Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7)

  In moments, the two men had reached the Range Rover and were giving chase, headlights dazzling now that they had nothing more to hide. Ben threw the Mazda hard into the bends, but the car was in danger of sliding right off the road on its flat tyres if he drove too fast, and the Range Rover began steadily overhauling them. Its passenger was leaning right out of his window, the wind tearing at his clothes as he let off several three-round automatic bursts from his weapon. Ben felt a bullet punch through the head restraint of his seat, an inch from his ear. The Mazda’s windscreen suddenly became a white mass of fissures. Without hesitating or taking his foot off the gas, he grabbed the shotgun from Jude’s lap and swung it one-handed at the windscreen, punching a hole that he could see through to drive. The inside of the Mazda became a howling tornado of freezing cold wind. Narrowing his eyes against the icy blast, he lobbed the weapon back into Jude’s hands. ‘Shoot!’

  ‘I can’t!’ Jude yelled back.

  ‘Point it, hold on tight and pull the damn trigger,’ Ben shouted at him as he struggled to keep the car on the road through a hairpin bend. There was a loud crunching scrape as the back of the Mazda broke out of line and hit the barrier at the side of the road. Ben couldn’t see beyond the barrier. At this moment, he didn’t even want to know what was beyond it.

  Terrified, Jude twisted round and poked the shotgun through the gap between the front seats. The car filled with a deafening blast and a white-orange flash as the gun went off like a bomb. Ben saw the Range Rover swerve in his rear-view mirror, then come on again. ‘Keep firing,’ he yelled at Jude.

  But now the Range Rover came roaring right up behind them at full throttle and rammed into the rear of the Mazda with brutal force. The shotgun spun out of Jude’s hands as the impact sent him sprawling half over the seat. The Mazda careened all over the road, and Ben couldn’t hold it any more. There was a jarring crash as its front end smashed through the roadside barrier. For a second, the vehicle bucked crazily as it hammered over a stretch of bumpy grass. Too late to do anything about it, Ben realised they were heading straight for a sheer drop.

  Then the Mazda’s nose dipped violently downwards, and they were falling over the edge.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  For a heartstopping moment as the car tipped over, Ben thought they were about to sail right off the edge of a precipice – but then the front wheels touched solid ground with a jarring thump and they were racing down a near-vertical slope, crashing over rocks and ruts. The Range Rover cleared the edge of the drop and came roaring after them, its four-wheel drive and elevated ride height enabling it to negotiate the extreme slope with greater control. More strobing white muzzle flashes burst from the passenger window. Bullets punched into the Mazda. The dashboard blew apart in front of Ben. Sparks began to fizz from mangled wiring.

  ‘Do something!’ Jude screamed.

  There was nothing Ben could do, except pray that the bullet-torn car wouldn’t start to tumble end-over-end, destroying itself and battering them to death inside. But even as the worst seemed inevitable, the slope suddenly began to level out. Open moorland was ahead of them, a few isolated copses of wind-ravaged trees flashing by in the headlights. Down here on lower ground, the going was much less rocky and much more marshy. Ben kept his foot to the floor and the engine revved into the red as the wheels spun in the mud. The front of the car threw up a constant fountain of brown spray that spattered the broken windscreen and half-blinded Ben as he kept doggedly surging ahead at over sixty miles an hour.

  They were driving into a real marsh now, thick with clumps of reeds and ancient, rotted tree stumps that stuck up out of the mud like gravestones. Ben only just managed to prevent the bucking Mazda from crashing straight into one.

  More gunfire exploded from the Range Rover. Bullets ripped through the Ben’s window and door. A red-hot sear of pain made him glance down and see the blood on his forearm where a round had grazed him, splitting the flesh.

  A few more seconds of this and they were dead.

  But then, suddenly, their pursuers seemed to be falling back. Ben twisted his head round to look out of the shattered rear window, and saw that the Range Rover had veered off course and was wallowing badly in the marsh, its passenger still hanging out of the window trying to fix the Mazda in his gunsights. Then, just as suddenly, the Range Rover slewed into a high-speed skid and hit the blackened stump of a tree.

