The Cassandra Sanction: The most controversial action adventure thriller you’ll read this year!

The Spaniard stopped three feet away from their table. The Arehucas Carta Oro was making him sway on his feet, not dramatically, but noticeably. He eyed the eight of them as if they were fresh dogshit, and then his gaze rested on the big porker.

Quietly, and in perfect English, he said, ‘My name isn’t Pedro. And you’re going to apologise for what you just called her.’

An outraged silence fell over the group. Ben was watching the big porker, whose grin had dropped and whose cheeks turned mottled red. The pack leader; and if he wanted to remain so, peer pressure now demanded that he make a good show of responding to this upstart who’d had the monstrous balls to stand up to him in front of his friends.

‘My mistake,’ the big porker said, meeting the Spaniard’s eye. ‘I shouldn’t have called her a bitch. I should’ve called her a cheap fucking dago whore slut cocksucker bitch. Because that’s what she is. Isn’t that right, Pedro?’

For a guy with the better part of a bottle of rum inside him, the Spaniard moved pretty fast. First, he dashed the contents of his tumbler at the big porker. Second, he hurled the empty tumbler against the table, where it burst like a grenade and showered the whole gang with glass. Third, he reached out and scooped up a cigarette lighter from the yobs’ table. Without hesitation, he thumbed the flint and tossed it at the big porker, whose T-shirt instantly caught light.

The big porker screamed and started clawing at his burning shirt. The Spaniard snatched a beer from the table and doused him with it. The big porker staggered to his feet and threw a wild punch that came at the Spaniard’s head in a wide arc. The Spaniard ducked out of the swing, then stepped back in with surprising speed and jabbed a straight right that caught the big porker full in the centre of his face and sent him crashing violently on his back against the table. Drinks and empty bottles capsized all over the floor.

The Dane still didn’t move, react or look up. This kind of thing must happen all the time where he lived.

Then it was just seven against one. The rest of the gang were out of their seats and converging on the Spaniard in a chorus of angry yelling. The barman was banging on the bar and yelling that he was going to call the police, but nobody was listening and the situation was already well out of control. The Spaniard ducked another punch and returned it with another neat jab to the ribs that doubled up his opponent. But the alcohol was telling on him, and he didn’t see the next punch coming until it had caught him high on the left cheek and knocked him off his feet.

The six who could still fight closed in on him, kicking him in the stomach and legs as he fought back furiously and tried to get up. One of them grabbed a chair, to slam it down on the Spaniard’s head. Raising the chair high in the air, he was about to deliver the blow when it was snatched out of his hands from behind. He turned, just long enough to register the presence of the blond stranger who’d got up from the corner table. Then the chair splintered into pieces over the crown of his skull and he crumpled at the knees and hit the floor like a sandbag.

The English boys stopped kicking the Spaniard and stared at Ben as he tossed away the broken remnant of the chair and stepped over their fallen friend towards them.

‘All of you against one guy,’ Ben said. ‘Doesn’t seem fair to me.’

One of them pointed down at the Spaniard, who was struggling to his feet now that the kicking had stopped. ‘What you taking his side for?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Because I’ve got nothing better to do.’

‘You saw what he did to Stu,’ said another.

‘Looked to me like Stu had it coming,’ Ben said. ‘As do the rest of you, unless you do the sensible thing and leave now, while you still have legs under you.’

The Spaniard swayed up to his feet, looking uncertainly at Ben.

‘You’re going to be sorry, pal.’ All remaining five moved towards him. Except for one, whom the Spaniard caught by the collar and dragged to the floor, stamping on his face. The first to reach Ben lashed out with a right hook that was instantly caught and twisted into a lock that put the guy down on his knees. Ben kicked him in the solar plexus, not hard enough to rupture anything internally, but plenty hard enough to put him out of action for a while.

Ben let him flop to the floor, rolling and writhing, as the next one stepped up. Wiry, shaven-headed, this one looked as if he fancied himself as some kind of Krav Maga fighter, judging from the jerky, spastic little moves he was pulling. Ben blamed action films for that one. He let the guy throw a couple of strikes, which he effortlessly blocked. Then hooked the guy’s leg with his own and threw him over on his back. A tap to the side of his head with the solid toecap of Ben’s boot was enough to make sure he wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon.

The fight was over after just ten seconds. The last man standing, obviously smarter than his friends, fled from the bar followed by the one the Spaniard had punched in the ribs, still winded and clutching at his side as he hobbled towards the exit. Six inert shapes on the floor, among the wreckage of broken chairs and glass, were going to need an ambulance out of there. The barman was on the phone, jabbering furiously to the police.

The Dane had slipped out of the door in the middle of the action, as if he’d finally noticed the commotion and decided to continue his reading somewhere less distracting. Ben hadn’t seen him leave.

The Spaniard turned to Ben. He was breathing hard and blood was smeared at the corner of his mouth. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he said in slurred English. He wobbled on his feet and Ben had to grab his arm to stop him from keeling over.

‘Just evening up the odds a little,’ Ben said. ‘You were doing okay until then.’

The Spaniard wiped at his lips with the back of his hand and gazed at the blood. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I just went crazy.’

‘Believe me,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve been there.’

The Spaniard looked mournful. ‘He shouldn’t have said that about her.’

‘I think he knows that now.’ Ben glanced at the unconscious mound on the floor. That single punch had knocked the big porker out cold. Two hundred pounds of prime gammon, taken down in a single blow by a man fifty pounds lighter. The Spaniard obviously had some hidden talents, when he wasn’t drinking himself stupid.

