The Babylon Idol

  ‘Did you say Valentina Del Cuore?’ Ben asked.

  Chapter 21

  Alf’s description of the dark-haired beauty fleetingly glimpsed that afternoon left Ben, posing as a reporter hunting for a snap of the movie star, in little doubt that the woman he’d spotted was in fact Anna Manzini.

  The holidaymakers had been labouring their way through an unentertaining tour of the Archaeological Museum of Olympia when they’d seen her enter, briefly speak to one of the staff and then disappear through a door marked ‘private’. Her famously lavish black locks were half-hidden under a hat and she was draped in a long winter coat with a big fur collar, but Alf swore it was her. Maybe she was scouting locations for a movie, he suggested, still dazzled by the sighting and virtually offering to carry Ben’s camera equipment for him as he went off in search of her.

  If the lead was a solid one, it meant Anna had turned up at the museum just an hour or so ago. With luck, Ben would still be able to find her there. Abandoning his half-eaten meal he rushed out to the car and checked Alf’s vague directions against the map on the museum’s website, which proclaimed: ‘The permanent collection contains finds dating from prehistoric times to the Early Christian period. Among the many precious exhibits, the museum’s famous sculpture collection, the bronze collection which is the richest of its kind in the world, and the large terracotta collection, are especially noteworthy.’

  The Archaeological Museum was situated just out of town, in a wintry valley north-west of the Kronion Hill. Ben left the Opel in a parking area and walked up to the museum via a columned walkway that led to a paved courtyard surrounded by trees. The main building was filled with the reverent hush of a cathedral. Ben found himself surrounded by gleaming statues of bronze and marble and stone and a dizzying array of artefacts from the dawn of antiquity. He could see why the place might have little to offer Alf and Deb in the way of entertainment value, lacking the interactive digital displays, virtual tours or emotion-driven social experiences required to shore up the limited attention span of the smartphone-toting modern breed of tourist. For an old-school appreciator of history and aesthetic beauty in the raw, though, it was a candy shop of eye-popping wonders.

  But that still didn’t explain why Anna Manzini should have travelled all this way from the culture-rich environment of Florence when she could have done all the research she needed in the comfort of her luxury villa, including talking to this Kambasis guy. The telephone was a wonderful invention. Whatever she’d come here for, she’d clearly had a very specific intention that could only be addressed by a visit in person.

  There was no sign of Anna in any of the exhibit rooms. Ben quickly found the door marked ‘private’ and was considering going through it when he spotted a female staff member in an apron, dusting the glass front of a display cabinet containing a collection of ancient bronze helmets. Putting on a nervous expression and glancing at his watch, he went over to where she was working. He spoke English, on the assumption that every single employee of the entire Greek tourist industry probably spoke it better than most Brits.

  ‘Excuse me, but I’m looking for my wife. I was supposed to meet her here about an hour ago but I got held up. Black hair, wearing a hat and a long coat with a fur collar – you wouldn’t have seen her, by any chance?’

  His linguistic assumption was correct. The woman shook her head and said no, she’d only come in for a couple of hours to do some cleaning and hadn’t been here long. Nobody answering that description had arrived in the last forty minutes or so, as far as she knew.

  ‘She had an appointment with someone named Kambasis, Theo Kambasis?’

  At which, the woman’s face brightened with recognition. ‘Oh, yes, Mr Kambasis is an assistant curator here. But I’m afraid you’ve missed him, too. He told me yesterday that an Italian history professor was coming to see him today, to discuss something about Phidias’ workshop.’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘I assumed it was a man.’

  ‘She gets that a lot.’

  The woman glanced at her plastic watch. ‘If you’re quick you might find them still over at the workshop.’ She added with a smile, ‘Mr Kambasis can’t tear himself away from that place, once you get him talking.’

