The Lost Relic bh-6

by Scott Mariani

  Right now, though, she couldn’t think of a place she’d rather be.

  ‘You’re a star, Amal. I worry about that amaranthus.’

  ‘Leave it with me. It’ll be ten feet high when you get back.’

  ‘One thing, though. If anyone comes looking for me, don’t tell them where I’ve gone, OK? And I do mean anyone.’

  ‘No problem. I won’t breathe a word.’ Amal frowned in concern. ‘Everything all right, Brooke?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. I just badly need to get away from it all. And thanks. I owe you one.’

  A quick phone call to Sturmer-Wainwright Associates was all she needed to square the time off work with her bosses. Five minutes later, she’d booked a flight online for seven-thirty the next morning. With a little luck she’d be at her place in Portugal for lunch.

  As she started packing her things for the morning trip, she felt a pang of guilt at the thought of Ben. She desperately wanted to see him – and she would, the moment this stupid situation with Marshall was resolved. That couldn’t happen soon enough. She called his mobile number. No reply. After the tone she left her message:

  ‘Hey, babe, it’s me. You’ve probably been wondering why I haven’t been in touch. I promise I’ll explain everything as soon as I can, OK? Anyway, I’m going to my place in Portugal for a few days. Maybe a week or so. I need a break. Remember there’s no mobile signal there, so you won’t be able to call me – but don’t worry about me and I’ll see you soon. Miss you. Love you.’

  Chapter Thirty

  172 kilometres southwest of St Petersburg, Russia

  The gleaming black Mercedes S-Class limo pulled up on the lonely, empty stretch of country road. When its engine cut out, the only sound was the murmur of the wind and the cawing of a faraway crow. It was the kind of place few people ever passed through, and even fewer people stopped. The road was reduced almost to rubble by the ravages of too many hard winters. The few trees around looked starved and oppressed under the grey sky. The only feature in the bleak landscape was the ruined church steeple a few hundred metres away, its spire just visible from the road over the top of a grassy mound.

  Grigori Shikov hauled his bulky frame from the rear of the limo and stretched away the stiffness that had crept through his limbs on the long drive. Spartak Gourko climbed out of the other rear door, while Yuri Maisky stepped down from the driver’s seat.

  Barely a word had passed between them since St Petersburg. Gourko hadn’t spoken once. Maisky watched him walk around to the back of the car, pop the boot and take out a green military duffel bag and a large black combat shotgun. It was loaded with solid rifled slugs the size of wine corks, capable of blowing a man in half at thirty metres. Not that anyone was likely to disturb them out here in the middle of nowhere; though Maisky knew that Gourko would have relished the opportunity.

  Shikov reached across his chest to his inside jacket pocket, took out a single sheet of paper and unfolded it. For the hundredth time since leaving Georgia, he studied the copy of the document he’d retrieved from inside the broken Goya frame. He glanced up from the paper to look at the distant church ruin. He licked his lips and nodded. ‘This is the place.’

  They left the road, and Shikov led the way through the long grass. He was soon breathing hard with the exertion of crossing uneven terrain, but pressed on eagerly.

  He’d waited a long time for this moment. Paid a heavy price for what he knew was waiting for him here.

  He imagined turning it over in his hands. Caressing it with a lover’s touch. To be able to hold it, own it at last. The excitement was almost more than he could bear. Part of him couldn’t help but question whether acquiring the priceless lost relic – so long dreamed of, so far beyond his reach all these years – had been worth the death of Anatoly. Another part of him hated himself for thinking it.

  And yet another part told him he’d thought, and done, things in his time that were far, far worse. He had little time to waste on idle sentiment, especially when something like this was about to become his.

  Maisky followed. Gourko brought up the rear, the duffel bag slung over one shoulder and the shotgun dangling lazily at his side. At the top of the grassy rise, the old ruined church came into view. Crows had nested in its steeple, and all but one of the walls had long since crumbled to the ground, their fallen grey stones covered with moss and half obscured by wild flowers. A tree had grown up where the nave used to be.

