The Babylon Idol

by Scott Mariani

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I’m going home.’

  ‘No more adventures for you either. You have to promise.’

  ‘That’s one promise you know I can’t make,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t think you could.’ She kissed him, and held him tightly for a long moment. ‘Stay safe, caro mio. Whatever the future holds. And remember—’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘If you ever find yourself in Florence, you must give me a call.’

  He said nothing more. Just smiled, then stood back and gave her a last wave as the RAF guys closed up the hatch. The plane taxied into position. Minutes later, Ben watched it take off into the wintry English sky.

  ‘And home we go,’ he murmured to himself when it was gone.

  To find what awaiting him, he didn’t yet know. In between trying to call Roberta Ryder to give her the all-clear, he’d left three messages on the voicemail of Dr Sandrine Lacombe, asking after Jeff’s condition and telling her he’d be back in France tomorrow evening. He was still waiting for Sandrine to reply. And that worried him. It worried him a great deal.

  Epilogue

  It was worrying him even more as he trudged up the front steps of the farmhouse at Le Val the following evening.

  It was his intention to stop off at home for a few hours, get cleaned up a little, change his clothes and inspect his dressings, before calling another taxi to drive him up to Cherbourg. He’d given up trying to call Sandrine. Either she’d switched jobs, or she’d taken an unexpected holiday and left her phone at home, or she had something to tell him that could only be said face to face. That could only be one thing, and it filled him with dread that made his wounds ache so badly he craved more of that Syrian rebel army morphine.

  The farmhouse was totally dark, not a lit window in the place. He found the door locked, so he took out his key and let himself in quietly. The house felt dead and sombre, to match his mood. He hung his jacket on the hook in the front hall, as well as the walking stick that he’d need to use for a few weeks, until his leg healed up completely. He limped slowly into the dark kitchen. Without turning on any lights, he opened a cupboard and took out the bottle of Laphroaig and a glass.

  The best part about not being able to drive a car for a while was that you could drink as much as you needed to. Which, in Ben’s case, was going to amount to a lot of drinking. That was his intention, too.

  He was finishing his glass and about to pour another when the kitchen door opened and Tuesday walked in. ‘I saw the taxi come and go.’

  ‘Then you know I’m back,’ Ben said.

  ‘How come you’re sitting in the dark?’

  ‘Because it feels like a good place to be right now,’ Ben said. ‘How come all the lights are out?’

  ‘I was in the back,’ Tuesday said, as though that explained anything.

  ‘You want a drink?’

  Tuesday shook his head. ‘Nah. I’m okay, thanks. So … what’ve you been up to?’

  ‘I had a few things to sort out.’

  ‘Sorted them?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘We good?’

  ‘We’re good,’ Ben said.

  Tuesday nodded and made no reply. Ben looked at him. Tuesday could be inscrutable at times. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’ Ben asked him.

  Tuesday gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘One bit of news. Looks like we’re off the hook with the cops. They’ve reinstated our licence. The armoury stuff all came back yesterday.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ Ben said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There was one other thing,’ Tuesday said morosely.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You’d better come with me.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘’Cause I need to show you something,’ Tuesday said.

  ‘Show me what?’

  Tuesday said nothing.

  ‘Can’t you just tell me?’

  ‘It’s best you see it. I can’t describe it.’

  Tuesday led Ben from the dark kitchen, down the dark hallway, towards the living-room door. He turned the handle and pushed the door open. The living room was dark, too.

  Ben limped inside the room. ‘What the hell’s this about?’ he was about to snap irritably at Tuesday, when the lights all came on at once.

  ‘SURPRISE!’

  Ben nearly fell over. Partly out of shock, and partly because Sandrine flew at him and hugged him so hard that he almost lost his balance.

