Climbing a wooden staircase without a creak in the still of the night was another art Ben had learned a long time ago, and practised many times in the course of his work. But these were marble, with a soft runner up their centre. He bounded silently up them two at a time and reached the first floor, where the banister rail curved elegantly into the wall and formed a landing overlooking the stairs and the hallway below. The voices were clearer up here. From their harsh tone, Ben had the impression that it wasn’t Brennan’s long-lost friends who’d come to visit.
From the landing led a wide passage, and a little way up the passage was a half-open door. The light was shining from the gap. Ben moved closer. The voices grew louder. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He stopped. In the glow from the half-open door he could see the gilded frames of paintings hanging on the opposite wall. And something else.
The centrepiece of the display of antique arms was a Celtic battle shield. Irish, Ben guessed, the circular kind called a targe. Probably four hundred years old, wood and leather banded with iron. Fanned out over the top of the shield was an array of ancient daggers. Framing it left and right, with their blade tips crossed in an X below it, hung a pair of basket-hilted broadswords sheathed in steel scabbards.
Ben reached up and unhooked the one nearest to him. It came away from its wall mounting without a sound. He slipped his hand inside the steel basket and gripped the handle. It felt rough, like sharkskin. He didn’t draw the blade out, for the zing of steel on steel that would give his presence away. He crept closer to the door, the sword substantial and comforting in his grip.
And peered tentatively through the gap into the room beyond.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The two intruders were dressed in black, from their combat boots to their ski masks. Black cordura holsters strapped to their hips. Black Glock pistols, one holstered and the other pressed tightly into Professor Gray Brennan’s right temple.
The bed was a tall antique four-poster that dominated the far end of the room. Its fleur-de-lys covers were thrown back as if the two men had dragged its occupant bodily out of it as he slept, giving him a rude awakening. Now they were holding him in a chair in the middle of the room with his wrists bound.
One man stood behind the chair with a gloved hand cupped under Brennan’s chin and the pistol at his head. Ben noticed the peculiar magazine loaded into the weapon’s butt: not the usual double-stack box magazine, but an ultra-high-capacity double-drum mag. As if its user had anticipated the need to let off a hundred rounds in a hell of a hurry. The other man was standing in front of the captive with his back to the doorway. He was saying, ‘Okay, asshole, one more time. Where are the fuckin’ books?’
Ben took in the accent right away. An American, from one of the southern states, somewhere like Alabama or Louisiana. A thin, greasy blonde ponytail stuck out from the back of his ski mask. He was wearing his Glock in a left-handed holster. That sounded a note of recognition in Ben’s mind.
‘You don’t tell us, I’m gonna watch your brains spatter all over that wall,’ the man with the southern accent said. ‘Your choice, douchebag.’
There’d been a struggle, even though Brennan was hopelessly overmatched. The front of his silk pyjama top was ripped, showing a welt of diseased and broken skin underneath. A vase of flowers on a table near the bed had been upset, the brightly coloured flowers trampled into the rug by the intruders’ boots. The scent of flowers filled the room. So did another smell. A sharp tang that was strangely familiar to Ben.
Mint.
It was the same faintly unpleasant odour of nicotine gum he’d caught on the breath of one of Kristen’s killers, that day on the beach.
The ponytailed man with his back to Ben was the one doing the chewing. With a chill of anger, Ben noticed the Ka-Bar combat knife in its sheath on the man’s belt.
No coincidence. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that he was looking at the knife that had been used to murder Kristen.
The situation inside the room was surreal. Most men dragged out of bed at two in the morning, bound and held in a chair with a gun to their head by masked attackers, would have been ready to wet themselves in terror. Ben had seen more than a few of those. But not Brennan. He was grinning up at his captors as if he’d just remembered a good joke. If Ben found it weird, the two masked men found it even weirder. It was hardly the reaction they’d expected, and that was pissing them off.
