by James Becker
For a moment, Angela didn’t understand what he meant, what the reference was to the name she normally associated with a temperature scale, and then she twigged.
‘You mean Kevlar?’ she said.
‘Probably, yes. Anyway, case really strong.’
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small but complex-looking key, which he inserted in turn in the two locks on the side of the case. Then he clicked the catches and lifted the lid.
He turned the case slightly on the table so that Angela could see inside it. Several glossy colour photographs were visible, and something else underneath them.
‘You have seen pictures, yes? Pictures friend Ali sent you?’
‘Yes,’ Angela replied. ‘I saw those pictures. And he was my friend too,’ she added.
‘Good. Now this is relic.’
Husani lifted the photographs out of the case and then reached into the case to remove another object which looked like a folder made of thin cardboard and designed to contain unbound leaves of paper. He placed this carefully on the table in front of Angela.
She reached out for it, opening the flap of the folder and peered inside, but didn’t touch the relic that it contained. Almost as she’d expected, the sight of the parchment was disappointing. It was a rough and slightly irregular oblong of brownish cured animal skin, with here and there a handful of letters and words, some obviously written in Latin, the ink having faded to almost the same colour as the parchment, and all the writing barely visible.
She wished George Stebbins had had the courage to come along to the meeting, because as she stared down at the ancient relic, she was very conscious that she was essentially unqualified to make a judgement on the object. It looked old, certainly, but that didn’t mean it was old. Angela was very well aware that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of highly competent forgers working in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt who would be perfectly capable of producing an object of this type.
But she also knew that those forgers would not have been capable of fabricating a piece of parchment containing text that could only be read in a scientific laboratory. That was completely beyond them. And most forgers, quite understandably, produced relics on which the lettering was readable, because that was the major selling point for them. Her only real concern about the parchment was whether or not it was the same relic that Ali Mohammed had examined. At least she could do something to check that.
‘May I?’ she asked, gesturing towards the sheaf of photographs which Husani had lifted out of the steel-lined case.
‘Of course.’
She selected the picture which showed the parchment in full colour, when it had been photographed under normal lighting conditions. Yes. She was quite certain that these pictures were precisely the same as those which she had received. She then compared the photo to the object in the folder. Unless Husani had managed to find somebody of enormous skill who could work incredibly quickly, she knew that she was looking at precisely the same object.
Angela handed back the photograph and closed the folder containing the parchment. Husani replaced everything in the briefcase, snapping the catches closed but not turning the key in the locks, presumably in case he or Angela needed to look at either the relic or the pictures again.
‘Now you make offer?’ Husani asked.
And that was the question Angela had been dreading. When it came to guessing the value of something like the parchment, she really had very little idea of its proper worth. In the end, she decided she needed two things — more time and another opinion — and that meant somehow getting George Stebbins out of his hotel room.
‘It is not quite that simple,’ she said slowly. ‘I am satisfied that the parchment is genuine, but I need to show it to my colleague who is an expert before I can make you an offer.’
Husani didn’t look very impressed.
‘There other buyers interest,’ he said. ‘Your colleague is man in car, yes? Show it him now?’
‘No,’ Angela replied. ‘He is just a friend. My colleague is in a hotel near here. Can we take the parchment to him so he can see it?’
She could almost see Husani’s lips forming the word ‘no’ when she heard the sudden blare of a car horn, then the roar of an engine. She span round to see Bronson powering the hire car out of the parking space, the front tyres smoking and screaming as they scrabbled for grip.
She turned back to Husani, but the Arab had disappeared. Then she saw that he had fallen backwards, out of his chair, the front of his white shirt a mass of crimson.
Angela choked back a scream. Instinctively she grabbed the steel-lined briefcase that had cost Anum Husani so much money. As she wheeled round and looked back towards the road, she saw a black-clad figure standing just a few yards away. He was staring straight at her, and looking down the barrel of a long and strangely shaped pistol.
The open space of the café was a cliché come hideously to life: there really was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
She heard the increasing bellow from the engine of Bronson’s car, but she knew he was too far away to help her. Then she saw a faint puff of flame from the end of the weapon, and felt in that same instant a sudden, terrible, searing pain in her chest, and an impact that knocked her flying.
She tumbled backwards, losing her grip on the briefcase. Then the back of her head hit the concrete floor — hard — and instantly her world went black.
65
It was the noise that she noticed first. It sounded strangely distant: an intermittent thumping and rumbling sound, and another more constant hum that rose and fell. For some time — it could have been minutes or seconds — she didn’t move, just stayed as still as she could, trying to make sense of what had happened to her. But it made no sense. There seemed to be huge gaps in her memory.
She gradually became aware of a voice — a familiar voice — close to her. A voice that seemed to be saying her name.
And then, slowly, things started to fit together. She realized that she was in a car, lying crumpled across the back seat. That explained the noises she could hear. But how had she got into a car? And whose car was it?