  Ben visualised some kind of restoration workshop attached to the museum, with rows of benches and priceless relics sitting here and there in the process of being reconstructed. ‘Which way do I go?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s not part of the museum,’ she explained. ‘It’s part of the ruins of the ancient site of Olympia. It’s not far. You’ll find it over on the west side of the sacred enclosure, directly opposite the Temple of Zeus. Here, let me give you one of the museum’s leaflets. There’s a little map on the back that shows you the layout of all the buildings.’

  Ben thanked her for her help, and left. The ancient site was within easy walking distance and cars weren’t allowed access, so he left the Opel outside the museum and set off at a trot, map in hand, hoping he wasn’t going to miss Anna again. Dusk was creeping in. His breath misted in the cold air as he hurried on his way.

  What had once been one of the most spectacular visions of ancient Greece was now an extended field of ruins, spread out among groves of trees with the rolling background panorama of hills and mountains still visible against the darkening sky. Using the map to orient him he made his way through the maze of tumbledown arches and buildings; there was little remaining of Olympia’s former glory except partial walls and the occasional segment of stone column standing here and there.

  The workshop of Phidias was his target. Whoever this Phidias was or had been, Ben had little idea and even less interest. The woman at the museum had said that it was near the Temple of Zeus, and the map seemed to concur, but he couldn’t see anything resembling a temple – only a rectangular patch of what was basically a rubble field. He was reminded of some of the devastated ancient temples he’d seen in the Middle East during his military days, victims of tank battles and bombing raids, millennia of history wiped out at a stroke. Here, the slow ravages of three thousand years of natural decay and earthquakes had taken a more gradual toll.

  He wondered whether those smoking battlefields, still echoing in his mind with the crackling of blazing vehicles and the screams of the dying, could ever become as serene and tranquil as the spot he was standing on now. There was something almost meditative about the ruins of Olympia, a stillness he hadn’t experienced since the brief months he’d lived the life of a lay brother in a monastery in the French Alps, so secluded from the hectic buzz of the modern world that it was easy, and very tempting, to forget it even existed.

  But there was no time for contemplation as he walked on, looking and listening for any sign of anyone around. Just as he was becoming certain the place was completely deserted and he’d got here too late, he heard voices in the distance and picked up his step. It looked as if he’d found the workshop of Phidias. As he drew closer, he could see that it was one of the only areas where the ruins were still fairly intact: a once-grandiose building with walls and columns miraculously unharmed by the wrecking ball of the ages.

  Then he saw them: two figures slowly picking their way through the dusky shadows of the ruined building, some sixty yards from him. One was a man, stooped and walking with the gait of an elderly person. The other was a woman he instantly recognised. Slim and statuesque, in a long elegantly tailored winter coat that couldn’t be anything other than Italian, her black hair spilling out from under a fur hat. Beautiful even from the back. He knew right away that it wasn’t Valentina Del Cuore.

  Anna Manzini. He’d found her, alive and safe.

  The man she was with, whom Ben presumed must be Kambasis, was pointing this way and that as the pair meandered along what had once been a corridor or passageway, now just the low remains of one wall. Anna was listening to him, pausing every few steps to raise an SLR camera that dangled from her neck and snap a photo while enough light still remained. They were too engrossed
in their conversation to have spotted Ben coming their way.

  He was about to call Anna’s name when he realised the three of them weren’t going to be alone for long.

  The lights of an approaching vehicle were cutting through the dusk, bouncing up and down as the suspension rocked over the bumpy ground. A white panel van had emerged from behind a stand of trees at the edge of the ancient site, where he guessed there must be a limited access road leading in for authorised users. At first he thought that it might be a maintenance crew come to carry out some kind of repair work on the place. But what kind of maintenance crew would start work at dusk? Something was wrong.

  The van’s headlights darkened, then its engine cut out. It didn’t stop. It coasted on between the ruins, steering a lurching, bumping course over the uneven ground towards where Anna and Kambasis were strolling along in conversation. They didn’t seem to have noticed it.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  The van braked silently to a halt. Its doors opened, soft and quiet. The dark figures of three men got out. Ben was much further away from them than they were from Anna and Kambasis, but even from this distance the way they moved had alarm bells shrilling in his mind. They walked from the van three abreast, confident yet stealthy, heading right towards Anna and Kambasis who were still too taken up by their intense conversation to have seen they weren’t alone.

