The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)

by Dominic Selwood

  Danny opened his mouth to demand an explanation, but saw the briefest hint of a flare at the end of the gun’s muzzle, then nothing.

  By the time he hit the dust he was dead, as one more round entered his skull and another ripped his heart apart.

  The men then moved swiftly, disabling the vehicle’s GPS system, then loading Danny’s body into the cab alongside the other two.

  They started it up, and headed off again. But instead of keeping to the tracks leading to the designated observation post, they turned and crunched over the scrub, heading down the mountain towards the Syrian border.

  When they got to the bottom, they rumbled up to the flimsy fence that marked the limits of Israel. Another team had already removed a section of the fence, and staked out a path through the mines left from the wars of the 1960s and 1970s.

  The M270 passed across the narrow strip, then the non-existent Syrian border.

  With a determined burst of speed, the mobile missile system disappeared over the dunes, and into the heartlands of one of the most vicious civil wars in history.

  Chapter 34

  Palazzo Malta

  68 Via del Condotti

  Rione IV (Campo Marzio)

  Rome

  The Republic of Italy

  MARY PULLED OUT her phone, and checked the surveillance logs.

  “Durov’s still inside,” she updated Ava. “He hasn’t left the building once.”

  That was exactly what Ava had been hoping to hear.

  If Durov was in the Order of Malta’s palace, then it was something to do with Rasputin’s cryptographs.

  She was sure of it, and had reached a decision. “If he’s not coming out, then one of us has to go in. And I’m guessing it can’t be you.”

  Looking around, she spotted a luggage shop a little way down a side street.

  “Wait here,” she told Mary, as she crossed the narrow road and headed down towards the boutique. A few moments later, she emerged with a small black rectangular bag.

  Mary was waiting for her outside. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll think of something,” Ava replied, pulling the price tag off one of the handles and dropping it in a bin.

  “Be careful,” Mary warned. “The Order is not like anything else in Rome.”

  Ava nodded.

  Approaching the front of the building, she saw that the heavy wooden gates were now hooked back, revealing a large internal courtyard.

  High on the right hand wooden door was a large polished brass plaque.

  She quickly translated it:

  SOVEREIGN MILITARY HOSPITALLER ORDER OF ST JOHN OF JERUSALEM OF RHODES AND OF MALTA

  MAGISTRAL PALACE

  EXTRATERRITORIAL SEAT

  She pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her jacket and put them into her hair, Italian style. Then she walked through the gateway.

  Looking straight ahead, she ignored a small reception room to her left, and strode through the inner gateway, into an elegantly arcaded private courtyard.

  At its centre, inlaid into the tarmac, was a large white eight-pointed Maltese cross. Around it, parked against the walls, were a number of cars with non-standard licence numbers. She spotted a Diplomatic CD plate with an XA code, which she assumed was the Order’s specific diplomatic identifier, as well as several bearing the acronym SMOM and a number.

  The courtyard was overlooked by four storeys of shuttered windows and, directly ahead, her eyes were drawn from a fountain springing out of a satyr’s mouth up to a large sculpture of the eight-pointed cross of Malta on the courtyard wall.

  There was no doubt who the building belonged to.

  In front of her, standing by the open door at the far end of the courtyard, was a soldier in camouflage battledress cradling an assault rifle.

  She worked hard to keep the surprise from her face.

  What was the Italian army doing here?

  As she approached and could see his uniform in more detail, she was astonished to notice on his arm, under the small Italian flag, a tactical recognition flash displaying the Order of Malta’s cross.

  She could barely believe her eyes.

  The Order of Malta had an army?

  With weapons?

  “I’m a doctor,” she announced brusquely, drawing level with the soldier. “The chaplain called me.”

  She prayed there was a chaplain in the building.

  Without waiting for a reply, she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, and carried on walking. In life, she had discovered, being self-assured was everything.

  The soldier did not react.

  Continuing through the door, she found herself passing under an archway of large battle banners. She spotted white Latin crosses and Maltese crosses on a range of black flags and red flags. Although the distinctive banners had many meanings now – care for the poor, hospitals, pilgrimage – the display was a blunt reminder that the Order was once an elite military unit, and its standards had fluttered on the battlefield, where they inspired fear and awe.

  And she was now trespassing in their headquarters.

  Once through the arch, she entered a richly decorated hallway, whose walls were covered in a collection of large oil paintings. She glanced around, noting saints, nobles in silk and armour, Mediterranean castles, and battle galleys in full sail.

  Ahead of her was a larger-than-life-size crucifix with an enormous wooden Jesus nailed to it in agony. To its left was a cannon stamped with the Order’s cross, and mounted in a pair of display cases were a double handed broadsword and two chain flails with viciously spiked balls. With what she knew about the Order’s history in the crusades and great battles in the Mediterranean, she had no doubt that the weapons had not always been decorative.

  The corridors and rooms branching off the hallway looked largely administrative, so she headed to the grand stone staircase dominating the hall at the far end, and began taking the steps two at a time.

