Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7)

  ‘This place has seen better days, that’s for sure’ Jude observed, sniffing at the smell of damp and rot. Little remained except the empty stone shell of the building. The altar was missing, probably looted decades ago. Even the flagstones had been prised up. Ben guessed they’d found their way into a lot of the local houses and cottages over the centuries. The bare earth floor was littered with dead leaves and the decayed remnants of the old wooden pews. A dusting of snow had fallen in through the holes in the roof.

  ‘There’s nobody here,’ Jude said. ‘I think your caller’s playing a prank on us.’

  ‘Be patient.’

  Jude paced around the inside of the moonlit ruin as Ben sat on a pile of broken stone with his bag at his feet. He fished out his spare can of Zippo fuel and busied himself refilling the lighter. He resisted the urge to re-read Michaela’s letter, and instead put the fluid canister away and rebuckled the bag’s leather straps. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Ben began to wonder whether his mystery caller was going to make an appearance or not. Maybe Jude was right.

  Jude stopped his pacing. ‘Why do you keep looking at me that way?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Was I?’ Ben realised he had been. It was completely involuntary.

  ‘You’re not going queer, are you?’ Jude said.

  ‘You should get a haircut,’ Ben said. His own thick hair would scarcely have passed military muster these days, but he’d known many an RSM who would have delighted in ordering Jude’s unruly mop to be shorn to the roots.

  ‘Girls like it,’ Jude retorted.

  More minutes passed. Jude stamped around the ruin, clutching at his sides and shivering. ‘It’s bloody cold out here. How can you sit still like that? Let me guess. Arctic training.’

  ‘I did say you should have stayed at the guesthouse. The flask’s in the bag. A nip of whisky will warm you.’

  Jude made a face. ‘No, thanks. You sit and freeze your balls off if you want. I’m going to wait in the car.’

  As Jude left the church, Ben glanced impatiently at his watch. His contact was almost twenty-five minutes late. The guy either hadn’t been able to get away, or he’d had second thoughts. Ben was trying to decide whether to give it one more minute when he heard a sound from the archway and looked up.

  Jude had reappeared in the entrance. He was struggling in the clutches of a strong, bulky man in a woollen hat. One gloved hand was clamped over his mouth, muffling his protests. The other held a double-edged combat dagger to his throat. A moonbeam glittered off the slim, leaf-shaped tongue of steel.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Three more dark figures burst into the church. More hardware flashed under the moonlight, two long silenced pistols and the unmistakable shape of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine carbine swivelling Ben’s way as he jumped to his feet in alarm. He looked down at his bag, just a few inches from his feet. The shotgun was inside, a round already chambered and waiting. But it might as well have been in Hanoi. The odds of getting the straps unbuckled and the weapon clear of the canvas before a bullet found him, or Jude got cut, were vanishingly remote.

  ‘I advise you to stay very still, Major Hope.’ The tall figure clutching the MP5 stepped forward. He was in his mid or late fifties, lean and gaunt. The moonlight cast deep shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and sunken eyes. His lips were thin and tight, his hair cropped into a sharp V over his brow. Ben tried to place the accent. It wasn’t quite Afrikaaner. Maybe old-school Rhodesian. One thing was for sure, the guy wasn’t a local. Or an amateur, for that matter. The muzzle of the MP5 was pointed rock-steadily at Ben’s chest. The man came on two steps and then stopped. Close enough to have no possibility of missing his mark if he squeezed off a burst. Too far away for Ben to be able to do a damn thing about it. Any attempt at a disarming move would be utterly suicidal.

  The tall man took out a phone. He kept his eyes on Ben as he thumbed the keys. The call was short. ‘This is Gant. We have him.’

  Gant. Professionals didn’t reveal names to men they intended to let live.

  Ben looked at Jude. The big guy in the wool hat had the knife pressed hard against his throat. Jude’s eyes were wide and bright with fear. He let out something muffled and indistinct from behind the glove over his mouth.

  Ben felt his skin tingle and the blood chill in his veins. ‘Let him go,’ he called out. ‘He’s nothing to do with this. Just a hitcher I picked up on the road.’

  The tall man called Gant smiled. ‘You normally bring hitch hikers into your hotel room, Major?’