  Everyone was there. Boonzie McCulloch, accompanied by his wife Mirella and clasping a bottle of whisky that he’d already drunk too much of to be able to speak coherently. Fry, Blackwood, McGuire and the other two ex-SAS guys Boonzie had drafted in to look after things in Ben’s absence, all loud and hearty. Marie-Claire, busily topping up empty glasses. Chantal, smiling radiantly but still eclipsed by the terawatt grin that was suddenly splitting Tuesday’s face in two. Lynne Dekker and her guy Kip, the crocodile farmer, both pink-faced with mirth and booze. Storm and the rest of the dogs, happily wagging their tails and lolling their tongues.

  And Jeff.

  He was sitting in a wheelchair in the middle of the crowded room. He’d lost weight and a couple of shades of colour. But he was alive, and awake, and laughing out loud at the expression on Ben’s face. ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ he hooted.

  Ben didn’t know what to say. He managed, ‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Dekker. Hope you had a good sleep while the rest of us were out working.’

  Sandrine clasped Ben’s hand. ‘You look awful,’ she said. He couldn’t have said the same thing about her. Her hair was loose, all the way down past her waist.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ he said.

  ‘I got your message that you were coming back tonight. And I thought you’d like a surprise.’

  ‘When did he wake up?’

  ‘Six days ago.’

  ‘Six days of hell, mate,’ Jeff laughed. ‘These women won’t leave me alone. This doctor lady, she’s a slave driver, I’m telling you. You never met an RSM half as tough.’

  ‘I like the chair,’ Ben said to him. ‘It’s a good look.’

  ‘Just for show,’ Jeff replied. ‘You want to see me dance the tango?’

  ‘Some other time,’ Ben said. A twinge made him step to the nearest sofa and lower himself stiffly into it.

  ‘Fuck, mate, you look even more banged up than I am. What happened?’

  ‘You want to hear a story?’ Ben asked him.

  ‘Just what I need.’

  ‘I have a story for you,’ Ben said. ‘It’s about a guy who got his neck stretched like a chicken.’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to hear that story now, chéri,’ Chantal said, stepping behind Jeff’s chair and putting her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Later,’ Jeff said with a wink to Ben.

  It was too much. Tears melted into Ben’s eyes as he sat there, surrounded by laughter and light and warmth. Sandrine looked tenderly at him and squeezed his hand. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I am now,’ Ben said. ‘I am now.’

  Read on for an exclusive extract of the new Ben Hope adventure by Scott Mariani

  The Bach Manuscript

  Coming November 2017

  Prologue

  Nazi-occupied France,

  July 16th, 1942

  All four family members were at home when they came.

  Monsieur and Madame Silbermann, or Abel and Vidette, were in the salon, relaxing in a pair matching Louis XV armchairs after a modest but excellent lunch prepared by Eliane, the family housekeeper. Vidette was immersed in one of the romantic novels into which she liked to escape, while Abel was frowning at an article in the collaborationist newspaper Le Temps, reading of much more serious matters. Things in France were growing worse. Each day seemed to bring a fresh round of new horrors.

  Seated at the piano, framed by the bright, warm afternoon light that flooded in through the French windows, th
eir seventeen-year-old daughter Miriam was working through the most difficult arpeggiated right-hand passage of the musical manuscript in front of her, pausing now and then to peer at the handwritten notes, some of which were hard to read on the faded paper.

  Though she played the piano with a fine touch, Miriam’s particular talent lay with the violin, at which she excelled. The real pianist of the family was her little brother. At age twelve, Gabriel Silbermann’s ability on the keys was already outstripping that of his teachers, even that of his father. Abel had been a respected professor of music at the Paris Conservatoire for over twenty years, until the venerable institution’s director, Henri Rabaud, had helped the Nazi regime to ‘cleanse’ it of all Jewish employees under the premier Statut des Juifs law, which had come into effect in 1941.

  For the last two years Abel Silbermann had managed to get by teaching privately. Things were not what they had been, but he had always convinced himself that the family money, dwindling as it was, would get them through these difficult times. Abel was also the proud owner of a fine collection of historically important musical instruments, some of which he’d inherited from his father, others he had picked up over the years at specialist auctions in France, Switzerland, and Germany – all before the war, of course. It had nearly broken Abel’s heart when, six months earlier, he’d been forced to sell the 1698 Stradivarius cello from his collection, to help make ends meet. He often worried that he might have to sell others.