  As she did, she passed an immense oil painting of an epic naval battle, with galleys bearing the crescent moon of Islam ranged against an alliance sailing under the flags of the Papal States, the Knights of Saint John, Venice, Spain, and other Christian countries. The scene was wreathed in cannon smoke, and looked like the mother of all engagements. The plaque underneath read simply, ‘Glorious Lepanto, 1571’.

  Arriving at the top of the stairs, she stopped at a doorway immediately to her left. She listened carefully outside it for a moment, then stole a glance into the room.

  It was a library, with dark bookcases running from floor to ceiling. The centre was dominated by a large table, on which was a carefully built reconstruction of a city.

  There was no one about, so she stepped quietly over to the model, and peered carefully at it, instantly recognizing the topography of the Old Town in Jerusalem.

  She had been to the ancient city many times, and could easily visualize its distinctive hills and topography – with the Temple Mount on the apex of Mount Moriah, rising out of the valleys between Mount Zion and the Mount of Olives.

  Over the years, she had studied hundreds of plans of the city, from the original pagan Jebusite settlement of Salem, where King Melchizadek had anointed Abram, to the modern-day urban sprawl.

  The maquette in front of her was unmistakably medieval Jerusalem, divided into its four different quadrants.

  The area modelled in most detail was the north-western sector – the Muristan in the Christian Quarter. She knew its narrow alleys and unending souqs well, all largely unchanged since medieval times. At its centre was the distinctive form of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And just to its south was a large area comprising three churches, a hospital, and other smaller buildings – all flying the white-on-black cross of the original Knights of Saint John.

  It was a map of the Order’s birthplace in Jerusalem.

  Behind the large model, also on the table, were smaller maquettes of the Order’s fortifications on the Mediterranean islands of Rhodes and Malta, which the knights h
ad conquered and made their home after the Christians lost the crusades. On the wall beside the models was a display charting the evolution of the Order’s patronage – from Saint John the Almoner in the beginning, to the more prestigious Saint John the Baptist.

  Listening intently for any movements out in the hallway, Ava waited in the library for a few minutes, then slipped quietly out of the room and back into the corridor.

  There was a corner ahead, and turning, she froze at the sight of the back of a man entering a room ahead and to her right.

  And behind him, to her horror, staring straight at her, was Oleg Durov.

  She dropped her face instinctively to shield it, but he had recognized her.

  He hissed something to the bodyguards following a step behind him, then turned, following the other man into the room.

  Ava spun and started back down the corridor.

  She was fast. But not fast enough.

  The bodyguard in front was already running. Launching himself forward, he grabbed her upper arm before she could get any further.

  She twisted hard to wrench free, lashing out with her arm and shoulder, knocking him off balance, and sending him crashing into the wall. But the other bodyguard was already on her, smothering her in a body lock.

  Before she knew it, she was being bundled back into the library, and there was a hand over her mouth.

  Chapter 35

  The West Wing

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

  Washington DC

  The United States of America

  IN THE WHITE House, Richard Easton reached for his telephone, and punched in the number he knew by heart.

  He had been in politics long enough to know that getting things done often required alliances with the strangest bedfellows.

  He looked over to his shelf, to his treasured King James Bible.

  The Lord really did work in mysterious ways.

  At the other end of the line, the man picked up.

  “It has begun,” Easton announced simply, then hung up.

  Chapter 36

  Palazzo Malta

  68 Via del Condotti

  Rione IV (Campo Marzio)

  Rome

  The Republic of Italy

  AVA WAS STRUGGLING as violently as she could, but the guard had one hand over her mouth, gripping her jaw tightly, with his other arm wrapped around her body, immobilizing her.

  Beside him, the second guard was typing something into his phone.

  She tried to wrench herself clear, but the guard was far too strong, and she quickly realized that her attempts to break free were futile.

  Redirecting her efforts, she felt with her teeth for any flesh on the hand covering her face. Finding some, she bit down hard.

  The guard bellowed, and pulled his hand away. Seizing the chance, she twisted her shoulders violently to throw off his grip, but was stilled by a blow to the back of her head.

  As nausea washed through her, the guard tightened his hold, and again placed his hand over her mouth – this time holding her jaw painfully hard.

  She watched helplessly as the door ahead of her opened, and Durov strode in.

  “You.” He was approaching her quickly. “Are persistent.” Arriving in front of her, and with no warning, he slapped her viciously across the face.

  “Still interested in icons, I see?” He stepped back, watching her carefully.

  She stared defiantly at him, her ear ringing from the blow.

  The guard behind her changed his hold, putting one arm around her neck, and pinning her upper arms behind her back with the other.

  It was excruciatingly painful.

  “You have something belonging to me.” Durov declared. It was a statement, not a question.

  Ava remained silent.

  He pulled back the cuff of his jacket to reveal a large old-fashioned-looking watch. From behind it, he released a small triangular blade of blackened steel. “Developed by the British SOE in World War Two,” he explained, holding it up in front of Ava’s face. “This is an original.”