  Ben said nothing. His eyes flicked from one man to another. The pistols were pointed at him in firm two-handed grips. They had him cold.

  ‘We know who he is,’ the tall man said, without looking back at Jude. ‘Arundel’s boy. Either he’s going to tell us what we want to know, or you are. And don’t waste time, Major. You may not have a lot of it left. Now, kick aside the bag, please. We know how tricky you can be.’

  Ben hesitated, then swept his foot to the side and sent the bag, with the shotgun inside, tumbling away a couple of yards.

  Without letting the MP5’s muzzle flicker a millimetre, Gant took his left hand from the forend of his weapon and gestured back over his shoulder to his colleague with the knife. The big guy smiled and pressed the knife harder to Jude’s throat. Any more pressure and it would split the skin. The slightest lateral movement and it would slice deep. Ben’s heart hammered uncontrollably. Jude’s eyes opened even wider in alarm and his muffled protests rose a notch.

  ‘Now,’ Gant said. ‘Who wants to tell us where the sword is?’

  Ben considered his options. He could tell the truth, and reveal to these people that he knew next to nothing at all, in which case Jude and he were pretty much guaranteed not to emerge alive from this situation. Or he could play along, in the desperate hope that if he kept them talking as long as he could, some opportunity might appear. It wasn’t much, but under the circumstances it was everything.

  ‘Wes has the sword,’ he said. As far as it went, he was pretty certain that much was accurate.

  ‘Its location?’ Gant asked impassively.

  So they obviously hadn’t caught Wes yet, or if they had, he was dead. Either way, their target still eluded them.

  Ben hesitated with his next reply. Just a fraction too long. Gant waved at his colleague again. The big guy grinned. Jude let out a cry of pain. Ben saw a trickle of blood run from the blade and his whole body jolted in horror. ‘Don’t do it!’ he shouted. His throat was so tight he could barely speak.

  The gesture again. The big guy looked disappointed and slackened the pressure on the knife. The blood ran down Jude’s neck, but the cut didn’t look as if it had broken all the layers of skin.

  ‘I won’t ask you again, Major,’ Gant said.

  ‘The name is Ben,’ Ben said, not taking his gaze off Jude. ‘Since you know anyway.’ We’re going to get out of this, he said with his eyes. Just keep watching me. Everything’s going to be okay.

  He was terrified that it might be the biggest lie he’d ever told.

  ‘I was an officer too, you know,’ Gant said, almost conversationally. ‘Back in the day. I fought for my country.’

  ‘But these days you just kill for whoever pays the most,’ Ben said. ‘Nice.’

  Gant gave a thin smile. ‘We’re running out of time. The sword.’

  ‘You’d never find it,’ Ben said. ‘But I can take you to where Wes has hidden it.’

  Gant shook his head. ‘Doesn’t work that way. You tell us where it is. Last chance.’

  Ben nodded. ‘All right. Fine. I have a map here in my pocket. The location’s marked on it.’

  ‘Map?’ Gant repeated suspiciously.

  ‘The night Simeon Arundel’s home was raided,’ Ben said. ‘I took the map from his safe. It tells you all you need to know.’

  Gant remained poker-faced. ‘Pass it over.’

  ‘If I reach for it, you’ll shoot me,’ Ben said. ‘You come over here and take it f
rom my pocket.’ In his mind he was already playing out the scenario. He pictured Gant’s tall figure stepping up close to him. Reaching out a hand to frisk him for the map. The other hand taking the weight of the weapon. Ben making his lightning move to deflect its angle of aim away from him. A shot might go off. Maybe a whole burst, the muzzle flash lighting up the church. But within the next second, Ben would have delivered the lethal blow to Gant’s throat or the base of the nose with the edge of his hand.

  Once he’d seized control of the MP5, he’d have to neutralise the knifeman without touching Jude. Difficult. Not impossible. Ben had spent countless hours of his past in the killing house at Hereford training with the MP5 for exactly such contingencies.

  The two pistol shooters would have time to fire in the exchange. Ben would take at least two bullets before he could cut them down. He was realistic about that – but at this point, he was past caring about his own skin. Only Jude’s mattered.

