CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

 

 

 

Sunday, June 17

Küsendorf, Switzerland

 

 

Marissa and Ulster had tried to distract themselves with work upon their arrival at the Ulster Archives on Saturday, but they had been far too worried about their friends’ safety to accomplish much of anything in the way of research.

Having agreed to keep the discovery of the tunnel system in Malta from the rest of Ulster’s staff, Marissa had spent most of the day uploading their pictures and videos to Ulster’s office computer, while checking her phone every five minutes for an update from Payne.

Still, that was much more than Ulster had accomplished.

In times of crisis, he often found himself in the kitchen. First he would glance through his shelves of cookbooks until he had spotted a tasty treat that he was capable of creating, and then he would make a mess while trying to bake something that resembled the picture next to the recipe. In the end, his personal chef would always help him salvage the final product before Ulster carried the treats from room to room like a proud father showing off his newborn.

Except in this case, Ulster urged people to eat his creation.

Thankfully, the call they had been waiting for had come just before midnight, and Payne had told them that everything had gone as planned. Although he didn’t provide many specifics, he had assured them that he, Jones, and Jarkko were unharmed and Volkov would be out of their lives forever. That had set off a lively celebration between Marissa and Ulster, which had resulted in the opening of a bottle of vintage champagne and the devouring of Ulster’s remaining cream-cheese brownies.

Despite their late-night merriment, they had agreed to meet for an early breakfast, followed by a long day of research in the archives. Both of them followed through with their promise, and they were well fed and ready to work before nine.

Unable to talk about the tunnels during their meal, they waited until they were in the privacy of the conference room in the lower level of the Archives to discuss their plan of attack.

“Where are you going to start?” Marissa asked as she logged into Ulster’s private network with one of the laptop computers that he kept in the room. It would allow her to access all of the pictures and videos that she had uploaded to his office system.

Ulster answered her question with one of his own. “It’s not where I’m going to start—it’s when. Ever since we came across that wall at the bottom of the ramp in Cassar’s tunnel system, I have been thinking about the date on the cornerstone: June 1798. As you are well aware, that date is quite significant in the history of Malta because it marks the arrival of Napoleon in Valletta. But what else does that date represent?”

Marissa glanced at him across the wooden table. “The date that Hompesch left Malta.”

“Exactly,” he said with a grin. “And if our theory is correct—that Hompesch loaded up the Maltese treasure before Napoleon arrived—then it stands to reason that he would check on its status after he departed Valletta. So my goal is to track Hompesch’s movement after he left the island and before he landed in Trieste, Italy.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

Ulster sighed. “I have no bloody idea.”

Marissa laughed. “Well, I’m here if you need me.”

He leaned back in his chair. “And what about you, my dear? What thread of history will you be tugging on today in order to unravel this mystery that we face?”

She motioned toward the door. “Although I treasure—pardon the pun—the vast amount of resources that are at my disposal in the archives, my initial focus will be on the images that we captured in the tunnel itself. Two things dawned on me late last night while I was struggling to fall asleep. One, I should never eat multiple cream-cheese brownies after midnight, no matter how tasty they are. And two, unless I’m mistaken, we overlooked one major thing while stumbling around in the dark of the tunnel system. Care to guess what it was?”

Ulster rubbed his hands together with anticipation. “A mystery inside our mystery. How absolutely delicious! I will most definitely hazard a guess!”

Marissa smiled at her mentor. “Somehow I knew that you would.”

“Truth be told,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “there is so much to unpack in your brief-yet-brilliant monologue, I’m not even sure where to begin. Actually, I take that back. I know exactly where to start. Never—and I do mean never—apologize to me for a good pun. You know how much I enjoy wordplay!”

She laughed. “Point taken.”