  The impact flipped the vehicle over sideways. Ben caught a glimpse of the passenger opening his mouth to scream as he was half thrown from the window and the Range Rover overturned on top of him, crushing him deep into the mud and smearing him like an insect under its weight. It slid for a few yards and then smacked into another tree stump, head-on, with enough force to kick the rear wheels high up in the air. The windscreen exploded outwards, and through the spinning shards of glass the body of the driver was shot like a missile over the bonnet and into the soft marsh.

  Ben brought the Mazda round in a handbrake turn, sending up a wave of watery mud as it came to rest among a thick bank of reeds. ‘You okay?’ he asked Jude.

  ‘I think so,’ Jude mumbled. Ben grabbed the shotgun, stepped out of the car and immediately felt his feet sinking into the ground. This isn’t a marsh, he thought, stepping quickly back towards the firmer ground on which the Mazda was resting. This is a bog.

  The Range Rover had come to a stop right in the softest part of it. One of its headlights was still intact, and in its beam Ben could see the sucking brown mud working its way up the crumpled bodywork as the vehicle began to sink.

  ‘Help me,’ the Range Rover’s driver croaked. He was a few feet in front of the overturned vehicle. His legs had already sunk deep into the bog. He reached out a hand in supplication. The other arm was mangled and twisted at his side. His ski mask had been ripped away in the crash. Most of his face was covered in the blood that was pouring from an open gash across his scalp, but Ben could see the look of utter horror in his eyes as the bog squelched and sucked at him, drawing him inexorably down inch by inch. ‘Help me. Please.’

  Jude had climbed out of the car and stood at Ben’s side. ‘We can’t just leave the guy to drown,’ he said shakily. ‘It’s awful.’

  Ben spotted the half-submerged remains of an old tree that lay crossways like a bridge between him and the sinking driver. Slinging the shotgun across his shoulder, he placed his foot on it. The bog heaved around the rotten wood like a living thing, but the trunk took Ben’s weight. He took a step towards the man, then another. It was unsteady beneath his feet. One slip, and he’d be next in line crying to be rescued.

  ‘Help me,’ the man moaned again, stretching out with his clawed hand.

  Ben took another step forwards. He looked at the hand.

  ‘Pull him out!’ Jude called across from firm ground.

  Ben looked at the man’s pleading face. He took in the lean features under the mask of blood, and the scar over the eye. He knew that face. He’d seen it before. And he remembered where.

  The man had sunk in almost up to his chest now. He was beginning to gibber in panic. ‘Ben!’ Jude yelled. ‘Grab his hand! You’ve got to help him. for God’s sake!’

  Ben didn’t grab the hand, not for God’s sake or anyone else’s. He reached into his jacket pocket for the printout of the photo from Petra Norrington’s camera. He unfolded it, studied it briefly in the glare from the Range Rover’s rapidly-disappearing headlight. Then he crumpled the printout into a ball and lobbed it over to Jude.

  Jude caught it, uncrumpled it and stared at it mutely.

  Slowly, calmly, Ben unslung the shotgun from his shoulder. His injured arm hurt as he worked the pump. The empty shell spat out and landed with a plop in the mud. The last round in the magazine fed into the chamber. Ben pointed the gun at the sinking man.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jude yelled, still clutching the crumpled printout.

  ‘That picture was taken the night your parents died,’ Ben told him, not taking his eyes off the whimpering,
groaning man in the bog. The mud was almost up to his neck now. He was flailing with his free arm. The other was well beneath the surface. A few feet away, the Range Rover was almost completely submerged.

  ‘This is the man who ran them off the road,’ Ben said.

  ‘I’m begging you. Pull me out!’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Napier,’ the man moaned. ‘Vincent Napier.’

  ‘Is that your real name? Not that it matters any more.’

  ‘Don’t let me die like this!’ Napier sobbed. His free hand clawed desperately at the air. His head thrashed from side to side.

  ‘The more you struggle,’ Ben said. ‘The quicker you’ll go down.’

