He balked a moment at the next logical conclusion, but then continued in a lower voice meant for Bones and Alex. “Everything Ray said about these guys is true. If word of this vault gets out, it pulls the curtain back on their conspiracy. That’s what they’re really protecting.”
“You are correct in most respects,” replied Hancock. “I was not deceiving you when I spoke of the Gatekeepers. That has ever been our assigned duty; to guard the gates to this vault, and to keep the tradition of protecting the key, just as your large friend there suggests.”
“But if you had a back door,” said Alex, “and you knew there wasn’t any treasure here anyway, why go to the trouble?”
“The treasure was kept here for many years. It was not quite so vast as has sometimes been reported, but those exaggerations served the order well. The belief that our letters of credit were guaranteed by a trove of incalculable value certainly facilitated our recovery after the Church betrayed us. Maintaining that fiction was also an important part of the Gatekeepers’ mission. However, as the years passed and the nature of the European economy began to change, it no longer seemed prudent to leave the treasure here to gather dust, so over the course of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, the treasures were liquidated.”
“And that infusion of cash helped you gain a foothold in international politics.”
Hancock shrugged. “Such matters are not in my purview. “
“I thought you guys had all kinds of treasures, like stuff from the Holy Lands, and secret knowledge,” Bones said.
Hancock gave a small nod. “There are legends of such things, and some are likely based in fact. Our forbearers were widespread and, in some respects, fragmented. I can speak only to this vault and the treasure that was kept here and the responsibilities of my particular sect. I am a Knight Gatekeeper. My duty is to protect the key and the vault, and I might add, the knowledge of the disposition of its original contents.”
“Which is why you’re going to make us disappear, right?” Dane asked.
“You do make it all sound so melodramatic.” Hancock gave an avuncular chuckle. “Why don’t we start with something simple? The key. Give it to me.”
“The key?” Dane laughed. “We don’t have it.”
Hancock’s unflappable lordly demeanor cracked a little. “Of course you do. You couldn’t have come this far without it.”
“We’re just that good.”
“But you found the ship. You said you were going to find Trevor.”
“Oh, we did. And we found your key, but then somebody took it.”
“We got a copy made at Home Depot,” added Bones.
Hancock’s self-control slipped another notch, and in a voice like wire stretched to the breaking point, said, “Who took it?”
Before Dane could even think about how to answer, a sound like the inside of a thunderclap boomed through the vault. The detonation was followed by the equally loud noise of the door slab breaking free of its guide track and slamming mostly intact onto the floor right behind where Dane and the others were standing. The combination of the blast wave and the resulting tremor threw everyone to the floor where a cloud of high explosives residue and dust rolled over them.
Dane’s ears were ringing and he figured that anything he said would be wasted, so he reached out to snare Alex’s hand and pulled her away from the doorway, just as the first of Ray’s men came through, his pistol leveled.
The Gatekeeper sergeants, further from the blast center, responded quickly, turning their machine pistols on the target in the doorway and firing without hesitation. The mercenary pitched backward under the withering torrent of lead, but no sooner had he gone down than return fire erupted from the breached opening.
Dane stayed low, half-crawling to the perimeter of the room, where he paused just long enough to make sure that Alex was still with him and not too badly injured. He could barely see her in the gloom, but when he clapped a hand to her shoulder, she nodded reassuringly.
The firefight intensified, and in the muzzle flashes, Dane spied Bones crawling along the opposite edge. Two of the sergeants were down and Hancock was nowhere to be seen, having evidently fled the battle in a very un-Templar-like display of cowardice. For the moment at least, no one was interested in the unarmed trio, but Dane knew that window of opportunity wouldn’t stay open long. He pointed toward the back of the room, and at a nod from Alex, started moving.
The gunfire slackened a little, and Dane saw that the surviving Gatekeepers were now hunkering down behind overturned tables and taking shots only when they detected movement beyond the entrance. Ray’s men were similarly cautious, but Dane knew that the standoff wouldn’t last; eventually one side or the other would make a bold move.
The back entrance was just twenty feet away and evidently unguarded. He checked to make sure that Alex was ready, and then bolted for the opening. A bullet sparked off the wall above their heads but they didn’t slow. Dane ducked around the edge of the doorway and found himself at the foot of another ascending stairwell.
He risked a quick sweep with his flashlight, and seeing no indication of traps, started up. Within a few steps, the noise of the battle was muffled by the surrounding stone and with his ears still ringing from the explosion, he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own footfalls. He turned his light on again, shining up, but the beam showed only endless steps, far more than any of the other stairs they had previously encountered.
Fueled by adrenaline and a fierce desire to survive, they raced onward, until at last, there was an end to it; a door, not of stone but of battleship gray metal with a very modern-looking institutional panic bar latch. Dane hit it at full speed, slamming his full body against the door. The hydraulic closer resisted the assault, but his momentum carried him through, stumbling into an empty room with cinderblock walls and no other immediately visible exits.
“There!” shouted Alex, pointing her light at the wall to the right.
The mortar around a large section of the blocks was missing, leaving a half inch gap that outlined an area big enough for a person to pass through. There was also a small hole in one of the concrete bricks, and inside it, a metal handle. Dane gave it a push, then a pull, and the section of wall swung toward them on concealed hinges.
Another concrete room, but this time the space was filled with equipment and sundry maintenance items. In the middle of the room was an enormous machine that Dane recognized as the drive pulley for the funicular railroad.
“We’re at the top of the mountain,” he realized aloud.
A cool breeze was drifting in through the dark cable way. He checked his watch and saw that it was after seven o’clock; the funicular should have been shut down for the night, but as they stood there, the machinery whirred to life and the cable started moving. Someone was using the rail line.
Hancock!
“Come on.” He shouted to Alex, but didn’t wait for her. He charged through another metal door to emerge into the brisk mountain evening on a walkway that ran parallel to the track. A hundred feet down the line, a rail car pulling away from the station.
Dane leapt onto the tracks and started sprinting after it. The funicular moved at about six miles per hour, faster than a walking pace, but not faster than he could run — at least not on a level surface. The funicular however was on a sharp angle to match the slope of the mountain, and to make matters worse, the evenly spaced wooden rail ties were a treacherous surface on which to move. He hadn’t worked out exactly what he was going to do when he caught up to the car, but he knew that he had to stop Hancock from summoning reinforcements.