‘You talk too much, Usberti,’ Anna said. ‘I asked about Ercan. You said he was nearby, so let me see him. Right this minute, you hear me?’
‘How can I refuse a direct request from a delightful lady?’ Usberti said. ‘By all means.’ He turned to Bozza. ‘Ugo, would you oblige the professor by reuniting her with her learned associate?’
Bozza wordlessly walked down the length of the RV and went to what Ben guessed must be the door to a bathroom or bedroom, at the tail end of the vehicle. Bozza opened the door, stepped through it and closed it behind him.
What Ben expected to happen next was for Bozza to re-emerge clutching Ercan Kavur, drag him up the aisle and dump him at Anna’s feet. Probably doped up to the eyeballs and semi-conscious, which would explain the silence from behind the door. Most likely battered and bruised, too. It seemed unlikely that he’d have fed so much information to his captors without being under some duress. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight, and an upsetting one for Anna.
But Ben was dead wrong.
The door reopened. Bozza came out alone, carrying something in his hand. It was a blue plastic cool box with a folding handle, the kind of insulated container people took with them to keep their beer cold on a camping trip. Bozza walked back up the length of the RV. Minute tremors of its suspension rocked the floor under his weight. He carried the box in front of him at arm’s length. Set it down on a table. Then he folded down the handle, unsnapped a catch at each side, lifted off the lid, and tilted the box towards them to display its contents.
It wasn’t a chilled six-pack of beer.
And that was when Ben saw how mistaken he’d been. They hadn’t beaten Ercan Kavur up at all. Or, if they had, they hadn’t touched his face, which looked perfectly unbruised as it stared at them from the blue plastic box.
They’d cut off his head.
Chapter 51
This wasn’t the first time Ben had found himself in the presence of one part or another of a decapitated body. But Anna had led a more sheltered life than he had. Her cry of anguish and horror filled the RV. Her knees folded under her and she covered her mouth with her hands.
‘Take her outside, Ugo,’ Usberti said, grimacing. ‘I would rather not have the carpeting covered in vomit.’
Bozza replaced the lid on the cool box, stepped over to Anna and hauled her upright by the arm. He marched her to the door, activated a switch that made it whoosh open, then shoved and dragged her down the metal gangway and let her go so she could bend double at the side of the road and throw up.
‘They don’t call you Mr Charm for nothing, do they?’ Ben said to Usberti. ‘What did you do with the rest of the guy, feed him to your lapdog?’
Usberti shrugged. ‘There is a limit to every man’s usefulness. Regrettably, we reached a stage where Signor Kavur no longer served any purpose to us. Moreover, I see no need to employ the services of two expert historians, when one will do me just as well. Now that she is up to date with her colleague’s latest discoveries, Professor Manzini will be quite able to help us achieve our objective. As for what to do with you, my dear Benedict, I have another purpose in mind. One for which your particular skills qualify you better than any of my men; or should I say, my remaining men. Once again, you have demonstrated your perplexing habit of diminishing my human resources.’
‘They’ll be diminished a lot more by the time we’re done,’ Ben said. He couldn’t point, so he jerked his chin in the direction of Aldo Groppione. ‘Starting with him there. But he already knows that.’
‘Fuck you,’ Groppione said. ‘Boss, I’m telling you, it’s a mistake to keep this fucker alive. He’s tricksy. You can’t trust him.’
‘You can trust me,’ Ben said. ‘You can set your watch by me. Start counting the minutes you have left. I’ll save you till last, Usberti. Just so I can see the look on your face when you’re all alone and it’s time to say bye-bye.’
‘I would expect nothing less from such a worthy opponent,’ Usberti said. He motioned towards Groppione and Starace without looking at them. ‘And I have no doubt that, left to your own fearsome devices, you would have little trouble disposing of these men. But Ugo Bozza is another matter. His lethal expertise is second to none, and he has waited a long time to avenge his elder brother.’
‘Or to join him in hell.’
‘We shall see. As they say, may the best man win.’
Bozza came back inside, shoving Anna in front of him. All the defiance had gone out of her and she looked waxen and utterly defeated. Bozza slung her into one of the long leather sofas that lined the sides of the motor coach’s opulent interior.
