The Lost Relic

‘Won’t take long if there’s five of us.’ Rocco motioned to the rough patch of ground that the builders had left in the wake of the construction project. ‘Over there OK?’

‘You’re shitting us.’

‘Nope. There’s a lot of stuff here. See for yourself.’ Rocco beckoned them round the back of the van, where they were out of sight of the guests inside the gallery.

Buratti was working hard to look fierce and professional, and failing. ‘Listen, pal. You do your job and we’ll do ours. We’re not paid to unload garden equipment. We have a job to do.’

‘Yeah,’ Ghini said. ‘What do we look like to you?’

Rocco gazed at them impassively from behind the curved shades. ‘Like a couple of dead assholes,’ he said, and opened the back door of the van.

The first thing Ghini saw inside the van was the last thing he’d ever see in this world. Spartak Gourko was crouching just inside the door, watching him impassively. Ghini stared at him, then stared at the strange-looking knife in his hand. The man was pointing it at Ghini’s chest, but he didn’t move. Then there was a sudden crack and the knife blade was propelled like a missile. Its razor-sharp point drove deep into him, shattering a rib and plunging into his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Buratti backed away in a panic, then let out a wheezing gasp as Bellomo stepped up behind him and buried a combat dagger in his back. He slumped down on top of Ghini.

Spartak Gourko jumped down from the van. In his hand was the hilt of his knife, a long steel spring protruding where the blade should be. A trophy from his Spetsnaz days. He kicked over the bodies and retrieved the detachable blade from Ghini’s chest. Slipping it into a metal sheath, he compressed it back inside the hilt with an effort before replacing the weapon in his belt.

Anatoly Shikov jumped out of the van next, followed by the other three Russians, each holding a large black canvas holdall. Strong hands grasped Ghini and Buratti by their collars and belts and bundled them messily into the back of the Mercedes.

The ornamental slabs and edging stones were lying in a ditch miles away.

Anatoly slammed the doors shut, peeled back the sleeve of his jacket, checked the dial of his shiny Tag Heuer. Dead on time, the radio gave a splurt and a fizz. He snatched it up. Petrovich’s voice, transmitting from somewhere beyond the woods.

‘You’re good to go,’ Petrovich said in Russian. ‘Landline dead?’

‘As disco.’

‘OK. You and what’s-his-name stand by.’

‘Caracciolo. Copy. See you when it’s done, boss.’

Anatoly shut off the radio. He unzipped a plain black gym bag, took out the cellphone blocker his father had given him, set it down on the van’s passenger seat and activated it. Just like that, all communication to and from the Academia Giordani was cut off. Also in the gym bag was the padded case his father had given him, tailored to the dimensions of the Goya sketch. Anatoly put the strap around his shoulder.

The eight men walked fast across the gravel and paused outside the entrance to unzip the holdalls. First, out came the black balaclavas, standard three-hole military issue. Rocco didn’t like to remove his shades, but couldn’t wear them over the mask. He took them off reluctantly and slipped them into his pocket. Next came the tight-fitting leather gloves; and finally the weapons. Five Steyr TMP ultra-compact 9mm machine pistols with twenty-round magazines; Anatoly grabbed one of those like a kid in a sweet shop, while Rocco Massi helped himself to one of the two AR-15 assault rifles fitted with 40mm underbarrel grenade launchers. Gourko claimed the other. The last firearm to be handed out was the short-barrelled Remington 12-gauge autoloader with folding stock. Good for blowing locks and generally blasting apart anything at close range. That one fell to Garrone.

Between them, it added up to enough firepower to hold off a regiment.

Once everyone was kitted up, all eyes fell on Anatoly. Waiting for his command. He loved this moment.

Chapter Twelve

There was a limit to how much Ben could discuss about fine art, but it turned out that Donatella shared his love of Bartók’s music and that was what they were talking about when Gianni came up to complain he was thirsty. While she fussed over the boy and went to the refreshments table to get him a glass of fruit juice, Ben stepped casually across to the window and gazed out at the grounds and the woods that surrounded the property. He noticed the white Mercedes van parked up outside, which hadn’t been there before. It looked like a builder’s van, well used and streaked with road dirt. Whoever had left it there while he and Donatella had been talking had disappeared out of sight.

