The Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7)

by Scott Mariani

  Straining every muscle with a groan of effort, Cutter heaved the dead-weight of the holdall out of the water and shoved it up onto the edge of the pool. He hauled himself up and collapsed next to the soaking wet bag, gasping and dripping water everywhere. The money! He fumbled for the holdall’s zipper and ripped it open. The stacks of notes inside were completely sodden. He moaned in despair.

  ‘Terry!’ he yelled, suddenly realising that Grinnall wasn’t there.

  ‘Terry’s in the shower right now,’ Ben said.

  Cutter looked up and his eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. He looked like what he was, cornered and deadly. Ben kept the silenced Browning Hi-Power aimed squarely at his head as he approached. The pistol had come courtesy of the Trimble Group, along with the commando dagger and certain other mission-specific items Ben had brought with him to Capri.

  ‘I know you,’ Cutter said, watching every step.

  ‘I know you, too,’ Ben said. ‘Little Denton vicarage, the night my friends died. You were making an unscheduled pick-up. And I never forget a voice.’

  ‘Hope.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Mills?’

  ‘Took up high-diving,’ Ben said. ‘You’re the last.’

  Cutter gave a bitter grin. ‘There you go. Don’t suppose I’ll ever know where the rest of that cash was, will I?’

  ‘You weren’t a bad soldier once, Steve. You went a long way. Should never have quit the regiment.’

  ‘No future in it.’

  ‘Not much future in killing my friends, either,’ Ben said.

  ‘You going to shoot me, then?’

  ‘It’d make it easier for me if you went for that Glock,’ Ben said, nodding towards the pistol in Cutter’s belt.

  ‘It’s full of water,’ Cutter said.

  ‘You can fire a Glock underwater,’ Ben said. ‘You should know that.’

  There was silence for a moment, just the steady tap-tap of droplets splashing down from Cutter’s clothes and hair onto the wet poolside tiles and the low hum of the heaters.

  ‘Right then,’ Cutter sighed. He shrugged, as if to say, ‘What the hell.’ And then his hand flashed down to the butt of the Glock.

  The Hi-Power spat twice. The sound echoed around the swimming pool.

  Cutter’s hand curled loosely around the grip of his pistol. Then he keeled over sideways and rolled into the water with a splash.

  Ben left the building. He retrieved his kit bag from the shadows of the walkway where he’d left it. Another piece of equipment that had been on his requirements list, along with what was inside. He slung the webbing strap over his shoulder and went looking for Penrose Lucas.

  As he re-entered the villa, he could smell smoke.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Ben found Penrose Lucas sitting alone in the semi-darkness of the wrecked dining room. He was slumped in a leather chair and seemed to be in a trance, staring fixedly into space and barely responding as Ben walked into the room and flipped on the main lights.

  Ben stood a few yards away and watched him, noticing how dishevelled and dismal the man looked in his grimy dressing gown and underpants. He was a far cry from the self-confident, immaculately dressed professor Ben had seen on the videotape at the vicarage.

  So here he was, face to face with Simeon’s enemy.

  Resting on the arm of Penrose’s chair was a large, shiny handgun. Ben stepped quickly over and scooped it up. Penrose made no response. Ben jacked out the cartridge in the chamber, dumped the magazine, separated the slide from the frame and tossed the bits into the far corner of the room.

  The sound of metal components clattering across the floor seemed to snap Penrose out of his trance. He turned slowly to look up at Ben. The glazed eyes focused with recognition.

  ‘You’re him,’ he murmured. ‘You’re Hope.’

  ‘In the flesh,’ Ben said.

  ‘Where are my men?’

  ‘They can’t help you any more,’ Ben said. ‘Your house is on fire. Did you know that?’

  Penrose nodded slowly. ‘Let it burn.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, then said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I brought you a Christmas present.’

  The mention of the word brought a scowl to Penrose’s face. ‘A what?’

  Ben unslung the kit bag from his shoulder, opened it up and took out what he’d brought with him all the way from America aboard the Trimble Group jet.

