The Babylon Idol

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Sure.’

  Ben slipped out the Taurus, dropped the magazine, jacked the round from the chamber and let Luciano fondle the unloaded weapon. Satisfied, Luciano passed the pistol back to him, took another draw of his cigarette, blew out a gigantic cloud of smoke and motioned towards the house.

  ‘Man, what a scene, huh? Never even met Gianni Garrone before. Poor bastard. I only came along for the ride; I’m a friend of Pietro there, you know?’ He pointed. Pietro was one of the two men in the hallway, still talking to Franciosa and the uniforms.

  Luciano went on, shaking his head, ‘It’s unreal, man. I’m new in town, first party I get invited to, next thing I know I’m walking in and there’s the host, this Garrone dude, tied to a chair and some big psycho maniac carving him up with a knife in one hand and a fucking digital recorder in the other. One glance at us, and he takes off. The sicko probably gets his kicks playing back the screams of his victims. I saw that in a movie.’

  It felt like history repeating itself. Another Manzini villa, another sadistic knife attack. As though Franco Bozza was back, and up to his old tricks. But that couldn’t be. In his mind, Ben was seeing the bloodied, ripped shower curtain at Luc Simon’s apartment in Lyon. Picturing the blade shearing through thin plastic and slicing into vulnerable, naked flesh. He asked, ‘Did you get a good look at the attacker? Would you recognise his face?’

  ‘No way, man. He was wearing a mask, like a ski mask?’

  ‘You said he was a big guy.’

  ‘No, not big. Huge. Definitely over two metres tall. All bulked up like he was a powerlifter or something, but fast on his feet. He disappeared into the woods on the other side of the house. A minute later we saw a car go speeding off. Might’ve been a van, probably dark-coloured or black, hard to say.’

  It was a usefully detailed description. Ben jotted it down. ‘Your friend, you said his name was Pietro—?’

  ‘Rossi. We work at the International Film School together. I just started there a couple months ago.’

  Ben’s list was growing. He scribbled the name Pietro Rossi next to Luciano Morante, circled them together and wrote beside them, FLORENCE INT. FILM SCHOOL. ‘So the victim, Gianni Garrone, he’s a buddy of Pietro’s too?’

  ‘Yeah, though like I said, I never saw him until tonight. It’s my first time coming here. Pietro’s been to a few of Garrone’s get-togethers. Said there were going to be girls. Well, I count two. For three guys, plus Garrone makes four. Some night this turned out to be. Can you believe I’ve been here two months and I still haven’t got laid?’

  Leaving aside Luciano’s frustrated love life, Ben asked, ‘Does Garrone live here?’ Thinking that maybe Garrone was Anna’s current younger male squeeze, who could have moved in with her. That didn’t seem like Anna’s style to Ben, but it occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. That still wouldn’t explain where Anna was now.

  Luciano shook his head. ‘He lives here, but not like, it’s his place. He works here. The owner’s a woman. Hot stuff, too.’ He grinned. ‘Pietro said, first time he saw her, he thought she was Valentina Del Cuore. You know, the movie star? Absolute dead ringer.’

  Ben grunted, pretending to have heard of her.

  ‘This Manzini chick’s a writer, apparently. Gianni’s, like, her assistant. Helps with research and stuff, makes phone calls, runs errands. Lives over there, in the annexe next door, but she lets him have parties and stuff in the big house when she’s away.’

  ‘And that’s where she is, away?’

  Luciano blew more smoke. ‘I guess she must be, yeah. She’s not here, anyhow. If she was here, you guys would’ve found her when you searched the house, no?’

  Ben’s relief was outweighed by his frustration. ‘Did Pietro happen to say if he knew where she’d gone?’

  ‘Nah, man, not to me.’

  ‘But if Gianni’s her assistant, he must know where she is.’

  ‘I guess so, yeah,’ Luciano said noncommittally, puffing like a steam train. ‘What’s the deal with her? She in trouble or something?’

  Ben put away his notepad, stood up and offered his hand. ‘You’ve been a big help to the investigation, Signor Morante. I’ll know where to find you if we need to talk again.’

  ‘Detective Bellomo, right?’

