The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)
Page 2
Raspallo watched in confusion as the monk held the official green and brown card up against the laptop’s screen, scanning its biochip, barcode, photograph, and signature. Then he began typing quickly, muttering as his gloved fingers raced over the soft rubber keys, each marked with a letter from an alphabet Raspallo did not recognize.
The noise from the power saw was getting louder as Vasily scythed its diamond cutting edge effortlessly into the polycarbonate-reinforced glass, ripping an ugly gash deep into the display case.
The caretaker stared with incomprehension at the laptop screen, but could only see line after line of tiny white letters and numbers on a solid black background. It looked nothing like the brightly coloured webpages he normally saw on the tourists’ tablets and phones.
“Your Uni Banca account shows you withdrew your entire life savings yesterday,” the pockmarked monk at the keyboard announced with a heavy Russian accent to Raspallo. “Nineteen thousand seven hundred and fifty Euros. And the flight manifests from Turin Sandro Pertini airport record that you boarded an Alitalia flight this evening to Paris, where you will soon land, before being safely logged through local border control at Charles de Gaulle.”
Raspallo did not understand.
Why would he be in Paris?
What did that mean?
The monk looked across at the caretaker with mock admiration. “Congratulations, Signor Raspallo. You just committed the crime of the century. Singlehandedly.”
He had?
Raspallo shook his head.
It was they who were the criminals. Not him.
“Don’t worry,” the monk continued. “They’re never going to find you.” He closed the laptop, clicking it shut. “We’ll make all necessary arrangements.”
The caretaker watched the industrial cutter cleave through the final section of glass, and an entire corner of the protective box clattered to the hard floor tiles.
Raspallo could no longer feel his limbs, and there was nothing he could do as Vasily shut off the power saw and reached his hand into the case’s jagged opening, laying a rubber mat over the cut glass edge, before carefully starting to pull out the fragile piece of linen.
Tears pricked the back of his eyes. As well as terror and outrage, he now felt shame.
This desecration was his fault.
It was all down to his greed.
He had let these monsters into the cathedral.
He had let everyone down.
Vasily nodded at the monk nearest Raspallo, who bent down and sliced open the zip tie securing the caretaker’s wrists.
Raspallo stretched out his trembling leg as the blood began to flow back into it, but the monk hauled him to his feet, and dragged him stumbling over to Vasily, who seized his wrists, and began stamping his palms down onto the shiny glass surface of the case.
Raspallo’s broken body was no match for the younger man’s strength, and he could only watch in horror as Vasily steered the back of the caretaker’s left hand towards the destroyed corner of the case, then purposefully ground the exposed flesh hard against the jagged glass, which tore effortlessly through the skin and deep into the blood vessels beneath.
Raspallo bellowed in shock and pain as the blood started to run freely from his lacerated flesh into the interior of the empty display case, but the gag in his mouth muffled all noise, leaving the scream echoing around his head.
The sight of so much blood made Raspallo lightheaded, but Vasily quickly pulled the caretaker’s mangled hand out of the display case, and began expertly applying a field dressing to the multiple wounds, catching the rest of the blood, preventing any more from dropping onto the case or the floor.
The caretaker was hazily aware that the remaining monks had finished packing away the gear, and were now looking at their leader expectantly.
On Vasily’s signal, two of them grabbed Raspallo again, and began dragging him over to the ancient temple’s west end.
Confused, the caretaker looked about groggily, until he saw that the tall monk who had been guarding the sacristy was now over by the west door, standing beside the cathedral’s ornately carved great stone font.
As the group approached, the tall monk pulled on the ancient iron chain mechanism, hoisting the basin’s heavy wooden lid high into the air.
Raspallo stared in confusion.
They had what they came for.
What did they want with the font?
The monks steered him up to the great stone bowl, then pushed his chest up against the exquisite carving of the tree of life.
Raspallo stared around, uncomprehending, until a hand grabbed hold of the back of his head and pushed it downwards.
The instant his face hit the icy water, he shouted for all he was worth, but the sound was lost in the cold darkness of the vast stone chalice.
It was then that Raspallo finally understood.
They had allowed him to live for a purpose.
And now he had performed it.
He screamed again, but too late realized that the precious air he had wasted was the last he would ever have.
He thrashed from side to side as violently as he could, but the arms pinning him to the font and holding his head under the holy water were made of steel.
With a primal terror flooding through him, he knew for certain he was dying.
A swirling purple spot appeared at the centre of his vision and began to grow.
Time seemed to slow, and he could sense his strength ebbing away as his ears filled with a roaring noise.
The spinning dark purple cloud now filled his vision, glittering and shimmering with pinprick explosions of light.
Instinct finally overrode his brain. He sucked in wildly though his nose again and again, drawing oblivion deep down into his drowning lungs.