  ‘Ben!’ Jude shouted from firm ground. ‘Help him!’

  ‘Please,’ Napier wept. ‘Look, I only do what I’m told to do.’

  ‘Just business,’ Ben said.

  ‘Yes! You’ve got to understand.’

  ‘I understand you’ve got less than half a minute left, Vincent,’ Ben said. ‘Tell me who you people are working for.’

  ‘I don’t know his name! He’s just the boss! I’ve only met him once!’

  Ben believed him. People in these kinds of situations generally didn’t tell lies. ‘Then that doesn’t make you very useful to me, does it?’ he said.

  ‘Please don’t let me drown.’ The mud was up to Napier’s chin and the arm reaching out was submerged to the elbow.

  ‘Ben!’ Jude shouted.

  Ben didn’t look back at him. ‘Turn around, Jude,’ he said.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Jude yelled hoarsely.

  Ben edged a few more inches across the tree trunk and reached out to the drowning man. Not with his hand. With his foot. He planted the sole of his shoe on Napier’s bloody forehead and pushed.

  ‘No!’ Napier screamed. Then the mud filled his mouth and his cry became a bubbling gurgle. His eyes stared upwards in horror in the last light of the Range Rover’s sinking headlamp. Then the light was gone, and so was the top of Vincent Napier’s head as Ben pressed him under with a final shove of his heel. A few bubbles clustered and popped on the surface of the swirling mud.

  Ben watched for a few seconds until the bubbles stopped, then turned and started making his way back to firm ground.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘I can’t believe what I just saw you do to that guy,’ Jude said sullenly as Ben returned to the Mazda.

  ‘I told you not to look,’ Ben replied.

  Jude was too shocked to reply. He breathed heavily for a few moments, then suddenly took out his phone and started punching in a number.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m calling the police.’

  Ben stepped up and grabbed the phone from him. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hey. Give me that back.’

  Ben tossed the phone into the bog where the Range Rover had now completely vanished. It hit the mud with a splash and sank almost instantly.

  ‘That was my Nokia!’

  ‘You never answer it anyway,’ Ben said.

  ‘This isn’t happening,’ Jude groaned, sitting on a grassy mound and rubbing his face. ‘It’s all a nightmare.’ He glowered up at Ben. ‘Just who the fuck are you?’

  ‘You keep asking me that. I told you. I was at college with your parents. I was on the same course your dad did.’

  ‘Theology? You?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘What kind of theologian guns people down in cold blood and drowns them in bogs?’

  ‘One who’s spent too many years doing stuff you don’t want to know about,’ Ben said.

  Jude grunted. ‘Oh, right. So now you’re going to tell me you were in the SAS or something.’

  Ben said nothing. He examined the car. There wasn’t a single window intact and much of the bodywork was riddled with holes. It mightn’t have looked out of place in war-torn Kabul or Tripoli, but driving it on the public roads of Britain was asking for more trouble that Ben didn’t need.

  He took the shotgun and his bag out of the car. His heart sank when he saw the bullet holes in the green canvas, thinking of Simeon’s laptop inside. His fears were confirmed when he examined the machine and found that the bullets had punched right through it. He had a feeling that Toshiba’s service warranty didn’t extend to their products being strafed with 9mm full metal jacket rounds. The casing fell apart in his hands, twisted wires and bits of shattered circuit board falling out into the dirt. The hard drive was history, and so were Ben’s chances of ever getting into Simeon’s research files.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. There wasn’t much point in putting the thing back in his bag. He tossed its remains into the Mazda, then climbed in behind the wheel, fired up the engine and slammed it into gear. The car lurched forward.

  ‘Hey!’ Jude shouted as Ben drove the car straight into the middle of the bog, where the Range Rover had now completely sunk. As the mud began to pull greedily at the Mazda’s wheels, Ben clambered out, jumped up on the roof and ran down the length of the car to make the leap back onto solid ground.

  It didn’t take long for the bog to engulf the car, along with Simeon’s laptop.