  Ben kept going, moving faster, watching the three men. The dark jackets they were wearing let them blend into the shadows. The two either side were large men, over six foot. The one in the middle dwarfed them both.

  The big guy. Gianni Garrone’s attacker. The driver of the black van in Florence.

  As Ben watched they broke their line and split up, the outer two peeling off at an angle, so that they converged on their target in a pincer movement like a pair of stalking predators creeping up on their prey. The two flankers were each drawing out stubby black objects that, even at this distance in the growing darkness, were unmistakably handguns. The big guy in the middle unslung a heftier weapon from under his jacket.

  Ben let his bag fall from his shoulder and broke into a sprint. It went against all his training and experience to give away his own presence and position to the three stalkers, but he had to warn Anna and her companion before something terrible happened right here in front of him. He let out a yell.

  ‘Anna! Look out!’

  He saw her tense, then whip around in surprise and confusion to see who was calling her name.

  But Ben’s warning was too late. Suddenly, through the stillness of the falling dark, came the first snap of gunshots.

  Chapter 22

  If this had been the summer season, hordes of tourists would have been fleeing amid scenes of mayhem. Now in the dead of winter with nobody around to raise the alarm, the ruins of Olympia were the gunmen’s own private shooting range and they could expend all the ordnance they wanted.

  The gunfire punched ragged holes in the silence of Olympia. Anna Manzini and Theo Kambasis froze like two rabbits paralysed in the headlights of an oncoming car. To the sound of another shot, Kambasis staggered and clutched at Anna’s arm. Still some forty yards away and running fast, Ben couldn’t tell if the old curator was trying to protect her, or was clinging to her for support. Anna let out a cry. The two of them fell back over the low wall by which they’d been strolling, and disappeared from view.

  Ben ran harder, his heart thumping with anxiety, partly because it was impossible to know whether Anna had ducked out of sight, or been shot, and partly because rushing unarmed, empty-handed and in plain view towards a trio of heavily armed attackers wasn’t tactically the soundest option in anyone’s book.

  A beat later, he knew that his warning yell had had exactly the effect he feared. Pausing in their stride towards the wall behind which Anna and Kambasis had disappeared, the gunmen turned and gazed in Ben’s direction, then raised their weapons and opened fire on him.

  Ben had reached a crumbly archway that stood supported on a pair of columns. Whatever temple or shrine the arch had once been a doorway to, the rest of the building lay collapsed and strewn all over the ground, and it was behind those ruins that he dived under cover, pressing himself flat as scores of bullets cracked into the ancient stonework, stinging him with flying chips of masonry.

  The big man motioned to his companions, as if to say, ‘I’ll take care of this guy, you deal with those two.’ The others turned back towards the low wall where Anna and Kambasis had dropped out of sight, while the big man started ambling casually towards Ben. If he seemed almost nonchalant, that was because he knew that if Ben had come ready for a gunfight, he’d have already returned fire.

  On his hands and knees in the dirt, Ben looked desperately around him for some kind of improvised weapon. Even a handy chunk of stone would be better than nothing, but the only rocks he could see were broken segments of ribbed cylindrical columns and large square blocks that must have weighed two hundred pounds apiece.

  The big man came closer, holding his weapon at waist level. It was the same kind of SIG Sauer MPX machine pistol they’d used to try to kill Ben in Florence. Possibly the very same weapon. It was fitted with a red-dot optical sight and long curved magazine, with a spare protruding from his hip pocket. He had the fire selector set to three-shot bursts, which hammered the stonework in percussive snorts as he walked closer.

  Ben could almost hear him laughing.

