The Lost Relic

Chapter Sixteen

Every second that ticked by was a torment as Ben explored his new surroundings on the second floor. The room he was in might have been a plush bedroom at one time during the building’s history, with ornately carved ceiling beams and a magnificent double doorway. In its more recent past, the owners of the art academy had converted it into a classroom. A large oak table at the side of the room bore a slide projector and a portable TV hooked up to a VCR. Bookshelves were stacked high with books and old video cassettes with titles like Art of the Renaissance and Grand Masters of Florence. Rows of chairs faced the teacher’s desk, on which lay assorted pens and writing pads, a heavy paper punch, a roll of tape.

Ben glanced out into the corridor, thinking hard and fast because he knew the gunmen were combing the building every moment he hesitated. He could almost hear their running steps closing in on him. He snatched the paper punch from the desk, weighing it in his hand and imagining its best use as a weapon.

He desperately needed to gain some kind of advantage. Escape was an option – it was only a few minutes’ sprint back to the village he’d passed through earlier. If he could get to a phone, he could alert the Carabinieri; but he couldn’t stop thinking about what could happen to those people down there during the precious minutes he’d be gone.

A few metres down the corridor, an antiquated fire hose on a big red metal reel the size of a tractor wheel was fixed to the wall. It looked as though it had been sitting there unused since the war. Next to it, held by steel clips behind a panel of dusty glass, was an old fire axe. Ben ran over to it, used the paper punch to break the glass and tore the axe away from the wall. The hickory shaft felt thick and solid in his hands.

Now he really could hear footsteps. They were some way off, resonating through the empty building, but approaching fast.

He propped the axe handle against the wall and tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his T-shirt. Sorry, Brooke. Snatching a long, pointed shard of broken glass from the floor, he wrapped the cloth around its base to create an improvised knife. With a hard spin of the reel, metres of pipe spilled like entrails over the floor. He used his makeshift blade to slash four lengths of the thick rubber, then spun the reel back the other way to wind up the trailing hose. Grabbing the axe again, he sprinted back towards the classroom.

‘Luigi,’ Count Pietro De Crescenzo repeated urgently. ‘Do what he says.’ Corsini seemed paralysed with indecision. His eyes bulged as he glanced back and forth between his colleagues, the gently stirring woman on the office floor and the submachine gun that Anatoly had pressed hard up against the back of her skull.

‘Too slow,’ Anatoly said. He touched off the trigger of the Steyr. De Crescenzo’s cry of protest was drowned out by the ripping blast of the three-shot burst.

Corsini’s jaw gaped. Silvestri rocked back and forth in his chair, jamming his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming in horror. De Crescenzo stared in numb despair as the last twitches of the woman’s central nervous system made her limbs jerk and the smell of death and cordite filled the small room. Vomit erupted in his throat like hot lava and he threw up.

Rocco Massi said calmly to Corsini, ‘We can keep doing this all day until you give us the code.’

The fat man had had enough. There were tears in his eyes as he grabbed the remote computer keyboard and tapped in a series of numbers, swallowed hard, and hit the enter key.

Anatoly nodded in satisfaction as the screen flashed up a ‘CODE VALID’ message. He pointed at Silvestri. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

Chapter Seventeen

Scagnetti and Bellomo tore through the second floor of the house, kicking open every door as they went. Bellomo was a couple of metres ahead when he held up a clenched fist and jerked his head towards the end of the corridor as if to say, ‘Wait. I hear something.’

Up ahead in the shady corridor was a carved double doorway. The doors were open inwards a few inches, sunlight streaming into the room from the window beyond. The men listened. Behind the doors, a man’s voice was talking. He spoke in rapid Italian, something about Botticelli. The voice sounded tinny and reedy, and they realised it was coming from a TV speaker.

‘That just came on now,’ Scagnetti whispered. Bellomo nodded. As they listened, the sound stopped abruptly, as if whoever had turned it on by mistake was turning it off again in a hurry.

The two gunmen kicked open the doors and raced into the room.

Straight into a massive impact that knocked them sprawling backwards and their weapons spinning out of their hands.

Ben rode the heavy oak table as it came swinging violently down from its perch over the double doors. The lengths of rubber hose he’d tied from two of its legs to the classroom’s ceiling beams brought it down in a perfect arc so that the thick tabletop rammed into the men’s bodies as they entered the room and laid them flat. It was as if they’d been hit by a train. He leaped off, landed nimbly on his feet, and stepped out of the way as the table swung back towards him.

One of the men was out cold; the other was groaning and struggling to raise himself up off the floor. His face was bloodied. Ben remembered him as the one who’d murdered Marcello Peruzzi as calmly as stepping on a beetle. He picked up the fire axe from inside the door and placed its blunt nose against the man’s throat, pressing him back down.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked softly.