Ben didn’t give it a second thought as he stood sipping his drink, surrounded by the growing buzz of conversation. The refreshments room was filling with people, wine being poured, the finger food rapidly disappearing from the table. The sullen teenage girl was moping alone in a corner, huffing in exasperation whenever her parents came within a few metres of her. Ben could hear Donatella in the background talking to her boy, and decided that now was the moment for him to make his excuses and get away. She was a charming host, Gianni was a sweet kid and he wasn’t sorry to have spent a while with them, but he needed to get back to his own affairs.

Just then, someone bumped into him from behind and a voice said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Ben looked around to see Mr Dashing, the Robert Redford-a-like, standing there with half a canapé in his hand and the other half partially chewed in his open mouth. Ben felt the wetness against his skin. He glanced down at the big dark red patch all down the front of his denim shirt and realised he’d spilled wine over himself. ‘Thanks for that,’ he said, dripping.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Mr Dashing repeated.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

Donatella joined him at the window. She was frowning at the slim phone in her hand. ‘I just tried to call Fabio to see what was happening, but I can’t get through. My phone’s gone dead.’

‘Battery?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Fully charged, and I’m getting good reception. It just doesn’t—’ She stopped and looked down at his shirt. ‘What happened? You’re covered in wine.’

‘Just an accident. Not a big deal. It’ll dry.’

She shook her head. ‘You should go and wash it out before it stains. There are toilets in the foyer but you’ll find a bathroom upstairs, on the first floor.’ She wrinkled her nose at the stain. ‘Really, I think you should. It’s a nice shirt.’

Ben was about to explain that a spot on his shirt didn’t bother him in the least – but he relented, thinking he didn’t want to be soaked in alcohol and smelling like a brewery when he went to find a hotel later. He excused himself and made his way back out through the glass corridor.

Anatoly Shikov was perfectly calm as he led the way into the building. Spartak Gourko followed close behind him, then Rocco Massi, both clutching their bulky AR-15 rifles. Rykov was the last man in, and locked the door behind him.

The entrance foyer was deserted now that all the guests had been shown inside the exhibition, which disappointed Anatoly. He’d been anticipating the squeals of terror from the women at the desk as eight masked and heavily armed men suddenly burst in to blow their cosy little world apart. He’d wanted to see the fear in their eyes, knowing that they were in his power.

It didn’t matter. The fun would begin soon enough. Anatoly did a final check of his machine pistol, and then turned to his guys. ‘Let’s get started,’ he said in Russian.

Ben soon found the bathroom near the first floor landing, at the end of a shadowy passage. The door was ajar. He walked in to find an elderly gentleman he recognised as the husband of the woman in the blue dress, stooped over the marble sink. The old fellow’s walking stick was propped up against the surface next to him as he washed down a handful of pills with a glass of water. Ben apologised for interrupting him, but the elderly man smiled and replied that he was just leaving. ‘Il mio cuore,’ he said, showing Ben the tube of heart pills. ‘The doctor says I have to take these every couple of hours, or I’ll die pretty soon. Then again, what does he know? Maybe I’ll outlive the bastard.’

The elderly man introduced himself as Marcello Peruzzi. They exchanged brief small-talk about the exhibition. ‘My wife doesn’t think much of it,’ Marcello said ruefully. ‘But then she always hates everything. Married fifty-two years,’ he added, and Ben wasn’t quite sure whether he meant it with pride or bitterness. With a wave of his hand, Marcello turned towards the door and started making his wobbly way back towards the stairs. Ben asked him if he needed any help, but Marcello assured him he could manage fine, thanks.

The bathroom was large and plush, with French windows leading out onto its own little balcony with a view of the grounds. Once he was alone, Ben went over to the sink and stripped off his wine-stained shirt. The TYRELL Genetic Replicants T-shirt under it was only slightly wet, and he decided it didn’t need washing.

He had the shirt bundled under the hot tap and was rubbing the dark red stain out of the material when he heard the first gunshots blasting out from somewhere down below.

And then came the screams.

Chapter Thirteen

Ben froze. It took him less than a second to process what he was hearing.

The sound was unmistakable, one he’d heard many times in the past. It was the harsh snorting rip of 9mm submachine gun fire, and it was coming from the direction of the gallery wing. Two sustained bursts. Then another. More screams. Pandemonium cutting loose among the exhibition guests.

