The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET. Scott Mariani

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СКАЧАТЬ cannot be broken.

      What kind of temple walls couldn’t be broken? Not the stone kind, that was for sure, judging by the number of old ruins around here. The crusading armies had been ruthlessly thorough in destroying the strongholds and churches of their heretic enemies.

      But then another idea hit him. What if the temple walls had never been built in stone at all–had never intended to be? What if they were the lines of an invisible geometric ground-plan that lay across the land, known only to the faithful and fair who were in on the secret? The marauding armies wouldn’t even have known such a temple was there. Because its walls were invisible. It was a virtual temple.

      In effect, it was a map. Whatever the House of the Raven was, it was at the centre of the layout and it seemed to be a marker for something. Maybe something that could get you into a lot of trouble. Secret alchemical treasure? Usberti was obsessed with finding it. The Nazis had lusted after it. Perhaps those who had launched the holocaust against the Cathars had been looking for it too.

      Ben’s mind was racing now. He ripped his road map out of his bag, unfolded the flapping square of paper and spread it across the plastic table. His finger landed on Rennes-le-Château. This was the place Fulcanelli had guided him to. This was where the search would begin, at the very nucleus of Cathar country and the hub of the mystery of their lost treasure.

      Using the edge of the laminated café table menu as a ruler, he started tracing out tentative lines in pencil on the map. He soon began to notice patterns emerging.

      St Sermin–Antugnac–La Pique–Bugarach.

      Couiza–Le Bezu.

      Esperaza–Rennes-les-Bains.

      And at least a dozen more. All were straight lines that perfectly connected the nearby churches, villages and castle ruins directly through the spot where he was sitting, the heart of Rennes-le-Château. This bizarre find seemed to confirm that he was looking in the right place. More lines, and soon he was building up an extensive grid that stretched bewilderingly across the entire area.

      Visitors to the café came and went, and he didn’t notice them. His coffee cooled at his elbow. He was transfixed by the dizzying maze of controlled complexity that began to unfold under his pencil. After the first hour, he had established a perfect circle whose circumference connected four ancient churches in the area, Les Sauzils, St Ferriol, Granès and Coustaussa. To his astonishment, his projected lines generated a six-pointed star whose points fitted perfectly within the circle and touched exactly on the first two churches. The first circle centred precisely on Esperaza, the village in the valley below Rennes-le-Château.

      After another hour the café staff were beginning to wonder how long the strange customer was going to sit there scribbling on his map. Ben was oblivious of them. Now a second circle was generated, and he traced it out with a steady hand. It centred on a place called Lavaldieu–Valley of God. The circles were identical in size and lay diagonally NW / SE across the map. He traced out more lines and shook his head in amazement as the complex alchemical symbol slowly revealed itself.

      The hexagram in the Esperaza circle had one of its southern points at Les Sauzils and another at St Ferriol. The pentagram in the Lavaldieu circle had its two western points at Granès and Coustaussa. A perfect straight line connecting Peyrolles to Blanchefort to Lavaldieu provided the southern point of the pentagram where it touched the edge of the Lavaldieu circle. Lastly, another perfect straight line connecting Lavaldieu at the centre with the more distant castle of Arques, gave the position for the eastern most point of the star.

      He sat back and contemplated the heavily lined and scored map. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. The twin star-circles were complete. The diagram was perfect in its geometry–the virtual temple, right there on a cheap filling-station road-map.

      Whatever civilization had created the phenomenon, long, long before Fulcanelli had stumbled upon it, must have been awesomely skilled in surveying, geometry, and mathematics. The logistics of just spinning this elaborate web of design across a harsh, mountainous landscape were mind-boggling enough, let alone the extreme lengths they must have gone to in deliberately building churches and entire settlements on the exact locations marked out by the invisible sweep of a circle or the intersection of two imaginary lines. And all this just to set up a concealed location for some cryptic piece of knowledge? What knowledge was worth that kind of trouble?

      Maybe he was going to find out. He was walking in Fulcanelli’s historical footprints. Now all he had to do was to find the centre point, and that should give him the exact location of whatever it was the alchemist had discovered. He drew out two extra lines that cut diagonally and symmetrically through the motif in an elongated X, marking out the dead centre.

      ‘X marks the spot,’ he murmured. The centre point was close to Rennes-le-Château. It couldn’t be much more than a couple of kilometres, approximately north-west.

      But what would be waiting for him when he got there? There was only one way to find out. He was getting close now.

59

      Ben set off across country. Starting out from the western edge of the village he discovered a winding route down the hillside. With stones and loose dirt sliding under his feet he scrambled downwards. Sometimes the bone-dry ground gave way under him and he slipped a few metres, struggling to keep his balance. By the time he reached the tree line a hundred metres below, the going was firmer and branches offered a handhold down the last of the slope. The trees were sparse at first, but as the ground levelled out they became a dense forest.

      He picked a leafy path between the tightly clustered conifers, oaks and beeches. The birds were singing in the trees above him and the milky rays of the autumn sun flickered through the green and gold foliage. For the first time in days he was almost able to clear his mind of troubled thoughts. Though he missed her badly, it was a relief to know that Roberta was safely out of the way. Whatever happened, she’d be all right.

      Beyond the wooded valley the ground began to rise again. A kilometre away across a rocky plateau, an escarpment sloped dramatically upwards to a high ridge. He saw that his route was going to take him straight over the top of it. He walked on steadily through the rocks, ignoring the thorny shrubs that caught at his ankles. The jagged ridge loomed closer.

      Far away, Franco Bozza was watching the tiny figure of his quarry through powerful binoculars. He’d followed Ben Hope all the way from Palavas, staying carefully out of sight. He’d watched him scramble down the hillside away from Rennes-le-Château and cut a straight path across country. He obviously knew where he was heading. Whatever the Englishman was looking for, he would find it too. This time, he wasn’t going to let him get away.

      Bozza had stalked in a semicircle around Ben’s flank. A goat path through a copse of trees shielded him from sight. Keeping low through the increasingly rocky terrain, stopping from time to time to check the progress of the small faraway figure, he’d worked his way right round and now he was high above Ben, near the escarpment’s summit. Behind him, where the ground sloped away far below into a green valley, was a house in the distance.

      The rock face soared up to a flat ledge, like a shallow plateau, and then rose up again to the summit. To the right, the hillside plunged dramatically away down some 300 metres into a deep valley thick with trees. Ben began the long climb. After half an hour or so he reached the first level, some ten metres across. A jutting shelf of grey rock overhung the cliff face to create a shallow cave. He stopped and rested for a few minutes, squinting up at the slope that he still had to climb.

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