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.
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.
Above him, Bozza crawled out a little further across the big rock. From this vantage point he had a good view of the Englishman through his binoculars. The wide, flat rock hung out over the edge of a steep slope. It felt stable enough under his weight, and it was secure enough to have stayed where it was for a thousand years. But Bozza was a heavy man and the further he moved towards the edge, the more strain he was putting on the rock’s balance.
By the time he knew it was beginning to slide, it was already too late to do anything about it.
Bozza rode the falling rock flat on his belly for the first few metres of the drop. It plunged over the edge and smashed into a cluster of smaller boulders and sent them spinning down with it. Bozza was thrown clear and went rolling and tumbling down thirty metres. He clawed frantically for a handhold but everything was sliding with him. The landslide gathered momentum, carrying away a slice of the hillside.
Ben could see the dust from a hundred tumbling rocks from where he was standing looking up at the rest of his climb. His blood froze. It was coming straight towards him. He dived under the shelf just as the spinning rocks reached the ledge. They hammered down all around and tore most of the ground away. He shielded his face from the loose earth and dust that poured down in a choking curtain. Suddenly the ground was giving way under his feet. He reached out in desperation and grasped the edge of the shelf above him. He hung there, praying it wouldn’t break away and crush him. A large jagged stone bounced off the cliff face and struck him on the shoulder, tearing his grasp away from the hanging rock. He slid and rolled a long way down the slope, boulders and dirt crashing all around him. A white flash of pain jolted through him as his body hit a protruding tree root. Somehow he managed to get a hold on it as the landslide battered him on its way past. The root held. The violence of the slide diminished, and then it was over.
The air was thick with dust. He spluttered and coughed, his mouth and throat full of it. He managed to find a secure footing, and slowly he let his weight onto his feet, testing the fragile slope. He gave the tree root a grateful pat and made his way cautiously back up the escarpment, heading for solid ground.
Bozza had come to a stunned, bloody stop among the rocks. His fingertips were raw from where he’d been scrabbling for a hold. He picked himself shakily up off the ground and looked around him at the debris from the landslide. He’d slid and tumbled a long way. Another couple of metres and he would have plunged straight over the edge of a sheer drop down the face of the escarpment and into the steeply sloping wooded valley below.
He heard a noise and spun around to see Ben Hope standing ten metres away.
Bozza didn’t have time to reach for his gun. Ben’s sights descended squarely, deliberately on the man’s chest and the Browning barked twice in rapid succession.
The flat reports hammered through the silence of the mountain air. Bozza’s body jerked back like a shaken doll. For a moment he teetered on the edge of the precipice, his arms outflung as he struggled to keep his balance. Ben watched him coldly and then fired again. Bozza clutched at his chest, and with a last