Free The Templar Archive by James Becker Page B

surprise. Although they hadn’t discussed it in detail, they had already come to more or less the same conclusion.
    “What about the differences between the two patterns?” he asked. “We already knew the metalwork wasn’t the same on the two lids, but what actually is the difference? Are thetwo patterns completely dissimilar, or are we looking at just fairly minor changes from one to the other?”
    Robin glanced down at the computer resting on her lap before she replied. She studied the two images on the screen, the side-by-side photographs of the lids of the two chests, and then shook her head.
    “They are sort of similar,” she admitted, “but different enough that you would never mistake one for the other, if you see what I mean. I can see shapes in one that aren’t there in the pattern of the second chest, and vice versa. But what I don’t see are any shapes that could be letters or anything of that sort, and unless we’ve got it completely wrong, we need another piece of plaintext or a code word that we can use to translate that final section of encrypted text on the parchment. Is that what you think as well?”
    “Pretty much, yes,” Mallory said, nodding and glancing over at Robin. “That really is the obvious way forward.”
    A few minutes later, he turned the Golf right at the Halwell T-junction to head north up the A381 toward Totnes.
    “Where are we going?” Robin asked, a few minutes later. “Not Exeter again, I hope. I had about enough of that particular city the last time we were there. No good memories, except that we did manage to walk away.”
    “No, not Exeter,” Mallory agreed. “I still haven’t got anywhere definite in mind, so I was generally heading up toward Okehampton. We should be able to find a quiet hotel somewhere up there on the edge of Bodmin Moor.”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    Robin closed the lid of her laptop with a decisive
click
and slid it back into her leather computer case.
    “If I look at those pictures any more, I will definitely go boss-eyed,” she said. “We’ll have a proper look—both of us—once we get to the hotel, where it’s quiet and we can concentrate.”
    *   *   *
    A little over an hour after they’d driven away from Robin’s bookshop in Dartmouth, a nondescript Ford saloon drew to a halt a few yards down the road and an entirely unmemorable man stared across at the parked Porsche. He didn’t need to check the registration number because he had already memorized it. In his business, a good memory for numbers, information, and especially faces was a definite asset.
    He made sure his car was legally parked, because coming to the attention of any of the British authorities for any reason was something he always tried to avoid, then walked away from the vehicle and approached the antiquarian bookshop’s street door. Inside, he held a very brief conversation with the slightly plump lady behind the counter, then stepped out again and returned to his vehicle.
    Marsh took out his mobile phone and dialed the number of his temporary and still-unidentified employer.
    “The good news,” he began, “is that I’ve found the address in Dartmouth and I’ve also found the Porsche. The bad news is that neither of the targets is here. According to the woman in the shop, they drove down from Exeter about an hour and a half ago, parked the car, and then left almost immediately in Jessop’s vehicle. And for that I don’t have a make or model, though the woman Italked to thinks it might be silver or gray, and fairly small, maybe a hatchback.”
    “That’s not a problem. I can get those details to you in a few minutes. Did this woman have any idea where they were going?”
    “No. All that Jessop apparently told her was that she and Mallory were involved in some kind of project, and they were going off to do some research. I did manage to get Jessop’s mobile number, so you should be able to triangulate their location fairly easily, as long as she