  But Abel Silbermann had far worse things to fear. He didn’t know it yet, but they were literally just around the corner.

  ‘Merde, c’est dur,’ Miriam muttered to herself. Complaining how tough the music was to get her fingers around. Gabriel could rattle through the piece with ease. But then, Gabriel was Gabriel.

  ‘Miriam, language!’ her mother said sharply, jolted from her reading. Miriam’s father permitted himself a smile behind his newspaper.

  Miriam asked, ‘Father, may I get a pencil and add some fingering notes? I promise I’d do it very lightly, so they could easily be rubbed out afterwards.’

  Abel’s smile fell away. ‘Are you mad, girl? That’s an original manuscript, signed by the composer himself. Have you any idea what it would be worth?’

  Miriam reddened, realising the foolishness of her idea. ‘Sorry, father. I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘It shouldn’t even be out of its box, let alone being defaced with pencil marks. Please tell your brother to put it back where he found it, in future. These things are precious. This one most of all.’

  ‘I’m sure Gabriel knows that, father. He calls it our family treasure.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Abel said, softening. ‘Where is Gabriel, anyway?’

  ‘In his cubbyhole, I think.’

  Things had been hard for Gabriel at school since the Nazis invaded. He hated having to wear the yellow star when he was out of the house. Some of the non-Jewish kids pushed him around and called him names. As a result, he had become a rather solitary child who, when he wasn’t practising his pieces and scales, liked to spend time alone doing his own things. His cubbyhole was the labyrinth of nooks and crawl-spaces that existed behind the panelled walls of the large house, connecting its many rooms in ways that only Gabriel knew. You could sometimes catch him spying from behind a partition through one of his various peepholes, and you’d call out, ‘Oh, Gabriel, stop that nonsense!’ and he’d appear moments later, as if by magic, and disarm everyone with his laughter. Other times he could stay hidden for hours and you’d have no idea where he was. Like a tunnel rat, his father used to say jokingly. Then they’d started hearing the terrible stories coming from Ukraine and Poland, from everywhere, of Jews hiding under floorboards and in sewers while their people were transported away for forced labour, or worse. Abel had stopped talking about tunnel rats.

  ‘I do wish he’d come out of there,’ Vidette Silbermann said. ‘He spends too much time hiding away like that.’

  ‘If he’s happy,’ Miriam said with a shrug. ‘What harm can it do? We all need a little bit of happiness in this terrible, cruel world.’

  Vidette lowered her book and started going into one of her ‘In my day, children would never have been allowed to do this or that’ diatribes, which they’d heard a thousand times before. Miriam’s standard response was to humour her mother by ignoring her. She moved away from the piano and picked her violin up from its stand nearby. Her bow flowed like water over the strings and the notes of the Bach piece sang out melodiously.

  That was when they heard the growl of approaching vehicles coming up to the house. Brakes grinding, tyres crunching to a halt on the gravel outside, doors slamming. Voices and the trudge of heavy boots.

  Miriam stopped playing and looked with wide eyes at her father, who threw down Le Temps and got to his feet just as the loud thumping knocks on the front door resonated all through the house. Vidette sat as though paralysed in her chair. Miriam was the first to voice what they all knew already. ‘Les Boches. They’re here.’

  In that moment, whatever shreds of optimism Abel Silbermann had tried to hang onto, his prayers that this day would never come, that everything would be all right, were shattered.

  From the window, the dusty column of vehicles seemed to fill the whole courtyard in front of the house. The open-top black Mercedes staff car was flanked by motorcycle outriders, behind them three more heavily-armed Wehrmacht sidecar outfits, a pair of Kübelwagens and a transporter truck. Infantry soldiers were pouring from the sides of the truck, clutching rifles, as Abel hurried to the front door. He took a deep breath, then opened it.

  You can still talk your way out of this.