  Anything you require, Brown had said. When Ben had asked for the sword, the man had been quite happy to let him have it. ‘As you wish,’ he’d said. ‘Hang it on the wall or poke the fire with it. It’s the same to me.’

  A keepsake, Ben had told him. Something to remember his friend by. But there was more to it.

  Ben swished the sword through the air and threw it point-first at the floor at his feet. It planted itself deep into the wood with a judder. ‘There you are, professor. The sword of Jesus Christ.’

  Penrose’s face contorted into a grimace and he leaned forward in his chair to stare at the sword. Until this moment, Ben had only had Brown’s word that Penrose Lucas had been behind all this. Steve Cutter’s presence in the villa was half the proof that Brown had been telling the truth. Now, as Ben saw the crazed mixture of hatred and desire in Penrose’s eyes, there was no longer any doubt.

  ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Ben said softly. ‘What you murdered Simeon and Michaela Arundel for.’

  A smile spread over Penrose’s lips. ‘Those cockroaches deserved what they got.’

  Ben didn’t feel like wasting time talking to this man. He unholstered his pistol and clicked off the safety catch. ‘I gather you’re something of an atheist, Lucas.’

  Penrose made no reply. He stared up at Ben, then at the gun. A nerve in his face twitched.

  ‘Fine by me,’ Ben said. ‘Then you won’t be wanting to say any final prayers before I kill you.’

  Penrose’s mouth hung open in horror. He slithered out of his chair and fell to his knees on the floor. ‘No, please,’ he gasped, looking up at Ben with pleading eyes and his hands clasped in supplication. ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Mercy is something you might have got from Simeon Arundel,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not like him.’

  Penrose sobbed pitifully as Ben pressed the muzzle of the silencer to his forehead. Ben’s finger touched the cool, smooth curve of the trigger. He visualised Simeon and Michaela in the sinking car. They’d be avenged now, and Jude would be freed, and it would all be over.

  But then another image appeared in Ben’s mind. That of Vincent Napier, half-submerged in the Cornish bog and about to die. And he remembered the last time an unarmed and totally defenceless man had begged him for his life. Ben had just snuffed him out with his own son watching. What he was about to do now was every bit as callous.

  This is who I am, he thought. A killer. I always was. Always will be.

  ‘I’m sick,’ Penrose wept. ‘I’ve done terrible things. Please give me a chance. I can change. I know I can.’

  Ben hesitated. You didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to see that this pathetic, wretched man was mentally ill. He needed the proper treatment, not a cold-blooded execution on the floor.

  Shoot him. For Jude’s sake. Ben imagined Jude trapped in the grip of Brown’s nameless, faceless associates. He thought of what they’d do to him if Penrose Lucas wasn’t eliminated according to their instructions.

  There was no choice. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  But then he hesitated again. There had to be another way. If he didn’t kill Penrose, but instead delivered him alive to the Trimble Group, perhaps they’d show clemency. They’d surely see that he was no longer a threat to anyone. They had the resources to place him in the appropriate facility, even if it meant keeping him behind bars for the rest of his life.

  The smoke was thickening in the passageway outside the dining room door. Ben could hear the crackling of the fire as it spread through the villa, intensifying
with every passing minute.

  He’d made his decision. He lowered the gun. ‘Get on your feet. We have to leave before this whole place goes up in flames.’

  ‘You’re not going to kill me?’ Penrose blubbered.

  Ben reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. ‘Come with me. I’ll see that you get the help you need.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Penrose croaked. ‘Thank you.’ He wiped his teary face with the sleeve of his dressing gown.

  Then, before Ben could react, Penrose retreated a step and tore out the concealed .25 Beretta automatic that had been nestling against the small of his back, in the elastic waistband of his underwear. He thrust the gun out at Ben and fired.

  The small-calibre bullet slammed into Ben’s left shoulder. At extreme short range, the impact was enough to spin him around. There was just shock, no pain. He stayed on his feet and raised his own pistol, but his senses were jangling in disarray and he wasn’t quick enough to squeeze the trigger before Penrose fired again.