As shocked as he was to see these two men here, Ben knew he had the element of surprise on his side. He knew he could rush into the room unsheathing the heavy broadsword and split the gum-chewing bastard diagonally from shoulder to hip before he even had time to turn around. But the element of surprise would only take him so far. It wouldn’t prevent his companion with the drawn pistol from pumping half of that big drum magazine into Ben before the sword could touch him. And that didn’t make a lot of sense tactically.
The ponytailed guy drew his Glock. He thrust it furiously in Brennan’s face and then averted the muzzle ninety degrees to let off a silenced double-tap that punched a pair of holes in the bedroom wall. ‘Last chance. Where are they?’
‘I know exactly what books you’re talking about, and I know exactly where they are,’ Brennan replied crisply. ‘But I won’t tell, so you’ll just have to shoot me. Right here between the eyes. Go on, get on with it.’
The masked men stared at him.
‘I repeat, I have no intention whatsoever of co-operating,’ Brennan informed them. ‘I am a witness to this assault and you have no choice but to silence me. What’re you waiting for?’
In the brief silence that followed, Ben realised that nothing he could do would save Brennan. And that was the way Brennan wanted it.
The two men glanced at one another. The one holding him in the chair shrugged. ‘This guy’s nuts.’
The other nodded. ‘Do it.’
Then the pistol at Brennan’s temple fired. The impact of the bullet at extreme close range sent the historian toppling sideways, spilling out of his chair as he dragged it down with him. By the time he flopped to the floor, he was already dead.
He hadn’t suffered. Probably hadn’t registered anything more than an infinitesimal white flash as the bullet passed through his brain and out the other side. His killers couldn’t know it, but it was the kind of clean, merciful death their victim must have prayed for a thousand times since his illness had struck. A doctor in a Swiss euthanasia clinic couldn’t have given him a quicker end.
But they weren’t going to get a medal for it.
‘Now what?’ said the one with the smoking pistol. ‘We’re never gonna find them.’
‘No worries,’ said the other, cracking a grin through his mask. ‘Sometimes Plan B is just plain more fun. Let’s torch this place and get out of here.’ He flicked his pistol on safe and thrust it back in its holster, turning towards the door as he did it.
He stepped out of the bedroom and into the corridor.
Ben was waiting for him there.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A broadsword against two Glocks. It wasn’t an evenly matched fight, but Ben couldn’t do a lot about that. He wasn’t about to let these guys walk away. He still had surprise on his side – and doorways offered advantages for combat that helped even the odds in ways that an open space never could.
As the first black-clad figure stepped out of the room and into the dark passage, Ben closed in on him fast, smelling the mint on the guy’s breath.
He didn’t want to kill them both, not yet, not until he found out who they were working for and why. Mint-stinker would be kept alive for now. Gripping the sheathed blade with both hands, Ben smashed the steel basket and pommel of the broadsword into the back of his ponytailed head. The blow sounded like a hammer hitting a cabbage.
The man fell forwards into the passage with a cry of pain, twisting as he went down, his hand going to his weapon as quick as a striking cobra. Ben lashed out a first kick that sent the pistol clattering f
rom his hand and a follow-up that caught him under the chin and bounced his head against the floor. The other man was still in the doorway, his eyes wide in the holes of his mask. That split-second of hesitation was all Ben needed to rip the sword blade out of its scabbard and lunge at him.
This one he could kill.
With fast footwork and a powerful thrust, the tip of a sword could accelerate towards its target as fast as a thrown javelin and with enough forward momentum for even the heaviest, broadest blade to penetrate right through an enemy’s ribcage. And Ben was fast. But the man was faster, dangerously faster. He threw himself backwards into Brennan’s bedroom, drawing himself out of range of the lethal stab. Ben propelled himself towards the doorway, lunging the sword at him again with even greater force. The man grabbed the edge of the door, slammed it and drove it shut with a powerful kick. Ben had put too much energy into his sword strike to pull the blow. The sharp point of the sword sheared into one of the wooden panels, eighteen inches of blade passing right through. Ben yanked on the hilt to pull it out for another strike, but the fibres of the wood gripped it tight. It wouldn’t budge.