‘I believe we have some trash to dispose of,’ Usberti said. ‘Then let us get underway. There is no time to lose.’
‘How about taking off these cuffs for me?’ Ben said. ‘Seems a shame to be travelling in this thing and not be comfortable.’
Starace just snorted in reply. He slung his weapon over his shoulder, grabbed the cool box, carried it outside and drop-kicked it into the scrub bushes that edged the road. He came back inside wiping his hands, then walked over to a digital display panel with a cluster of buttons and pressed one. The door sucked shut behind him. He pressed another, and there was the whirring of an electric motor as some hidden mechanism folded the extending gangway steps into a recess beneath the door. The third button activated a hydraulic system that retracted the extending slide-outs on both flanks of the vehicle. The walls and floor sections closed in, suddenly transforming the RV’s interior back from a penthouse apartment to something resembling a luxury narrowboat.
‘Take a seat, asshole,’ Starace said to Ben, unslinging his weapon and using it to motion at the sofa where Anna was sitting. He leaned back in one opposite, now much closer across the narrowed centre aisle, with the gun resting on his thigh and pointing lazily at Ben.
Meanwhile, Groppione was getting behind the wheel of the starship. The diesel engine started up with a muted snort, rippling the length of the huge vehicle with faint tremors of vibration. Groppione pushed the oversized chrome gear selector into drive and the motor coach shuddered against its brakes. Usberti returned to his throne. His assistant, Bellini, perched on a fold-down seat nearby. Bozza hovered towards the stern end of the coach, his eyes never leaving Ben. Ben ignored him and sat close to Anna, but she was in a world of her own.
There was a hiss as Groppione released the airbrakes. Then they began to roll.
The winding track meandered downhill for several kilometres. The coach had been built to cruise the glass-smooth, arrow-straight interstates of North America, not for hacking through the camel trails of south-eastern Turkey. Groppione was taking it very easy, but still the suspension was rocking and bouncing, and the rear end was swaying like a pendulum through the twists and turns. Ben couldn’t lean back on the soft leather sofa with his hands cuffed behind him, so he sat leaning forward and watched the road.
Nobody spoke. Bellini looked deep in his own worries. Starace’s eyes were closed, but he still had his finger on the trigger of his weapon. Bozza’s were wide open and fixed on Ben like a chameleon watching a fly.
They eventually joined a windswept highway and Groppione was able to put on some speed. The road carved through the flat, wintry semi-desert landscape for an hour without meeting any traffic. Usberti seemed to be enjoying the ride, a contented smile on his face as though the golden idol was already in his hands. Or a treasure map with a big red X that marked the spot where all they had to do was start digging. Either he was delusional, Ben thought, or he knew something they didn’t. Was it possible that Ercan Kavur had figured it all out? Found the key to a secret that had eluded the best of the world’s historians for two and a half thousand years?
‘You seem to have a very good idea of exactly where we’re headed,’ Ben said to him. ‘As you’ve press-ganged Professor Manzini into serving as your archaeology consultant, it might be appropriate at this point to fill her in on the details.’
Professor Manzini didn’t se
em to give a damn one way or the other. But Ben needed to form a strategy. In tactical planning, if you weren’t thinking ahead, you were going backwards.
Usberti wasn’t about to be drawn, however.
‘All in good time, Benedict. All in good time,’ he said.
Which confirmed what Ben had been thinking, but didn’t detract from his suspicion that Usberti was at least partly delusional. Because no matter how confident he might be that he knew where the idol was, he was seriously underestimating the trouble they were going to have getting there.
And the closer they got to the Syrian border, the more Ben could see the signs of trouble growing. Slowly at first, then with dramatic speed, the highway around them began to crowd with traffic rumbling in both directions. Most of it was military. Dusty olive-green convoys of troop transports, armoured personnel carriers and heavily loaded supply trucks, giant articulated trailer lorries carrying tanks and artillery, formations of four-wheel-drive pickups crammed with men and ordnance. The majority of the army traffic was Turkish, while the rest belonged to Syrian forces allied to President Erdogan’s regime. So far, nobody seemed to be bothering with the RV, but it was only a matter of time before they were pulled over by one lot of soldiers or another.