  The paper trembled in Shikov’s hand. The lie of the land was exactly as Borowsky had described. ‘This way.’ He led them over a low broken-down wall to the neglected graveyard beyond. Some of the graves had been grand once, but now the imposing monuments and statues were weathered and streaked with green lichen. Other gravestones were broken or misaligned, like bad teeth. Across the far side of the cemetery was the crumbling outer wall, and next to it an old oak tree.

  The tree was the marker. Near to its foot, three simple graves were arranged in a row, the stones lying flat on the ground and half grown over. The resting places of three poor folks, three undistinguished lives that had met unremarkable ends and melted away into history. Shikov lowered his heavy bulk into a crouch and studied the weathered inscription on the first of the three gravestones. He shook his head and stepped over to the next one.

  Not this one either. His face darkened. Just one left. He dropped down awkwardly on his haunches and tore away the clump of weeds obscuring the markings on the third gravestone.

  ‘Andrei Bezukhov,’ he muttered. ‘Born 1794, died 1853.’ He took a deep breath and looked up at Maisky, standing nearby. ‘This is it.’

  ‘I wonder who he was,’ Maisky said.

  Shikov raised himself upright with a grunt of effort and gave his nephew an empty stare. ‘Who gives a damn who he was? It’s here.’ He nodded at Gourko.

  Gourko propped the gun against the tree, unslung the duffel bag, reached inside and came out with a heavy iron wrecking bar. He rolled up his sleeves and then stabbed the chisel end of the bar deep into the grass at the edge of the gravestone. The muscles in his forearms bulged and veins stood out from his skin as he heaved it upwards, levering the heavy slab off the ground with a ripping of dead grass. Beetles and woodlice scuttled away from the rectangular patch of bare, damp earth it left behind.

  Gourko tossed the wrecking bar down on the grass. He shoved his hand back into the duffel bag and took out a folding military entrenching shovel. As he began to dig, Maisky glanced around him nervously and Shikov looked increasingly restless.

  Within less than a minute of fast digging, Gourko’s shovel blade struck something that sounded metallic.

  ‘Quickly,’ Shikov said. ‘Get it out.’

  Gourko stabbed and chopped at the earth and uncovered the top of a metal box, like a small casket. It would have been too small for even a baby’s coffin, and was buried far too close to the surface. Gourko dropped the shovel and got down on his knees to dig around the casket with his hands. He prised the object from the ground and placed it on the grass at the graveside.

  Maisky hadn’t seen the Tsar look this excited since the execution of Vladimir Drago and the heads of the four ruling families in ’94. He seemed to savour the moment like a gourmet dish being placed in front of him. He was almost rubbing his hands with glee.

  ‘So this is where Borowsky hid it.’ His voice was strangled and croaky with emotion. He cleared his throat and ordered Gourko to open the casket.

  Gourko grappled with the domed lid of the metal box, but it was rusted shut. He reached down his leg, slipped a small double-edged commando dagger out of the hidden sheath he wore in his boot, and used its sharp tip to force the box open. The lid gave with a crack. Gourko wiped his blade carefully on his trouser leg and slipped the knife back into the boot sheath. He opened the casket and looked inside. His expression didn’t change. He glanced at Shikov. Stared back at the box.

  ‘Show me,’ Shikov said, panting with anticipation. Gourko slowly turned the casket round so they could
see inside.

  Empty.

  Shikov left the cemetery looking as though he’d just attended the funeral of a dear friend. His shoulders were slumped in grim defeat as they walked back to the limo.

  Inside the car, Maisky let out a long sigh. ‘Well, that’s that.’ He thought the old man was as grey as a corpse. ‘I’m so sorry, uncle. Maybe Borowsky went back for it,’ he added after a pause.

  Shikov shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe he lied about the whole thing.’

  Shikov shook his head again. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Then someone else must have taken it,’ Maisky said.

  Shikov was silent for a long time. ‘And my boy died for nothing,’ he said quietly, and closed his eyes.

  In the driver’s seat, Gourko said nothing.

