He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.
He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail – nothing especially interesting or pressing there – then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.
One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.
Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.
The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.
At Wesley’s last medical check-up, his doctor had told him he had the heart of a forty-five-year-old. But it gave a terrifying leap and almost stopped beating permanently at the sight in the kitchen. He cried out in horror.
Moses the cat was lapping nonchalantly at a thick blood trail that gleamed under the lights. It led from near the cooking range to the door, where Abigail had managed to drag herself before she died. She’d been shot twice in the chest with a large-calibre weapon. She was still clutching the spatula that she’d been using to stir the cream sauce, now simmered to a black mess on the stove, the extractor fans sucking away the smoke.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley shouted in panic. ‘Coleman!’ He darted back across the hallway and into the main salon.
Hubert Clemm’s body lay twisted in the middle of the vast Persian rug with his arms outflung and his face turned towards the door. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead, a spray of blood up the upholstery of the couch behind him.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley screamed.
He heard a sound behind him and whipped round. Before he could react, he was being propelled backwards into the salon and the muzzles of two silenced pistols were looming large in his face. He fell heavily into an armchair and stared helplessly up at the pair of gunmen standing over him. One of them was tall, well over six feet. The long brown coat he wore was made of heavy, full-grained tan leather, like horsehide. The other was wearing a quilted jacket. Both had on black ski masks that hid their faces.
Robbers. Wesley’s heart pounded horribly. He could see Hubert’s corpse out of the corner of his eye, and it was more than he could bear. ‘I keep over a million dollars in cash in a safe upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘And jewels. I’ll open it for you myself. Take what you want and go. Please, just go.’
The masked men exchanged glances. The prospect of making off with a million-plus in cash was appealing, but their orders had been strict and precise. ‘The sword,’ the big one in the leather coat said tersely. ‘Let’s have it.’ He talked with an English accent. A Londoner, maybe.
Wesley balked. His brain churned faster than it had ever churned before. ‘I don’t know what sword you mean!’ he protested. But he did know, very well. If he and his associates were right about it – and almost three years of tireless efforts had persuaded him beyond a doubt that they were – it was a treasure of incalculable value. What he couldn’t understand was how these men could possibly be aware of its very existence. Virtually nobody was, outside of the group. Who could have given away the sworn secret? Hillel Zada? Surely not him. He didn’t know enough.
The worst thing for Wesley was that the sword was so nearby. He tried desperately hard not to let his eyes flick across to the black fibreglass container, just a few yards away across the room. ‘That’s it there,’ he said, instead pointing through the open door at the giant two-handed Landsknecht weapon that dominated the display in the hallway. From tip to pommel it stood taller than a tall man, and it was almost four centuries old.
Much too big. Much too new. Totally wrong. A wild bluff, based on the fact that these thugs could hardly be expert enough to know one sword from another. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a fortune.’ That part was quite true.
The gunmen gave the monster blade a cursory over-the-shoulder glance. The one in the brown leather coat shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck with us.’ The one in the quilted jacket pressed his gun muzzle hard into Wesley’s cheekbone. ‘You’d better start talking, old man.’ Another Brit. Who were these men?
‘Drop your weapons and turn around slowly,’ said a calm, steady voice from the doorway, and Wesley’s heart soared.
Coleman Nash had the massive twin bores of the elephant gun trained steadily on the robbers.
The two men froze. The pressure of the pistol muzzle against Wesley’s cheekbone slackened. Coleman had them cold.
Except for one problem. Coleman had never pointed a gun at a living being before, still less pulled the trigger. These men did it for a living. Amateurs hesitated. Professionals never did.
It all happened too fast for Wesley to follow. The report of the first pistol was a muffled ‘dooophh’, followed almost instantly by another, simultaneously with the brain-numbing explosion of the elephant gun as it blasted a moon crater out of the far wall.
Coleman’s legs wobbled and then buckled and he went down on his knees. Blood on his lips.
Wesley yelled. Another pistol shot. Then another.
Wesley saw the bullets strike and knew there was nothing he could do to help poor Coleman. He jumped up from the armchair, grabbed the black fibreglass case and bolted like a rabbit for the side exit. The big man in the leather coat turned to stop him, but dived for cover behind the couch as the stricken Coleman let loose with the second barrel. The .700 Nitro Express blew a great ragged hole through the backrest of a hundred-thousand-dollar antique couch.
