The Lost Relic

‘Fuck him, he’s dead anyway.’ The man pointing the gun casually placed the muzzle against Marcello’s neck and touched off the trigger. A deafening triple-shot burst crackled out across the landing and up the passage. The 9mm bullets ripped into Marcello’s body and his distressed heart stopped for ever.

Ben recoiled into the bathroom, unseen, and turned the lock.

Down below, Anatoly and the rest of his team had rounded up the crowd of exhibition guests. The gallery was filled with shouts of rage and frightened screams and the blast of fully-automatic fire as the intruders let off bursts into the ceiling. It was a technique intended for one purpose only – to strike terror into their victims and reduce them into a state of complete helplessness – and it was very effective. The thirty-five or so guests gave no resistance, allowing themselves to be herded like sheep across the gallery, their shoes crunching on the broken glass from shattered overhead lighting. It took under half a minute to shove everyone into the corner of the side room and make them huddle on the floor across from the refreshments table. The white-haired woman in the blue dress was looking around desperately for her husband and wailing loudly in panic. Rocco yelled at her to shut up, and when she kept on wailing Anatoly grabbed a half-finished bottle of Chianti from the refreshments table, took a long swig out of it and then hurled it at her. The base of the bottle caught her across the forehead and she fell back with a gasp. Another woman and the bearded guy in the sandals caught her as she keeled over.

‘How dare you!’ the bearded guy shouted. ‘This is an outrage!’

Gourko delivered a kick to his stomach that folded him double before slamming a knee into his face. He collapsed, wheezing, blood pouring out of his busted nose into his beard.

Gourko laughed.

The Robert Redford type in the Valentino blazer glowered at him, but did nothing. Crouching among the other hostages, Count De Crescenzo exchanged looks of horrified disbelief with his business partners Corsini and Silvestri. The bearded guy huddled into the arms of the woman he was with. The woman in the blue dress was slumped against the wall in shock, blood running from the cut on her forehead.

‘Am I going to get any shit from you fuckers?’ Anatoly screamed in Russian at the cringing assembly. ‘Am I?’ He didn’t care that they wouldn’t understand him. They’d understand this. He aimed his machine pistol at the table and let off a rattling blast that smashed bottles and plates into flying pieces. ‘Am I?’ he screamed again. Wine and food spilled onto the floor. The hostages cowered in terror.

Gianni Strada was pale and shaking as he clung to his mother. The boy was holding her so tightly that it hurt. Donatella struggled to contain her own panic as the armed men strode up and down the room. The one who frightened her the most was this maniac with the blond ponytail sticking out from under his mask. Was that Russian he was talking? Sounded like it to her. What was happening? How could this be happening? Was no alarm being raised?

Gianni suddenly let out a strange, high-pitched keening sound that dissolved into racking sobs. He clung to her even tighter, grasping handfuls of her hair. She could feel his tears wet against her neck.

‘You. Make that little ratshit quiet or he dies in the next two seconds,’ Anatoly raged, jabbing the gun an inch from her face.

Donatella didn’t need a translator. She closed her eyes and stroked her son’s hair, murmuring words of comfort in his ear. Gianni’s sobs quietened to a low whimper.

Anatoly unslung the padded case from his shoulder and laid it down on the table. He beamed at the hostages.

‘Good. Now let’s get down to business,’

Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_f018de84-cda2-5bfd-be64-e8fd28456cbb)

Ben paced the bathroom, thinking hard. There was no telling how many armed men were down there, and how many other people had been hurt. He dug in his jeans pocket for his phone.

It was a rare thing for Ben to call the cops. In the kinds of situations his work had often involved him in the past, the last thing he needed was the police getting under his feet. But today he was just a tourist. He was unarmed, he had no idea what was happening, and he had no other options.

He punched 112 into the phone keypad, the emergency number for the Carabinieri. Italy’s paramilitary gendarmerie were widely disliked but in a situation like this, with their rapid firearms response capability, they were the best people for the job. Fractions of seconds felt like drawn-out minutes as he waited for the dial tone.

And nothing happened. His phone was dead, just like Donatella’s. His battery was about three-quarters charged and he was getting a good reception. Yet the phone was utterly useless. There was only one explanation, and that was that the intruders were using a cellphone blocker. The kind of equipment that police and counterterror units used to isolate cells of suspects before moving in. Which meant that what was happening downstairs was no ordinary armed raid – and with no way to call for outside help, Ben was going to have to deal with it on his own.

