The Lost Relic bh-6

by Scott Mariani

  It wasn’t. A dark corridor opened up in front of him. Before the big guy could see which way he’d gone, Ben had slammed the door shut behind him and was sprinting hard down the corridor. He tore through another door, hit a fork in the corridor and took a right.

  As he ran, he was getting his bearings. He was on the ground floor now, and had probably come down the same way the guys he’d locked in the kiln had come up. The second two must have come round the other way, heading him off in a pincer movement.

  Moving more slowly and cautiously now that he’d managed to lose his pursuer, Ben wove his way onwards until he found himself in a familiar-looking hallway. To his left was the foot of the main staircase, ahead of him was the entrance to the glass walkway through to the gallery.

  He stopped, listened. He could hear no movement from the gallery. Maybe everybody was dead already and the rest of the gunmen had escaped. Or maybe they were all watching him on CCTV, waiting quietly for him to walk in there so they could riddle him with bullets.

  It was as he stood there figuring out his next move that he heard the cry from the half-open door on the far side of the hallway.

  A woman’s cry. Someone in distress.

  A vision of Donatella Strada leaped into Ben’s mind. He raced across the hall and slipped into the room.

  Sprawled helplessly on her back across a chaise longue was a young girl of about fifteen or sixteen. A man stood over her with his back to Ben. The first thing Ben noticed about him was the long blond ponytail. He’d removed his mask, and thrown it on the floor together with his gun, a Steyr machine pistol identical to the empty weapon in Ben’s hand. The man’s gun was just a couple of steps out of reach. Careless.

  Ben moved a little closer, and recognised the girl as the sullen teenager from the exhibition. Her hair was dishevelled, her face contorted and streaked with tears.

  The next thing Ben noticed about the man was the six-inch double-edged combat knife that he was using to cut away the girl’s clothes piece by piece. Her dress was slashed up the middle and hung open. He had the blade up inside her bra and was sawing slowly through the middle of it, talking softly to her as he sliced the flimsy material.

  The girl’s eyes opened just a little wider as she saw Ben. The man seemed to tense, sensing a new presence in the room. He turned.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ People tended to revert to their native tongue in moments of surprise. The Russian.

  Ben raised the empty Steyr. He took a step closer. ‘Have you forgotten our conversation? I thought we agreed you weren’t going to harm anyone else.’

  The Russian blinked. ‘It’s you,’ he said, switching from Russian to English. He spoke it with an American accent. Too many Hollywood movies.

  ‘Get away from her,’ Ben said, motioning with the gun. ‘I haven’t touched her. See for yourself.’

  ‘Get away from her.’

  The Russian stepped away from the girl, but he kept hold of the knife. The teenager immediately covered herself with the tatters of her dress and curled up tight on the chaise longue, making small sounds and shuddering as though she’d been thrown in icy water.

  ‘Who are you?’ the man asked, with what sounded like genuine curiosity.

  ‘My name’s Ben Hope.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just a tourist,’ Ben said. ‘Came to see some art.’

  ‘Looks like I picked the wrong gallery.’

  ‘Looks that way to me, too,’ Ben said, and took another step.

  The Russian chuckled. For a man with a machine gun aimed directly at his face, he was a little too composed. ‘You are from England.’

  ‘I don’t live there any more. And you’re Ukrainian,’ Ben said.

  ‘Excellent guess. My name is Anatoly Shikov.’ He said it as though it should mean something to Ben. It didn’t, but just the fact that the Russian had told him meant a lot. It meant he was confident Ben wasn’t leaving the room alive. The guy had some kind of angle – what it was, Ben didn’t know yet.

  ‘I think you should lose the knife, Anatoly,’ Ben said. ‘Things will go better for you that way. Then you can take me to where you’re keeping the hostages. It’s time to give this up.’

  Anatoly’s blue eyes twinkled with a glacier light. ‘I disagree. I think you should drop the gun. I think you would have shot me by now. I think I am the only one armed here, yes?’ He waggled the knife loosely in his hand, then pointed the tip of the blade at Ben.