He wrenched open the bathroom door as he heard more shots reverberate through the building. He glanced left, then right.

Marcello Peruzzi, the elderly man he’d encountered a moment earlier in the bathroom, had made it as far as the top of the stairs when the shooting started. He was standing there paralysed with shock, a frail hand gripping the banister rail.

He wasn’t alone. As Ben watched, a pair of men came sprinting up the stairs. From the black ski-masks and the stubby Steyr machine pistols in their fists he guessed they didn’t have invites to the exhibition either.

One of them slung his weapon behind his back and grabbed Marcello Peruzzi roughly by the arm while the other jabbed the muzzle of his gun at his head. ‘Downstairs with the others, grandpa,’ he snarled in Italian.

Marcello struggled weakly, protesting, and tried to lash out with his walking stick. The gunman clubbed him hard across the face with the butt of his weapon, twice, beating him down to his knees. He collapsed onto his belly and the second guy let go of his arm as he began convulsing.

Watching the scene in horror from the shadows of the passage, Ben remembered the heart pills.

The masked men stared down at Marcello as he folded up in agony on the carpet. ‘He’s having an attack,’ one of them said.

‘Fuck him, he’s dead anyway.’ The man pointing the gun casually placed the muzzle against Marcello’s neck and touched off the trigger. A deafening triple-shot burst crackled out across the landing and up the passage. The 9mm bullets ripped into Marcello’s body and his distressed heart stopped for ever.

Ben recoiled into the bathroom, unseen, and turned the lock.

Down below, Anatoly and the rest of his team had rounded up the crowd of exhibition guests. The gallery was filled with shouts of rage and frightened screams and the blast of fully-automatic fire as the intruders let off bursts into the ceiling. It was a technique intended for one purpose only – to strike terror into their victims and reduce them into a state of complete helplessness – and it was very effective. The thirty-five or so guests gave no resistance, allowing themselves to be herded like sheep across the gallery, their shoes crunching on the broken glass from shattered overhead lighting. It took under half a minute to shove everyone into the corner of the side room and make them huddle on the floor across from the refreshments table. The white-haired woman in the blue dress was looking around desperately for her husband and wailing loudly in panic. Rocco yelled at her to shut up, and when she kept on wailing Anatoly grabbed a half-finished bottle of Chianti from the refreshments table, took a long swig out of it and then hurled it at her. The base of the bottle caught her across the forehead and she fell back with a gasp. Another woman and the bearded guy in the sandals caught her as she keeled over.

‘How dare you!’ the bearded guy shouted. ‘This is an outrage!’

Gourko delivered a kick to his stomach that folded him double before slamming a knee into his face. He collapsed, wheezing, blood pouring out of his busted nose into his beard.

Gourko laughed.

The Robert Redford type in the Valentino blazer glowered at him, but did nothing. Crouching among the other hostages, Count De Crescenzo exchanged looks of horrified disbelief with his business partners Corsini and Silvestri. The bearded guy huddled into the arms of the woman he was with. The woman in the blue dress was slumped against the wall in shock, blood running from the cut on her forehead.

‘Am I going to get any shit from you fuckers?’ Anatoly screamed in Russian at the cringing assembly. ‘Am I?’ He didn’t care that they wouldn’t understand him. They’d understand this. He aimed his machine pistol at the table and let off a rattling blast that smashed bottles and plates into flying pieces. ‘Am I?’ he screamed again. Wine and food spilled onto the floor. The hostages cowered in terror.

Gianni Strada was pale and shaking as he clung to his mother. The boy was holding her so tightly that it hurt. Donatella struggled to contain her own panic as the armed men strode up and down the room. The one who frightened her the most was this maniac with the blond ponytail sticking out from under his mask. Was that Russian he was talking? Sounded like it to her. What was happening? How could this be happening? Was no alarm being raised?

Gianni suddenly let out a strange, high-pitched keening sound that dissolved into racking sobs. He clung to her even tighter, grasping handfuls of her hair. She could feel his tears wet against her neck.

‘You. Make that little ratshit quiet or he dies in the next two seconds,’ Anatoly raged, jabbing the gun an inch from her face.