  The officer in charge stepped from the Mercedes. He was tall and thin, with a chiselled, severe face like a hawk’s. He wore an Iron Cross at his throat, another on his breast. The dreaded double lightning flash insignia was on his right lapel, the sinister Totenkopf death’s head skull badge above the peak of his cap. Just the sight of those was enough to instil terror.

  ‘Herr Silbermann? I am SS Obersturmbannführer Horst Krebs. You know why I’m here, don’t you?’

  Abel tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry croak. When Krebs produced a document from his pocket, a high-pitched ringing began in Abel’s ears. The paper was a long list of many names. It was the nightmare come true. Some Jewish families had fled ahead of the rumoured purges. Abel, choosing to disbelieve that anything like this could happen in his dear France, had made what he was now realising with a chill was the worst mistake of his life by staying put.

  ‘You reside here with your wife Vidette Silbermann and your children Gabriel and Miriam Silbermann, correct? I have here an order for your immediate deportation to the Drancy camp. Any resistance, my men will shoot. Understood?’

  Drancy was the transit camp six miles north of Paris that the Germans used as a temporary detention centre for Jews awaiting transportation to Auschwitz. Abel had heard those rumours, too, and refused to believe. Now it was too late. What good would escape have done them, anyway? All fugitives would be picked up long before they reached the Swiss border.

  ‘Take me. I care little for my own life. But please spare my family.’

  ‘Please. Do you think I haven’t heard that before?’ Krebs pushed past Abel and strode into the house. His soldiers clustered around the entrance. Abel found himself looking down the muzzles of several rifles. The hallway of his genteel family home was suddenly filling with troops, their boots crashing on the parquet, the smell of their coarse tunics mixed with leather polish and gun oil, a harsh and alien presence. The Obersturmbannführer turned to his second-in-command and said sharply, ‘Captain Jundt, seize everyone whose name appears on the list and have them assembled here in the hall. Make it quick.’

  The captain snapped his heels. ‘Jawohl, mein Obersturmbannführer!’

  Jundt relayed the command and soldiers surged into the salon to seize both Miriam and her mother, who was mute with horror and virtually fainting as they half carried, ha
lf dragged her into the hallway. While his men carried out his orders, Horst Krebs strolled around the downstairs of the house and gazed around him with appreciation for the Silbermanns’ good taste. Krebs did not consider himself a barbarian, like some of his peers. He came from Prussian aristocratic stock, spoke several languages and, before the war, had published three volumes of poetry. By chance, he had studied music at the same Halle Conservatory founded by the father of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS chief whom the Czech resistance had murdered only the previous month. Reprisals there had been harsh and were ongoing. Krebs intended to pursue his own duties here in France with equal zest.

  Noticing the piano at the far end of the salon by the French windows, Krebs strolled over to inspect it. It was a very fine instrument indeed, a Pleyel. His keen musician’s eye passed over it, taking in the beauty of such a magnificent object. Maybe he would take it home to Germany as a trophy of war.

  Then Krebs’ eye settled on the music score that lay open on the music rest. He raised an eyebrow. Unusual. And very old. He picked it up with a black-gloved hand, and peered at it.

  Behind him, the hallway echoed with the cries of Madame Silbermann and her husband’s pleas as the soldiers forced them to line up at gunpoint. Captain Jundt was yelling, ‘Wo is das Gör? Où est le gamin?’ Demanding to know the whereabouts of young Gabriel, whose name was on the list. Jackboots thumped on the stairs and shook the floorboards above as more troops were dispatched to search the rest of the house.

  Krebs heard none of it. His attention was completely on the manuscript in his hands as he studied it with rapt fascination. The age-yellowed paper. The signature on the front. Could it be the genuine thing? It was amazing.

  Handling it as delicately as though it were some ancient scroll that could crumble at the slightest touch, Krebs replaced the precious manuscript on the music rest, then swept back his long coat and took a seat at the piano. The six flats in the manuscript’s key signature showed that the piece was in the difficult key of G flat major. He removed his gloves, laid his fingers on the keys and sight-read the first couple of bars.