With a rush, she remembered the café. She remembered talking to Anum Husani, remembered examining the parchment. And then her normal, lineal memory seemed to fail her, and it was as if she was seeing individual frames from a movie inside her head.
Husani no longer sitting beside her, but flat on his back on the ground, his shirt deep red in colour. Grabbing the briefcase. A man dressed all in black. And then the gun. The gun he was holding. And then the man firing the gun.
She gasped with shock as she relived the moment, and struggled to sit up. As she did so, a throbbing pain pulsed through the back of her head, and she cried out involuntarily, reaching up to hold the place where it hurt.
‘Angela. It’s me, Chris. Don’t try to move. Just lie there. Just for a few more minutes.’
‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice weak and slurred. ‘Where are we?’
‘Madrid. We’re still in Madrid, but we won’t be for long. We’re going to have to move quickly, but first I need to take a look at that head of yours. You cracked it pretty hard when you fell.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ Angela said, ‘but I do know that my head hurts.’
Suddenly, the world outside the car went dark as the vehicle angled downwards.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re at the hotel. As soon as I’ve parked the car we’re going up to our room. Then I’ll explain what happened.’
Moments later, Bronson pulled the car to a halt.
‘Can you get out by yourself?’ he asked.
‘Did I get in by myself?’
Bronson gave her a slight smile.
‘Not exactly. I’m afraid I had to more or less chuck you in there. There wasn’t time to do anything else.’
Angela turned round on the seat to face the open door and, with legs that suddenly seemed to be made of rubber
, crawled clumsily towards his waiting hands.
As soon as he could, Bronson seized her under the armpits and gently lifted her body out of the car. Once he was sure that she could stand, albeit leaning against the side of the vehicle, he let go of her.
‘Just hang on there for a couple of seconds,’ he said.
Bronson glanced round the garage, but he and Angela were entirely alone there, and so far he hadn’t spotted any surveillance cameras. Nevertheless, he used his own body to screen what he was doing from any possible observer. He bent forward, reached down into the passenger-side foot well and removed four objects. The first was a briefcase; and the others a mobile phone and a Beretta semi-automatic pistol with a lengthy suppressor attached to its muzzle, plus a pistol magazine. He snapped open the two catches on the leather-covered briefcase and put the phone, the magazine and the pistol, complete with the suppressor, inside it. Then he closed the briefcase and locked the car.
Holding the briefcase in his left hand, he wrapped his right arm around Angela, pulling her close to him, and then the two of them began slowly walking across the garage floor towards the two lifts.
Bronson ushered Angela inside one of the lifts and pressed the button for their floor. Less than three minutes later, he was able to lock the door of their room from the inside and watch Angela sit down gratefully on the wide double bed.
Bronson put down the briefcase and walked across to where she was sitting.
‘Just lean forward very slightly,’ he said, ‘so that I can see the back of your head.’
He examined the wound on the back of her scalp. It was more bruised than cut, and he didn’t think it would need stitches, just a dressing and a pad, neither of which, of course, he had.
‘I need to clean and dress that wound,’ he told her. ‘Just stay here on the bed while I go and find a medical kit from somewhere. Don’t open the door to anybody. I’ll take the key with me.’
Angela silently nodded her agreement.
Bronson descended in the lift to the ground floor. There was nobody at the reception desk, so he walked through into the bar. About half a dozen people were sitting at tables in there, drinks in front of them and, as he’d hoped, the same friendly waiter he’d spoken to before was standing behind the bar industriously wiping the countertop.
Bronson immediately walked over to him.
‘Do you have a medical kit I could borrow?’ he asked. ‘My wife’s bashed her head, and I just need a dressing or something to cover it.’
The man looked concerned.
‘If you want,’ he suggested, ‘I can call a doctor for her. An English-speaking doctor, I mean.’
Bronson shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that bad. It’s just a graze, really. I just need to clean and dress it.’
‘If you’re sure?’
He walked to the opposite end of the bar and reached below it, and then handed Bronson a small white plastic box with a red cross on it.
‘Thanks. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.’
The waiter nodded.
‘Take as long as you need. Just make sure she’s OK.’
Back in their bedroom, Bronson opened the medical kit, took out what he thought he would need, and then tenderly washed the wound on the back of Angela’s head in warm water. Once he’d removed most of the dried blood from the hair around the injury, it looked a lot smaller and a lot less serious than he’d thought at first. But blows to the head, even quite minor injuries, can be dangerous. There’s the possibility of concussion or, less likely, a fractured skull or damage to the blood vessels inside the brain.
‘How does it look?’ Angela demanded.
‘It’s not too bad,’ Bronson said truthfully. ‘It’ll still need a small pad or something to cover it, but otherwise it’s fine.’
He organized a pad and, as a temporary measure, loosely tied a bandage around the back of Angela’s head and around her forehead, just to keep it in place.
‘Right,’ Angela said, ‘now you’ve done your impersonation of Florence Nightingale, why don’t you tell me what the hell happened in that café.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘It’s mostly clear in my mind up to the point when you started the car. I recall turning to look over towards you, but after that I can only remember flashes. I saw Husani lying on the floor.’
