by James Becker
Mallory hesitated, though it was clear to him that he really had very little option. And the Italian’s next words reinforced that belief.
“Don’t even think about it, Jessop. This woman’s life means nothing to me. I’d rather avoid bloodshed here, but if you don’t do what I tell you, we’ll shoot her. Then we’ll shoot you, eventually, once you’ve given us what we want. Now turn off the engine.”
Mallory nodded. He reached forward and slowly turned the ignition key.
Never taking his eyes off Mallory, the Italian spoke in his native language to the man standing on the other side of the car, who quickly hustled Robin over to the Ford and made her sit in the backseat. As soon as she’d sat down, he slid in beside her.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen now,” the Italian said, switching back to English. “You are going to get out of that car and stand facing it, legs and arms apart and leaning on the roof. Do it.”
Mallory climbed out of the driving seat and did precisely as he was told.
The third man emerged from the front of the Ford and quickly and efficiently searched him, almost immediately finding the pistol Mallory had tucked into his waistband. The man handed the weapon to the one who appeared to be in charge, who looked at it briefly, then slipped it into his own pocket.
“One of our pistols, I believe,” he said.
The third man finished the search and stepped back. “Good. Now you will sit in the front passenger seat of our car and do absolutely nothing until it reaches its destination. If my colleague in the backseat thinks for even an instant that you might try some kind of violence, I have told him that he is to immediately shoot the woman and then shoot you. I’d rather he didn’t have to do either, because of the mess that would make inside the car, but be in no doubt that he is quite prepared to carry out my orders if you make it necessary. It is, after all, only a hire car. Do you understand?”
Mallory nodded again.
“I hope you do, because frankly as far as I can see we don’t need either you or the woman. I’m quite certain that the relic and whatever information you two amateurs have managed to extract from it are either in your pockets or possibly locked away in your car, but even if you’ve hidden it somewhere else I’m sure I can persuade one of you to tell me where.”
He gestured toward the Ford Focus. “Now get into the passenger seat, and do up the seat belt. Then lace your fingers together and put your hands on top of your head, where my colleague in the backseat can see them clearly.”
With the Italian’s pistol pointing straight at him as a silent persuader, Mallory complied, as there was absolutely nothing else he could do. He was also acutely aware of the essential truth of what the anonymous Italian had just said: there was no argument that he could marshal that would be likely to persuade the man that their lives were worth sparing. They had no fallback plan or backup system that would be convincing enough to bother the man with the gun.
Who he was, Mallory still had no idea, but he exuded an air of utterly ruthless efficiency. He would not have been surprised if the Italian had been the man who pulled the trigger of his pistol to silence the three men who had appeared at Robin’s apartment. And those three people had presumably been his colleagues. If he had been prepared to summarily execute three people he had been working with, Mallory had no doubt that he would kill him or Robin without a second thought. In fact, he was sure that the only reason he and Robin were still alive was that it was more convenient for the Italians to drive away from the center of Exeter with them still in one piece, which meant that as soon as they reached whatever destination they had in mind, their life expectancy would probably be measured in minutes or even seconds.
The other side of the coin, and what gave Mallory the tiniest sliver of hope, were Robin’s impressive martial arts skills. And, Mallory thought, as he laced his fingers on top of his head as he had been told, another useful factor was that the strength of the opposition had just been reduced by a third. Instead of facing three men they were, at least for the moment, only facing two, although that would obviously change as soon as the third man arrived at their destination in the Porsche. It all really depended on what happened next, but at least for the moment the odds had been shortened.
The man behind the steering wheel glanced across at Mallory, checking that his seat belt was secured and that his hands were on his head as he’d been told, then nodded to the man outside the car, reversed the Ford, and drove it toward the exit ramp from the car park.
Mallory moved his head slightly so that he could see the door mirror. In its reflection he caught a glimpse of the Italian placing a slim leather case on the passenger seat of the Cayman, then opening the trunk and looking inside, presumably checking to see if that was where they’d hidden the ancient parchment. Then he was lost to sight as the Ford headed down the ramp.
37
Devon
It wasn’t a particularly long drive.
The driver swung the Ford out of the parking garage and immediately began heading northwest. Within a few minutes he turned onto the A377, which led up to Crediton, but Mallory doubted if he intended to drive that far.
He was right. They drove past a village called Smallbrook, and about half a mile later the driver slowed down, alternating his glance between the road in front and the built-in GPS. And as he hadn’t programmed the unit, presumably their destination had already been entered, even before the car had driven into the parking garage.
At Dunscombe, the Italian turned off the main road onto a minor road that opened up to the southwest, signposted to Hookway.
When Mallory saw the direction the vehicle was going, he guessed that they would end up on some quiet road or possibly on the outskirts of a wood somewhere, a place where the Italians could conclude the business with them well away from the prying eyes of any witnesses.