  The shot crashed into Ben’s ribs and knocked him to the floor on his back. The pistol spun out of his grip.

  Penrose howled with savage laughter. ‘Now who’s going to die? Not me! Not Penrose Lucas!’ His teeth bared in hatred, he advanced towards Ben.

  Ben struggled to get up, but his body wasn’t obeying the commands of his brain. Penrose stepped closer and leaned over him. He was just three feet away. The gun was trained on Ben’s head. And he couldn’t miss this time.

  Ben kicked out with his legs, sliding himself across the floor. Something hard nudged against the back of his head and he realised that it was the sword blade planted into the floorboards.

  ‘You thought you could outsmart me,’ Penrose laughed. ‘Now you’ll rot with all the others.’

  Ben’s strength was ebbing fast. In desperation he grasped the bronze sword hilt with both hands and tugged with all his might. He felt the tip of the blade pluck out of the floor.

  Penrose’s fingertip whitened against the Beretta’s trigger.

  Ben swept the sword up over his head and let go.

  The pistol boomed.

  The shot ploughed into the floor two feet from Ben’s head. A burbling scream burst from Penrose’s lips and he reeled backwards. He dropped his gun and his hands went to his throat, clawing at the bronze hilt that was protruding grotesquely at an angle from the soft flesh above his breast-bone. Three feet of blade stuck out of the back of his neck. Blood gushed from his throat and down his front.

  Ben wobbled to his feet, fighting to remain upright. His left arm wouldn’t work properly. He staggered towards Penrose. With his good hand he grasped the slippery, bloody sword hilt, wrenched it out and swung it hard, edgeways. The sickle-shaped blade hummed through the air and slashed Penrose’s throat to his spine, almost severing his head.

  Penrose’s knees buckled. He hit the floor in a bloody sprawl.

  Ben swayed on his unsteady legs. The second bullet had broken his ribs and passed right through, but the first was still lodged in his shoulder and a lot of the blood on the floor was his own. He could feel the darkness rising, but he wasn’t going to let it. Not yet. He steadied himself against the wall and headed for the door.

  As he staggered out of the villa, the flames were leaping from the windows and curling up the walls. The blaze lit up the night sky.

  Ben took one last look at the burning house, then turned away.

  It was time for him to go and get his son.

  The Armada Legacy Extract

  Read on for the explosive first chapter of Scott

  Mariani’s new novel The Armada Legacy,

  coming from Avon in 2013

  Chapter One

  Just after ten on a clear, cold night in late February, and the moon-glow over the Donegal Atlantic coast cast a speckled diamond glimmer across the dark sea. High above the shoreline, a solitary car was threading its way along the twisty coastal road, leaving behind the distant lights of the Castlebane Country Club and heading inland towards Rinclevan on the far side of New Lake.

  The chauffeur of the black Jaguar XF was a square-shouldered former Grenadier Guard called Wally Lander. He kept his eyes on the winding road and drove in silence, studiously detached from the conversation of his passengers: his employer Sir Roger Forsyte, Forsyte’s personal assistant Samantha – Sam for short – and an auburn-haired woman Wally had never seen before. Attractive – he could tell from the couple of discreet rearward glances he’d snatched at her – very attractive in fact, wearing a tight-fitting black dress that he frustratingly couldn’t see enough of in the driver’s mirror. He presumed she must have attended that evening’s Neptune Marine Exploration press conference and was now coming along as a guest to the private party that would probably last well into the wee small hours. Maybe something to do with Sir Roger’s latest caper, Wally mused. If she was alone, that meant she was almost certainly single. Definitely worth a crack at it. There was a chance he’d get to chat to her at the party, find out more about her.

  Wally couldn’t know it yet – none of them could know it – but that would never happen. Because Wally didn’t have very long to live.