  Gant gave a curt shake of the head, and Ben’s plan fell apart in an instant. ‘Do it properly and I won’t shoot. Thumb and forefinger. Nice and slow. Slide the map out and toss it on the ground.’

  Ben did as he’d been told. Very cautiously and deliberately, he opened the left side of his jacket, reached to the inside pocket and slipped out the local map he’d bought on the way to Saint-Christophe. He dangled it between thumb and forefinger, then skimmed it across the floor towards the tall man.

  It fell short. Exactly as Ben had intended it to.

  Gant tutted reprovingly. ‘Bad throw.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Ben replied.

  Gant moved forward a step. Then another. His eyes flicked down towards the floor, and he began to stoop to pick up the map. He was within range now, just.

  This was it. Ben had played his last and only card, and once Gant got a close-up look at the map and realised what it was, it would be over. Jude would die. Ben would too, if he was lucky. Otherwise, they might just take him away to be tortured and then dump his ravaged body in a ditch somewhere.

  Ben’s body tensed as he watched Gant bend to pick up the map. It would have to be a frenzied assault, several moves blurred seamlessly into one, the fastest he’d ever moved in his life. Faster than razor-honed carbon steel could slash through human flesh, faster than fingers could twitch against triggers.

  Ben realised he was trembling in fear. Not for himself, but for Jude.

  He’s your son.

  Gant’s sharp eyes were off him and he was too intent on the map to see the attack coming.

  Ben lashed out. Felt the toe of his shoe connect against Gant’s face. Heard the grunt of pain as the man’s head snapped back and sideways. Ben launched himself at the MP5.

  And the inside of the church exploded in a flurry of gunfire.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was in moments like these that the principles of physics fell away, milliseconds suddenly became like hours and you really did have time to review your entire life in the time it took for a bullet to cross the space between a gun muzzle and your brain. In stop-frame slow-motion, Ben saw Gant’s face split open and the blood fly from the impact of the kick. Felt his knee connect with his enemy’s ribs and the cold steel of the submachine gun in his hands as he wrestled it violently from the man’s grip. He heard the report of the first silenced pistol shot and the searing whistle of the bullet pass his ear. And heard Jude’s scream from somewhere a million miles beyond his reach at the other side of the church.

  Gant kicked and struggled. Ben ripped the gun from his hands and rolled across the floor. Whumph. Whumph. The silenced pistols letting fly.

  In a semi-instant snatched in his peripheral vision Ben thought he saw a figure standing in the church archway. Then through the mayhem sounded a percussive, ear-shattering boom. A flash of white-orange flame and a rolling mushroom of smoke. Then another, crashing through Ben’s eardrums like a clap of thunder.

  Ben didn’t know what was happening. He only knew that he had control of the MP5 now. He could virtually feel the dreaded knife blade cutting into Jude’s flesh, as though it were his own. Driving another pitiless blow into Gant’s bloody face he raised the submachine gun and took instinctive aim at the big guy with the knife. In the semi-darkness, disorientated by the explosions and the flashes, he couldn’t even see the sights. He felt the trigger break under the pressure of his finger and the weapon gave a judder in his hand as it spat a three-round burst of 9mm shells in less than a fifth of a second.

  Jude fell to one side, the knifeman to the other. Jude hit the floor with his shoulder and rolled. The knifeman hit the floor flat on his back and didn’t move.

  Ben whipped around to see one of the two pistol shooters lying twisted on the ground. The other squeezed off a shot that ricocheted off the stone wall. Ben realised he was shooting at the figure who’d appeared in the archway and was half-hidden in swirling white smoke.

  A third crashing fiery blast filled the church. The pistol shooter was lifted off his feet and sprawled backwards in the dirt.

  By then, Ben had was already running over to Jude, calling his name. He saw the blood soaking Jude’s clothes – then realised that almost all of it was spatter from the dead knifeman. The cut on Jude’s neck was superficial. Ben dropped the MP5 and helped him to his feet.

  As quickly as it had kicked off, the fight was over. Three men lay dead on the floor of the church. One killed by Ben, two by the mysterious new arrival, who was still standing near the archway, holding a large revolver. White smoke trickled from its barrel and floated up to join the pall that drifted in the air. It smelled pungently of rotten eggs. Old-fashioned gunpowder, the stench that had filled a million battlefields of days gone by.

