‘Talkative, isn’t he?’ Ben said. ‘Once you get him started, you can’t shut him up.’
‘Ugo doesn’t speak,’ Bellini said. ‘Not to me, not even to Usberti. Least of all to you. He’s taken a vow of silence. And I would advise you to follow his example. Don’t make this worse for yourself.’
They kept moving fast over the desert. It was a rough ride, but Ben had had rougher. A blast of freezing wind, snow and dirt kicked up by the wheels of the lead truck whistled through the broken windscreen and all around the inside of the cab. The bobbing tail-lights ahead were barely visible. Meanwhile the headlights behind them gradually receded to pinpoints in their wake and finally vanished altogether, leaving their little convoy alone in the vastness of the night.
Ben was picturing Anna sitting there in the lead truck next to Usberti, wondering what the bastard was saying to her, wishing he could have done something to prevent the situation getting so bad. And he was thinking about all the possible ways he could disarm Bellini and kill both him and Bozza without using his hands.
The first part wouldn’t have been too hard. Speed and surprise would be half the battle. Ben’s upper body was already canted slightly forwards out of his seat because of his cuffed wrists in the small of his back, which potentially gave him an advantage. A violent curved lunge to the right, one good solid head-butt straight to Bellini’s forehead, and he could smash the guy’s glasses off, break his nose, then use his elbow to knock the weapon out of his hand before he pulled the trigger, and then flip himself around to kick hard with both boots and send Bellini flying right out of the damaged door. One down, maybe three seconds.
But taking on Bozza no-handed was a different matter. It would be the most efficient form of suicide imaginable. Ben closed his eyes, willed his mind and body to relax, and resolved to wait for a better opportunity.
After a few more minutes he sensed that they were slowing down. He opened his eyes again, expecting to see the lead truck doing the same. It wasn’t. The gap between them was widening, Usberti leading further and further ahead. For a moment Ben thought something was wrong with the engine, even though the rattle from under the bonnet hadn’t got noticeably worse. It wasn’t fuel, either. The gauge was reading a third full. Then he realised that Bozza was deliberately slackening his pressure on the gas. The speedometer needle dropped to forty kilometres an hour. Then thirty-five. The dirt spray from the lead truck would obscure most of what Groppione would be able to see in his mirrors. They wouldn’t know what was happening behind them.
And something was happening, for sure. Ben could sense it almost telepathically, just like he could feel the strange energy emanating from the silent killer sitting next to him.
‘Ugo, why are we slowing down?’ Bellini said. He was shivering so much from the cold that his voice was full of tremors. ‘What are you doing? I don’t understand.’
But Ben understood.
He wasn’t the only one planning his moves, waiting for the right moment.
Bozza let the truck roll to a halt.
Then he turned off the engine.
Chapter 59
They were in the middle of nowhere, nothing to be seen except the twin strips of illuminated ground in the beams of the spotlamps, snow drifting gently through them to coat the desert in a sprinkling of whiteness. The sound of the lead truck was so distant as to be barely audible.
Bellini repeated, ‘Ugo, what are you doing? Keep moving. Usberti said we were to follow close behind.’
Bozza said nothing. Instead, he reached for his door and opened it and stepped out of the truck. He walked around its front, casting a monstrous shadow across the landscape ahead. Before Bellini could say anything more, Bozza pulled the passenger door open and punched him hard in the face. Bellini brought the gun around defensively to point his way, but Bozza was much faster. He snatched it from Bellini’s fingers, seized his collar and dragged him from the truck and punched him twice more, breaking his nose and smashing his glasses. Bellini went limp on the ground.
Bozza spoke for the first time. ‘Fuck Usberti. And fuck you, priest.’
By then, Ben was already out of the truck. Nowhere to run.
He wouldn’t have run, anyway. Not from this man. He would fight, even with his hands tied behind his back and no possible chance of winning. Sometimes, it was the fight that mattered, more than the outcome.
Bozza left Bellini lying semi-conscious in the dirty snow and walked slowly back around the front of the truck towards Ben. He was smiling. He pointed the pistol.
