallic impression was heightened by the continental cut of his dark suit and the fact that he spoke English with a Parisian inflection.

He was an odd duck, Logan decided, as he eased the big car along Mayor’s Walk and then swung left into Gillygate, skirting the city’s medieval walls. From the very beginning, Gerard had made it clear that his sole purpose in coming to England was to acquire an antique bronze seal currently in the possession of the owner of the house targeted for tonight’s venture. According to Gerard, the seal was of value only to a historian like himself. If that were true, it would confirm Logan’s suspicion that the Frenchman was one of those academic fanatics who would do literally anything in order to steal a march on a rival scholar—in this case, Dr. Nathan Fiennes, a distinguished philosopher presently lecturing at the University of York.

None of this had anything to do with Logan, of course. And even if Gerard was lying, and the seal was worth more than he was letting on, Logan was prepared to let him have it, provided that the rest of the takings were as lucrative as the Frenchman had made out. Finding a suitable buyer for a stolen museum piece was always a time-consuming enterprise, requiring far more work than Logan was willing to invest when there were much quicker profits to be made on more conventional commodities.

The only real catch in the arrangement was that Gerard had insisted on taking part in the burglary. Logan would have much preferred to do the job alone, but the Frenchman had argued” with some heat that he had to be present to authenticate the seal, on the chance that Fiennes might have had a copy made. Logan could think of no reason why Fiennes should have wanted to do anything of the sort; but then again, academics of Gerard’s caliber were seemingly a breed apart. And since, in any case, Gerard was already paying for the privilege of sharing the risks, Logan had resigned himself to the necessity of having the Frenchman along for company.

He just hoped that Gerard wouldn’t do anything stupid that might risk their getting caught.

They crawled past the vast, floodlit pile that was York Minster, with the delicate tracery of its spires and towers bright against the starry backdrop of a mid-September night. On through the night-hushed streets they wove, emerging through the Monk Bar Gate and picking up speed as they headed back along Monkgate again. Half a mile northeast of the historic city center, as Logan made the turn into the darker, quieter streets of an established residential suburb, Gerard sat forward, apparently unaware how his eagerness showed.

“Just relax,” Logan told his employer. “From here on out, we’ve got to look like we belong to this neighborhood. We don’t want to do anything to draw attention to ourselves.”

The Fiennes house was one of three detached stone villas that stood at the bottom of a crescent-shaped cul-de-sac. Alert but relaxed, Logan drove on around the corner into the adjoining street and parked the Volvo at the curb in an island of shadow between two streetlamps. The two men alighted unhurriedly from the car and set off up the sidewalk at a leisurely pace. A casual observer, noting their conservatively cut trench coats and expensive leather briefcases, would have taken them for two businessmen out to pay a social call on a friend.

They used a public footpath to cut back in the direction of their goal across the narrow, grassy common that ran between the two opposing rows of back gardens. The Fienneses’ property was enclosed by a high wall, but the lock on the garden gate yielded readily to Logan’s expert manipulations with a lock pick. He let himself inside and swiftly beckoned Gerard to follow, pulling the gate to but not latched. Crouching low in the shrubbery flanking the wall, the two paused to don black balaclava helmets and tight-fitting surgical gloves before making their way stealthily up the flags toned walk to the conservatory at the rear of the house.

Gerard watched in tight-lipped anticipation as Logan took a specialized assortment of implements from his briefcase and set himself to disabling the alarm system, his work illuminated by a tiny pencil-flash held between his teeth. In less than a minute they were inside the conservatory. A glass sliding door leading into the house yielded in a matter of seconds, after which Logan led his employer stealthily into the narrow confines of the downstairs hall, where a small lamp glowed on a side table. Gerard made a darting movement toward the foot of the staircase, only to feel Logan’s restraining hand catch at his sleeve.

“Not so fast,” the thief whispered. “The stuff in the safe isn’t going anywhere, is it? Then slow down, and let’s do this thing according to plan.”

Nodding somewhat sullenly, Gerard dropped back to let Logan precede him up the stairs, toward where an overhead light dimly illuminated the upstairs landing. The upper regions of the house were silent except for the hollow ticking of a grandfather clock standing against the wall just outside the study. An ornate mezuzah of finely wrought silver graced the right-hand lintel of the study door, and Logan grinned thinly to himself as he pried it off and slipped it into his pocket. The door swung back on silent hinges as Logan led the way across the threshold into a large square room redolent of pipe tobacco and book bindings.

Light spilled from the landing through the open doorway. The room’s only window lay directly opposite, with a large desk set before it. The curtains were standing open, affording a darkling view of the garden below.

“Get the curtains,” Logan ordered, moving to the left, where the entire wall was taken up by an immense built-in bookcase. When Gerard had complied, Logan shone the beam of his electric torch along the fourth shelf from the top until its light picked up a mousy-looking set of commentaries on the Talmud.