‘Go fuck yourself.’

Ben put some more weight behind the axe blade, and the guy’s face turned a mottled purple. Blood dribbled downwards from the corners of his mouth where the table had smashed his lips against his teeth.

‘What’s your name?’ Ben said again.

‘Scagnetti.’

‘You’re in the wrong place, Scagnetti. You have a first name?’

‘Antonio.’

‘What about him?’

‘Bruno Bellomo.’ It came out as a groan as Ben leaned a little harder on the axe.

‘Who are you working for?’

Scagnetti spat blood at him and snorted. Ben lifted the axe away from his throat. He took a grip on the smooth hickory handle and swung it down with a loud crash of steel on floorboards. Wood splintered. Blood flew, and with it the four severed fingers of Scagnetti’s left hand.

‘That’ll save you money on guitar lessons,’ Ben said.

Scagnetti’s screams echoed down the corridor as he writhed and rolled in agony, his bleeding hand clamped hard under his right armpit.

‘I think you were just telling me who you work for,’ Ben said, crouching beside him with the axe handle against his shoulder.

‘The Russian,’ Scagnetti whimpered. ‘I don’t know his name. I swear.’

Ben knew the look on the man’s face. It was the look of a guy who’d just realised exactly what he was dealing with: an enemy perfectly willing to take him apart, calmly, piece by piece. That was one scary moment, even for a cold killer like Antonio Scagnetti. In Ben’s experience, someone in that seriously rattled state of mind was willing to say anything to make the horror go away. The first thing out of their mouths was generally the truth.

Ben stood up. ‘OK, Antonio, I believe you. You can save the rest for the cops. Time for a nap now.’ He swung the axe at Scagnetti’s head, side on so that the flat face of the blade whacked into his skull with a meaty thud. Certainly not hard enough to kill him, unlikely to cause permanent damage, but he’d have something to help take his mind off his sore hand for a while.

Ben stepped over the unconscious body to the other guy, who was beginning to come to. Sweet dreams, Bruno. Crack.

Putting aside the axe, Ben frisked the men and found two identical radio handsets. He tossed one aside and examined the other. It was a wide-band VHF Motorola, a complex pro-level device covered with knobs and switches. Ben made a mental note of the channel it was set to, then used its scanning facility to skip through multiple frequencies in search of a police channel. The Carabinieri, officially part of the Italian military, used encrypted frequencies that couldn’t be unscrambled on a civilian radio set, but after a minute or so of scanning through white noise and static, he hit on a channel that sounded like a Polizia Municipale control room. The Italian municipal cops were mainly a civilian force, limited to directing traffic, enforcing minor local laws, getting stuck kittens out of trees – but that was good enough right now.

Or so he hoped. He kept his voice low and calm as he explained to the stunned operator on the other end that heavily armed robbers had taken control of the Academia Giordani near Aprilia, had taken hostages and were acting with lethal intent. He repeated that last part again, slowly and carefully.

‘This is not a hoax. People are being shot. You must alert the nearest Carabinieri station immediately and have as many rapid response units sent here as poss—’

Ben was able to say no more before the signal dissolved into fuzz and static. He could only pray that the municipal cops would take it seriously and relay the alert to the Carabinieri. This was Italy. No telling how efficient their systems were. Until something happened, if anything did, he was on his own.

Silvestri had been quick to snatch the computer keyboard away from Corsini, who was slumped in his chair weeping openly with shock and guilt. A moment later, the second security code had been entered and accepted by the computer. Then Anatoly thrust the keyboard towards Pietro De Crescenzo with a sneer.

The count took a deep breath, looked at the Russian with bloodshot eyes, poised his long, thin fingers over the keys and typed in the third and last set of numbers to disarm the secondary security system. His hand shook over the enter key. By pressing it he was enabling this gang of ruthless thugs to walk away with every single piece of artwork in the gallery. A massive cross-section of five centuries of the pinnacle of human cultural achievement, delivered at a stroke into the hands of men like these. If he’d been made to launch nuclear missiles, he’d have felt no worse.

He pressed the key. In his mind, its tiny click sounded like the crack of doom. He hung his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a new message had appeared on the computer screen: ‘SECURITY DEACTIVATED’

‘There,’ De Crescenzo groaned. ‘It’s done. Take what you want and go.’

‘We’re not finished yet,’ Anatoly told him.

Chapter Eighteen

Ben dragged Scagnetti’s unconscious body through the classroom, leaving a trail of blood from the guy’s mangled hand all the way to the balcony. He heaved him upright and slung him half over the parapet, so that just a light shove would send him tumbling over the edge. He did the same with the other man, Bellomo, then ran back to the corridor, unravelled more of the fire hose and slashed off a length. Back out on the balcony, he quickly knotted one end of the thick rubber around their ankles. He estimated the drop to the ground below, subtracted three metres and then secured the other end of the hose to the balcony before shoving both men over the edge. They dropped over the side like the world’s calmest bungee jumpers and then were jerked up short by the hose’s elasticity before their brains could be dashed all over the ground.

