The Last Secret of the Ark

by James Becker

  ‘Right, then,’ Angela said. ‘Let’s go and play out the rest of this charade.’

  Three minutes later, they were sitting at one of the outside tables in front of the small auberge and Bronson was ordering a couple of grand crèmes, a croissant and a pain au raisin to fill any gaps left after their lunch in Rennes-le-Château.

  A couple of minutes after the waiter had taken their order, two casually dressed men of average height and build with entirely unmemorable faces strolled down the street and took seats at the next table but one. They both nodded in a friendly fashion with a muttered ‘Bonjour, monsieur-dame’ and then continued their quiet conversation in French.

  Angela eyed them discreetly. ‘You were right,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll give you that.’

  The waiter reappeared with a laden tray. Bronson handed him a ten-euro note, waved away the change and launched into his spiel.

  ‘I know it’s a real disappointment,’ he said, ‘and I’m just as pissed off about it as you are, but as far as I can see, there’s nothing else we can do. We’ve tracked the relic from Montségur to Rennes-le-Château and then on to this village, and now we know that this is where the trail ends.’

  Angela picked up the ball and ran with it, and for the next few minutes they batted a repeat of the conversation they’d already had in the church back and forth across the table.

  Bronson noticed that the men at the other table had apparently finished their conversation and were now devoting all their attention to the coffees they’d ordered and to what he and Angela were saying. Their interest was far too obvious, which suggested they weren’t the most experienced surveillance operatives. On the other hand, they were obviously getting the message he wanted to convey, which was really the point.

  ‘So do you want to fly back to London tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘If you prefer, we can spend another day here, perhaps go and have a look around Carcassonne. It’s up to you.’

  At that moment Angela’s mobile emitted a musical tone. She fished it out of her handbag, swiped her finger across the screen and looked at the message she’d just been sent. It took her a couple of minutes to read it. Then she shook her head and put the phone back in her handbag.

  ‘Problem?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘No, just the bloody museum,’ she replied. ‘There’s yet another staff meeting the day after tomorrow and it’s one that I have to get back for. Carcassonne will have to wait for another time. But don’t bother booking the flight now. We can do it from the hotel tonight. I’ll need to make sure that George can pick us up from the airport.’

  Bronson nodded. ‘Okay, then. When you’ve finished your coffee, we’ll get back on the road.’

  Chapter 42

  The three Israelis saw Luca Rossi issue verbal instructions to two of the men who had arrived in the village shortly after him, and watched as the pair walked away, further into the village and out of sight.

  Josef Gellerman waited for three or four minutes as a precaution and then made a decision.

  ‘This is our best chance,’ he said. ‘Lemuel, come with me. Aaron, get in the driving seat as soon as we’ve gone. Start the engine and be ready to pick us up when I raise my arm.’

  The two Israelis checked that their weapons were loaded and cocked with the safety catches on. Then they stepped out of the Renault and walked casually towards the two cars, Gellerman telling Dayan what he wanted him to do when they reached them.

  The vehicles had been reversed into their parking spaces, and Gellerman hoped that their approach from behind would be undetected. At least until the last moment. He could see immediately that Rossi’s interest was focused on a building further along the street. It looked like a cafe bar or perhaps a small hotel, and he assumed that was where the two other men had gone.

  As they reached the vehicles, Gellerman took the pistol out of his pocket, walked straight to the driver’s door of Rossi’s car and wrenched it open. Behind him, Lemuel Dayan exactly and simultaneously mirrored his actions with the second man in the other car.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Rossi,’ Gellerman snapped, aiming his pistol at the chest of the Italian, who had clearly been taken completely by surprise.

  ‘Gellerman,’ Rossi said, staring at the man behind the weapon. ‘You’re a hell of a long way from the Wailing Wall. Still looking for something your sad little country lost, are you? So you can use it to try and really fuck up the world?’

  ‘You know what I’m here for because it’s what you’re here for as well. If you don’t want me to squeeze this trigger you’ll tell me what I want to know. Where is the Ark?’

  Rossi started to laugh. He’d been involved in violence of one sort or another for most of his adult life, and one thing he didn’t do was scare easily.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. All this way to find a relic that vanished from history two and a half millennia ago. You must have been following the same trail we have. Sniffing along on the path of the Ark from Montségur to Rennes-le-Château and finally here to this shithole of a French village. Well here’s the bad news, my radical Jewish friend. The trail ends right here and right now. The Ark isn’t here, and I’ve no idea where it went. Nobody has. Not that I would tell you if I did know.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Rossi shrugged. ‘I don’t give a shit whether you believe me or not. That’s the truth, so you can take it or leave it. Now either pull that trigger or fuck off.’

  Gellerman searched the Italian’s face, looking for signs of deception, but found none. Against all the odds, it sounded as if he was telling the truth. And that suggested another obvious question.

  ‘If you know the Ark isn’t here, why you still waiting around?’

  ‘Just tying up a few loose ends. What you might call final confirmation.’

  Gellerman nodded. ‘Are you carrying?’

  ‘You know me. I’m always armed. Shoulder holster, left side.’

  ‘Put your hands up. Palms flat against the roof of the car.’