“Secondly, thank you for such kind words about my brownies. I slaved all day making those magical morsels, so I am glad you appreciated them on the way down. Like you, I started to regret my lack of restraint at some point during the night when those chocolate demons congealed together in my colon like the stone and mortar that sealed the tunnel near Marsamxett Harbour, and yet I get the sense that I will make that same mistake again in the near future. Perhaps not with a viscous substance like cream cheese, but certainly with another culinary delight that I whip up in a time of distress.”

“Some people drink. You like to bake. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Actually,” he said as he patted his stomach, “I like to do both, and I think that will eventually lead to my downfall. Or, at the very least, a larger belt.”

She smiled at him. “Don’t ask me why, but I get the sense that you’re stalling.”

Confusion filled his face. “Stalling?”

“You know, my mystery inside a mystery?”

“Good heavens! It seems I’ve done it again! I don’t know what is wrong with me lately, but as soon as I start talking about desserts, my mind tends to wonder. Speaking of which, did you know that the word ‘dessert’ comes from the French word desservir, meaning ‘to clear the table’. I don’t know about you, but when dessert is on the way, I certainly push things aside in order to make room for it!”

“Petr,” she said with a laugh. “You’re doing it—”

Ulster cut her off. “I swear, my dear, that one was intentional. I figured my use of a French term would actually serve as a backdoor to your original puzzle, since Hompesch was hiding the Maltese treasure from the French. Anyway, while replaying your words in my mind—which I was able to do while droning on about desserts—I realized that you pointed toward the door at the start of your monologue. Whether your signal was intentional or not, I do believe that is the one major thing we overlooked while examining the tunnel system. It was lacking a door.”

Marissa grinned in amazement. She had no idea how Ulster had picked up on the scent so quickly or how he had managed to use a mid-sixteenth century French word to get there, but somehow, in a matter of seconds, he had figured out the issue that had kept her awake.

“Exactly,” she said as she carried the laptop to his side of the table. “We were so focused on the limestone tunnels and the two stone walls that we failed to look for a way in. If we assume the dates on the two cornerstones are correct, the southern wall was built in January 1798 in order to close the tunnel system off from the other auberges. That would allow Hompesch and the German knights to work in private. And the northern wall was built near the harbor in June 1798 to seal off the tunnel system for good. But if that is true, how did the knights access the tunnel in the five months in between? I didn’t see any sealed passageways in the ceiling of the tunnel, and I find it hard to believe that the knights walked up that long spiraling ramp each and every time they wanted to do their mystery work in the tunnel. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Ulster rubbed his chin in thought. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” she demanded.

He continued to think. “What if the wall was actually a wall?”

She stared at her mentor and sighed. “Petr, I think it’s time to set some ground rules here. Desserts are one thing—at least I enjoy those—but if you drift off on a philosophical tangent and start to talk about Kierkegaard’s theories on existence, I swear to Jarkko, I’m going to work in another room. It is far too early in the morning to deal with theoretical rhetoric.”

Ulster laughed. “No, my dear, you completely misunderstood my question! I meant it quite literally! What if the wall wasn’t a barricade of some kind? What if it was the side of a room?”

She blinked a few times. “A room?”

“Yes!” he blurted much louder than he had intended. “When we came across the southern wall, we naturally assumed it had been built to seal off the tunnel from the rest of the system in order to give the German knights privacy. But what if that theory is partially incorrect? What if our wall—the one built in January of 1798—was the second wall that Hompesch had built in the tunnel system? What if the wall he had built to give them privacy was actually farther south into the system? That would mean the space in between the wall we inspected and the one even farther into the system would be…”

“A room!” she exclaimed.

Ulster grinned, glad that she had eventually caught on. Normally he liked for his students to figure things out on their own, but in major moments like these, it was tough for him to stifle his personal enthusiasm. “Think about it, my dear. If Hompesch secretly moved the Maltese treasure through the tunnel system after his predecessor’s death like we assume he did, he would have needed some place to store it.”