In the next moment, Coleman was cut down by a volley of bullets. He died before the rifle had dropped from his hands.
By then, Wesley had made it out of the exit and was sprinting in a grief-stricken panic down the passage, carrying his precious case. He heard the door burst open behind him and the footsteps pounding as the gunmen gave chase. The terror pressed him on faster. He hammered up a flight of steps, down another passage, and reached the door.
The panic room had been built several years earlier, in case of just such a contingency. Wesley had let Coleman take care of the arrangements, then signed the cheque and promptly forgotten all about it.
Which made it all the more miraculous that the password for the voice-recognition vault door should come back to him now.
‘Barbarossa!’
The six forged steel deadlocks opened with a clunk. Wesley rushed inside and the armoured door shut behind him, locking itself automatically.
Safe. More importantly, the sword was too. Wesley leaned against the wall and breathed hard, able to hear the muffled voices of his pursuers cursing on the other side. For the first time in his life, he thanked God for modern technology. If he’d had to fumble for a key, they’d have got him. Would they have killed him outright, or tortured him until they’d found the sword in its case?
Wesley staggered numbly over to the control console and peered at the bank of monitors showing digital hi-definition images of every part of the house. He could see the two bodies on the main living room floor: Coleman’s near the entrance, Hubert’s on the rug. Abigail’s in the kitchen. The blood looked garishly bright.
Wesley tasted bile in his mouth at the sight and turned away, following the gunmen’s progress from screen to screen as they dashed furiously from one room to the next. They must have known that the clock was ticking now, but clearly believed they still had a chance of locating their quarry somewhere within the Whitworth Mansion.
They wouldn’t hang around too long, if they had any sense. Wesley picked up the phone and dialled 911. He spoke urgently but clearly to the police operator, and was assured that officers were on their way. Then, swallowing back his grief, he moved on to the even more important call he had to make.
*
Halfway across the world, Simeon Arundel picked up on the second ring that dragged him up out of a deep sleep.
‘Simeon?’ said the familiar voice.
‘Wesley, it’s three o’clock in the morning here,’ Simeon muttered, rubbing his face. It had been a late night, and his head was a little fuzzy from all the whisky they’d drunk. Their visitor’s capacity for alcohol seemed to be undiminished with the years. Michaela was fast asleep, the curve under the blanket rising and falling gently in the bed next to him.
‘Listen to me,’ the American’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘Something’s happened.’
Struggling to clear his head and afraid of waking Michaela, Simeon sat up and swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Hold on, Wesley.’ In the darkness of the bedroom he padded over to the ensuite bathroom, closed himself quietly inside and turned on the light. ‘All right. What’s happened?’
‘They’re after the sword.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The armed men who broke into my house tonight. Or whoever paid them to come here to steal it.’
Simeon sat down heavily on the edge of the bath, his mind swimming with horror. ‘Oh, Lord. Are you all right?’
‘I’m safe. The cops are on their way as we speak.’ Wesley’s voice quavered with emotion. ‘They shot Coleman, Simeon.’ A sorrowful pause. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead!?’
‘So are Hubert and Abigail.’
Simeon’s heart began to beat even faster. He could feel it thudding violently at the base of his throat. He suddenly felt as if he might need to lurch the two steps across to the toilet and throw up.
Then the suspicions Fabrice had expressed to him just before his death had been true. Someone really was taking an unhealthy interest in the research they’d all tried so hard to keep secret. Someone really was after them.
Someone who was prepared to murder to get what they wanted.
Simeon swallowed back the urge to gag. ‘Is it safe?’
‘It’s right here next to me,’ Wesley said, patting the case.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Wesley? Didn’t I tell you something strange was happening – that I was sure I’d been followed – about the man I saw in the church a couple of weeks ago?’ Simeon visualised the scene clearly in his mind as he spoke. The stranger had materialised as if out of the blue while he’d been helping put up the Christmas decorations at one of his churches in a rural part of Oxfordshire. When Simeon had gone to welcome him, the man had slipped away as suddenly as he’d appeared. ‘And didn’t I tell you that Fabrice would never have killed himself like that? Or done those appalling things?’
They’d been through this over and over, ever since receiving the news of their colleague’s death and his shocking circular email. ‘I don’t know whether Fabrice did those things or not,’ Wesley said impatiently. ‘Or why he’d have confessed to them if he hadn’t. And I don’t know if he threw himself off that damn bridge or not. Neither do you. All we can be sure of is that you and I are both in danger and it has to do with this sword. That’s the reality we’re facing right now.’