Donatella didn’t need a translator. She closed her eyes and stroked her son’s hair, murmuring words of comfort in his ear. Gianni’s sobs quietened to a low whimper.

Anatoly unslung the padded case from his shoulder and laid it down on the table. He beamed at the hostages.

‘Good. Now let’s get down to business,’

Chapter Fourteen

Ben paced the bathroom, thinking hard. There was no telling how many armed men were down there, and how many other people had been hurt. He dug in his jeans pocket for his phone.

It was a rare thing for Ben to call the cops. In the kinds of situations his work had often involved him in the past, the last thing he needed was the police getting under his feet. But today he was just a tourist. He was unarmed, he had no idea what was happening, and he had no other options.

He punched 112 into the phone keypad, the emergency number for the Carabinieri. Italy’s paramilitary gendarmerie were widely disliked but in a situation like this, with their rapid firearms response capability, they were the best people for the job. Fractions of seconds felt like drawn-out minutes as he waited for the dial tone.

And nothing happened. His phone was dead, just like Donatella’s. His battery was about three-quarters charged and he was getting a good reception. Yet the phone was utterly useless. There was only one explanation, and that was that the intruders were using a cellphone blocker. The kind of equipment that police and counterterror units used to isolate cells of suspects before moving in. Which meant that what was happening downstairs was no ordinary armed raid – and with no way to call for outside help, Ben was going to have to deal with it on his own.

Another burst of shots from down below made him think of Donatella and Gianni Strada. He imagined the boy’s terror. Felt his blood turn from icy cold to burning hot at the thought of anyone harming either of them. He thought of old Marcello Peruzzi lying dead at the top of the stairs. Thought of all those other people down there, helpless, vulnerable, frightened. His teeth clenched so hard that they hurt.

The muffled clump of footsteps running up the passage was audible through the bathroom door. Voices outside.

Ben glanced around him. In a moment like this, just about any household item could be turned into an improvised weapon. His gaze locked on the mirror above the sink. He was just about to smash the glass with the heel of his shoe when he heard the marching footsteps run right up to the bathroom door.

The handle turned. The door rattled furiously. That flimsy lock wasn’t going to last long.

As the first heavy kick pounded the door, Ben leaped across the room and out through the French windows onto the balcony. It was too high to jump down to the concrete below without risking injury. He craned his neck upwards and saw that there was another balcony window directly above. The old house was built from solid stone, and the masonry had been expertly pointed, with recesses between the blocks that looked just about deep enough to climb.

As more kicks thudded violently against the bathroom door, he jumped up onto the balcony rail, turned to face the wall and dug his fingers into the cracks in the stonework to the left of the window. He swung his legs off the balcony. For a few painful seconds, his fingertips took his weight as he brought up his knees and scrabbled against the wall with the toecaps of his shoes until he found a crack. He was clear of the window now, clinging to the sheer wall like a spider. He reached up with his right arm, groped for another hand-hold and found it. Then the left foot, feeling around for a good purchase, then pulling himself up so he could grab another hold with his left hand. The second floor window was still tantalisingly far above him. He climbed faster.

Down below, the bathroom door burst open with a crash and the two gunmen rushed in, weapons at the hip, knees bent to brace themselves against the recoil. A storm of automatic fire shattered tiles and blasted apart the sink, riddling the walls with holes. Before the men even realised the room was empty, it was destroyed. One of them motioned to the French windows. They ran over to them and burst out onto the balcony.

Ben was clambering over the rail of the balcony above when he looked down and saw the masked gunmen below him, craning their necks down at the ground. They hadn’t spotted him. For a moment he was tempted to jump down and try to take them both – but some kinds of heroics could get you killed in a hurry.

By the time they’d looked up from the balcony below, Ben had disappeared out of sight and was going in through the second floor window.

The two men heard the smash of glass above them and knew what it meant. One grabbed a radio handset from his pocket, hit the press and talk button and said in Italian, ‘This is Scagnetti. I’m with Bellomo. We have a runner.’

The reply that came over the radio was ‘Find him. Kill him.’