  Ben shrugged and tossed away the Steyr. ‘Someone’s going to get hurt, Anatoly, and it’s not going to be me.’

  ‘Let us find out.’

  In the next split second, Ben’s eyes darted to the knife. It was a strange-looking weapon, with a large nub on the top of its hilt that wasn’t a bayonet-fixing lug. The Russian was holding it oddly in his hand, and the way he was pointing it . . .

  Almost as if it were a gun . . .

  There was a sharp crack and something blurred through the air towards Ben. At the same instant he realised what the weapon was, he was ducking out of the way. Fast, but not quite fast enough to avoid the hurtling blade. It ripped through the left shoulder of his T-shirt, slicing the flesh on its way past before embedding itself with a judder in a bookcase behind him.

  Ben had heard of the infamous Spetsnaz ballistic knife, but he’d never seen one in action before. That strange nub was a release catch for the blade, which was propelled faster than a crossbow bolt by the powerful spring inside the hilt. Combat dagger meets flick-knife meets harpoon gun. Very KGB. Very effective. He touched his left shoulder and his fingers came away thick with blood. No pain yet, just a burning tightness. The pain would come, though.

  ‘Handy little toy,’ Ben said. ‘You should practise more with it.’

  Anatoly tossed away the empty hilt and backed off several steps, moving round in a curve towards the fireplace. Groping behind him, he grabbed hold of a heavy cast iron poker and swung it wildly as Ben closed in fast. Ben stepped out of the range of the blow, felt the humming whoosh of the poker as it passed an inch from his nose. He moved back in, threw a kick at the Russian’s knee that didn’t connect hard enough to break it. The Russian cried out in pain and rage, bared his teeth in hatred and swung the poker again. Ben ducked. The poker smashed into the mantelpiece, breaking off a big triangular chunk of marble that fell with a crash to the hearth. Ben bent low, scooped it up and hurled it with all his strength at the Russian’s head.

  Anatoly saw the lump of marble flying towards him and tried to bat it out of the way like a baseball player. The world’s thinnest bat against the world’s heaviest ball. The poker hummed through the air and connected with nothing. The chunk of marble caught him on the cheekbone with a solid crunch. He dropped the poker and looked dazed for just an instant, then staggered back across the room with blood pouring from the ragged gash below his eye.

  ‘I told you not to harm these people,’ Ben said. He picked up the poker. ‘You should have listened to me.’

  Anatoly staggered across the room to the bookcase in which the Spetsnaz blade had embedded itself. He twisted and ripped it out of the wood. His eyes were filled with maniacal hatred. He screamed and came running at Ben like a wild man, holding the blade high.

  He was three metres away when Ben brought the poker down hard and fast and let go. It sailed like an iron spear, and Anatoly ran right into it. Their combined momentum drove it deep into his brain. He went down on his back as if hit by a cannonball and lay still. He was still clutching the blade and his eyes remained fixed on Ben’s, but there was no life in them any more.

  Ben could feel the warm wetness of the blood running down his shoulder, making his T-shirt stick to him. A trickle went down his arm and dripped from his elbow. He turned to the girl, went over to the chaise longue where she was still curled up tight, shaking, staring at nothing. He felt her brow. Clammy and cold. She was going into shock.

  He was about to say something reassuring, when he heard the front do
or of the Academia Giordani burst in.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The dark blue Land Rovers with the white tops and the red stripes down the side and CARABINIERI in big white letters across the doors had rolled silently up the drive to the Academia Giordani and were clustered outside the front entrance. The assault team, clad in back paramilitary gear, helmets and goggles, took down the front door with a battering ram and stormed inside. In seconds, the entrance foyer and hallway were swarming with armed cops.