  Rossi complied. He had no choice.

  ‘You know I’ll shoot if you move?’

  ‘Of course I know that. Just get on with it, will you.’

  Gellerman reached inside the Italian’s jacket and pulled out a Beretta nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol, which he tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Then he took a step back, glanced behind him to ensure that Dayan was in control of the other man, and raised his left hand above his head.

  Immediately he heard the chirp of tyres on tarmac and the revving of an engine as Chason accelerated the Renault towards them.

  ‘I’d better not see you again, Gellerman,’ Rossi said, his voice laced with menace.

  ‘My own sentiments exactly,’ the Israeli replied, backing away towards the car that had just stopped with a squeal of brakes directly in front of Rossi’s vehicle.

  Dayan opened the Renault’s rear door and climbed in as Gellerman slid into the front passenger seat.

  The moment the door closed, Rossi reacted. He got out of the car, his movements surprisingly fluid and economical for such a big man, bent down and reached under the driver’s seat. As the vehicle containing the Israelis accelerated away, he stood up, a Glock 17 pistol in his right hand, and snapped off three quick shots. One of the bullets shattered the rear window of the fleeing car, but he had no idea where the other two had gone, or if he’d hit any of the men inside it.

  Inside the Renault, Gellerman and Dayan aimed their own weapons and let loose a fusillade of shots. But they were firing inherently inaccurate weapons from an unstable platform as the car accelerated hard over the slightly uneven surface of the road, and neither man had much hope of hitting the target.

  Seconds later, Chason drove the Renault out of range and around the corner.

  * * *

  Gunshots sound unlike anything else, and four people in the village reacted immediately and instinctively when they heard them.

  Marco Ferrara scrambled out of his Alfa Romeo and looked back t
o where Rossi’s car was parked, his right hand closing around the pistol in his jacket pocket. He saw the Renault accelerating towards him, heard the sound of its rear window shattering, and then the sound of other gunshots from within the car.

  He had no idea who was in the vehicle, and the absolutely last thing he wanted to do was get involved in a gunfight on the streets of a French village, but right then he was out of options. The man in the rear seat of the Renault swung a pistol to point directly at him and squeezed the trigger.

  Ferrara immediately dropped flat on the ground to create the smallest possible target, and at the same moment pulled out his own pistol and snapped off two quick shots at the car as it passed. Once it was out of sight, he jumped to his feet and ran along the street towards Rossi. He needed to find out what the hell was going on, and then they had to get out of the village before the gendarmes arrived.

  * * *

  At the auberge, the two men at the other table stood up as the speeding Renault headed in their direction, their right hands reaching for what Bronson was certain were concealed weapons.

  He didn’t think that was a very good idea, so he reacted faster, pulling the Glock from his shoulder holster and levelling it directly at them.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he said in Italian. ‘Both of you, stand still. Now take out your pistols with your left hands, one at a time. You first,’ he added, pointing at one of the two men. ‘Put it down on the table, then back away.’

  Staring down the muzzle of an automatic pistol from a distance of about eight feet, the man knew he had absolutely no choice.

  ‘Now you,’ Bronson said when the first man had disarmed himself. ‘Right. Now you can both get back to whatever rock you live under. Get lost.’

  He replaced his weapon out of sight in the shoulder holster as the two men jogged away down the street.

  The waiter stepped out of the bar at that moment, a dishcloth in his hand, and stared with fascination at the two automatic pistols lying side by side on the table. He took a couple of paces forward and stretched out his hand as if to pick up one of the weapons.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Bronson said again, this time in French. ‘Let me borrow that cloth for a moment.’

  The waiter, looking slightly bemused, passed him the dishcloth.

  Bronson used it to pick up the first of the pistols – they were both Glock 17s, which didn’t come as too much of a surprise – then pressed the magazine release and worked the slide to clear the chamber, repeating exactly the same actions for the second weapon to make them both safe without leaving his fingerprints on them.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, handing back the dishcloth. ‘I’m sure the gendarmes will be along quite soon and they should take charge of these weapons.’

  ‘But what happened?’ the waiter asked. ‘I heard shots.’

  ‘It was the strangest thing,’ Bronson said. ‘We heard the shots as well, and so did the two men sitting at the other table. They just got up, left the pistols where they’d been sitting and ran away.’

  ‘Really?’ The disbelief in the waiter’s voice was obvious. ‘You must wait until the gendarmes arrive,’ he added.

  ‘Normally we would,’ Bronson said, ‘but we have an urgent appointment that we simply cannot miss.’

  He glanced at Angela, who stood up, and they both walked away from the auberge.

  * * *

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ Ferrara demanded when he reached Luca Rossi, who was reloading the magazine of his Glock before putting it in his shoulder holster to replace the missing Beretta.

  ‘That,’ Rossi said, ‘was Josef Gellerman and two of his henchmen from Zeru. I didn’t know those bastards were involved in this.’

  ‘I know his name,’ Ferrara replied, ‘but I’ve never seen him.’

  Rossi stared at him for a moment. ‘You don’t sound surprised about running into Zeru,’ he said. ‘Did you know they might be around?’