  Shikov was taken by a racking fit of coughing. He grabbed a pill from the tube in his pocket and gulped it down. When he’d finished coughing he said, ‘Spartak.’

  Gourko slowly turned to look at him. His eyes stayed blank.

  ‘One item of business remains unfinished,’ Shikov said. ‘Until it’s done, you work only for me. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gourko said. It was the first word he’d uttered since they’d left Georgia.

  ‘You’ll return to Italy, or wherever necessary, and for as long as required. You’ll have unlimited resources. Men, money, transportation, weapons, no object. Eliminate anyone who gets in your way.’

  Gourko nodded. A thin smile tugged at the scar.

  ‘Find this man who killed my boy. However long it takes. Whatever it takes. You find me this . . . this Ben Hope.’ Shikov’s eyes brimmed with sudden tears, and he wiped them with the back of his hand and sniffed, then collected himself. ‘You may hurt him if you wish. Hurt him very badly. But keep him alive, and bring him to me. I want to be there at the end. I want to be the one who finishes him. As he deserves to be finished. Is that clear, Spartak?’

  Gourko nodded again, smiling more widely.

  Shikov snapped his fingers. The tears were gone. ‘Start the car.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Rome

  The taxicab Ben took from the airport was a faded yellow Merc that had seen a lot of hard service and looked like it was a second home for the driver, a cheerful, chubby guy with curly hair. Ben read out the address on Tassoni’s business card, and the guy seemed pleased. It was right across the other side of Rome.

  Almost 5.20 and the traffic was intense. As they hustled across town the driver played Iron Maiden loudly from rattling speakers, drummed on the wheel and sang along. His English was even less comprehensible than the lyrics the lead singer was belting out.

  ‘OK if I smoke?’ Ben said over the noise.

  The guy made a casual gesture that said sure, do what you like. Not the fussy type. Ben leaned back in the worn seat and took out his Gauloises and Zippo. He offered one to the driver. The guy was happy to accept. Ben smoked and watched the city go by, and thought about Urbano Tassoni.

  When the politician had invited him to dinner earlier that day, Ben had made the assumption that he simply wanted to curry public favour by being seen to hobnob with ‘l’eroe della galleria’. Visions of himself walking into a storm of camera flashes, platoons of paparazzi stampeding over one another to get a shot. Having to pose shaking hands with the politician, the whole tedious grip ’n’ grin media ritual that he’d have done anything to avoid.

  But Ben realised now that his assumption had been false. Dinner probably would most likely have been a very private affair after all. Just the two of them, over good food and good wine, exactly as Tassoni had promised. A pleasant, quiet couple of hours during which the politician would have used all his well-practised smooth-talking guile to pump Ben for just how much he knew, or might have figured out, about the gallery robbery. Whoever had set up the operation, they hadn’t figured on their plan being interrupted by someone like him; and whatever Tassoni’s involvement, it made sense that he would want to assess the level of threat Ben represented now, in the aftermath.

  This surprise visit was going to be interesting. Even a politician could be made to tell the truth. All it took was a little pressure of the right kind. By the time their discussion was over, Tassoni was going to feel all squeezed out.

  It was after quarter past six by the time the taxi pulled up in the quiet street where the politician lived. Judging by the average value of the cars parked along the kerb, Tassoni had picked himself one of the most prestigious neighbourhoods in the Roman suburbs. The houses were widely spaced apart, and stood well back from the road at the end of long paved or gravelled driveways. The late afternoon air smelled of flowers and freshly-mown lawns. Tassoni’s place was bounded by a high wall. The house was a graceful white villa, its facade elegantly half-hidden behind drooping willows. Outside the front entrance, a sparkling white Porsche Cayman was parked up next to a burgundy Cadillac SUV. If Tassoni was a patriot, it didn’t show in his automotive tastes.

  Cameras peered down from the tall gateposts. Ben wasn’t going in there to kill anyone. Not yet. So it wasn’t nervousness about being caught on a security recording that made him stop and peer back up at the little black lenses that were watching him from above. He was thinking again about inconsistencies. An untrained eye would have missed them, but Ben was already picking out details that seemed to jar.