There was a small wood over to the right-hand side of the road, and Mallory wondered if that was where the car was heading, but the driver continued along the minor road without slowing down. But then he did reduce speed. It was quite obvious that the driver had simply been given the location, and had never been to that particular spot before, because he was following the instructions from the GPS with considerable care. At a crossroads he paused briefly and then took the road on the left and continued for another half a mile or so. As they reached another wooded area on the left, he dropped the speed of the car down to a crawl and began searching for somewhere to pull off the road and get the vehicle out of sight.
There were several pull-offs where the car could have left the road, but the condition of the ground meant that getting back onto the tarmac again could have been quite difficult. After about fifty yards, as the vehicle approached the farther end of the wood, a rutted track appeared, leading to a small clearing. Immediately the driver turned the steering wheel to the right and the car bounced and lurched as it left the metaled road surface. He swung the car round the clearing in a circle so that its front pointed back the way they’d come, toward the road. Then he turned off the engine and for a few seconds nobody in the car moved.
Then the driver unclipped his seat belt, reached into his jacket pocket, and took out an automatic pistol—yet another example of the Beretta Storm model—and pointed it at Mallory.
“Girl stays in car,” he said, in broken and heavily accented English. “You get out, then stand still.”
The last thing Mallory wanted to do at that stage was give either of the men an excuse to pull the triggers of their weapons, so he moved with exaggerated care, unlacing his fingers and reaching slowly down to his right-hand side to unclip the seat belt. Then, still moving slowly and carefully, he opened the door beside him and stepped out of the car. He took a couple of paces away from the vehicle, then stopped and turned back to face it, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The driver was still watching him closely, the muzzle of the pistol aimed at h
im.
He heard the driver issue an instruction in Italian to the man in the backseat, and then he, too, climbed out of the car and stood on the opposite side of it, the Beretta still covering Mallory.
After another moment the left-hand rear door of the car swung open and Robin emerged, the blond wig tangled and a fierce determination shining in her eyes.
But for the moment, there was nothing either of them could do. The Italian standing on the far side of the Ford gestured with his pistol for Robin to move closer to Mallory, obviously so that he could cover both of them with his weapon at the same time. As she did so, the other Italian moved a couple of paces to the side, to stand beside his companion.
Whether by accident or design, the two armed men had made it impossible for either Mallory or Robin to react. The biggest problem with martial arts was that any practitioner needed to be standing extremely close to his or her target before any of the techniques could be used, and right now they were both too far away.
In short, until one or both of the Italians came a lot closer to them, there was nothing Mallory or Robin could do to try to resolve the situation. If the two men were going to wait where they were until the third member of their lethal group arrived, then Mallory didn’t see how they were going to be able to walk away.
The attention of the two men seem to be focused more on Robin than on Mallory, and they were talking together in low voices while they looked over the top of the car at her. Mallory spoke virtually no Italian, just a handful of words and phrases that were useful in a café or restaurant and that he’d picked up on a couple of holidays he’d taken in Rome and Florence a few years earlier, but it looked to him as if they were contemplating spending a bit of recreational time with her, presumably before they shot or strangled her. That, Mallory thought, would be quite interesting to watch, because he frankly doubted whether either man would survive the encounter without getting something broken, but his guess gave him the first glimmerings of an idea.
If they were planning on raping or assaulting Robin, they would presumably shoot or incapacitate him first, to ensure that he wouldn’t be able to interfere. Logically, if that was the case, then the closer he was standing to her the better, because they wouldn’t want to kill her by mistake when they fired at him.
He glanced at Robin, who was standing only four or five feet away. She met his glance levelly, and he felt that she almost knew what he was thinking. And then they both moved at virtually the same moment, Mallory stepping toward Robin as she clutched him, wrapping her arms around his body and positioning herself in front of him, so that her back was toward the car and partially shielding him from the view of the opposition.
Immediately the Italians angrily shouted out orders, and then they both moved quickly around the car, apparently intending to physically separate them.
And that was the opportunity that Mallory had been waiting for.
“We’ll only get one chance,” he whispered to her.
“I’ll take one if you handle the other,” she murmured, then stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.
At that moment, the Italian who had been sitting in the backseat with Robin reached them first and roughly grabbed his shoulder, pulling Mallory away from her.
As Robin stepped to the side, her muscles already reacting to the threat posed by the other heavily built Italian who was then just a few feet away from her, Mallory turned around, his fist traveling in a short and brutal arc toward the Italian’s solar plexus.
But the bigger man was no stranger to street fighting, and moved sideways a few inches so Mallory’s blow missed. The Italian swung his own fist, aiming for his ribs. But Mallory danced back, dodging to one side, and the man’s fist barely grazed his abdomen. He’d done this kind of thing before as well.
He swung his left fist forward, and the blow slammed into the right side of the Italian’s chest. To Mallory, it felt something like hitting a plank of wood, and had no obvious effect on the other man.