‘Get on your knees.’ His voice was raspy and pitched an octave lower than a normal man’s.
‘You know I won’t do that,’ Ben said.
Bozza shrugged, like saying, ‘Fair enough.’ And shot Ben in the left leg.
Agony lanced like a blade through Ben’s thigh. His left knee gave way under him and he fell hard on his side. He rolled and looked up at the man’s silhouette standing tall above him against the lights of the truck.
‘You going to shoot me in the head? Go for it, if you’ve got the guts.’
Bozza laughed. ‘You want me to make this easy for you, Ben Hope. But I am in no hurry. I have waited for this.’ He held the gun up in the air and tossed it over his shoulder. It hit the ground a couple of feet behind him. He took a step closer to Ben, and kicked him in the stomach.
Shot in the leg with the wind knocked out of him, Ben would have loved to jump up and get in the fight. Bozza laughed again, a strange raucous cackling that wasn’t quite human. He peeled off one glove, then the other. Folded them carefully away into his jacket pocket. He spat on his hands and rubbed them together. Just as he’d promised, he intended to take his time.
Ben expected the knife to come out next. No matter what training a person has received, no matter how skilled in combat, no matter how brave in the face of impossible odds, no sane human being yet born did not experience visceral fear at the thought of cold steel plunging into their defenceless flesh. Ben knew he was about to get cut: badly, deeply, slowly, expertly, probably fatally. But he also knew he would not sell his life cheaply to Ugo Bozza.
He was wrong about the knife. And he couldn’t have fully imagined what was about to happen next.
Bozza hovered over him and then, as fast as a falcon swooping on a mouse, reached down with fingers splayed like talons. Still gasping from the gut-kick, Ben wasn’t quick enough to ward him off. Bozza’s fingers gripped Ben’s shoulder muscle, near the base of his neck. They squeezed like no grip Ben had ever felt before. The pain that exploded through him was as if red-hot wires had been inserted into every cell of his body and simultaneously hooked up to a million-volt electrical pulse generator. There was no physical way to control his response to it. Nothing he could do to resist what Bozza was doing to him. But he wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t utter a sound, not if he had to bite his own tongue off.
‘I am going to make you suffer like this for hours, Ben Hope. Scream. You know you want to. You will die screaming.’
Bozza released the nerve centre. His hand drew back and his eyes darted up and down Ben’s body as though he was deciding where to hurt him next. Then the hand darted back in like a snake. Ben felt the agony course and quake through him. He was on fire, tearing apart, exploding into a thousand pieces. The pain of his wounded leg felt like nothing by comparison.
A voice from very far away shouted, ‘STOP!’
Bozza released his torturous grip. He turned. Bellini was standing by the truck. There was blood pouring from his nose. The broken glasses were gone.
Bellini repeated, ‘Stop. You’re going to kill him.’
Bozza nodded impassively. ‘Yes. And you, if you stand in my way.’
‘Usberti will punish you if you don’t let him go, right now.’
‘Usberti can die too,’ Bozza said. ‘You think he matters to me?’
The two of them seemed to lock eyes for the longest moment. Then Bellini’s gaze flicked down at the gun on the ground. It lay a
couple of paces closer to his feet than it did to Bozza’s. Bozza could see what he was thinking, and smiled at the idea that this limping cripple, this half-blind gawky preacher, thought he could beat him – him, Ugo Bozza – to the drop.
Then Bellini went for the gun.
Except there was something Bozza couldn’t have predicted. Bellini was no longer the limping cripple, and he could see just fine without his glasses. He got to the gun first and scooped it up and wheeled away just in time to duck out of the path of Bozza’s fists. Backing off three fast steps with the pistol thrust out in both hands, he yelled, ‘On the ground! You’re under arrest!’
Bozza sneered at him. Then attacked like a charging tiger.
The gunshot rang out. Bozza recoiled, blood spurting from a hole in his shoulder, eyes wide more with incredulous surprise than the shock of being shot. He clutched his shoulder and stood there for an instant as Bellini kept the weapon pointed at him.