The barman had finished on the phone and was venturing beyond the hatch to inspect the state of his premises and glower at the two men still standing in the ruins. ‘Someone’s going to pay for this!’ he was yelling in Spanish.

‘We should leave before the police arrive,’ the Spaniard said. ‘I live just a couple of minutes from here.’ He paled. ‘Jesus, I feel terrible.’

‘Nothing a couple of pints of strong black coffee can’t fix,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s get you home and sobered up.’

Chapter Two (#uc42c1ce3-784b-53dd-90e4-629b3810b37d)

Neither of them spoke much as the Spaniard led the way from the bar and through the narrow, uniformly whitewashed streets of Frigiliana’s old Moorish quarter. Ben followed a few steps behind, watching as the Spaniard tried to hold a straight line and had to keep steadying himself against walls and railings. Ben thought about all the times he’d walked out of bars and pubs with a skinful of whisky and some other guy’s blood on his knuckles, and wondered if he’d been such a sorry sight as this. Never again, he vowed. But it was a vow he’d broken enough times to know he’d probably break it again, some place, some time.

Ben’s left arm felt a little tight and sore after his exertions. A few months earlier, he had been shot from behind at close range with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The surgeon who had pieced his shoulder blade back together had done good work, but he still had pain sometimes. In time, he knew, the twinges would fade, even if they never faded away to nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot.

‘This is it,’ the Spaniard muttered, stopping at an arched doorway on a sloping backstreet. Every inch of the house’s exterior was painted pure brilliant white, like every other building they’d passed, bouncing back the light and warmth of the afternoon sun. The Spaniard fumbled in his pocket and found a ring with a heavy old iron key. After a couple of stabs, he managed to get it in the lock and shoved the door open.

Ben followed him inside. He had no intention of staying any longer than it took to make the guy a remedial cup of coffee and see him settled safely out of harm’s way. Ben himself had been rescued more than once from the perils of a drunken stupor. The last time it had happened had been in the French Alps; his saviour on that occasion had been a massive Nigerian guy named Omar, who’d brought him home rather than let him get picked up by the local gendarmes. Looking out for the Spaniard was a way for Ben to put something back, make himself feel like he’d done something good.

The Spaniard’s home was simply, economically furnished. The walls were white inside as well as out, hung here and there with tasteful art prints. The living room had a single sofa with a low coffee table between it and a TV stand. A large bookcase stood against one wall, heavy with titles on history and philosophy and classical music CDs. It wasn’t the typical home of a bar brawler. The Spaniard was evidently a cultivated guy, within a certain budget. Bookish, scholarly even. But from the mess in the place, it was just as evident that for whatever reason Ben had found him drowning his sorrows in the bar, his comfortable little life had lately fallen apart. Clothes lay strewn about the floor. The sofa was rumpled as though it had been slept on a lot recently. Empty beer cans lined up on the coffee table gave off a sour smell of stale booze.

Ben glanced around him. A corner of the room was set aside as a little study area. Above the desk hung a crucifix, to the left of it a framed degree certificate from the University of Madrid, awarded to one Raul Fuentes for achieving first-class honours in English. To the right of the cross, a poster was tacked to the wall depicting a forlorn-looking polar bear cub alone on a melting ice floe that was drifting on unbroken blue water under a bright and sunny sky, with the legend STOP GLOBAL WARMING NOW.

Next to that hung a smaller framed photo of the Spaniard, grinning and laughing on a white-sanded beach somewhere hot, with his arm around the shoulders of a strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman. She was laughing with him, showing perfect white teeth. It was a happy picture, obviously from a happier time not so very long ago.

‘Raul Fuentes,’ Ben said. ‘That would be you?’

The Spaniard nodded. He slumped on the rumpled sofa. Leaned across to pick up one of the beer cans to give it a shake, in case there might be some left inside.

‘No beer for you,’ Ben said, stepping over to snatch it from his fingers. ‘Which way’s the kitchen? I presume you have coffee in the place.’ Raul Fuentes flopped back against the cushions and sighed, wagged a hand in the direction of a door.

The kitchen was a mess, though Ben could tell it hadn’t always been. Copper saucepans hung neatly on little hooks above the worktop, next to a shelf with a collection of cookbooks. An ornamental wine rack was loaded with a selection of decent bottles that Raul hadn’t yet got around to emptying down his throat. The ones he had filled the bin and stood around the surfaces, along with more empty beer cans and piles of unwashed dishes. Ben shoved them to one side and set about making coffee.

Raul had a real percolator and real fresh-ground beans. Ben approved. The instant stuff was essentially dehydrated military rations, popularised during successive world wars. You shouldn’t have to drink it unless there was no other choice.

As he waited for the coffee to bubble up on the stove, Ben thought about the picture on the wall above the desk and wondered whether the woman in it was the reason behind Raul Fuentes’ troubles. She’s not worth it, mate. The yob’s words had evidently touched a nerve.

When the coffee came up, he poured the contents into two cups. Straight, black, as it came. Milk and sugar were trivial nonessentials at a time like this. He carried the cups back into the other room and set one down in front of Raul.

‘Drink it while it’s hot. It’ll do you good.’

Raul slurped some, and pulled a face.

‘It needs to be strong,’ Ben said.

Raul braved another sip. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said, looking up.

‘Ben,’ Ben said.

‘You’re not from around here.’