  Ben walked away. He wanted to confirm what he’d learned with Pietro and perhaps find out more, but Pietro was still deep in conversation with the cops. Meanwhile, the paramedics had finished loading the injured Gianni Garrone into the ambulance and were closing the doors. If Ben wanted to find out where they were taking him, now was his only chance. If he drew a blank, he could always pay a visit to the Florence International Film School later to catch up with Pietro Rossi.

  Making his choice, Ben trotted to the Alpina and fired it up. He waited for the ambulance to go first, making its way down the villa’s driveway with its headlamps burning beams through the mist.

  He followed.

  Chapter 17

  The ambulance headed back towards Florence with its blue lights flashing. Ben had expected it to lead him to some modern hospital on the outskirts of the city, but instead it led him deep into the historic centre, to the Piazza di Santa Maria Nuova where it pulled up outside the portico of an ancient hospital building by the same name. Ben tucked the Alpina into a parking space off the square a short distance away, and watched from behind the wheel as the paramedics and a team of hospital staff unloaded Gianni and hustled him quickly inside out of the cold.

  Ben waited an hour in the car, during which time he got back on the phone. Still no email response from Anna. Frustrated, he dialled Sandrine Lacombe’s number. She sounded anxious. There had been no change in Jeff’s condition and she had little to report, except that his mother had arrived from Australia and had to be sedated after the shock of seeing him. Sandrine seemed totally unaware of the armed guard Ben had posted on her hospital. But something in her tone made him suspect she wasn’t telling him everything.

  Next, he called Le Val for an update on things there. Tuesday told him that McGuire, Fry and Blackwood had arrived early that morning. Between them, they were watching the perimeter day and night and if anyone was lurking nearby, they’d know about it. ‘Have you seen the news?’ Tuesday added in a dark undertone.

  When Ben checked the online media channels immediately after ending the call, he fast discovered what Sandrine Lacombe hadn’t wanted to tell him. ‘Shit,’ he muttered.

  It had to have happened sooner or later – and it had, while he was heading towards Italy. The BBC, Euronews.com and the other channels had all broken the story more or less identically:

  ‘The victim of the recent suspected terrorist incident in Normandy has been named by French police as Jeff Dekker, a British ex-serviceman and director of the Le Val Tactical Training Centre near Valognes, a shooting gallery used by law enforcement and the military, as well as civilians. Mr Dekker is currently being treated for gunshot wounds at Louis Pasteur Hospital in Cherbourg, where he remains in a critical condition. Le Val co-director, Benjamin Hope, was unavailable for comment. France’s Secretary General for National Defence, Henri Couillon, yesterday expressed grave concerns over the security risk posed by private firms such as Le Val, where large arsenals of deadly assault weapons are vulnerable to easy theft by extremist groups …’

  Ordinarily, Ben would have been irritated by the ‘Benjamin’ part, as well as the article’s misleading sensationalism and description of Le Val as a ‘shooting gallery’. But right now, what concerned him was the fact that his enemies, whoever they were, knew that they’d got the wrong man. They wouldn’t have to be geniuses to figure out that their intended target was still out there, and gunning for them.

  In other words, his element of surprise had just vaporised.

  Ben quelled his annoyance with a couple of cigarettes. As his thoughts calmed, he realised that the leak also meant that Jeff was no longer at risk in Cherbourg – not from sneak assassins,
at any rate. He made a quick call to Boonzie to instruct him to pull the two guys off their post in Cherbourg and send them down to Le Val to fortify the defences there.

  Once that was done, Ben looked at his watch and decided that Gianni Garrone’s doctors had had plenty enough time to do whatever they needed to do to patch up their patient. He left the car and wandered inside the old hospital building, keeping an eye out for cops but, so far, spotting none. At the front desk, he flashed the police ID and asked to see the patient. He was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, but the real Detective Bellomo obviously hadn’t yet sounded the alarm over his stolen badge, and the hospital staff were happily taken in by the impostor – weird accent or not. The nurses tried to insist that he should come back later as Signor Garrone was in no fit state to receive visitors yet. Ben sweet-talked them into letting him have ten minutes alone with the patient. This kind of work was so much easier when you could open doors with a wave of your badge. He wished he could be a cop more often.