As total darkness descended, he went limp, and his life flowed out into the baptismal waters.
Then nothing.
The monks opened the sacristy door and admitted two men dressed as dustmen, who quickly put the caretaker’s lifeless body into a large wheelie bin, then pushed it outside to a waiting rubbish truck.
The monks did not need to clear away anything. Raspallo’s skin and hair had been building up around the cathedral for the past few decades. There was no specific evidence of murder. The only signs of any crime the Polizia would find were Raspallo’s fresh fingerprints and blood all over the shattered empty glass display case.
When the monks were done, Vasily ushered them out of the building, before closing the sacristy door behind them, and locking it from the outside with Raspallo’s key.
They all slipped into a nearby Mercedes, whose engine had been running all the while, and sped off into the night, carrying in a silver suitcase one of the world’s most famous relics.
Chapter 2
10b St James’s Gardens
Piccadilly
London SW1
England
The United Kingdom
AVA WOKE WITH a start, instantly on her guard.
She glanced at the glowing red digital readout of the radio by her bedside.
It showed 2:04am.
Straining to listen, she heard the sound again.
It was coming from down the hallway.
Fully awake now, she reached under her bed and felt for the loaded Ruger LCR she kept taped there.
She was well aware that the weapon was unlicensed and she should not have it. The days when she had operational permission to carry a firearm were long gone. But, after recent events, she was no longer going to assume that her past would leave her alone.
In the dark, her fingers found the small cold weapon, and she quickly pulled it free, instantly at ease with its snug fit in her hand.
Listening intently, she heard it again.
Whoever it was, they were moving about in her kitchen.
She pulled on a pair of jeans, softly opened the bedroom door, and moved silently down the hallway, the adrenaline pumping hard.
She did not hav
e a burglar alarm. She did not need one. Instead she had a custom-made solid steel front door.
How had the intruder got in?
The kitchen door was fractionally open, and she could see a chink of light coming from behind it.
She steadied her breathing.
In one fluid movement, she swung the door wide open with her knee and entered quickly, moving past the doorway and out of the line of fire.
Her aim zeroed in on the intruder’s heart.
To her amazement, the man was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him.
He was also holding a handgun, pointed directly at her.
“Ever prepared, I see.” His voice was raspy. The accent was Scottish. Glasgow, if she had to guess.
She took in his features in a split second. Close cropped grey hair. Mid-fifties. A crumpled grey suit he wore every day. A frame that was once fit, now going soft around the edges.
Nothing about his appearance reassured her.
He could be anyone.
The tension between them was mounting dangerously. She locked onto his face, searching for any small sign of his intentions.
His expression was impassive. But there was something else, too – a hint of coldness in his pale eyes. Unpredictability.
“Dr Curzon. My apologies. I should’ve introduced myself.” He rose slowly to his feet.
Ava’s adrenaline started to surge.
She did not have a nameplate outside her door.
The man kept his aim on her, and with his left hand reached for his inside jacket pocket.
She focused on both his hands, shutting everything else out, looking for the first flicker of a hostile movement.
“Very slowly,” she warned him, pulling the Ruger’s trigger a fraction. The diminutive silver cylinder turned in the matt black weapon, cocking the hammer on a fresh .22 round.
Gently, he pulled out an identity card, and held it up.
She could not read his name, but the photograph was a good likeness, and three words stood out in bold capital letters:
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
“Jack Swinton,” he explained. “MI13.”
“Get out,” she ordered, her voice low.
He nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. MI13 doesn’t exist. Except,” he smiled briefly, “here we are.”
From the corner of her eye, Ava caught a movement at the edge of the kitchen blinds, on the road outside.
She stole a glance, and saw a black van parked up. Beside it was a police car, with two police officers inside staring out into the night.
“Imagine MI5, MI6, or GCHQ want to get something done.” He was speaking quietly, his gun still on her. “But they don’t want the politicians or public to know about it.” He paused. “That’s what we’re for.”
She continued to stare at him, unblinking. “I said, get out.”
He did not move. “Things have moved on since your day.”
She swallowed hard.
“The intelligence services now have to answer openly to parliamentary committees. It’s impossible to do anything truly covertly any more. Which is where we come in. The politicians don’t even know we exist.”
She glanced again through the small strip of window at the squad car on the street. It looked real enough – even down to the bored expression on the policemen’s faces at having pulled the graveyard shift.
“The boys in blue riding shotgun out there think we’re Customs and Excise,” he chuckled.
“You’ve got the wrong house.” Ava nodded towards the door. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
He sighed. “Let’s do it the long way, then. Dr Ava Curzon. Studied archaeology and ancient Middle-Eastern languages at Oxford, Harvard, and Cairo. Followed your father into MI6. Top recruit in the year. After a flying start, you left – disillusioned – at the start of the Iraq war. You joined the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, where you were later seconded to museums in Amman and Baghdad. Now you’re back in London working on Assyrian antiquities damaged by the wars in Iraq.”