  Gant, the leader of the men, was on his knees and elbows groaning and bleeding liberally from his smashed nose and teeth. Injured and groggy, but still a threat. Seeing one of the fallen pistols nearby he made a sudden and surprisingly fast lunge for it.

  ‘Ah, non, non. Pas si vite,’ said the figure in the archway, raising the smoky revolver and deftly cocking the hammer with his thumb. Flame burst from its barrel. The gunshot flattened Gant into the dirt like a crushed beetle.

  Ben left Jude standing propped against a stone wall and turned to face the new arrival. ‘Thanks, but I might have wanted to talk to him,’ he said sternly, pointing at Gant’s bleeding body.

  The man shrugged. ‘That is no way to greet someone who has just saved your life,’ he said gruffly in French.

  Ben peered at him. Where had he seen him before? He was about Ben’s height, ten or a dozen years older, bearded and dark and wearing a chequered work shirt. Then Ben remembered: he’d been one of the group standing at the bar in Saint-Christophe that evening. The guy who’d been doing some kind of business with Moustache and left counting his money.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ben asked.

  ‘My name is Jacques Rabier. I knew Fabrice Lalique, and like you, I would like to discover the truth about what happened to him.’ He kicked one of the corpses as if it were a sack of grain. ‘It seems I was not the only person interested in talking to you tonight.’

  ‘Was it you who called me?’

  Rabier shook his head. ‘I think perhaps it was one of your friends here, no? You have walked into a trap, mon vieux.’

  ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘This is a small village. I knew where you and your son were staying.’

  ‘He’s not my son,’ Ben replied with a total lack of conviction.

  Rabier raised an eyebrow. ‘He looks like you.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Jude groaned in the background, nursing his cut neck. He looked pale and shaky.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ben told him. ‘Keep talking,’ he said to Rabier in French.

  ‘I was coming to speak with you when I saw you leaving the hotel in a hurry, and I followed you here. I thought this was a strange place for you to come, so I watched to see what you were doing. Then these men appeared from the trees. I thought that was strange to
o. Then when I saw them make a grab for the boy there, I thought perhaps it was time for old Jacques to give you some help.’

  ‘I’m obliged to you, Jacques. One thing, though. If you were just coming to talk to us, why the six-gun?’

  Rabier hefted the revolver in his fist and gave a crooked smile. Ben had never seen a weapon like it in action before, the type of old-fashioned cap and ball pistol that harked back to the 1860s and the days before modern cartridges and smokeless gunpowder. In Britain you needed a stack of authorisations to own one; in France they were completely unrestricted. ‘I carry this everywhere with me now,’ Rabier said. ‘It is a precaution I have been taking ever since those men threw Fabrice off the bridge.’

  ‘That’s what you believe?’

  ‘You do not?’

  Ben took out his pack of Gauloises, offered the Frenchman one, took one for himself and lit them both up with his Zippo. ‘I’m taking it that you’re not the kind of guy to be calling the gendarmerie in such situations,’ he said, motioning at the dead men on the ground.

  Rabier let out a short laugh. ‘Bernard, the Chief of Police, is one of my best customers.’ He spat on the ground. ‘But the rest of them are no better than the Nazis who butchered my grandfather and grandmother during the occupation. We have the new Gestapo now, only their masters are in Brussels instead of Berlin.’

  Ben didn’t ask in what capacity Bernard was one of Rabier’s best customers, but he had the impression that his new friend was in the illicit booze business. Ben had lived in rural France long enough to know that black market alcohol was a growth industry there.

  ‘You have no more social engagements planned for this evening?’ Rabier asked.

  ‘This was it,’ Ben said.

  ‘Then come back with me to the farm. We can dispose of these connards there, and we will talk. You can stay the night.’ Rabier went to fetch his pickup truck from where he’d left it hidden among the trees, and backed it up to the entrance to the church. Jude retreated to the far side of the ruin and didn’t watch as Ben and the Frenchman grabbed each corpse in turn by the collar and ankles and flung them in an undignified heap on the flatbed of the pickup. Rabier seemed quite unperturbed by the grisly work, and puffed happily on his cigarette. ‘You have done this before?’ he asked Ben. That crooked smile again.