“I’ve found the benchmark texts you said to look for,” he reported in a clipped undertone, turning to set his briefcase on a corner of the desk. “Come and hold the light while I lift them out.”

As keen as his associate to get on with the job, Gerard made haste to comply, setting his own case on the desk’s chair. Logan removed the books from their place and set them aside on the desk. The cavity left behind on the shelf was backed not with walnut paneling, but with the metal door to a small wall safe fitted with an old-fashioned combination lock.

“Well, well, this thing’s practically an antique in itself,” the thief exclaimed in tones of scornful satisfaction. “Let’s arrange for a little more light on the subject, and we’ll be in and out before you know it.”

There was a goose-necked reading lamp on the desk. Logan angled it round so that the shaded bulb was pointing toward the safe before switching it on. Then, taking a stethoscope out of his case, he pushed back his balaclava helmet and donned the earpieces with workmanlike efficiency.

“Go out in the hall and keep watch,” he directed over his shoulder. “If you hear anything suspicious, sing out.”

Much as it galled him to take orders from his English hireling, Gerard knew it was a sensible precaution. Suppressing a pang of irritation, he retreated to the hall while Logan gave his attention to dialing up the opening combination. The seconds ticked away with what seemed like maddening slowness. Gerard was about to inquire sharply how much longer the operation was likely to take when there was a muffled exclamation of triumph from inside the office.

“Got it!”

Gerard rushed back into the room to find Logan opening velvet-covered jewelers’ boxes into his briefcase. A diamond tiara and a necklace dripping with diamonds and emeralds already gleamed in the glancing light of the goose-necked lamp, and a pair of diamond clips and a string of pearls quickly joined them, their boxes tossed onto a growing pile on the floor as Logan riffled through a sheaf of negotiable bonds with obvious satisfaction. Lying next to the briefcase was a battered wooden box the size of a small, thick book, its lid inlaid with Hebrew characters.

“Is that what you’re looking for?” Logan said dryly at Gerard’s gasp, indicating the box with a jerk of his chin.

Heart pounding, Gerard pounced on the box and flipped it open. Inside, pillowed on faded crimson velvet, was an oval of age-blackened bronze nearly the size of a man’s palm, pivot-mounted between the arms of a heavy arc of the same dark metal. The device deeply etched into the face of the disc was that of a six-pointed star made of interlocking triangles, surrounded by a serpentine scroll of Qabalistic script.

Almost reverently Gerard allowed himself to touch the seal with one trembling forefinger. It still staggered him to reflect that the seal—
the Seal
—had been in the Fiennes family for so many generations without any of its keepers even suspecting the incalculable potency vested in the object they had in their possession.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed, licking his lips like a wolf that scents meat. “But I must be sure.”

All but quivering with eagerness, he took a jeweler’s loupe from the breast pocket of his suit coat and adjusted it in his eye, at the same time lifting the seal from its box with his free hand and moving over into the light. A brief examination of the face of the seal confirmed that the design had been etched with a tracer rather than a graver—circumstantial evidence, at least, that the piece had been crafted prior to 800 B.C. But the real proof Gerard was looking for was a recent telltale scratch on the inside of the mounting.

To the sound of more loot going into Logan’s case, Gerard rotated the seal in the glare of the lamp. His breath caught in his throat as his searching gaze found what he was seeking—the scratch he himself had made a few months back, in the course of taking a sample shaving of the metal. Subsequent photomicrographic analysis of the shaving had confirmed the seal’s genuine antiquity. And now it was in his hands at last!

“We can go now,” he murmured, smiling almost dreamily as he laid the seal reverently back in its box and closed the lid. “This is, indeed, the piece.”

In that same instant, Logan suddenly stiffened in a listening attitude, his manner all at once apprehensive and alert.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Gerard demanded in a startled undertone.

“Car in the driveway,” Logan muttered.

“That’s imposs—”

Logan gestured vehemently for silence. An instant later, they heard a pair of car doors open and slam, and then the patter of footsteps coming up the front Walk, high heels and leather soles, making for the front door.

“Must’ve been a bad show,” Logan said, already snapping his briefcase shut and heading for the door, pulling his balaclava back into place. “We’ve got maybe forty seconds to get the hell out of here!”

His hand was already on the study door. Gerard looked stunned, but likewise went into action. Gripping the wooden box tightly in his right hand, he made a clumsy left-handed grab for his own carrying case, but his gloved fingers miscued and it slipped from his grasp, striking the carpet with a muffled thud and bouncing out of reach under the chair.

Logan fetched up with a virulent whispered curse as Gerard scrambled to retrieve the case. From downstairs came the rattle of a key being turned in the front door lock. Showing teeth like a pit bull terrier, Logan gently closed the study door as the one below in the vestibule creaked open. A woman’s voice, slightly muffled, floated up to them from the ground floor in tones of indulgent reproof.