A few feet inside the tunnel the light melted away. Dane flipped on his dive light, setting the passageway aglow. Like all the others they had explored, the passage was wide enough for a man to swim through comfortably, the way irregular, and the rough edges worn smooth over time. This time, though, something immediately caught his eye.
A groove, two inches thick, had been carved up each side of the entrance and across the bottom. There was no way it was natural— the lines too sharp and straight, the groove almost perfectly square. His first thought was someone had slid planks into this groove to form a cofferdam.
“Matt, do you see this?” he asked through the transmitter. The long-range communication devices were state-of-the-art, and came courtesy of Charlie’s generosity.
“Yeah. Looks like someone tried to block this channel. Pirates?” He said the last in a comic, throaty growl.
“Or treasure hunters. Charlie isn’t the first to try to dam up the channels under the island.”
“You, my friend, are no fun.”
Grinning behind his mask, Dane led the way into the passageway, which ran back only about forty feet before it made a sharp bend to the left and came to a dead end.
“That was easy,” Matt said. “We’ll check this one off the list and be back on deck, drinking a cold one, before Bones and Willis drag their soggy carcasses back.”
“Hold on.” Dane played his light slowly up and down the wall that blocked their way. He saw immediately that it wasn’t like the sides of the passage. Instead of a smooth, regular surface, a pile of rubble blocked their way. A thorough inspection revealed an opening at the top, and darkness beyond.
“Think we can make it through?” Matt moved alongside him, reached out, and gave the topmost rock a shove. It gave an inch. “I think we can move it.”
Dane nodded and together they worked the stone, which was the size of a small microwave oven, free, and let it fall. Matt vanished from sight as a cloud of silt roiled in the water.
“There’s no current carrying it away,” Dane observed. “I don’t think this tunnel goes much farther.”
“Then there’s no point in wasting time waiting for things to clear up. Let’s keep working.”
Three large stones later, they had cleared a space large enough for one man to swim through. After securing one end of a strong cord to a length of branch that jutted up from the pile of rubble, Dane went in first. He held on to the rope in case he lost his way and moved slowly due to the limited visibility, not wanting to injure himself or damage his equipment on an unseen snag. As he cleared the pile of debris, he felt a tug on the cord and knew Matt was behind him.
As he had predicted, the passage did not extend much farther, perhaps another forty feet, before it came to another dead end. This time, it wasn’t a pile of stones blocking their way.
“Holy crap!” Matt’s voice was dull with disbelief.
The twin beams of their dive lights shone against a wall of stone, and a carving of a Templar cross.
Chapter 6
Morgan plucked the phone from its receiver on the first blink. Her sisters never answered immediately, thinking it a subtle way of showing they had more important things to do than to take a telephone call. She brooked no such nonsense. She was a firm believer in immediate, positive action in all things, even the smallest.
“Yes?”
“Locke is here, Ma’am. He wishes to speak with you if you will consent.”
“Of course.” She hung up the phone, closed the file folder she had been reviewing, and stared expectantly at the door, which opened a moment later. Jacob knew her philosophy on wasting time, and made a point not to do so. He appeared in the doorway, his shaved, black head gleaming in the artificial light, and his broad shoulders filling the door frame. He gave her a respectful nod and stood aside for Locke.
The two could not have been more different. Where Jacob, formerly of the Elite Royal Marines, was built like a bull, the tawny-haired Locke was lean like a puma and moved with the deadly grace of one of the big cats. Formerly of MI-6, his whiskey-colored eyes shone with intelligence. Every member of her personal staff was an asset, mentally and physically, and he was her top man.
“Ma’am,” he said without preamble, as was always her expectation, “we have a potential lead on the Kidd chests.”
She felt her entire body tense. Locke often surprised her with information, but nothing of this magnitude.
“How strong a lead?”
“We can’t be certain yet. Someone in Canada posted a query on a message board. He claims to have been tipped off by a researcher who gave him the location of one of the chests. An agent in the area is following up on it as we speak.”
“A message board? I assume the post is gone?”
“We actually took down the entire site. We’ll restore it, the post in question deleted, of course, after we’ve investigate the claim. Could be a crackpot.” He sounded doubtful.
“For three centuries we have suppressed every mention we could find of these chests. It is not something one would accidentally stumble upon.” She turned in her chair and gazed out the window. Truro lacked the size and bustle of London, and she liked it that way, but the modern world intruded here too. There was too little appreciation for the old ways, and old powers. “I want you there. Depart as soon as possible.”
“As you wish. Should I wait until after your training session?”
“Jacob can train with me today.” Morgan turned around just in time to see the ghost of a smile play across Locke’s face. Jacob hated their training sessions. He was averse to striking a woman, which was a fatal weakness Morgan exploited to its full extend. Locke had no such compunction, but this task was more important.
“There is something else.” His hesitation was so brief that none but Morgan would have noticed. “A potential complication.”
“What?” Her word cracked like a whip as suspicion sent hot prickles down her spine.
“Two others viewed the post before we eliminated it. I traced the ip addresses. One is an American from a small town in the south. A bit of a nutter who blogs about Bigfoot and aliens and the like.”
“Erase him and his internet presence.” Morgan would not accept even the tiniest risk of the legend of the chest spreading across the internet.
“Already done,” Locke said. “It was a house fire. Truly, those so-called mobile homes are veritable death traps.”
“Very good. And the second person to see the post?”
“That one is problematic. It took a great deal of doing, but I traced the source to Germany. BÜren, to be precise.”
Morgan froze. “Wewelsburg?”
“I cannot say for certain, but…” Locke shrugged.
“Herrschaft,” Morgan whispered. “We must assume they have the same information we do.” Her eyes met Locke’s. “We will get there first.”
“It will be as you say. Anything else before I go?”
“No, that will be all.”
Morgan returned to her desk as Locke saw himself out. She performed a series of calming mental exercises to slow her racing heart, opening her eyes when she was, once again, her serene, rational self.
She gazed at the family portrait on the far wall. How unlike sisters they looked — Tamsin, a raven haired beauty, Rhiannon, with her coppery tresses and emerald eyes, and Morgan, a blue-eyed blonde. They were not sisters by blood, only distant cousins, but they were bound by something deeper. How she longed to call the assembly and deliver the news that a chest had been found. Soon, perhaps, she would be able to do just that. But not until it was in her possession. To tip her hand too soon would be an unnecessary risk. Her position at the top of the order was strong, but she was not immune to the machinations of her Sisters.