The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)

He’d suspected as much. There had to be more to this place.

Pollux stepped beyond the altar into the apse. Three stone panels formed the curved walls, separated by moldings, with limestone benches wrapping the semicircle. Cotton watched as Pollux laid the pick down and knelt, reaching beneath one of the stone benches and pressing something.

The center panel released inward a few inches.

“Centuries ago there was a manual winch,” Pollux said. “But today we’re a bit more modern.”

“Napoleon never found the door?” he asked.

Pollux shook his head. “The French were in a hurry and not all that smart. They came, saw nothing, and left. We installed the electric lock about five years ago. The stone is balanced at its center of gravity, on a lubricated center post. You can push it open with one hand.”

The cardinal stepped forward and did just that, exposing two blackened rectangles, about two feet wide, centered by the short side of the stone wall.

They stepped through and Pollux activated another light switch.

A tunnel stretched ahead.

Tall. Wide. Spacious.

“Where does it lead?” he asked.

“To a wondrous place,” Pollux whispered.

* * *

During the car trip Kastor had admired the Pwales Valley, a picturesque region of timeless wetlands that dominated Malta’s northern corner. The land undulated with hillocks of lichens and foul-smelling mushrooms. It stayed carpeted with cape sorrel, crow daisies, borage, and spurge. Unusual for Malta, which was not all that hospitable to plants. Some of the most stunning views on the island could be seen here, though darkness prevented him from enjoying any of them now.

People had lived on the land for over five thousand years and there were cave paintings in the nearby ridges to prove it. Its many bays had long made it prone to outside attack. The knights had fortified the whole area against Muslim corsairs with coastal towers and garrison batteries. The British manned a fort nearby during, and after, World War II. As a kid he’d visited it several times. The nuns would buy them sweets and sodas. They’d also taken swimming lessons in the nearby harbor.

Those nuns.

They’d at least tried to make things bearable, which was hard to do given all of their children were orphans. Few ever left until they were old enough to walk out as adults. He’d always wondered how many ever ventured back for a visit. He never had.

He knew all about the Church of St. Magyar’s, which was actually two chapels in one. The outer portion had served as an overt wayside chapel and gathering place for the Secreti. But it was the inner portion—the Church of St. John—that had held a special place.

But not John the Baptist.

John of Nepomuk, the patron saint of Bohemia, drowned in 1393 in the Vltava River at the behest of King Wenceslaus for refusing to divulge the secrets of the confessional. He was often depicted in statues with a finger to his lips, indicating silence, keeping a secret. The Jesuits spread the story of his martyrdom that eventually elevated him to sainthood. A cult devoted to his worship flourished on Malta in the 16th century, so it was easy to see why the Secreti would have named their chapel for him.

Kastor had never visited St. Magyar’s, nor, he assumed, had 99 percent of the knights’ membership. As with its patron saint, the secrets within this place had stayed secret. Why Pollux had chosen to reveal this sacred location to an outsider remained a mystery.

They carried the tools and walked down the lit tunnel.

“This is a man-made extension of the original natural cave,” Pollux said. “The exterior sanctuary was built to conceal the true chapel of the Secreti.”

The path was lit by a series of incandescent fixtures attached to the ceiling, connected by an exposed electrical cable. The floor was flat, hard-packed earth, dry as a desert. The air was noticeably cooler the farther inside they walked. The tunnel ended at a set of arched, oak double doors hung on heavy iron hinges. No locks, just two iron rings that Pollux used to push open both panels. Not a sound betrayed the hinges. Obviously, things around here were dutifully cared for.

Beyond was a towering space that stretched in three directions, two lateral vaults off a central core. Arches and pillars supported the rock overhead. Statues dominated every nook and cranny. Not separate additions, either—as in the co-cathedral, each had been carved from the surrounding stone. He saw Madonnas, saints, Christ, animals. Most were freestanding. A few stood alone in niches, while others emerged from the walls in three-dimensional façades. Carefully placed floor and ceiling lights illuminated everything, casting the stone in varying hues of brown and gray, all combining for a hauntingly ominous atmosphere.