  She stared at it.

  This was not good.

  “Saint Peter was a noble man.” His tone was business-like. “In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was being betrayed to the Roman soldiers, do you know what he did?”

  She looked again at the blade, which he was still holding up in front of her face.

  She knew exactly what the Bible said happened in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  Durov rested the blade on her neck, against her jaw.

  “To protect Jesus, he cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant.”

  She held his gaze.

  “Violence,” he murmured, “in the name of the Lord, can be the most holy of acts.” As he spoke, she felt him angle the blade so its edge was touching the underside of the soft skin below her ear.

  “Where is my Shroud?”

  She gazed at him in astonishment.

  His Shroud?

  She did not answer.

  “Why are you here?” His tone was becoming more urgent, and she felt him increase the pressure of the blade under her ear.

  “Research,” she spat out the answer, trying to shut off the pain in her shoulders. “Thought I’d go to Malta this year for my summer holidays.”

  Durov widened his eyes with pleasure for a half-second as he flicked his wrist, and Ava felt a sharp sting to the back of her ear, followed by the sensation of blood on her skin.

  He held the blade in place. “Unlike you, I am a guest in this palace. The continued operation of the heretical Order of Malta in Orthodox Russia is a matter of great diplomatic delicacy.”

  “I didn’t have you down as the peacenik type,” Ava answered.

  Anger flashed across his face. “The time for reconciliation between the Churches is long past. We are now approaching the eessatton.”

  Ava did not understand what he had just said.

  The eessatton?

  What was that?

  “How did you know about the icon?” He slid the blade into the cut, and Ava pushed back the tears of pain gathering behind her eyelids.

  What icon?

  He removed the blade, wiped the blood off on a cloth from his pocket, and slid the weapon back behind his watch.

  “Have it your way. It’s no matter.” His expression was brimming with arrogance. “You’ll never see it.”

  Ava frowned.

  Was he still talking about the icon?

  “Take her to the embassy,” Durov instructed the guards. “By the time I get back, I don’t care if she can still walk, but she needs to be able to talk.”

  Ava was now beginning to feel real fear.

  They would not dare really harm her in the palace, she assumed. There was every chance she could attract the attention of others if things got really nasty. But once in the basement of the Russian embassy, there was every likelihood she would not come out again.

  Without waiting for any further instructions, the two bodyguards bundled her towards the door, and out into the corridor. Behind them, Durov headed off in the other direction.

  With a hand again clamped firmly over her mouth, and her arm twisted up behind her back, there was nothing she could do as they frogmarched her down the corridor.

  They passed an ornate doorway on the right, and through it Ava caught a glimpse of a richly decorated baroque chapel. It was a long rectangular room, with pews running the length of the nave, collegiate-style, facing each other across the central aisle. Around the walls, there were holy pictures of men and women wearing the habit of the Order.

  Up at the far end, at the altar, a priest in traditional clothing – a full chasuble, stole and maniple – was standing and quietly praying.

  The guards drove her forward, and in no time they were approaching a closed door at the end of the corridor. Ava assumed it must lead to a lift, and realized that the three of them would not be able to get through it walking abreast.

  As they
drew up before the door, the guard on her left released his grip, and stepped forward to open it.

  She knew she would not have another chance.

  And she had only one shot.

  She planted her right leg firmly, placed all her weight on it, dropped down, then spun round, low and hard, swinging her left fist up into the groin of the guard on her right, focusing all her strength into a brutal uppercut.

  He bellowed, gagging, and dropped to the floor, instantly releasing his hold on her.

  She sprang backwards, dodging his flailing arm, and sprinted back down the corridor in the direction they had just come.

  Despite having broken free, she was acutely aware that she had almost no chance of making it out of the building. The guard she had punched would only be down for a while, and the other was already starting towards her.

  She needed somewhere safe.

  And fast.

  As she accelerated down the corridor, she drew level with the open door of the chapel.

  She could hear that the guard was now only a fraction behind her.

  Seeing no other option, she threw herself through the chapel’s doorway, and slammed into a row of dark mahogany pews.

  The priest at the altar spun round at the commotion, gazing at her sprawling over the benches. His initial look of incomprehension turned to anger at the sight of the bodyguard crashing through the doorway after her.

  “Sanctuary,” Ava yelled at the priest.

  In England, the ancient medieval law of Church sanctuary had been repealed centuries earlier. She prayed it still meant something to a traditional religious order in Rome.

  The priest eyed her in bewilderment.

  “I’m demanding the Church’s protection,” Ava shouted across to him, scrambling to her feet and running towards the altar.

  “I know what sanctuary is,” the priest answered tartly in a heavy Italian accent. “I’m—”

  He broke off and stared as the Russian bodyguard headed for Ava.

  Whatever the modern Church’s position on sanctuary was, Ava did not have time to find out. She looked around for anything to protect herself with. Nearby were two reliquaries: one of the Blessed Gerard – the Order’s founder – the other of Saint John the Baptist.