He followed it up with a straight jab with his right, connecting with the man’s stomach. But it hadn’t enough power to even slow him down.
Mallory rocked backward as the Italian drove two powerful blows onto his chest, the breath driven from his body, and he stumbled backward, losing his footing on the uneven ground.
Through a haze of pain, he saw the Italian smile at him, the smirk of a man anticipating a future pleasure. At the same moment, Mallory realized he was reaching for his pistol, pulling the weapon out of his jacket pocket.
He thrust himself forward, slamming into the Italian’s body, his left hand grabbing for the man’s right hand to prevent him pulling the weapon clear, forcing the man back and toppling him to the ground.
They landed heavily, Mallory on top, and as they fell he brought his right arm up so that he drove his elbow—hard—into the Italian’s chest. He felt something snap as they hit the ground, and the sudden grunt of pain from the man probably meant he’d cracked a rib.
But the Italian wasn’t finished, not by a long way. He levered Mallory off him and, scrambling to his feet, drew the pistol.
There was only one thing Mallory could do. As the Italian lifted the pistol, the muzzle moving to point at him, he slammed into the man again, grabbing his wrist and forcing the weapon away from him.
It was a test of strength, and Mallory knew immediately that he was going to lose. The Italian was just too big and too strong, and he could feel and see the man’s right arm moving, inexorably turning the pistol back toward him. The moment it pointed at him, he knew the Italian would pull the trigger. And that he would die.
There was just one chance, and Mallory took it. He took half a step to his left, then kicked out hard with his left leg, crashing the sole of his shoe into the side of the Italian’s right knee. It was a painful and incapacitating strike, and Mallory knew it.
The Italian screamed in pain as his right leg gave way, and the two men fell sideways together, both slamming hard onto the ground. At the instant they did, the pistol fired, and both men lay still.
38
Devon
The sound of the shot seemed to echo through the wood, and Robin was suddenly aware of the sound of a multitude of flapping wings as rooks and pigeons took flight away from the trees around them.
“David,” she yelled, turning to look at him.
She’d already dealt with the other Italian. He was lying flat on his back, moaning in pain, his left arm cradling his right, which was clearly broken. But before she went to Mallory, she kicked his Beretta to one side, out of his reach, then seized the man around the throat and used a push choke to knock him out.
Then she jumped up and ran the few feet that separated her from Mallory and the other Italian.
She grabbed him by the shoulder, but even as she did so, Mallory moved, rolling sideways off the man he’d been fighting.
Robin looked at the mass of blood covering his chest and gasped in shock.
But Mallory shook his head as he scrambled back to his feet.
“Not mine,” he said, gasping for breath. “I managed to turn the pistol toward him. Then he pulled the trigger.”
They looked down at the heavily built Italian, but it was quickly obvious to both of them that there was nothing they could do for him—even if they’d wanted to. His eyes and mouth were open, and he was clearly not breathing.
“It looks like the bullet went in just below his sternum,” Mallory said, getting his breath back. “But the pistol must have been angled upward, and I think it went straight through his heart.”
He glanced at Robin, who looked a little more disheveled, and her eyes were fixed on the corpse of the man Mallory had shot. Or who had technically died by his own hand, not that that suggestion would be likely to cut much ice with the local police force.
“I think that probably counts as burning our bridges,” she said.
/> “I could definitely argue self-defense,” Mallory replied, trying to keep his voice level and matter-of-fact while he mentally tried to come to terms with the realization that at best he’d effectively just committed manslaughter. The fact that he’d saved his own life and probably Robin’s as well seemed almost irrelevant as he looked down at the body lying in front of him.
“So that’s what you’re going to say when you end up in the dock at the Old Bailey, is it?” Robin’s tone and the expression on her face were entirely serious.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mallory replied. “Now we need to get the hell away from here before that other Italian turns up. He seems to me to be by far the most dangerous of all these people we’ve met so far, and I’ve got no intention of ending up in a shooting match here in this wood with him.”
He gestured toward the car.
“Check that the keys are in it,” he said, “and then get in the passenger seat.”
“Forget it. I’ll drive.”
Robin turned back to the injured and unconscious Italian and removed the wallet from his jacket pocket—she guessed they would need more funds, especially cash—then jogged over to the parked car, pulled open the driver’s door, and dropped into the seat. She started the engine and drove the vehicle a few yards closer to Mallory.
He reached inside the man’s jacket and removed the wallet and spare pistol magazine from his pockets. Then he grabbed the dead Italian by the left arm and tugged the body onto its side. The back of the man’s jacket was stained a deep red, and Mallory saw at once that the bullet that had killed him had passed completely through his body. But what he couldn’t see was any tear or rip in the fabric of the garment, and when he ran the tips of his fingers over the wound, he felt a small hard nodule.
“What are you doing?” Robin asked again through the open window of the car.