‘Great plan, Usberti,’ Ben said. ‘This carnival float sticks out like a hot-dog stand at a Jewish wedding. You think you’re just going to go waltzing into the middle of a war zone?’
Usberti said nothing.
Ben knew the border control was up ahead long before Groppione was forced to slow down for it. Both lanes of the highway and a whole stretch of dusty, sandy terrain either side of it were teeming with troops and vehicles. The checkpoint itself was hardly visible through the confusion, but it was clear that what little civilian traffic was attempting to pass through was being stopped and searched. Several vehicles ahead, a dirty, battered Toyota farm truck loaded with goats was rolling at walking pace towards the checkpoint when a group of soldiers clustered around it with rifles pointed and a burly Turkish officer in wrinkled combat DPMs and a blue beret blocked its path with a raised hand. One of the soldiers banged on the driver’s window and made an exaggerated motion telling him to step out of the vehicle. The guy was dressed in Arab garb, wiry and grey-bearded. The soldiers yanked him out of the Toyota. They weren’t being particularly gentle about it. They pushed and poked him around as the officer yelled something in Turkish. The old Arab guy started nervously reaching around inside his garb for his papers, surrounded by threatening guns.
Groppione turned round behind the wheel of the RV and threw a look at his boss that said, ‘What do we do now?’
Usberti still said nothing.
As the soldiers waited impatiently for the old goat farmer to produce his papers, Ben saw the Turkish officer glance over at the RV. As if the huge gaudy bus could be missed, even in all the chaos and half-camouflaged with road dust. The officer issued a brusque nod to some more of his men who were standing on the sidelines. Four snapped to attention and came running over towards the RV, clutching their weapons. MPT-76 battle rifles, standard issue to Turkish infantry. Ben had used one in the past. It was a good tool. Not one that anyone wanted to have pointed at them.
Ben said, ‘Let’s see you talk your way out of this one, Usberti.’
The soldiers came closer. They spread out around the front of the motor coach. Three of them planted themselves right in front of it, aiming their rifles at the windscreen in a triangular formation. The fourth marched up to Groppione’s driver window, which was so high off the ground that he had to stand back to be seen. He used his weapon to rap on the glass and started gesticulating angrily.
‘Boss?’ Groppione said, throwing up his hands. ‘Tell me what to do here? The guy wants to see papers. We don’t have any.’
‘We are going through regardless,’ Usberti replied calmly. He turned and looked at Bozza, who had quietly stepped past Anna and Ben and was standing close to the big leather throne, looking expectantly back at Usberti.
The soldier was still rapping on the window.
The officer who had given the order was stepping away from the goat truck and walking towards them to see what the problem was.
‘We are going through,’ Usberti repeated. ‘Nothing can stand in my way. If God wills it, we will fight our way into Syria. Ugo, shoot the soldiers.’
Bozza responded without hesitation, without the smallest flicker of doubt on his face. He grabbed the submachine gun from Starace. Checked it, flipped off the safety, and walked to the front of the RV.
‘Call him off, Usberti,’ Ben said. ‘He’s about to get us all killed.’
Bozza took aim through the window at the nearest soldier.
Chapter 52
All Ben could do was brace himself for the gunshot. About one second after Bozza squeezed the trigger, every soldier at the checkpoint would respond with a concentration of gunfire that no one inside the RV would survive.
When it came, the blast was stunning, like a massive clap of thunder. Beyond any gunshot Ben had ever heard before. The whole coach rocked violently on its suspension, as though a powerful percussion wave had slapped into it from outside. Windows shattered and cracks appeared all over the windscreen as Groppione ducked behind the steering wheel and covered his head with his arms. Bellini tumbled out of his seat and hit the floor. Ben felt Anna tighten up with sudden terror next to him.