Ben peered down at the two swinging bodies. They weren’t going anywhere. He slung one of the Steyrs over his shoulder, stripped the magazine from the other and stuck it in his back pocket. Tossed the empty weapon off the balcony together with one of the radios, and moved quickly on.

Glass flew as the butt of Anatoly’s Steyr smashed into the display cabinet that protected the Goya drawing. He used the weapon to knock away the jagged pieces around the edge, then slung it over his shoulder and reached in with both hands to grasp the sides of the plain black wooden frame.

He gave a hard yank and felt something give. The piece of artwork came away easily from the wall, and he lifted it out of the broken cabinet and stepped back.

Nothing happened. No alarms, no slamming down of steel shutters. He grinned to himself. It was his.

And so was the rest of the stuff, as much as he could carry out of here. The old man might be nuts, but he, Anatoly, wasn’t.

Anatoly strolled back into the office, holding the Goya against his chest. Rocco Massi was fiddling with his radio, frowning through the mask. ‘I can’t raise Bellomo and Scagnetti.’

Anatoly ignored him. ‘Thank you for your co-operation, gentlemen,’ he said in Russian to the three gallery owners. ‘That will be all.’ He set the frame down on a filing cabinet, then unslung his Steyr and turned to Corsini. The fat man’s face was covered with sweat. He began to raise his hands, and his eyes widened in horror as he saw the gun muzzle swing his way. Anatoly made a clucking sound with his tongue, stretched a grin and the gun jolted in his hand. Corsini sprawled heavily backwards, tipping up his chair and crashing to the floor. Anatoly swivelled the Steyr towards Silvestri and pulled the trigger.

‘Shit.’ He looked at his gun. ‘Empty.’

Rocco Massi tossed him a spare mag. Anatoly grunted, dumped the empty one, slotted the new one into the receiver and racked the cocking mechanism.

‘You animals,’ Silvestri said. His next words were drowned out by the blast of gunfire that spilled him sideways out of his seat and misted blood up the wall behind him.

Pietro De Crescenzo was curled up in a ball like a trapped animal, shaking with terror as Anatoly turned towards him. A thin wisp of smoke curled out of the barrel of the Steyr. Anatoly blew it away and laughed. He took a step closer to De Crescenzo.

‘Bellomo, Scagnetti, come in. Where the fuck are you? Over,’ Rocco Massi said into his radio.

Ben was walking fast down a corridor when he turned on the radio handset and dialled it back to the frequency the gunmen had been using. He heard the harsh voice crackle out of the speaker. ‘Bellomo, Scagnetti, come in. Where the fuck are you? Over.’

The red plastic rocker switch on the side of the radio was the press and talk button. Ben thumbed it and said, ‘Uh, I’m afraid Antonio and Bruno won’t be joining us. They’re kind of tied up at the moment.’

Stunned silence.

‘I want to talk to the Russian,’ Ben said. ‘Now.’

There was another moment’s silence, then another voice rasped out of the radio. Speaking Italian, but with a heavy accent. The Russian. ‘Who the fuck is this?’

Ben’s Russian wasn’t as fluent as his Italian, but good enough to get his point over. ‘If you’re here to steal artwork, it’s my guess you’re interested in doing business. Correct? Over.’

Pause. ‘Go on,’ the voice rasped.

‘I have a business offer for you,’ Ben said. ‘Here are the terms. The police are on their way. You and your men put down your weapons and surrender to me immediately, and you have my word that eventually you’ll live to be a free man. Not for a couple of decades, maybe, but eventually. And I hear the food’s very good in Italian prisons. Over.’

The pause was longer this time. ‘Interesting. What if I decide to take my chances?’

‘Harm any more of those people down there, and today is the last day of your life.’

‘I see. You must be one of those one-man armies, that right? You’re gonna kick my ass, and the asses of all my friends down here? All on your own.’

‘Scagnetti and Bellomo didn’t take much.’

‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I think you’re the one who should surrender to me. I’d like to meet you.’

‘Maybe you will.’

‘Maybe I’ll just go on shooting hostages until you turn yourself in.’

‘Then I’ll withdraw my offer. You and all your men die.’

‘That’s a bold statement.’

‘It’s a promise,’ Ben said. ‘The offer is on the table. Think about it.’ He turned off the radio.

Chapter Nineteen

Anatoly tossed away the radio with a snort. He’d forgotten all about Pietro De Crescenzo, who was still cringing in his chair, shaking badly and expecting a bullet at any moment.

‘Who is this bastard?’ Rocco Massi said.

‘How the hell should I know who he is?’