‘Who are these people? How do they know about us?’
‘Did you talk to anybody? Anybody at all? They even seem to know what it looks like.’
‘Nobody,’ Simeon blurted. ‘I swear.’
‘You’re absolutely positive about that?’
‘Wesley, I would never …’
‘Good. Keep it that way. Listen, I can’t stay on this line. The cops will be here any minute. When I’ve dealt with them I’m going to call my lawyer and arrange some private security for you and your family over there, okay?’
‘There’s no need for that. I’ll be making my own arrangements.’
‘Can you get armed bodyguards in England?’
‘I don’t think so, not unless you’re the Prime Minister or something. But I have an old friend with a lot of experience of that kind of thing.’
‘He’d better know his business,’ Wesley said. ‘This is serious.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me? I’m going to Martha’s. Got to get the sword somewhere safe. It’s more important than any of us. You said that yourself, remember?’
Simeon nodded. He was still reeling. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘I’ll call you from the road. You watch your back, hear me?’
Chapter Six
Sometime before sunrise, Ben flipped himself out of the comfortable bed in the Arundels’ guest annexe, stretched and warmed his muscles and dropped down to the floor to knock out fifty press-ups without a break. He followed those up with fifty sit-ups, and was about to go straight into another set of press-ups when he heard the unmistakable throaty engine note of the Lotus from outside. He rubbed condensation off the window pane and peered out to see Simeon’s taillights exiting the vicarage gates. It seemed the vicar was off to an early start this morning.
The thoughts that had been swirling around Ben’s mind before he’d finally drifted off to sleep the night before were still lingering. The life that Simeon and Michaela had created for themselves here in this serene heart of rural England had made a strong impression on him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how a life like that might have been possible for him, once, too. There’d been a time, many years ago, when he couldn’t have imagined his future any other way.
As he’d done so often in the past, Ben tried to imagine himself in the role of a clergyman. The ivy-clad vicarage, the dog collar, the whole works. Ben Hope, pastor and shepherd of the weak, beacon of virtue and temperance.
The fantasy had always been there, but it was a self-image he’d never found it easy to believe in with all his heart. If he was a Christian himself, he was an extremely lapsed one – and it had been that way for much too long. Compared to the blazing supernova of Simeon’s faith, Ben’s was a guttering candle. He seldom prayed with anything approaching conviction, even more seldom picked up a Bible. The old leather-bound King James Version he’d hung onto for years had ended up being tossed out of the window of a moving car on a road in rural Montana; it had been a long time before Ben had come round to regretting his rash action.
And yet faith, of some kind, was something that had never quite left Ben – although whenever he tried to ponder on its nature, as he did now, he was left with only the vaguest, cloudiest impression of the strange yearning he felt somewhere deep inside, at the core of his being. So
me indefinable sense that one day, maybe, he could find peace within himself. That one day, a guiding hand would appear out of the darkness to steer him on the right path.
Ben closed his eyes, and for a brief moment he had a vision of himself, a different Ben Hope altogether, living this serene, idyllic life, with Brooke by his side.
The vision made him flinch and open his eyes again. He cursed himself for allowing such a hopelessly absurd and romantic notion to enter his head. Brooke as a vicar’s wife – it was nuts. She was as different from Michaela as Ben was from Simeon. She’d have laughed in his face at the very idea of it.
Brooke would probably never want to see him again anyway.
‘You’re a fool, Ben Hope,’ he said out loud. He chased away the darkness in his mind with more rapid-fire press-ups, eighty of them without a rest, so that his muscles screamed and his T-shirt clung damply to his skin.
After a cool shower, he dressed and stepped outside into the frosty dawn and crossed the yard to where the Land Rover was parked. ‘Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,’ he muttered, raising the battered matt-green bonnet lid and preparing to get his hands dirty.
He’d been there quite some time before he heard the footsteps on the gravel and looked up to see Michaela approaching, a mug of something hot and steaming in her hand.
‘Brought you coffee,’ she said, setting the mug down on the Landy’s wing. ‘You’re covered in grime.’ She reached over to Ben’s face, touched his cheek, looked at her blackened fingertips and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Any joy?’
‘Jeff was right,’ Ben said. ‘I shouldn’t have come in Le Crock.’
Michaela had the decency not to rub salt into Ben’s wounds by mentioning old bangers again. ‘Can you fix it?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder into the rusty engine compartment.
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