CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

 

 

 

Marissa smiled at her mentor. Although she knew that tunnels existed underneath the city of Valletta, she had never thought to mention them during her history lesson. Not because they weren’t pertinent, but because they weren’t the type of thing to be described in textbooks or taught in classrooms. They were merely interesting footnotes.

Suddenly Ulster’s comment about shining ‘a light on a shadow or two that she might have overlooked’ made perfect sense to her in two completely different ways. On one hand, he was talking about the dark underworld of the tunnels themselves, which was obviously going to play a big role in Hompesch’s supposed escape attempt, but he was also talking about her tendency to be so focused on the black and white that she missed the gray stuff in between.

That’s where the real history could be found.

Hiding in the shadows of the spotlight.

“Petr’s right,” she said as she squeezed his arm. “If the grand master had a secret treasure, he wouldn’t have kept it at the Order’s treasury, which was located in Piazza Tesoreria—the square outside of the national library. He would have kept it elsewhere underground.”

“Have you been in the tunnels?” Payne asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been in some, but certainly not all. Recently the government opened up a few tunnels to the public as tourist attractions. Some of the chambers are as tall as modern buildings and reinforced with elaborate brickwork. The problem is there are so many tunnels, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. The Order certainly built a number of them when they constructed Valletta, but in the four centuries since, countless more have been added by locals who dug into the ground for a variety of reasons.”

She smiled as a story came to mind. “The Knights weren’t the only group who tried to conceal things in the limestone of the Sciberras Peninsula. During World War Two, the British—who still controlled Malta at that time—decided to build a submarine base underneath Valletta. They brought in the equipment and started to build a secret lair that would be large enough to store one of their subs. Halfway through the construction, they realized that the expense of the lair was going to cost twice as much as the sub they were trying to hide, so they stopped the project and used the leftover money to build an additional submarine.”

“Was it yellow?” Jones asked with a grin.

She laughed at the Beatles reference. “I can’t answer that, but the half-built lair still exists to this day. The Brits don’t like talking about it, but I know where it is.”

Payne smiled. He had been around the military long enough to know how often they wasted money on ridiculous projects. He also knew that they rarely liked to talk about them. “What about the other tunnels? Would you know how to access those?”

“Some,” she said as she used her hands to illustrate the problem. “Unfortunately, they crisscross the peninsula like a game of Dig Dug. Some start high and go deep. Others stay straight for blocks. And dozens were built as fallout shelters during World War Two. Most of those zigzag back and forth to diffuse shockwaves from enemy bombs.”

Payne shook his head. “Unless I’m overlooking something, we’re not interested in those. We’re looking for the ancient tunnels that were built by the Knights themselves.”

She nodded in understanding. “One of the major tunnel systems has an entry point in the basement of the national library. I’m assuming the tunnel originally led to the Conservatoria—the place where the Order’s treasury stored its gold and silver bullion until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But it was moved to make way for the library. Of course, all of this would have been done under Grand Master Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, the immediate predecessor to Hompesch. Call me crazy, but if I’m Hompesch, there’s no way I would have used a tunnel that was built by Rohan’s men. Not at a time when French knights couldn’t be trusted.”

Ulster grinned with pride, glad that Marissa was connecting the dots on her own. Although he was in Malta to help the team find the Order’s treasure, he viewed every situation as a teaching moment. If he had wanted to, he could have jumped in and dominated the conversation, but he preferred it when those around him came to realizations on their own.

In his mind, how else were they going to learn?

But at some point, Ulster knew that he needed to reenter the discussion in order to get them to where they needed to go. “I agree with Marissa. I think we’re probably looking for a tunnel system that was known to a select few. Possibly one that has been forgotten by time.”

Jones grimaced. “And how are we supposed to find that?”

Marissa answered. “If you’d like, I could make some calls to local historians to see if they have any suggestions. Maybe one of them could—”

“Are you nuts?” Jones said with a laugh. “You want to endanger the lives of others by getting them mixed up in this shit?”

“You’re right,” she said as she shook her head in embarrassment. “I can’t believe I forgot about the Russians and all the guns. You guys must be rubbing off on me.”

Jarkko grinned. “Jarkko would like to rub—”

“If you finish that sentence,” Payne threatened, “I swear to Poseidon that I will drag you from the couch by your hairy feet and throw you off your yacht.”

Jarkko frowned. “But Jarkko captain.”

“Then act like one.”

Jarkko glanced at Marissa. “Jarkko sorry.”

She nodded her forgiveness to Jarkko and her thanks to Payne.

Both of them smiled in return.

“Anyway,” Ulster said, “I think I have an answer to David’s question.”

“What question is that?” Jones asked.

“The one about finding the correct tunnel.”

“Oh yeah,” Jones said. “That was a great question. What’s the answer?”