  Ferrara nodded. ‘I heard from Caravaggio that they’d had access to the same information that we got from the library in Paris, but I didn’t know they’d be likely to turn up here.’

  ‘You should have expected it,’ Rossi said flatly. ‘Any hint about the location of the Ark and Zeru will be all over it like a rash. It would have been a big help if you’d let me in on that particular piece of information. I’ve had dealings with Gellerman in the past. He’s tough and resourceful and doesn’t give up easily.’

  ‘I don’t think shooting at them was a particularly sharp idea,’ Ferrara said. ‘We need to get out of here right now.’ He turned around, again reaching for his weapon as he heard running feet behind him.

  ‘Relax,’ Rossi said. ‘These are the two I sent down to that cafe to listen to what Bronson and Lewis were talking about. What happened?’ he asked them.

  The men glanced at each other in a nervous fashion, and it was a couple of seconds before one of them replied.

  ‘They were talking about the Ark,’ he said, ‘just as you said they would. They’re going to go back to Britain because they said this is the end of the trail.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Rossi asked.

  ‘Not exactly. When we heard the shots, we both stood up to draw our weapons, in case we were being fired at. But that man Bronson was quicker, and before we could do anything he was pointing his pistol at us.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Ferrara muttered. ‘Don’t tell me he took your weapons.’

  Both men nodded sheepishly.

  Ferrara looked at Rossi. ‘I have no idea where you get your men from these days, but they seem to be completely bloody useless. If I were you, I’d shoot the lot of them. I’d class it as nothing more than mercy killings. Now get on the road, all of you, right now, and scatter. This operation is terminated.’

  As Ferrara turned and walked back towards his car, he heard the slamming of doors and the sound of engines behind him as Rossi and his men prepared to leave the village. He had almost reached his MiTo when Bronson and Angela Lewis walked past him heading in the opposite direction, Bronson holding the Glock in his right hand as a perfectly clear and obvious threat.

  The Italian didn’t even give them a second glance, just got into his car, started the engine and drove away.

  * * *

  Bronson’s hearing was quite acute, and as he unlocked the Peugeot he could faintly hear the sound of an approaching siren somewhere to the south, getting steadily closer.

  ‘The gendarmes, helpfully giving us notice of their arrival,’ he said. ‘I think Quillan is the closest town with a gendarmerie, and they’re probably coming up the main road.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Angela asked.

  ‘Not use the main road, obviously,’ Bronson replied. ‘We’ll take the scenic route and you can tell me exactly what that message was that you received while we were having our coffee, because it obviously wasn’t from the museum. And you can also tell me who the hell George is, and why you think he’s coming to pick us up from the airport.’

  * * *

  About five miles away from the village, just to the west of Couiza, Chason pulled the Renault into a parking area so they could assess the damage. The rear window had imploded from the impact of one of the nine-millimetre bullets Rossi had fired, covering the rear seat in glittering blue-white jewels of safety glass, but neither of his other two bullets, or the rounds fired at them by the other Italian, whom Dayan had recognised as Marco Ferrara, appeared to have struck the car. What they couldn’t find was the bullet that had come through the rear window.

  ‘The door windows were still open,’ Dayan pointed out as they checked the interior of the vehicle, ‘so maybe that’s where it went.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Gellerman agreed. ‘Right, leave the glass on the back seat. When we return the car, we’ll just say a stone flew up and hit it.’

  ‘So where do we go now, if the Ark really has disappeared?’

  ‘Just because we don’t know where it is doesn’t
mean it can’t be found. We’ll go back to Jerusalem. There’s no point in staying here, but this isn’t over yet.’

  Chapter 43

  Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France

  Bronson couldn’t be certain that somebody in Campagne-sur-Aude hadn’t made a note of the registration number of his hired Peugeot after the shots had been fired, and so putting some distance between themselves and the village seemed like an extremely good idea. If he was on the spot when the gendarmes arrived, he was certain he would be questioned, either as a witness or perhaps even as a suspect in the absence of any other non-French people who could be blamed. But if he wasn’t there and the gendarmes had to identify him through the car registration and then try to find him in the vastness of the country, that might well fall under the heading of ‘too difficult’ or simply ‘can’t be arsed’, which would suit him very well.

  So instead of crossing the bridge with the attendant risk of meeting a carload of gendarmes coming other way, Angela and Bronson headed west and picked up the mountain road, the D2, through Brenac. After about five miles, he was able to join the faster D117 through Puivert and Lavelanet. He stayed on the same road until he reached Saint-Antoine, just south of Montgaillard, where he joined the N20, the main road that ran from the border with Spain to the east of Andorra and all the way up to Vierzon, south of Orléans.

  His plan was to reach Toulouse as quickly as he could while staying off the autoroutes where the car would be easier to spot and stop, and to surrender the vehicle as soon as he got there. Obviously he would still be traceable through the hire car company records if the gendarmes decided that he was a person of interest, but the reality was that he had actually done nothing illegal in the village apart from wave an unlicensed automatic pistol at two men who were carrying virtually identical weapons. And the only people who had seen him do that were the two Italian surveillance operatives themselves, whom he had no doubt had already swiftly made tracks into the middle distance.