Chapter Fifteen

It didn’t take Anatoly long to find the piece of artwork his father had sent him all the way to Italy to obtain. The framed Goya sketch looked pretty much the way it had in the photo he’d seen in the old man’s study. Just a plain and, to him, frankly pretty fucking boring picture of some scraggy dude crouched down on his knees. The poor bastard was barefoot and had a desperate expression on his thin face. He was wearing a shapeless robe that could have been a bit of old sacking material, and his hands were clasped together in supplication as he prayed fervently to God for something or other. Salvation, Anatoly supposed. Or maybe just a decent suit of clothes.

Anatoly looked at the picture for a long time and the same two questions kept coming back to him. Why would anybody bother drawing such a dull and depressing picture? And why the fuck would anybody want to own it? You’d have thought the old man would have picked something better.

There was a small plaque on the wall next to the display cabinet that housed the picture. It said Francisco Goya, 1746 – 1824. Underneath was a blurb about how it had recently been rediscovered after being thought to have been lost for years, blah, blah, blah. Anatoly gave it only a cursory glance. Shaking his head, he moved away and spent a few moments gazing pensively at the other paintings around the walls of the gallery. Big, bold, rich-looking oils and ornate gilt frames.

Now this was more like it. He didn’t much rate this kind of stuff but he’d heard of fancy names like Da Vinci. Who hadn’t? And you didn’t have to be an art snob to know there was a bloody fortune hanging on these walls, right here for the taking. Just a single one of these others would surely fetch him the cost of a new Lamborghini, even after deducting the fence’s cut. It made him wonder all the more why he’d been sent to steal a poxy colourless drawing of a skinny bloke saying his prayers. It didn’t even have a nice frame, just a plain black wood surround.

But what the hell. Anatoly sighed and turned back to the Goya. Raising his Steyr, he was about to whack the protective glass casing when he remembered what that prick Maisky had said about the impregnable security shutters that would come slamming down to seal off the whole place if anyone messed with the artwork. Before it could be taken off the wall they had to enter the three codes to disable the secondary alarm system. Right. Some parts of his father’s plan did make sense.

Anatoly walked back to the side room, swinging his gun as he went. Passing the food table he scooped a handful of stuffed olives from one of the plates he hadn’t blown apart earlier on. He popped it through the mouth hole of his balaclava and chewed noisily as he approached the clustered hostages. Gourko and Rykov were standing over them with their weapons trained menacingly. Turchin was over by the window, refilling a magazine from loose rounds in his pocket. Rocco Massi and one of his guys were slumped in a couple of canvas chairs, holding their guns loosely across their laps. The two Italians Rocco had sent upstairs hadn’t returned yet.

Anatoly popped another olive and surveyed the crowd of frightened faces, feeling supremely in control. His gaze stopped at the young girl who was in the arms of her mother. Her face was hidden by a mass of blond curls, but running his eye down the curve of her body he liked what he saw. The strap of her pretty little dress was just off the shoulder, showing the flimsy bra strap underneath. She couldn’t be more than fifteen, he thought, and wondered if she was still a virgin. A budding little flower, just waiting to be plucked by ol’ Anatoly. Nice. Very nice.

A couple of the hostages gasped in fear as he stepped forward and reached down abruptly to grab the girl’s bare arm. She let out a whimper as she felt his fingers close tightly on her skin. He hauled her away from her mother, yanking her body round so he could see her face. So adorable. He stroked her cheek lightly. It was sticky with half-dried tears, and that really turned him on. He cocked his head a little to the side, looked into those sweet, moist blue eyes and gave her a crooked smile. ‘Later, babe, later,’ he muttered in Russian.

First, though, he had more pressing matters to take care of. He dumped the girl back down on the floor. Scanning the rest of the hostages he quickly picked out the faces of the three men whose photos his father had shown him. ‘You, you and you,’ he said, pointing with his Steyr.

Rocco Massi stood and jerked his thumb at the three men. ‘Get up,’ he barked in Italian. De Crescenzo, Corsini and Silvestri nervously got to their feet, stiff and rumpled from crouching on the floor. The count was deathly pale. Silvestri dusted off his suit and tried to look dignified. Corsini’s chubby face flushed with indignation; he opened his mouth to say something, but it never came out, because Gourko slapped him hard across the face and then grabbed a fistful of his collar and shoved him brutally towards the door. Corsini stumbled, and Anatoly aimed the toe of his boot at those fat buttocks, sending him sprawling on his face through the doorway.