‘I said, on the ground, NOW!’ Bellini yelled. His whole manner and behaviour were suddenly completely changed.
Bozza hesitated one more second, then bolted into the darkness.
Bellini watched the man sprint away. He lowered the gun and hurried over to where Ben lay clutching his injured leg. ‘You’re bleeding badly.’
Ben had already assessed the damage. A gunshot to the thigh can kill a man within minutes, but that wasn’t going to happen to him. Bozza had deliberately aimed off and only clipped the outside of the quadriceps muscle, in order to bring him down without injuring him too badly. He didn’t want his victim to bleed out from a ruptured femoral artery. That would have been much too quick and merciful an end.
Ben looked up at Bellini. ‘Who are you?’
Bellini said, ‘We’ll get to that. First I’ll see if there’s a med kit in the truck.’ He hurried over to the vehicle, dug under the seats and returned a moment later with a tatty olive-green plastic box that he set on the ground next to Ben and opened up. ‘Okay, we have pressure bandages, rolls of gauze, surgical tape, antiseptic, some penicillin that’s about three years out of date and a bunch of morphine syrettes that look like military surplus left over from the Vietnam War.’
‘How many syrettes?’
‘Enough to kill a platoon. Or turn them into hopeless addicts.’
‘That’ll do. First you need to help me get these damn cuffs off.’
‘I have no key.’
‘Then shoot them off me.’
‘Gun’s jammed.’
‘Then unjam it.’
Ben had never seen a priest who could field-strip a pistol the way Bellini could. He ejected the magazine, worked the slide back and forth to clear the jam and then released a catch to allow the slide to pull free of its rails. Next he took out the barrel and spring, wiped down and blew into the mechanism and then put everything together again just as fast. ‘All right. Now hold steady. I’m going to blow the chain in half. That’s the best I can do. If I try for the bracelets it’s going to take your hands off.’
Ben gritted his teeth from the pain in his thigh as he rolled onto his side and kept his wrists braced as far apart as he could. He felt Bellini lever the muzzle of the pistol between them, pressing against the chain. ‘The blast’s going to hurt like a bastard,’ Bellini warned him.
‘Do it,’ Ben said. Bellini fired. The explosion of hot gases that burst from the muzzle in the bullet’s wake seared his flesh. His hands jerked free. He flexed his arms. The steel bracelets were still clamped too tightly around his wrists, each dangling a few links of broken chain. The flesh was blackened and bloody where the hot nitrocellulose propellant gases had broken the skin, but he had worse pain elsewhere.
‘Give me one of those syrettes,’ he muttered, feeling faint from the agony of his leg. Bellini pulled one from the med kit. Ben tore open the wrapping and jabbed the needle into his thigh, a few inches from the gunshot wound. The pain relief would be rapid, in exchange for some temporary wooziness, and maybe a hallucination or two. He could live with that, especially if the drug took away the lingering, burning torment of what Bozza had done to the nerves of his neck and shoulder.
‘You’d better wrap that leg,’ Bellini said. ‘Not to mention start looking for a hospital.’
‘What hospital? Anyway, it’s just a scratch.’
‘Looks like more than a scratch to me.’
‘Why did you let Bozza run?’
‘I didn’t. I was going to shoot him again, but like I told you, the gun jammed. Sand and grit in the slide rails. Fucking Glock piece of shit. Anyway, he’s wounded and he can’t survive long out here. I hope the fucker gets beheaded by ISIL or skinned alive in a dust storm.’
‘You certainly don’t talk like a priest.’
‘That’s because I’m not. But my father was. I’ve spent the last six months trying to be him, basically.’
‘Then who the hell are you?’ Ben asked.
‘First, my name’s not Bellini. It’s Janssens. The rest is a long story.’
‘I want to hear it,’ Ben said. ‘But not here.’
‘Where?’
‘In the truck. We have some bad guys to catch up with.’
Chapter 60
After Ben had cleaned up his leg, disinfected the wound area and taped it up with a pressure bandage to stem the bleeding, Janssens helped him back to the truck. ‘I’d better drive,’ Janssens said. ‘Apart from not being able to work the clutch, that morphine’s going to knock you for six.’