  Nor would Wally ever know the mystery woman’s name. It was Brooke Marcel, or Dr Brooke Marcel when she was in her professional capacity as a psychologist. Tonight she was just here as a guest of her friend Sam, who was sitting between Brooke and Sir Roger, all clipped efficiency with a tiny netbook resting across her knees, its screen reflected in her glasses as they ran through some NME business details together. Sir Roger had loosened the tie he’d put on for the presentation and was leaning luxuriantly back against the Jaguar’s cream-coloured leather. Brooke put Sam’s boss’s age at around sixty, though he was in better shape than many men half his age.

  As Sam started detailing the plans for the following day, Brooke tuned out and drifted back to the thoughts that preoccupied her so much of the time, with the same mixture of emotions that always came flooding back whenever Ben was on her mind.

  She wished he could have been here. He loved Ireland, would have been completely in his element here on the Donegal coast. Maybe she’d been wrong in coming without him – but the fact was she’d been too plain nervous about asking him. The wrong signals, she’d worried. Moving too fast, trying to force things prematurely. Or something like that. She didn’t know any more. For a gifted and highly trained psychologist, it amazed her how little she understood her own feelings.

  Ben Hope. What an enigmatic, complex man he was. Even before they’d got together she’d been aware of the ghosts from his past, stuff you could never ask him about and which he kept fiercely private; so closed, yet so open, so warm and tender. Sometimes she felt as if he’d been there all her life; sometimes as if she’d never known him at all.

  As she gazed out of the car window at the dark, rocky landscape flashing by, Brooke wondered whether her troubled relationship with Ben would ever recover. It had started so blissfully, only to crash so senselessly on the rocks just when it was beginning to look as though it could last for ever.

  The crash had come in September. The autumn months had been a forlorn, empty time, drowning herself in her work; the Christmas holiday without him almost unbearably miserable. Then, slowly, slowly, over the last couple of months had dawned the prospect of a possible reconciliation. The phone conversations between her home in London and his in France were growing longer and more frequent. Sometimes he even called her.

  It was still fragile, though, still just a tiny candle flame that could snuff out at any time. There were moments when Brooke thought she could sense the tension between them, ready to flare up all over again. In their separate ways, they’d both been equally to blame for the split. What a couple of hotheads we are, she thought wryly to herself as she recalled the awful quarrel that had busted them apart. The worst thing was that, in the end, it had all been about nothing. Just a stupid, horrible misunderstanding.

  ‘The chopper will pick us up at the house and take us ov
er to Derry Airport first thing in the morning,’ Sam was saying to her employer. ‘We should easily be in London by ten-thirty, which gives us plenty of time to get things together before the meeting with Cabeza.’

  Forsyte pursed his lips and gave a grunt of assent. Drifting momentarily back to the present, Brooke noticed the way he kept fingering the handle of the attaché case that was secured to his wrist by a steel cuff and a slim chain, and she wondered what was inside that must be so valuable – but her curiosity waned rapidly as she turned back towards the dark window and resumed her own private thoughts.

  A flash of white light caught Brooke’s eye. The road behind was no longer empty: the bright headlights of a car were coming up fast. No, she thought, twisting round to peer out of the rear window – not a car, but a van of some kind. Going somewhere in a real hurry, too.

  Forsyte glanced back as the van’s main-beam headlights loomed close enough to fill the inside of the Jaguar with their glare. ‘Just some idiot,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Pull in a little and let him past, will you, Wally?’

  Wally shook his head in exasperation, then flipped on his indicator, slowed to just over thirty and steered towards the side of the narrow road to let the van by. The large vehicle noisily overtook them – a plain white Renault Master panel van, scuffed and spattered with road dirt – then cut in tightly at an angle and screeched to a halt, blocking the road.

  Wally hit the brakes and the rear passengers were thrown forwards, except for Brooke who’d braced herself against the front passenger seat a fraction of a second before the emergency stop. Sam let out a little cry as her netbook went flying.

  ‘What the hell—?’ Forsyte shouted.

  ‘Fucking arsehole!’ Wally thrust the automatic gearbox into Park and left the engine running as he climbed out of the car. ‘What’s your game, you bloody prick?’ he yelled, slamming his door shut and storming up to the stationary van.