  The hospital wasn’t much more modern inside than it was outside. A nurse led him to a curtained-off corner of a ward, where he found Garrone propped up in bed, heavily bandaged and even more heavily drugged.

  Ben pulled up a chair. When the nurse had gone, he said, ‘I’m Detective Bellomo. You had a lucky escape tonight, Gianni. I know you’re hurting, so this won’t take long. I need to know where Anna is. I don’t have time to explain, but she’s in serious danger.’

  Garrone couldn’t turn his head. His bloodshot eyes rolled sideways to peer at Ben in surprise at the mention of Anna. He was pumped full of so many painkillers that his lips barely moved as he croaked, ‘Is … she … okay?’

  ‘I hope so, Gianni, and I mean to keep her that way. But I need your help.’

  ‘Left … three days ago … research trip … ’ The patient winced as though every breath was causing him terrible pain, which Ben didn’t doubt it was. ‘Really big … Important,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t care what she’s researching, Gianni. That’s not what I need to know. Just tell me where she went.’

  Garrone’s eyes drifted shut, and for a moment Ben thought he’d passed out. He had to lean close to hear the murmured word, ‘Olympia.’

  Ben didn’t think he meant the capital of the state of Washington, USA. Or the exhibition centre in London. ‘She’s in Greece?’

  Almost inaudibly, Gianni whispered, ‘She went … to meet a man … Theo Kambasis.’

  ‘Kambasis,’ Ben repeated, writing it down.

  Gianni nodded. The drugs were rapidly carrying him under.

  ‘Stay with me, Gianni. One more question. The man who attacked you. He was after her, wasn’t he? He hurt you so you’d tell him where she’d gone. That’s why he had the sound recorder.’

  Another barely perceptible nod. Gianni’s breathing had slowed down to the merest sigh.

  ‘Did you tell him, Gianni? Do they know where Anna is?’

  But by then, Gianni Garrone was far away in a chemical haze from which he might not emerge for hours. Ben had got all he was going to get, and it was time for him to leave.

  He just had to hope he could find her before the killers did.

  Chapter 18

  As Ben was leaving the hospital, he was scanning a mental map of Europe and measuring distances. Olympia was a long way away, right down on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. To travel there by road represented a monster journey back north past Bologna and Ferrara, then over the arch of the Gulf of Venice to Trieste near the Italian border. Once out of Italy would begin the long slog southwards through the snowy forests and mountains of Slovenia and Croatia, across Bosnia and Herzegovina, through Montenegro and Albania and much of Greece itself. Such a long drive was out of the question, time-wise. As was the prospect of hacking all the way down to Ancona or Bari on Italy’s east coast to catch a ferry – if ferries even operated at this time of year.

  No: it was clear he was going to have to leave the car here in Florence and jump on the first flight he could get. Assuming he could locate Anna Manzini in Olympia when he arrived. Assuming she was still there by the time he did. Assuming she was still alive when he found her.

  A lot of assumptions, but it was all he had.

  Ben’s mind was working fast as he walked away from the hospital portico arches and headed across the square towards where he’d parked the Alpina. Piazza di Santa Maria Nuova was cordoned off by stumpy chained-together bollards, to stop cars blocking up the parking spaces for ambulances. He stepped over the drooping iron chain and walked a few paces up the narrow street towards the car, lighting another Gauloise.

  He was so consumed with his thoughts that he at first failed to register the pair of blazing headlights approaching the wrong way up the street, from the opposite direction. Snapping back to the present moment he turned and saw the black van.

  Going much too fast. Heading right for him.

  By the time Ben realised that the driver’s intention was to run him down, it was almost too late to get out of its path. He leaped back over the chain cordon, placing the two-foot-high concrete bollards between him and it.

  The van didn’t slow down. It rammed into the bollards with a crunch of crumpling metal. Its front rode up off the ground as it smashed the concrete into rubble and kept coming, like a tank, bearing down on him.

  Ben ducked through the rapidly narrowing gap between the corner wall of the square and the oncoming vehicle. He made it to the first parked car, a yellow Fiat, dived for it, slid sideways across its bonnet and landed on his feet. Immediately he was running up the street towards the Alpina, knowing he had little chance of reaching it before the van caught him.