Spartak Gourko had walked into the office, cradling his rifle in his arms. He barely glanced down at the bodies of the woman and the two dead men, or the blood that was pooling all over the floor.

‘He called the Carabinieri?’ Rocco said.

‘Fuck the police,’ Anatoly said, and Gourko let out a short laugh.

‘We should get out of here,’ Rocco said.

Anatoly snatched the Goya. ‘Come with me,’ he muttered, and burst out of the office. The others followed as he strode into the side room where Rykov, Turchin and Garrone were guarding the rest of the hostages. The guests were all much more subdued now, just a quiet sobbing from the young boy as his mother rocked him gently in her arms. A few faces peered up in fear as Anatoly walked in. He stuffed the Goya into its tailor-made case. It fitted perfectly, lying snug against the padding. He zipped it shut, then motioned to Rykov and Turchin. ‘Ilya, Vitaliy, some bastard is loose upstairs and thinks he’s John Wayne. Get him for me.’

‘He could be anywhere in the building,’ Rocco said. ‘You’ve got what you came for. Now let’s go.’

Anatoly gave him a long, hard stare. ‘You too. Get up there now. And you,’ he snapped at Garrone. The four men swapped glances, then headed for the gallery exit.

Now it was just Anatoly and Spartak Gourko left in the room. The fear among the hostages had intensified palpably.

‘Spartak, you stay here and make sure these pieces of shit keep still,’ Anatoly said. ‘Give me your knife.’

Gourko drew the weapon from his belt and tossed it to him. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I came to Italy to have some fun and that’s what I’m going to do.’ Anatoly marched over to the hostages. The teenage girl he’d admired earlier was sitting with her parents, watching his every move and not daring to make a sound. He reached out, grabbed her arm. Her face creased in terror and she whimpered.

‘Let’s find somewhere nice and private we can get better acquainted,’ he said, dragging her to her feet. The girl’s mother began to howl and tried desperately to hang on to her daughter. Gourko knocked her back with a hard stamping kick to the chest, and aimed his gun at her father with a look that said, ‘Go on, make my day.’ The other hostages were silent, apart from Donatella who stared at the two Russians and muttered something under her breath.

‘Maybe when I’m done with this bitch I’ll come back for that one,’ Anatoly chuckled. Gourko’s lips twitched into a faint smile. Anatoly hauled the girl away from the others and dragged her, screaming and writhing, towards the gallery.

While Massi and Garrone headed up a backstairs that doubled as a fire escape, Rykov and Turchin stalked the main stairs to the first floor. On the landing was the body of the old guy who’d died there earlier, his blood soaked into a wide area of carpet. They stepped over him as though he were roadkill and made their way through the maze of corridors. Every door they came to, they kicked open, ready to blast anything the other side of it. They found storage spaces, lecture rooms, classrooms. All empty.

Pushing through a set of fire doors, they came to a short flight of steps and then to what looked like a ceramics department with a couple of large workshops flanking the corridor. One of them had display units filled with clay pots and vases, and long benches covered in materials and tools. The other room contained a row of heavy-duty iron kilns, like gigantic ovens with sturdy deadlocks to seal their doors tightly shut and thick layers of insulating material to protect the wall and nearby surfaces. Fat metal flues disappeared into the heat-discoloured wall.

The Russians took a brief glance around the workshop, just long enough to ascertain that the guy they were looking for wasn’t hiding under a table or in a cupboard. Satisfied, they were just about to turn to leave when they heard the soft voice behind them.

‘Hey.’

The Russians spun around.

Chapter Twenty

Ben had often wondered if you could improvise a silencer out of an empty plastic bottle. He’d never quite got around to experimenting, until now. The litre Pepsi bottle had been left in a waste bin, and he’d used some Sellotape he’d found to fix it to the muzzle of the Steyr. From the doorway of the workshop, he aimed down at the floor and let off a short flurry of muffled shots, sweeping left to right. The two men dropped their weapons and crumpled to the floor, shouting out in agony, clutching their feet.

Ben ripped the burst remains of the Pepsi bottle from his Steyr as he walked over to them. ‘That’s not bad, is it?’ he said, kicking away their fallen guns. The guy on the right let out a stream of obscenities in Russian. Ben silenced him with a kick to the throat and he went straight down on his back. He clubbed the other over the head with the Steyr, and suddenly the room was quiet again.

Crouching beside them, he checked them for hidden weapons and then relieved them of their radios. He stood up and swung open the door of the nearest kiln. It was all blackened inside, with metal grille shelves like those in a domestic oven, only much larger. He pulled out the shelves, tossing them aside with a clatter. There was plenty of space for both men in there, as long as they weren’t expecting comfort. He dragged each one inside in turn, kicked their legs out of the way of the door, then clanged it shut and rolled the heavy deadlock into place.