Ulster grinned. He had been holding back an important piece of information since his arrival. “Late last night, while I was awaiting the call from Jonathon that never came, I started to think about Grand Master Hompesch and his treasure. Obviously the tunnel system underneath the city immediately sprang to mind, and it dawned on me that I had seen some ancient blueprints of Valletta at one point in my career. Unable to sleep after devouring the delightful fruit torte that I told you about—you know, the one with the mango, papaya, and Chinese gooseberries. Did I happen to mention the hand-whipped cream?”

“Focus,” Payne ordered.

“Yes, of course, how foolish of me! Anyway, with no sleep in my future, I decided to putter downstairs to my collections to see if I could dig up—pun intended—anything on the construction of the city. As Marissa will surely attest, I have a fair amount of information on Malta in the Archives. An island system such as theirs, which sits at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, has been touched by more civilizations over time than just about any place on earth. It truly is a remarkable place that has seen empires come and go. And yet, as I flipped through my records, I was unable to locate the document that I had certainly seen before.”

Marissa chimed in. “Unless you acquired it during the last few years—which is certainly a possibility given your facility—I can say with near certainty that the document was not in your Maltese collection. And the reason I can say that with such confidence is because I was the intern who helped you reorganize that entire section.”

She turned to the group. “You see, the problem with Maltese history is that it has been mixed with so many other cultures over the centuries—whether that be the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Normans, and so on—that it is next to impossible to sort through the overlaps. For instance, if you find an ancient scroll from the Roman Empire on Gozo, do you put it in your Roman collection or your Maltese collection? In the Archives’ original system, before the dawn of computers, it was up to Petr to connect all of the threads in that genius brain of his and remember that he had placed that scroll in his Roman room.”

“Unfortunately,” Ulster admitted, “my genius brain has seen better days, so sometimes I’m not as fast or reliable to make those connections, which is why we are scanning everything into the computer system that Jonathon was kind enough to donate…. Wait. Where was I?”

Payne smiled. “You were flipping through Maltese records.”

“Right!” Ulster blurted. “As I was flipping through my Maltese collection, I came across a document that described the Vatican’s contribution to the rebuild of Malta after the Great Siege, and just like that, it came to me. I was looking in the wrong place. I shouldn’t be looking in my Maltese collection at all. I should be in my Vatican vault!”

Jones’s eyes lit up. “The pope’s dude!”

Payne glanced at him. “Excuse me?”

Jones stood up in his excitement. “I know where Petr is going with this!”

“Oh!” Marissa said, catching on. But she was so swept up in the moment, she completely blanked on his name. “Michelangelo’s assistant!”

“That’s him! The Italian guy!”

Jarkko jumped up, too. “Jarkko remembers name. It was Francesco Lasagna!”

“Boom!” Jones said as he started to dance. “It was Frankie Lasagna!”

Ulster burst out laughing. “Although I could go for a nice slice of lasagna covered in Bolognese right about now—which I do believe I saw in a takeout container in the yacht’s refrigerator— the man you’re referring to was actually named Francesco Laparelli.”

Jarkko grinned. “That’s what Jarkko said: Francesco Lasagna.”

Payne cursed to himself. He hated being the last one to figure out things. “Now I remember. He was the Vatican’s military architect, the one sent to Malta to design Valletta.”

“Exactly!” Ulster said with a smile. “So I hustled over to my Vatican vault and scrolled through my files on Pope Pius the Fifth, and there it was: the original blueprints of the city of Valletta by Francesco Laparelli.”

“That’s fantastic!” Marissa said before she gave it some thought. “I’d love to see the original plans, I truly would. But how will they help us? The tunnel system that we’re looking for would have been dug after Laparelli’s death in 1570 AD. In case you forgot, the Valletta project was actually completed by his assistant, a Maltese architect named Girolamo Cassar. He went on to build many things in Malta including the auberges.”

“Trust me, my dear, I’m well aware of Mister Cassar and quite happy that he was the builder who finished the project.”

“Why’s that?” she wondered.

“Two reasons,” Ulster said with confidence. “Unlike Francesco Laparelli, who answered to the Vatican and the pope himself, Girolamo Cassar was a Maltese citizen, who learned his craft under Evangelista Menga, the resident engineer of the Order of Saint John. Therefore, Cassar’s loyalty would have been to the Knights—particularly after 1569 AD when he was admitted to the Order. Like the Knights themselves, Cassar made his name during the Great Siege when he risked his life on multiple occasions to repair the fortifications that were damaged by the constant barrage of Ottoman cannons. By the time that he rose to replace Menga as the resident engineer of the Order, Cassar was highly respected and trusted by his fellow Knights.”

She nodded in understanding. “Meaning that Cassar probably designed many of the tunnels under the city of Valletta, including the secret ones.”

“Exactly,” he said with a nod.

“Okay. All of that makes perfect sense. What’s the second reason?”

Ulster grinned. “Guess who has Cassar’s portfolio in his suitcase.”