The Lost Treasure of the Templars

The In a quiet English seaside town, antiquarian bookseller Robin Jessop has acquired an odd medieval volume. What appears to be a book isn’t a book at all, but a cleverly disguised safe, in which she finds a single rolled parchment, written in code Now, Jessop and Mallory find themselves on a global hunt for an unsurpassed treasure and this much closer to the keys to secrets that could change history, topple an empire, and bury them both alive. Because they’re not only the hunters. They’re also the hunted.

Praise for James Becker’s Novels

“Fast-paced action propels the imaginative and controversial plot.”—Publishers Weekly

“This is an utterly spellbinding book...stunning and breathtaking....I was left shattered and stunned.”—Euro Crime

“James Bond meets Alex Cross.”—Fresh Fiction

“Extremely satisfying and ridiculously exciting!”—For Winter Nights

“Superbly crafted...it breaks new ground...a tightly worded, sharply written thriller.”—CrimeSquad.com

Auteur

James Becker spent more than twenty years in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. Throughout his career he has been involved in covert operations in many of the world's hot spots, including Yemen, Russia, and Northern Ireland. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Treasure of the Templars and The Templar Archive as well as the Chris Bronson novels, including The Lost Testament and Echo of the Reich. He also writes action-adventure novels under the name James Barrington and military history under the name Peter Smith in the U.K.

Texte du rabat

The New York Times bestselling author of The Templar Brotherhood presents the first novel in a thrilling series about the powerful secrets of the Knights Templar-and a conspiracy too shocking to believe...

In a quiet English seaside town, antiquarian bookseller Robin Jessop has acquired an odd medieval volume. What appears to be a book isn't a book at all, but a cleverly disguised safe, in which she finds a single rolled parchment, written in code.

For encryption expert David Mallory, the text is impenetrable. Until an invaluable clue opens the door to a mystery, and a conspiracy, stretching back seven centuries, when the most powerful man in Europe declared war on the most powerful clan, the Knights Templar.

Now, Jessop and Mallory find themselves on a global hunt for an unsurpassed treasure and this much closer to the keys to secrets that could change history, topple an empire, and bury them both alive. Because they're not only the hunters. They're also the hunted.

Résumé
The New York Times bestselling author of *The Templar Brotherhood *presents the first novel in a thrilling series about the powerful secrets of the Knights Templar—and a conspiracy too shocking to believe...

In a quiet English seaside town, antiquarian bookseller Robin Jessop has acquired an odd medieval volume. What appears to be a book isn’t a book at all, but a cleverly disguised safe, in which she finds a single rolled parchment, written in code*.

*For encryption expert David Mallory, the text is impenetrable. Until an invaluable clue opens the door to a mystery, and a conspiracy, stretching back seven centuries, when the most powerful man in Europe declared war on the most powerful clan, the Knights Templar.

Now, Jessop and Mallory find themselves on a global hunt for an unsurpassed treasure and this much closer to the keys to secrets that could change history, topple an empire, and bury them both alive. Because they’re not only the hunters. They’re also the hunted.

Échantillon de lecture

PRAISE FOR JAMES BECKER’S NOVELS

ALSO BY JAMES BECKER

SIGNET

Prologue

Acre, Palestine

May 1291

“We have no choice. We agree or we die. All of us. It’s that simple.”

Pierre de Sevry, the marshal of the Knights Templar in the Holy Land, rested his left hand on the pommel of his sheathed battle sword and looked around at the assembled company. His white tunic, bearing the unmistakable symbol of the order, the bloodred croix pattée, which had been used in various forms since 1147 to signify membership of this illustrious company of warrior monks, was ripped and torn and heavily stained with blood, some of it his own. His plate armor was dented, holed, and scratched from the almost continuous close combat that had been a daily feature of the siege of Acre since the first Mamluk attack on the city.

The Mamluks—an elite caste of warrior slaves who had fought for the Egyptian rulers for over a century—had assumed power in Egypt a short time earlier, ending the reign of the descendants of the great Muslim leader Saladin. Thirty years earlier they had utterly destroyed a Mongol army at Ain Jalut, south of Nazareth, and had been undefeated ever since. By any standards, they were formidable opponents.

A deep voice cut across the suddenly silent chamber.

“For myself, I would be happy to give my life in this glorious mission.”

De Sevry looked at the knight who had spoken, a man he knew had acquitted himself with conspicuous valor over the last few days, and nodded.

“None of us doubt either your courage or your resolve, my brother, and all of us have been prepared to give our lives for the honor of God every day since we arrived in this place. But I have no wish to sacrifice myself or any of this company to no purpose. We are a mere handful of men, less than two hundred strong, and by our latest count the sultan Khalil has mustered an army of over one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, not to mention his siege engines and catapults, and his miners who are probably even now tunneling somewhere in the ground under our feet. Even if each of us in the coming battle managed to slay five hundred of the enemy, there would still be well over fifty thousand of them left. This is a fight that we simply cannot win, no matter what we do or how courageously we conduct ourselves. If we decide to fight, then it is inevitable that we are also deciding to die. And if we die, then the only chance the forces of Christendom have of regaining the Holy City will die with us.”

De Sevry paused in his grim recitation and again looked around at the company of his most senior knights, a bare dozen men whom he considered his brothers in Christ as well as his most trusted comrades in arms. All of them looked haggard and wearied by over six weeks of unrelenting and utterly brutal hand-to-hand combat, facing the teeming hordes of Mamluk attackers who had thrown themselves, wave after wave, against them.

From the very beginning, the sultan’s siege engines and catapults had been raining missiles down on the city, their target the massive outer wall surrounding Acre. The wall was studded with ten separate and formidable towers, the principal entrance tower possessing walls almost thirty feet thick, a huge structure that had looked utterly impregnable to some of the inhabitants. But that hadn’t proved to be the case.

As well as the knights of the Templar order, the beleaguered garrison included Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, and a joint force of Templars and Hospitallers had barely repelled a determined attack by the Mamluk soldiers on Saint Anthony’s Gate on May fifteenth. But already the writing had been on the wall: the siege was only ever going to end one way, and all of them inside the fortress knew it.

Three days later, a sound like distant swelling thunder had echoed off the old stones of the city walls as all the war drums of the Mamluk attackers had been sounded simultaneously, the noise growing rapidly until people within the city were almost deafened. And then with a suddenness that was almost shock…