After an instant’s confusion, he realised what had happened. Bozza hadn’t fired the shot. The blast had come from outside. The scene he could see through the RV’s now-cracked windscreen was one of total carnage. The Turkish officer and a dozen of his soldiers had been laid flat by the explosion. Several of them were torn apart. Blood was everywhere. Body parts were still falling from the sky. Separated limbs were strewn across a circle fifty feet in radius. Not just human ones. Pieces of goat lay twitching with the fur singed and smoking. Then the screaming began as dozens more injured men at the edges of the blast circle realised the horror of the damage done to them.
At the centre of it all, what was left of the Toyota farm truck was a black, torn shell engulfed in roiling fire. Surrounding vehicles had been blown over onto their sides by the massive shockwave, flames belching from their scorched insides. Nothing at all remained of the wiry little Arab guy who had been reaching inside his garb for his papers – and pulled out a remote detonator switch instead, triggering what the military called a VBIED, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive device – what everyone else called a car bomb. Twenty or thirty pounds of Semtex cleverly stashed where few soldiers would think or care to search, under a pile of stinking goat bedding in the back of the truck, had done their work.
The result was a slaughterhouse. Ben had been close to car bombs before, but never close enough to see the immediate aftermath from a ringside seat. The checkpoint instantly fell into wild chaos. Some soldiers tried to drag the mutilated survivors away from the flames. Others simply ran, fearing secondary blasts if the fuel tanks of burning vehicles exploded. Some began firing off their weapons in confusion at some unseen enemy hidden in the black smoke that was billowing up and blocking out the sunlight.
Usberti surveyed the scene with an air of unflappable calm, then said, ‘Groppione, drive on.’
Groppione was too stunned to speak. He slammed the selector back into drive, put his foot down, and the coach went lurching through the mayhem. It had taken some shrapnel from the blast, but they were still in the game. A soldier ran in front of them, yelling and waving his gun. Groppione just accelerated towards him and he dived out of the RV’s path.
‘Keep moving!’ Usberti commanded. ‘We do not stop for anything!’ The diesel engine grunted and rasped. Groppione drove blindly through the smoke and flames, rolling over wreckage and crushing dead bodies and severed limbs. Then the smoke cleared to reveal the path ahead, which the explosion had carved out of the busy checkpoint. Groppione accelerated harder, and they were through and away, picking up speed. Through the back window,
Ben saw soldiers chasing them on foot, shouting, raising their rifles. A crackle of shots sounded over the roar of the diesel. Bullets smacked into the tail of the RV. But the soldiers had more to worry about, and quickly gave up the chase to return to their shattered checkpoint.
Massimiliano Usberti looked as proud as if God Almighty himself had come down and parted the Red Sea to let him through. ‘Faith, men. Faith. The Lord is with us.’
Groppione said, ‘Amen to that.’ Starace closed his eyes and sank his chin to his chest in a moment of reverent prayer. Bozza said nothing, and neither did Ben, though for other reasons. If there was a God up there, Ben was thinking, and if He had any influence at all on what happened down here below, then He truly did move in mysterious ways. Or, if Usberti was just lucky, then given what plans his good fortune might allow him to carry out, that in itself could be taken as pretty good proof that there was no God up there after all.
Or, maybe God wasn’t such a good guy.
Ben and Anna sat close together on the leather sofa. The cuffs were constantly chafing and biting his wrists, and there was no way he could sit that didn’t hurt, but he was concerned only for her. ‘Are you okay?’ he mouthed silently. She tried to smile. She nodded. ‘I’m okay,’ she mouthed back.
Soon, all that could be seen of the border checkpoint was a tower of black smoke far behind them as they rolled onwards into Syria, due south. The sun was beginning to set in the west, casting its pale rays through the Perspex window behind Ben and Anna. Sand and dust were blown in ever-shifting waves across the RV’s path by the wintry wind. Warm air whispered through the heating vents. The road went on, and on, through the arid landscape. If the soldiers had radioed ahead to alert other units to the presence of a large, suspicious vehicle in the vicinity, there was no sign of it. They drove past a burned-out tank that sat lopsidedly at the roadside, its armoured flanks perforated and charred black, alone in the desert like a silent monument to the men who had died there. And the thousands more who would before this senseless war passed into history to join all the other senseless wars that men had fought since the dawn of time.
The Babylon Idol Page 28