  Spartak Gourko had burst through the gallery the moment he heard the crash of the front door. At the same instant, Rocco Massi emerged from the passage that led towards the fire escape. Neither of them hesitated. As the police stormed into the hall waving their submachine guns and riot shotguns, Massi and Gourko opened up on them. The crossfire was wild and devastating. Five, eight, ten cops went down before the return fire drove Massi and Gourko together back down the glass walkway. Panes shattered around them as they sprinted back to the gallery. ‘Anatoly?’ Gourko roared at the Italian. Massi shook his head, as if to say ‘I haven’t seen him’.

  A dozen Carabinieri gave chase. Their commander’s eyes opened wide behind his assault goggles when he saw the displays of artwork. His department would have hell to pay if a single canvas was ruined by a stray bullet.

  Massi and Gourko didn’t share his concern. As the Carabinieri emerged into the open gallery space, they were waiting for them. Gourko levelled his AR-15 and let off a long burst at the invading cops that took down one man and sent the rest scurrying for cover. Three display cabinets exploded into spinning fragments. Tatters of canvas that had once been a Picasso worth eight million euros floated down through the gunsmoke.

  In the side room, the hostages were yelling and screaming in panic. Donatella clutched Gianni tightly to her, covering his eyes. Another deafening exchange of shots, and they could see the two masked gunmen retreating towards them just beyond the doorway.

  One of the hostages saw his chance. Until now, the Robert Redford lookalike in the Valentino blazer had said and done nothing. Now he crept to his feet, eyes glued to the gunmen’s backs.

  ‘No,’ Donatella said. ‘Don’t do it.’

  Pietro De Crescenzo tugged at the man’s sleeve. ‘Get down,’ he implored. ‘You’ll get us all killed, you fool.’

  The guy wasn’t listening. He snatched his arm away from De Crescenzo’s grip and before they could stop him he was across the room and had attacked Gourko from behind, grasping for his gun and trying to wrest it from his hands.

  Gourko was twice as strong and twice as fast. He’d once held off an entire squad of Chechen guerrillas, armed with nothing more than a sharpened entrenching tool, for five hours until reinforcements arrived. This guy wasn’t going to cause him much trouble. He tore the man’s hands from his weapon and sent him flying with a head-butt that drove his teeth into his throat. The guy screamed and started crawling back towards the other hostages, as if he thought he could hide among them. Crazy with rage, Gourko rushed after him into the side room with his AR-15 down at the hip, pulled the trigger and held it back. More than twenty rounds of high-velocity rifle bullets ripped the room apart, drowning out the screams of the hostages. He didn’t stop firing until the magazine was empty.

  By then, the screams of the hostages had been silenced.

  Spartak Gourko gazed dispassionately at the carnage inside the room, then turned away. Spotting the padded case containing the Goya picture, he snatched it up and slung it over his shoulder. When he ran back out into the gallery he saw the place was being overrun with cops. Massi was pinned down by gunfire. Gourko spat. Raised his AR-15 and let rip with the underbarrel 40mm grenade.

  The explosion shook the room and blew out most of the windows. Glass rained down like an ice storm from the ceiling. Where the Carabinieri had been gaining ground a moment earlier, a lake of fire washed over scattered bodies. Burning cops staggered and fell. A shattered Rembrandt turned a blazing cartwheel across the floor.

  Gourko and Massi dashed through the smoke and leaped out of the smashed windows and into the grounds, running like crazy. They vaulted over a low wall, and then were rapidly disappearing across the lawns towards the woodland in the distance.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ben had raced out of the library just in time to see the heavily armed Carabinieri come swarming into the hallway. He waved his arms and yelled ‘No! There are hostages!’ at the top of his voice – but his shout was lost in the noise as the two gunmen opened fire and drove the assault team back towards the entrance foyer. Ben had just enough time to recognise one of the shooters as the hulk he’d encountered earlier; then he had to duck back inside the library, shielding his face from flying splinters as the two thugs shot everything to pieces with their automatic rifles. He ran back to the girl, trying to shield her as best he could from stray bullets, his mind racing to think what he could do to protect her if the gunmen came in here.