Ava took a deep breath.
He clearly knew his stuff.
“That information isn’t hard to come by.” She eyed him closely. “If you know where to look.” Her voice expressed a confidence she did not feel.
“Fine,” he answered. “Just do me one favour. Look at that.”
He nodded towards a piece of paper in the middle of the large kitchen table. She had not spotted it before, lying on the photographs and translations of Mesopotamian funerary carvings she had been working on until late.
She had no intention of moving any closer to where he was sitting. She wanted him – and his gun – at a good distance, where she could see them both.
She glanced down at the paper, and saw it was a montage of photocopied documents reduced onto one sheet. As she focused on them, she realized with a jolt they were all familiar.
And very highly classified.
She stared at her former MI6 ‘Foreign Office’ photo-identity card. Her official MI6 fingerprint card. A shot of the Director-General welcoming her intake of new recruits, taken in his penthouse office at ‘Legoland’, MI6’s multi-coloured headquarters that looked like building bricks from a kindergarten toy box. And her confidential P45 ‘Details of Employee Leaving Work’ tax form, issued by HR without so much as a thank you on the day she left.
Even though the photographs had been taken a while ago now, she still looked pretty much the same. Dark hair – still in a ponytail – and brown eyes with gold flecks. It was a good look for the line of work. She could pass convincingly for English, European, or Middle Eastern.
It took her a moment to notice that there was also a shiny brass key resting on the sheet of photographs. As she recognized its familiar shape, she realized that unlike the identical one she always carried, the copy on the table was still shiny, and tagged with a label bearing an alphanumeric code.
“The Firm keeps a key to all doors it installs,” he explained. “Your father had this flat done. Late 1990s, wasn’t it? I’m sure you know how these things work.”
She glanced down again at the key.
Her father had the door installed during a particularly nasty operation in which his safety was deemed compromised. She remembered it well. However, as far as she was aware, she had the only key.
She looked up slowly and met his gaze. “I’m giving you a final warning.”
“You recently helped a senior MI6 officer and an American DIA agent deal with a group of very bad people, and there were some – how shall I put it? – unexpected funerals.”
She froze, not believing what she had just heard.
Knowing about her past was one thing.
But no one knew about that.
She could sense the hairs on the back of her neck prickling.
That information was beyond classified.
It did not exist.
Beads of sweat started forming in the middle of her back.
Had details leaked out?
Was that what this was?
Payback?
She stared at the muscles around the man’s eyes, fractionally tightening her grip on the Ruger’s trigger.
Were loose ends being cleaned up?
The barrel of his gun moved almost imperceptibly.
In the split second it took her to breathe out and start squeezing the trigger all the way, she registered that he was lowering his gun.
“Do I have to go on?” he asked, placing the weapon onto the table.
Her palms were moist.
Was this a trick?
“Look, we just really need your help,” he persisted, placing his gun on the table. “If I was here to harm you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
She looked down at the photographs and the key.
What he said made sense.
He was going to a lot of trouble if he had just come to kidnap or kill her. He could have done that while she was asleep.
“Take me off your list,” she ordered. “I’m a museum archaeologist now. Nothing more. And that’s how I want it.”
He slumped back down into his chair. “We can talk about that.” He picked up the piece of paper and key, and slipped them back into his pocket.
Glancing up, his eyes rested on a large pair of framed photographs on the wall beside her. One was of Lawrence of Arabia in the 1930s. He was somewhere in the English countryside, wearing British Army uniform, sitting astride a sleek vintage motorcycle. The photograph next to it was of Ava, parked up beside a medieval castle somewhere, leaning against an identical black and chrome motorcycle.
“From what I see,” he continued, “I think you’ll like MI13. Not very conventional. Not many rules.”
Ava glanced out of the window at the squad car. The policeman in the passenger seat was checking his watch.
“It’s not going to happen,” she answered. “I’m done with all that. I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time.”
He scrutinized her face closely for a few moments, before reaching for the mug of coffee and taking a mouthful. “You’ll appreciate, I’m sure, that the current climate with Russia is more tense than at any time since the Wall came down in ’89. With everything now going on in eastern Europe and Syria, anything the Russian military does out of the ordinary is therefore of the utmost interest to everyone.”
He rubbed his hand across his face. “So here’s the thing, Dr Curzon. Would you have any idea why a Russian military unit would heist the Turin Shroud?”
Ava stared at him in disbelief.
That’s what this was about?
The Turin Shroud?
“If you’re interested, get dressed.” He stood up to leave. “We’ve got a mobile unit outside.”
Chapter 3
10b St James’s Gardens