Another burst of shots from down below made him think of Donatella and Gianni Strada. He imagined the boy’s terror. Felt his blood turn from icy cold to burning hot at the thought of anyone harming either of them. He thought of old Marcello Peruzzi lying dead at the top of the stairs. Thought of all those other people down there, helpless, vulnerable, frightened. His teeth clenched so hard that they hurt.

The muffled clump of footsteps running up the passage was audible through the bathroom door. Voices outside.

Ben glanced around him. In a moment like this, just about any household item could be turned into an improvised weapon. His gaze locked on the mirror above the sink. He was just about to smash the glass with the heel of his shoe when he heard the marching footsteps run right up to the bathroom door.

The handle turned. The door rattled furiously. That flimsy lock wasn’t going to last long.

As the first heavy kick pounded the door, Ben leaped across the room and out through the French windows onto the balcony. It was too high to jump down to the concrete below without risking injury. He craned his neck upwards and saw that there was another balcony window directly above. The old house was built from solid stone, and the masonry had been expertly pointed, with recesses between the blocks that looked just about deep enough to climb.

As more kicks thudded violently against the bathroom door, he jumped up onto the balcony rail, turned to face the wall and dug his fingers into the cracks in the stonework to the left of the window. He swung his legs off the balcony. For a few painful seconds, his fingertips took his weight as he brought up his knees and scrabbled against the wall with the toecaps of his shoes until he found a crack. He was clear of the window now, clinging to the sheer wall like a spider. He reached up with his right arm, groped for another hand-hold and found it. Then the left foot, feeling around for a good purchase, then pulling himself up so he could grab another hold with his left hand. The second floor window was still tantalisingly far above him. He climbed faster.

Down below, the bathroom door burst open with a crash and the two gunmen rushed in, weapons at the hip, knees bent to brace themselves against the recoil. A storm of automatic fire shattered tiles and blasted apart the sink, riddling the walls with holes. Before the men even realised the room was empty, it was destroyed. One of them motioned to the French windows. They ran over to them and burst out onto the balcony.

Ben was clambering over the rail of the balcony above when he looked down and saw the masked gunmen below him, craning their necks down at the ground. They hadn’t spotted him. For a moment he was tempted to jump down and try to take them both – but some kinds of heroics could get you killed in a hurry.

By the time they’d looked up from the balcony below, Ben had disappeared out of sight and was going in through the second floor window.

The two men heard the smash of glass above them and knew what it meant. One grabbed a radio handset from his pocket, hit the press and talk button and said in Italian, ‘This is Scagnetti. I’m with Bellomo. We have a runner.’

The reply that came over the radio was ‘Find him. Kill him.’

Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_8780e992-cf0e-5dbd-b082-d03d287eb7b4)

It didn’t take Anatoly long to find the piece of artwork his father had sent him all the way to Italy to obtain. The framed Goya sketch looked pretty much the way it had in the photo he’d seen in the old man’s study. Just a plain and, to him, frankly pretty fucking boring picture of some scraggy dude crouched down on his knees. The poor bastard was barefoot and had a desperate expression on his thin face. He was wearing a shapeless robe that could have been a bit of old sacking material, and his hands were clasped together in supplication as he prayed fervently to God for something or other. Salvation, Anatoly supposed. Or maybe just a decent suit of clothes.

Anatoly looked at the picture for a long time and the same two questions kept coming back to him. Why would anybody bother drawing such a dull and depressing picture? And why the fuck would anybody want to own it? You’d have thought the old man would have picked something better.

There was a small plaque on the wall next to the display cabinet that housed the picture. It said Francisco Goya, 1746 – 1824. Underneath was a blurb about how it had recently been rediscovered after being thought to have been lost for years, blah, blah, blah. Anatoly gave it only a cursory glance. Shaking his head, he moved away and spent a few moments gazing pensively at the other paintings around the walls of the gallery. Big, bold, rich-looking oils and ornate gilt frames.

Now this was more like it. He didn’t much rate this kind of stuff but he’d heard of fancy names like Da Vinci. Who hadn’t? And you didn’t have to be an art snob to know there was a bloody fortune hanging on these walls, right here for the taking. Just a single one of these others would surely fetch him the cost of a new Lamborghini, even after deducting the fence’s cut. It made him wonder all the more why he’d been sent to steal a poxy colourless drawing of a skinny bloke saying his prayers. It didn’t even have a nice frame, just a plain black wood surround.