‘Can you follow tyre tracks over this terrain?’
‘Not when they’re covered up with fresh snowfall,’ Janssens admitted.
‘Then I’d better stay awake, hadn’t I?’
They took off, chasing the faint tracks of Usberti’s truck. The snow was gradually easing off, but the wind was blowing harder and Ben guessed from the way Janssens started shivering again that the temperature had dropped still further. He couldn’t feel it, with the effects of the morphine elevating his body heat. The drug was kicking in full blast now. He had to keep blinking to stop himself from falling asleep. The nicotine rush from a few good, strong cigarettes would have been ideal, but Janssens didn’t smoke.
‘Talk to me,’ Ben said.
‘You want my life story? My name’s Marc Janssens. Son of a Belgian priest and an Italian schoolteacher. Hence, the fact I could pass myself off as Italian, as well as a man of the church.’
‘You told Bozza you were arresting him. You’re a cop?’
‘I prefer “undercover law enforcement agent”,’ Janssens replied.
‘What agency?’
‘A leading one.’
‘INTERPOL?’
Janssens took one hand off the wheel to make a vague gesture. ‘Whatever. You know, we’re all the same soup. Let’s just say I was sent into deep cover to infiltrate Usberti’s operation.’
‘To investigate what? He was cleared of all charges, years ago.’
‘Precisely,’ Janssens said. ‘Elements within the agency were unhappy with the way he got off the first time. There were suggestions that he used his power, money and contacts to leverage his way out of trouble, letting others take the fall for him.’
‘Like Fabrizio Severini.’
Janssens nodded. ‘But now we’ve got more than enough evidence to blow the case back wide open and put that piece of shit away for the rest of his life.’
‘If he lives that long,’ Ben said.
Janssens smiled. ‘So, have you puzzled it out yet?’
Ben looked at him, confused.
‘The letter,’ Janssens said.
‘It was you?’
‘No, the letter was for real. But it wasn’t God who gave Severini the word that Usberti was back in business. It was me. Personally, I thought the whole divine inspiration bit was too kooky. I was afraid it would put you off. But I couldn’t think of any other reason why a crazy old coot in jail might have the inside track on what Usberti was doing.’
‘Why contact me at all?’ Ben asked.
r /> ‘Three reasons,’ Janssens said. ‘First reason, you were the guy who did more than anyone else to nail him the first time round. If only he hadn’t managed to slip through the net in the end, it would have been all down to you.’
‘Not just me. Luc Simon did his bit, too.’
‘You can play it cool if you want. Second reason, as a result of the first, we knew you were Usberti’s top target and about to become involved anyway. Sadly, he made his moves against you and the others sooner than we anticipated.’
‘Meaning that you could have saved them,’ Ben said. ‘If you people had come to me sooner, all this could have been prevented. Father Pascal and Luc Simon would be alive now. Jeff wouldn’t have been shot.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. If you let me explain the third reason, you’ll understand why that couldn’t be helped.’
‘It had better be a good one.’
Janssens said, ‘When I said I worked for a big law enforcement agency, I was telling the truth. Thing is, I work for Europol. Now do you understand?’
Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘Europol are just an organising body with limited powers. In effect, you’re a paper tiger. You don’t have the authority to arrest criminals, or even to conduct criminal investigations inside Europe.’
‘You’re right. Technically, we’re strictly an intelligence agency, and obliged to delegate those powers to INTERPOL, a whole other and totally differently-structured organisation. Unless, that is, we decide to do things off our own bat.’
‘Which is what happened in this case?’
‘That would be one way of putting it,’ Janssens said.
‘Meaning that this isn’t any kind of official investigation,’ Ben said. ‘You’re off the radar and in direct contravention of your own rules, just by being here.’
‘Yeah, right. Just like the CIA are technically prohibited from performing internal security functions within North America, but they say screw that and do it anyway. Wake up. The rule books were tossed a long time ago. When it suits them, at any rate.’