“All right,” Kastor said to Malone. “What now?”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Cotton had never seen anything like the macabre underground chapel, which, thanks to all of the life-sized images, made him feel like he was standing in a crowd. Thankfully, no disturbing feelings of claustrophobia had grabbed hold of him as the room, though cluttered, loomed airy and spacious.

“Is there climate control?” he asked, noticing the lack of humidity and the breeze.

“We have dehumidifiers,” Pollux said. “We installed them when we changed out the door mechanism. The air-conditioning is natural. We’ve learned that you have to be careful with something like this. Touching with bare fingertips leaves oil that degrades the limestone. Artificial lights encourage bacterial growth. Lots of warm bodies exhaling carbon dioxide change the airflow, temperature, and humidity. It’s important this place survives, so we took measures to ensure that it did.”

“Is this where the Secreti worshiped?” Cotton asked.

Pollux nodded. “This is also where new members were inducted. The Secreti were quite peculiar about who they asked to join their ranks. They kept no written records, so it’s impossible to know who was a member. Unless you wore the ring.”

“I guess there were no jewelry stores copying them back then,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.

Pollux seemed perplexed.

He told them what the fake Pollux Gallo had explained.

“There actually is truth to the statement,” Pollux said. “I’ve seen a few of those copies over the years—”

“But since the Secreti are gone, what did it matter?”

He couldn’t resist.

“Something like that,” Pollux said.

Cotton had been thinking about the answer to the cardinal’s question of what now. There’d been nothing in the outer chapel to draw his interest, which was surely the whole idea of keeping things simple there. Here, though, there were a multitude of potential hiding places represented by the numerous figures carved in stone. He turned to Pollux. “How far are you willing to go to find what you’re looking for?”

“If you mean defacing any of this, that depends,” Pollux said. “Let’s see how certain you are of a result once when we reach that point.”

His mind sorted through the possibilities. So far the dead prior’s actions had been wholly practical. But nothing in any of the clues pointed to anything inside this statuary. Only to the chapel in general. Both Pollux and the curator had made it clear back at the cathedral that there were no other chapels or sacred sites near where the lines on the map had intersected.

So this had to be the place.

“No telling what godforsaken things happened here,” the cardinal said.

“The Secreti were only a danger to those who threatened the knights.”

“And today? Now? What’s threatening the knights? Why are the Secreti killing people?”

Pollux faced his brother. “No one says they are.”

“You did,” Cotton said. “The urgency to get here was because the Secreti were on the move. Three men died at that villa. Two more here on Malta. You said the likely suspect in all five killings is the Secreti.”

“It seems logical,” Pollux said. “But I will deal with that possibility after we locate the Nos

tra Trinità.”

Cotton’s gaze had been raking the room and he’d settled on the only spot that made sense. At the far end, up three short steps, an altar had been carved from the wall. It jutted out and faced away from the worshipers, as would have been common five hundred years ago. Above it was a Madonna and child etched from the stone. Two winged angels flanked either side. But it was the altar’s base that drew his attention. Five words that could be read the same from any direction. The palindrome from the ring.

The sign of Constantine.

He pointed. “It has to be there.”

They approached the altar.

“Constantine’s sign was carved there when the church was built,” Pollux said. “It’s always been here.”

Cotton set the shovels on the floor and knelt down to inspect the altar. The letters sprang from a recessed panel at the altar’s center, right where a priest would have stood while saying mass. Four fluted columns carved from the limestone flanked left and right. With his finger he traced a mortar joint in the recessed panel—dry, brittle, and gray, like everything else.

“I say we bust this open.”

He gave Pollux a moment to consider the ramifications. This wasn’t a broken clock. It was a piece of something that had survived five hundred years. Something men had dedicated their lives to preserve. Thousands of knights and Maltese had died fighting to keep all of this inviolate.

And they’d succeeded.

Only to have it destroyed now by an outsider, with permission from one of their own.

Pollux handed over the sledgehammer, signaling his assent. Cotton gripped the wooden handle and decided there was no delicate way to do it, so he gave the center of the panel, right above the word TENET, a hard rap with the business end. The stone held, but there was a noticeable give, as at the obelisk.