But what the hell. Anatoly sighed and turned back to the Goya. Raising his Steyr, he was about to whack the protective glass casing when he remembered what that prick Maisky had said about the impregnable security shutters that would come slamming down to seal off the whole place if anyone messed with the artwork. Before it could be taken off the wall they had to enter the three codes to disable the secondary alarm system. Right. Some parts of his father’s plan did make sense.

Anatoly walked back to the side room, swinging his gun as he went. Passing the food table he scooped a handful of stuffed olives from one of the plates he hadn’t blown apart earlier on. He popped it through the mouth hole of his balaclava and chewed noisily as he approached the clustered hostages. Gourko and Rykov were standing over them with their weapons trained menacingly. Turchin was over by the window, refilling a magazine from loose rounds in his pocket. Rocco Massi and one of his guys were slumped in a couple of canvas chairs, holding their guns loosely across their laps. The two Italians Rocco had sent upstairs hadn’t returned yet.

Anatoly popped another olive and surveyed the crowd of frightened faces, feeling supremely in control. His gaze stopped at the young girl who was in the arms of her mother. Her face was hidden by a mass of blond curls, but running his eye down the curve of her body he liked what he saw. The strap of her pretty little dress was just off the shoulder, showing the flimsy bra strap underneath. She couldn’t be more than fifteen, he thought, and wondered if she was still a virgin. A budding little flower, just waiting to be plucked by ol’ Anatoly. Nice. Very nice.

A couple of the hostages gasped in fear as he stepped forward and reached down abruptly to grab the girl’s bare arm. She let out a whimper as she felt his fingers close tightly on her skin. He hauled her away from her mother, yanking her body round so he could see her face. So adorable. He stroked her cheek lightly. It was sticky with half-dried tears, and that really turned him on. He cocked his head a little to the side, looked into those sweet, moist blue eyes and gave her a crooked smile. ‘Later, babe, later,’ he muttered in Russian.

First, though, he had more pressing matters to take care of. He dumped the girl back down on the floor. Scanning the rest of the hostages he quickly picked out the faces of the three men whose photos his father had shown him. ‘You, you and you,’ he said, pointing with his Steyr.

Rocco Massi stood and jerked his thumb at the three men. ‘Get up,’ he barked in Italian. De Crescenzo, Corsini and Silvestri nervously got to their feet, stiff and rumpled from crouching on the floor. The count was deathly pale. Silvestri dusted off his suit and tried to look dignified. Corsini’s chubby face flushed with indignation; he opened his mouth to say something, but it never came out, because Gourko slapped him hard across the face and then grabbed a fistful of his collar and shoved him brutally towards the door. Corsini stumbled, and Anatoly aimed the toe of his boot at those fat buttocks, sending him sprawling on his face through the doorway.

‘There is no need whatsoever for this violence,’ De Crescenzo stammered. ‘Whatever it is you want, we’re more than happy to comply.’

‘Oh, we know that,’ Rocco Massi said. De Crescenzo and Silvestri were prodded through the door at gunpoint as Corsini picked himself up with a moan.

Anatoly pointed at the closed door a few metres along the end wall. ‘Ask them what’s in there,’ he said to Rocco. The big Italian translated. De Crescenzo cleared his throat and replied, ‘That is the office from which we control the security system.’

‘Open it.’

The count fumbled in his pocket, took out a key ring and unlocked the office door. Anatoly shoved it open and led the way inside. The room was small and quite bare, except for a couple of steel filing cabinets, a worktop with a bank of computer equipment and some office chairs.

The three gallery owners were made to sit. Anatoly leaned against a filing cabinet, twirling his weapon. Rocco stepped up to Corsini’s chair, bent down so that his nose was just inches from the man’s sweaty face, and said, ‘Each of you has a separate passcode to disable the secondary alarm system. You have five seconds to enter it.’ He grabbed the back of the chair and wheeled the fat man brusquely over to the worktop. The computer was on standby mode and the screen popped up into life as Rocco nudged its wireless mouse. He tapped a few keys and an empty box opened up, a blinking cursor at its far left inviting someone to enter the code.

‘I won’t do it,’ Corsini mumbled.

‘What did the fucker say?’ Anatoly asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘He says he won’t do it,’ Rocco said.