  ‘Mum loved that car,’ Jude said reprovingly, as if Ben had wrecked and sunk it out of sheer badness.

  ‘This place will be crawling with police come morning,’ Ben told him, folding the shotgun stock and stuffing it into his bag. ‘I don’t think you want them finding her car in the middle of it, do you?’ He slung the bag over his shoulder and started walking away across the moor. The dog followed at his heels. Jude hung back for a few moments, then muttered, ‘Oh, bollocks,’ and reluctantly followed too.

  There weren’t too many roads cutting across the wilderness of Bodmin Moor, and it was a long trudge through the cold and dark before Ben and Jude came across another and began walking along it. There wasn’t a car or a light in sight. Ben led the way, with Scruffy trotting along happily at his side. Jude lagged behind, silent and brooding.

  Ben didn’t blame him.

  It was after 1 a.m. by the time they came to the isolated cottage. The place was all in darkness, but somebody was obviously home, judging by the two vehicles parked outside, a year-old Nissan Outlaw off-roader sitting next to a badly rusted-out Vauxhall Astra. The red light of an alarm system flashed in the window of the Nissan. The Vauxhall had none. Ben tried the door, and found it open.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to steal it,’ Jude whispered at his shoulder.

  ‘I’m not stealing it,’ Ben answered. ‘I’m buying it.’ He reached for his wallet, took out five twenties and tucked them under one of the Nissan’s windscreen wipers. A hundred pounds was probably more than the Astra was worth.

  ‘That makes it right?’ Jude said, frowning.

  Ben climbed into the car, felt behind the plastic fascia under the steering wheel and started tugging at wires. In moments, the engine spluttered into life. It didn’t sound completely terminal. ‘That’ll do,’ he said.

  Lights came on in the cottage. An upstairs window flew open and a man’s voice let out a yell.

  ‘Shit!’ Jude clambered quickly into the passenger seat. ‘Scruffy, come on!’ The dog finished urinating on the tyre of the Nissan Outlaw and bounced up into Jude’s lap. Ben hit the gas and they sped away down the road in a cloud of blue smoke.

  When Jude was assured that the owner of the Nissan wasn’t in hot pursuit, he turned to Ben. ‘So now we’re off to France in this stolen rustbucket? I suppose I don’t have much choice except to come with you, do I?’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Ben said, driving fast through the darkness. He was already figuring out his next move. ‘But we need to make a stop-off first.’

  ‘You owe me an explanation. A very long explanation.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s this all about? What was my dad involved in? I mean, was he some kind of crook or something? It sounds crazy, just saying it.’

  ‘Your fath
er was a good man,’ Ben said. ‘The best. None of this was his fault. But there was something he was working on that got him into a lot of trouble. Not just him, but the people who were working on it with him.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How could someone like him get into this situation?’

  ‘Did he ever mention anything to you about a sword?’

  Jude looked baffled. ‘No? What sword?’

  ‘This was a particular one. A sacred sword.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Right now,’ Ben said, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  Jude shook his head. ‘I’d definitely have remembered if he’d mentioned something like that. He never said anything to me. Did Mum know about it too?’

  ‘She knew very little,’ Ben said. ‘Only what she told me, that he was writing a book about it. There were at least three people involved in the research project. Did you know about his trips to America and Israel?’

  ‘I knew he went there. That’s about it.’

  ‘So he never talked about his reasons for going? People he travelled with, or people he might have met up with there?’

  ‘We never talk … I mean we never talked about anything to do with his work, or religion, or any of that stuff,’ Jude said. ‘We always ended up arguing about it, and Mum would get upset …’ His voice trailed off. He wasn’t far from tears.

  Ben gave him a moment, then asked, ‘How about somebody called Lalique? Fabrice Lalique? Did your dad ever mention that name?’

  Jude sniffed. ‘No. Who is he?’

  ‘He was a Catholic priest in Millau in the south of France,’ Ben said. ‘He and your dad went to Israel together in connection with this sacred sword business.’

  ‘Well, if we’re going to France, why don’t we ask this Lalique guy what’s going on?’