  The politician clearly valued his security; yet the tall wrought-iron gates were wide open. Not just open, but wedged with wooden chocks so that their automatic closing mechanism was blocked. Not the most secure perimeter Ben had ever had to cross.

  He walked through the open gates and up the driveway. The lawns were prim, the flower beds neat. Fancy gravel, not just rough quarry chippings but the expensive ornamental stuff. Ben only noticed it because of the tyre grooves cut so deep into the surface that in places it was down to the black synthetic membrane underneath. As though someone had driven away from the place in a real hurry. More inconsistency. Tassoni’s place looked well-tended enough to be pretty well staffed. The kind of place you’d expect two little guys to come out from behind the bushes to rake the gravel up after you. The urgent skidmarks struck the wrong note. A subtle sense of emptiness, a certain desolation that Ben couldn’t put his finger on.

  He walked on towards the house. At its end the driveway forked into two and swept across the front of the villa in a U-shape. He climbed the steps to the entrance and his eyes searched for a bell push. Before he found one, he saw the inch-wide gap between door and frame. He nudged with his foot, and the door swung open silently.

  The hallway was large and elegantly furnished, with huge polished stone floor tiles that probably each cost the price of a small car. It made Ben think of the old part of the Academia Giordani building, on a showier scale. The broad double staircase was carpeted in red and the banisters gleamed with fresh wax. A perfect backdrop for a photo session for Grazia or Paris Match.

  Not today, though. Not without some major cleaning up first.

  Ten metres away from the entrance, two men in dark suits were lying sprawled on their backs on the gleaming floor. Tassoni’s bodyguards. They hadn’t been there very long, because the blood pools around them hadn’t fully glazed yet. Ben put it at about twenty minutes. Both men had been shot.

  Ben walked up to them. He wasn’t interested in the smaller, blonder of the two guys. It was the big one who caught his attention, and held it. Standing up, he would have towered over Ben by maybe four inches. The cut of his suit couldn’t hide the weight-room bulk of his chest, shoulders and arms. But no amount of muscle could stop a bullet. One had punched through his left pec, straight through to the heart. That one probably hadn’t killed him outright, though. The fatal shot had split his dark glasses in half before blowing out the back of his head. Everything above the eyebrows was pretty much mulch. Below the eyebrows, the face was mostly intact. The dark glasses had fallen away to reveal the guy’s eyes, which were open and staring.

&n
bsp; One brown. One hazel.

  The big man had been going for his weapon when he’d died. The chunky .45 Ruger automatic was cupped loosely in his outflung hand. Ben scooped it up. It was loaded. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. First lesson Boonzie McCulloch had ever taught him, a long time back, and it had stuck.

  He glanced around him, and that was when he noticed the foot poking through the banister rails. The shoe was shiny. Expensive Italian leather. He trod up the stairs to see more, but he already knew whose foot he was seeing.

  Which was just as well, because Tassoni’s whole face was missing. The generous blood spatter and the bullet hole in the staircase wall told Ben that the politician had taken one shot to the head while still on his feet, then a second after he’d gone down.

  Not the messiest headshot Ben had ever seen, but not too far from it.

  It ain’t a lump of coal, he thought.

  That first shot had gone right through Tassoni’s head and into the wall. Ben stepped carefully over the body and examined the hole in the plaster. It was neat and clean, about the right size to have been drilled by a .38 or .357 handgun bullet. He could see through it into the next room. There were no shell casings lying about, which meant either the shooter had picked them up, or he’d used a revolver. Three targets, two shots each, added up to six. A revolver made sense. It also tallied ballistic-wise. The most penetrative handgun calibre Ben had used in an automatic pistol had been the .357 SIG cartridge, back in his army days. It had been conceived by a military mind with the purpose of providing a little more power than the standard 9mm auto rounds. But not even the .357 SIG could punch through a man’s skull and out the other side, removing most of his head before going straight through the wall behind him.