Angela stopped talking and her eyes widened in a delayed-shock reaction as her brain processed the implications of what she was saying.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said.
Bronson nodded.
‘I’m afraid he is, but it’s thanks to him that you’re not.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Let me tell you what happened, as I saw it. As soon as I got back to the car I started the engine, so I could move immediately, and started watching you, and checking the street in both directions. I really didn’t think there would be any trouble, but it just seemed like a sensible precaution.’
‘Which it was,’ Angela remarked.
‘I saw Anum Husani approaching. He was difficult to miss, because he was on my side of the road, but I guessed it was him because he was carrying the briefcase. Then he crossed the road and approached you at the table, and that more or less confirmed who he was. Quite a few people walked past the café, and a couple even went in and took a table on the opposite side of the terrace to where you were sitting, but I thought they all seemed entirely innocent. And then I saw a man walking along the pavement, dressed in black. He looked like a priest. Anyway, he didn’t appear to be in any way threatening, and seemed occupied talking on a mobile phone.’
‘The man in black,’ Angela shuddered. ‘Him, I do remember.’
Bronson nodded. ‘He stopped walking a few yards away from the café terrace, the way people sometimes do when they’re concentrating on a particular subject being talked about during a telephone call. All of that seemed perfectly normal, but then I noticed that he seemed to be looking towards the café, and possibly even staring towards your table. That rang alarm bells. Then he slid the phone into his pocket, reached inside another pocket and pulled out the gun. It all happened very quickly. It turns out you can hide a lot of stuff underneath a cassock.’
Angela tried a laugh that ended up a hoarse croak.
‘So what did you do?’
‘I knew I couldn’t run across the street and grab hold of him before he fired, so I did the next best thing. I used the car as a weapon. I sounded the horn to try to distract him, and then drove straight towards him. But I wasn’t quite quick enough. He must have been a professional, because he didn’t even glance in my direction. He was totally focused on completing the job, and we’re just lucky that the first part of the work he did was killing Anum Husani, not you.’
Bronson looked at Angela’s face and saw her eyes misting.
‘He seemed like a decent man,’ she said, her voice breaking as she spoke. ‘He really didn’t deserve that.’
‘The first shot the killer fired took Husani in the middle of the chest, and he was probably dead even before he hit the ground. Then I saw him switch his aim towards you. I accelerated as hard as I could, but I was a couple of seconds too late. I saw you fall down, flat on your back.’
Bronson stopped talking for a moment, and Angela could see the emotion coursing through him, his eyes glistening. She’d never seen him quite this close to tears before. She reached out and gently squeezed his hand.
‘At that moment I was quite certain that you were dead, that he’d just murdered you, right in front of me. So I didn’t slow the car. In fact, I accelerated even harder. He tried to jump to one side, but I caught his legs with the right front of the vehicle, and he went straight down.’
‘Oh, God,’ Angela murmured.
‘I jumped out, and checked to see if he was still a threat. But I’d done a good job. It looked as if both his legs were broken, and he was unconscious. He was bleeding from his nose and ears, so he’d probably smashed his head
onto the pavement. If I’m honest, at that moment I very much hoped I’d killed him. I grabbed his pistol and his mobile, then searched him quickly, but the only other thing he had on him was a spare magazine for the pistol. Then I ran over to you.’
For a few seconds Bronson again visibly struggled with his own emotions, then he resumed his narrative.
‘You were just lying there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know if you were still breathing, and there was some blood on the back of your head, but I couldn’t see any sign of a bullet wound. Then I looked at the briefcase. There was a small hole torn in the leather, and I could see the glint of metal behind it. The bullet knocked you to the floor, but somehow it didn’t make it through the case.’
Angela nodded weakly.
‘Husani was really proud of that case. He bought it specially. He said it’s lined with Kevlar. He actually told me it was bulletproof.’
‘Really lucky for you that it was. As soon as I saw that, I knew that you had to be alive, so I just picked you up, put the briefcase under my arm, and ran back to the car. There were people screaming and shouting, and it was only going to be a matter of minutes before the Spanish police pitched up. I really didn’t want to have to answer a lot of questions from them.’
‘But what about the assassin? You probably killed him.’
Bronson shook his head.
‘If I’d stayed, I would have been the only person involved in the incident who was still alive, apart from you, and I can absolutely guarantee that the very first thing the Spanish police would have done was arrest me, and possibly you as well. My other worry was that whoever’s trying to recover the parchment had obviously hacked into Husani’s email — and probably yours as well — and if they can do that, arranging for somebody to attack you or me in prison wouldn’t greatly tax their ingenuity. The only safe thing I could do was get us — and the parchment — away from the scene as quickly as possible.’
‘But surely somebody will have noticed the car number?’
‘Maybe, but witnesses to violent action very rarely remember anything particularly clearly. And with any luck we’ll be long gone before they get around to checking.’