She nodded with excitement. “And why waste the time and energy to carve a vault out of the limestone underneath their auberge when all they needed to do was build a wall to cut themselves off from the rest of the tunnels? That would have given them all the privacy and protection they needed—especially if Hompesch used his men to guard the harbor door.”

“Exactly!” he said as he sorted through the possibilities in his mind. “Obviously the original barrier would be a solid wall to protect the treasure, but it stands to reason the wall that we inspected would most likely have a way in. After all, someone would be coming to move the treasure eventually. Only we didn’t know to look for a point of entry.”

“Wait!” she said as she pointed at the computer. “You don’t think…”

“Actually, my dear, I do think.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” she said on the verge of freaking out. “You actually think there’s a chance that the treasure is still sitting in our tunnel on the other side of that wall.”

Ulster leaned back and smiled. “Who cares what I think? Based on the excitement in your voice, I’d much rather hear what you think.”

“Okay!” she said as she leapt from her chair and started to pace the room as she tried to connect the dots in her head. If this had been a week earlier, she would have been unwilling to put her name on a theory that involved so much speculation, but ever since they had discovered a secret tunnel system underneath the streets that she had walked on many times before, she had started to view history in a whole new way.

Suddenly it was a living, breathing thing that could morph in the blink of an eye.

And she was at the forefront of change.

“Pictures!” she blurted as she rushed back to the table to search through the files she had uploaded the day before. “If our wall is the northern edge of a room—one that would eventually be opened by Hompesch or his men when it was time to ship the treasure from Malta—then you’re right: there’s no way that the wall is solid. Maybe some of it was solid for structural integrity, but it stands to reason that the very center of the wall would be made of a different substance. Perhaps a different kind of brick, or even a different type of mortar.”

Ulster pointed at the screen. “I know I took several photos of the wall with my phone. Did you get them onto my computer?”

She nodded as she continued to scroll. “That’s what I’m looking for now. I know they’re in here somewhere, but there were so many files that it will—”

“There!” Ulster shouted. “That one! Go back to that one!”

She stopped and scrolled back to reveal a photo of the upper wall. She had taken it herself after she had finished filming the entire vault with the video camera.

“Can you enlarge it?” he demanded.

She clicked a few buttons and started to zoom in. “Which part do you want to—”

“To the left and down. A little more. There! Do you see it?”

The center section of the upper wall filled the entire screen. The image was zoomed in far enough that she could see individual stones and the substance in between. Having just mentioned mortar a moment earlier, her gaze was naturally drawn to it. She leaned in close, looking for anything that looked suspicious in the ancient cement.

She was getting ready to ask her mentor for a clue when she spotted an enigma on the left side of the screen. On one of the stones, there appeared to be a chiseled mark that she had seen thousands of times in Malta. She quickly tapped the arrow key until the image shifted over ever so slightly, and then she zoomed in a little more until the symbol filled the screen.

It was a cross.

A Maltese cross.

Carved right into the stone.

Associated with the Order of Saint John since the sixteenth century, the eight-pointed cross was formed by four V-shapes, each joining the others at its vertex while the two tips spread outward in a symmetrical fashion. The eight points of the four arms represented the eight original langues of the Knights Hospitallers while also symbolizing the eight obligations of the knights: to live in truth; to have faith; to repent of one’s sins; to be humble; to love justice; to be merciful; to be sincere and wholehearted; and to endure persecution.

Marissa had memorized the list a long time ago, but upon seeing the symbol in the stone, the last obligation of the knights suddenly took on a whole different meaning.

After surrendering to the French, Grand Master Hompesch had been despised by most of the knights and had been ridiculed far and wide for his inactivity during the invasion, but he had never defended himself or said a word about his secret plans or the location of the Maltese treasure because he didn’t think that was in the best interest of the Order.

Instead, he had endured the persecution as he patiently waited for the opportunity to move his treasure to the new home of the organization that he loved so dear.

An opportunity that never came.