  Tactical advantages were few and far between in this situation, but Ben had one thing going for him: if he kept low enough the big guy couldn’t actually see him. Pinned under fire, he inched forwards like a crawling snake, until he’d managed to work his way out of the hot zone and could peer around the edge of a big stone block and see the big guy just feet away, blasting at the spot where he thought Ben was sheltering. He was grinning ear to ear, clearly a man who enjoyed his work. In the background, Ben saw the other two stepping closer to the low wall over which Anna and Kambasis had disappeared. They raised their pistols and let off two shots each, BLAMBLAM – BLAMBLAM, firing over the top of the wall at an angle towards the ground. It was exactly the angle they’d have been shooting at if they were executing two injured victims lying at the foot of the wall on the other side.

  Ben went cold. Anna had just been murdered right in front of him and there’d been nothing he could do to save her. He’d been too late. It had been all for nothing.

  The big man had reached the solitary stone arch and was peering over the piles of ruins strewn around it, the contented smirk on his face turned to a perplexed frown as he realised that his helpless target wasn’t where he’d thought he was. He stood bulkily framed beneath the archway, searching left, searching right. His eyes darting in all directions except for the one he should have been looking in, which was directly above him.

  Ben had clambered up the rocks unseen and was perched on top of the archway right over the big guy’s head. The two other gunmen had only to turn round to spot him and open fire, but they seemed too busy admiring their handiwork over by the wall. Ben waited for the perfect moment, holding his breath, every muscle coiling like a spring. Then he pounced, like a leopard dropping from the foliage of a tree to surprise a gazelle grazing below.

  Except this gazelle was more like a Cape buffalo. From a little distance away, the guy was huge. Close up, he was enormous. Ben’s 165 pounds landed squarely across his broad shoulders with an arm hooked around his throat, and he hardly seemed to sag under the sudden impact. Ben locked the stranglehold tighter and rained blows on his face and head. A massive elbow lashed backwards and caught Ben in the ribs, ripping his grasp loose and sending him sprawling to the ground.

  Towering over him with a look of rage, the big guy pointed the machine pistol in Ben’s face. Before he could shoot, Ben lashed out with a prone kick and swept the man’s legs out from under him. This time he did go down, and hard, all that bulk raising his centre of gravity to bring him slamming to earth like a sack of concrete.

  Then B
en was up on his feet, stamping on the guy’s throat and face as he tried to protect himself with his arms. Ben might as well have tried stamping on a tree trunk. Moving back, he snatched up the fallen gun, pointed it, squeezed the trigger – and nothing happened. In the failing light he’d missed what the big guy had missed moments earlier. The gun was empty, the bolt was locked to the rear, the breech open, good for hammering nails and not much else.

  In the split second it took Ben to realise it, the big guy had scrambled back to his feet. A normal man would have been crippled by Ben’s surprise assault, but if he was hurt he didn’t show it. Now the two of them were circling one another beneath the archway. Ben was no dwarf at a shade under six foot, but he had to look up to make eye contact. The monster was at least a foot taller, and two feet wider. With a grin, he bent down and picked up a stone block that probably weighed more than Ben, as though it were made of polystyrene. He raised it to his shoulder and heaved it at Ben like a shot putter.

  Ben ducked out of the way of the skull-crushing missile, tripping backwards as the block flew past him and struck the middle of one of the archway columns with a massive thud that left a crater and seemed to rock the whole arch on its shaky foundations. A shower of dust and loose chippings sprinkled from overhead. Ben hurled the empty machine pistol at his opponent. A hefty chunk of steel and aluminium hardware that bounced off his bunched pectorals as though Ben had pinged a pebble at his chest.

  The big man bent down to pick up another rock. This time, he wouldn’t miss. He raised it high above his head, preparing to hurl it down and crush his enemy like a worm.

  But he never got the chance as a ton of crumbling ancient blockwork came crashing down on him and flattened him to the ground. The impact of the hurled rock had finally proved too much for the supporting archway column. After withstanding all the ravages that two and a half millennia could inflict on it, now it gave way and buckled in the middle like a broken knee. The arch collapsed with a roar, burying the man’s head and torso under a pile of stone so that only his lower half protruded. His legs gave a couple of twitches, then stopped moving.