  With just one headlight still intact and its bumper and grille twisted and mangled, the black van ploughed through the remains of the bollards and entered the mouth of the street, the roar of its engine echoing between the tall buildings either side. Its left-side wing caught the front of the yellow Fiat and rammed it violently into the car behind it, a red Alfa that bounced sideways out of its parking space and almost flattened Ben as he raced past.

  Ben was still ten long strides from his BMW. The van smacked the wreckage of the cars aside and kept coming. The passenger window was rolling down. A black-gloved hand was reaching out, clutching what took only a split-second glance for Ben to identify as a SIG Sauer MPX machine pistol.

  The weapon opened fire, filling the narrow canyon of the street with noise and releasing a stream of bullets that stitched a ragged line of holes in the sides of the parked cars in Ben’s wake, punching through metal and glass.

  He reached the Alpina’s driver’s door, but there was no time to get in. Ducking around the back of the car he fell into a crouch and whipped his Taurus from his belt. In advanced pistolcraft classes at Le Val, they taught the art of high-speed combat fire without using the sights. Things were happening too fast to take aim in any case as the van bore down on him, the machine gun snorting from its passenger window. He let off three fast snap-shots, saw his bullets splat into the van’s crumpled bonnet and windscreen. The MPX opened up with another strafing volley, blowing out two of the Alpina’s side windows, shredding the rear door and wing and forcing him to duck. The car shielded him from the gunfire. Solid German engineering. But if they’d been using a rifle-calibre assault weapon the bullets would have torn right through and found him on the other side. Some things in life, you had to be grateful for.

  The van slewed to a skidding halt, blocking the street. Its doors burst open and two men jumped out. They were wearing ski masks and body armour. The one on the passenger side, dumping the spent mag from his machine pistol and slapping in a fresh load from a tactical pouch on his belt, was small and slightly built. The driver was a monster, muscular and tall, and the Franchi Spas combat shotgun he was wielding like a claymore was built to match.

  Ben remembered the witness description of Gianni Garrone’s attacker. A huge guy, bulked up like he was a powerlifter, but fast on his feet. Same guy – a
nd maybe also the same bastard who had shot Jeff and murdered Father Pascal, Luc Simon and Carlo Scanzi. He and his accomplice must have been hanging around the villa, waiting for the ambulance to go by so they could tail it to the hospital in Ben’s wake and lie in wait for their moment to finish the job and eliminate the witness.

  And Ben had walked right into their path. They’d obviously watched him go inside the hospital, and decided to make their move when he reappeared. But Ben wasn’t about to let himself be picked off so easily.

  Firing past the van’s open door the big man let off a roaring blast from his shotgun that ripped away part of the Alpina’s rear wing and tail-light, inches from where Ben was crouching. Then another, blowing out most of the rear window pillar and spraying Ben with broken glass.

  Pinned down, he used the moment to consider his tactical options. In an ideal world, the torturer needed to be taken alive. The big man had been the one sent into Anna’s villa to gain the information; hence he was the most trusted and senior member of the hit team; hence he was more likely to know who they were working for. By contrast, the little guy on the passenger side was expendable.

  So in the next instant, when Ben felt a pause in the gunfire and reared up from his cover to take another shot, it was the little guy he fired at. When the enemy is wearing armour, you abandon the traditional centre-of-mass approach and aim a little higher. Ben held the Taurus tightly in both hands and snapped off a double-tap, BANGBANG, that took him right in the head, a little off-centre but who would quibble. The little guy jerked backwards off his feet and went down on his back, the MPX clattering from his hand. Before he’d hit the ground Ben was swivelling the pistol a few degrees sideways to open fire on his muscular pal, hoping to wing him and take him out of the game without inflicting a lethal hit.

  But the big guy was as fast on his feet as Luciano Morante had said. He ducked behind the open door of the van, clambering back inside with surprising agility for a man his size. Ben fired at the windscreen, turning it into a web of cracks. The van’s engine roared. It lurched forward and took off, leaving the dead man lying in the road. As it sped past, Ben rattled off a string of shots and shattered the passenger window. But the van kept going, making its escape the wrong way up the narrow street.