  But moments later he realised that the gunfight had moved to the gallery room. He ran back out into the hall and was met by the gun muzzles of the Carabinieri. He raised his arms and laced his fingers over his head. As they closed in on him, he explained that he was one of the exhibition visitors. Rough hands started hauling him away towards the entrance foyer.

  That was when the grenade went off inside the gallery. The whole building seemed to rock.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled the Carabinieri sergeant who’d been clutching Ben’s arm. He let go of Ben and ran with the rest of his men towards the shattered glass walkway as thick black smoke billowed out into the hall.

  Nobody was stopping him in the chaos, so Ben followed them through the acrid smoke. For the first time since the robbery had started, he found himself back inside the exhibition room.

  However many more gunmen there’d been, they were all gone now. In their wake they’d left a battlefield. Burning bodies of fallen cops, some dead, some maimed and trying to roll out the flames and crawl to safety. Broken glass covered everything. Many of the precious exhibits were destroyed.

  Ben didn’t care about those. His heart was in his mouth as he looked around him, peering through the smoke. No sign of the hostages anywhere – then he looked through the open door to the side room and saw something.

  A foot. Someone lying motionless. Ben ran. He burst into the room.

  He stared.

  He’d found the hostages.

  Or what was left of them. Thirty or more bodies lay strewn and piled across the floor. Some lying flat. Some propped against the wall. Blood everywhere, and plaster and dust and debris and scattered bottleneck shell cases from an automatic rifle.

  Ben heard a groan. A survivor. He rushed over and saw a dusty hand groping out from the piles of bodies, and a pale face staring at him streaked with dust and blood. It was Pietro De Crescenzo, the count. As Ben looked around him, he realised one or two others were stirring.

  And then he saw Donatella and Gianni.

  Ben staggered back and slumped against the opposite wall and closed his eyes and felt sick and then the room was filling with shouting Carabinieri.

  He scarcely even noticed them haul him to his feet and half-carry him away. Barely registered the chatter of radios and the screech of the sirens, the chaos around him as he was led outside, or the paramedics who sat him down and covered him with a blanket.

  The ambulance ride was just a faraway dream.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dark was falling by the time the fleet of ambulances wailed into the ER bays at San Filippo Neri hospital in Rome and the injured were urgently whisked away by medical staff. Ben refused the wheelchair that the paramedics tried to shove under him. After a few minutes he was taken into a brightly-lit treatment room where he was given a form to fill in and left alone for a while. He sat on a bed with his head in his hands. Didn’t look up when he heard the nurse come to attend to his shoulder. Didn’t speak to her as she gently cut away his bloodied T-shirt and began cleaning his wound. He h
ardly noticed the sting of the surgical spirit or the prick of the anaesthetic needle as she prepared to stitch him up. He was far away, caught up in a dark storm of rage and guilt and despair.

  For the first time in his life he’d voluntarily allowed the police cowboys to compromise a delicate, volatile hostage situation. It went against all his training, all his experience. And look what had happened as a result.

  What were you thinking?

  I had no choice.

  Yes, you did. You could have saved those people.

  It didn’t matter how tightly he closed his eyes or ground his fists against them. He couldn’t shut out the image of Donatella and Gianni lying dead. Their staring eyes. Their clothing ripped up by bullets, the pool of their merged blood glazing on the floor. He saw the boy’s face looking up at him as they’d walked down the road together earlier that day. Saw the young mother’s expression of relief and joy as he’d brought her son back to her. She’d been so warm, so vivacious. The kid so inquisitive and smart, his whole life ahead of him.

  Now the two of them were lying on slabs somewhere in this very hospital. And that could have been prevented.

  It was insupportable.

  Ben didn’t notice the nurse leave the room. Time passed – it could have been minutes or days, he had no sense of it. Then a voice broke into his thoughts, speaking his name. He looked up to see two men standing there, both wearing dark suits.

  He instantly figured them for police. One of them stood back near the doorway as the other stepped towards him. ‘Signor Hope?’ he repeated. ‘I am Capitano Roberto Lario of the Arma dei Carabinieri here in Rome.’ His English was accented but fluent.