He’d just lost his primary weapon. But there was another behind him on the floor. Abandoning the trapped sword, he dived away from the doorway to scoop up the Glock he’d struck from Mint-stinker’s hand.
He’d hit the guy pretty hard, though evidently not hard enough. He was struggling to heave himself up from the floor and roll across to grab the weapon at the same time Ben went for it. Ben drove a knee into his chest and punched him in the face, felt his knuckles connect solidly against bone. It was a disabling punch, but this guy seemed able to absorb them with uncanny ease. Ben hit him again, blood smearing his fist. This time Mint-stinker flopped back down, but he looked as if he might pop right up again. Ben was losing precious seconds.
Too many precious seconds. The bedroom door burst open, the hilt of the trapped sword crashing against the wall. The second man reappeared in the doorway, his Glock with the bulky-looking twin-drum magazine thrust out in a two-handed grip and the sights rapidly acquiring a bead on Ben.
Ben’s reaching hand was still a metre away from the fallen gun.
The second man took a step forward. As if in slow motion, Ben saw the well-practised flick of his thumb against his weapon’s fire selector switch. He smiled. As if to say, Gotcha, asshole.
And in that fleeting fraction of an instant, Ben knew he was in more serious trouble than he’d bargained for.
Because pistols didn’t normally have fire selector switches.
With a shock, Ben understood what was about to be unleashed on him. Getting shot at with a handgun was never good news, but now Ben was realising why these particular weapons were loaded up with twin-drum magazines. It was because they were Glock 18s, outwardly almost identical to standard pistols but officially classed as submachine guns. At the flip of a lever, they could be switched from normal semi-auto mode to spew out a constant stream of bullets at a rate of twelve hundred a minute.
Ben scarcely had time to think Uh-oh before he had to duck back through the dark passage, abandoning all notion of grabbing the fallen Glock. He kept his head down, weaving desperately as a zigzagging line of bullet holes churned up into the wall and chased him like a swarm of attacking hornets. Masonry chippings flew. Paintings dropped from their hooks, glass exploding. He dived, rolled, felt bullets zing past and flying bits of plaster sting his face. Twelve hundred rounds cycled per minute. One every five hundredths of a second. The air was thick with copper-jacketed lead alloy.
Ben reached the top of the stairs but knew that he’d never make it down without getting shot to pieces. He flipped himself over the landing rail as rounds sparked and ricocheted off its bars, and dropped into space.
For a moment he felt himself falling; then his shoulder and ribs exploded with pain as he hit the stairs ten or fifteen below. There was no time to worry about damage, as long as it wasn’t crippling. He rolled down a few steps, then found his feet and went bounding towards the bottom.
The shooter appeared at the top of the stairs behind him, ejecting his empty drum magazine and slamming in a fresh one. His colleague was right behind him, hobbling slightly and holding his pistol in one gloved hand, with the other clamped to the back of his head.
Ben launched himself from the eighth step and hit the mosaic floor of the entrance hall running, heading for the front door. Nothing seemed to be broken, and if it was, he’d worry about it on the other side of that door. He could be there in six racing strides which, as long as the shooter fumbled his reload, might just be possible.
But the shooter didn’t. He knew exactly what he was doing.
‘Let’s torch this place,’ the guy had said. And as gunfire erupted around him again, Ben realised they weren’t thinking of using matches. The stairway filled with bursts of white light as the rounds from the fresh drum mag ignited into flame like miniature Greek fire.
Incendiary explosive ammunition. Used in warfare to burn out vehicles and buildings and dispatch any and all enemy personnel inside them with the extra edge of efficiency that modern small arms munitions technology allowed. Ben had fired off more than a few crates of blue-tipped stuff in his military days, seen it light up tactical targets faster than rocket grenades.
And now he knew he had about a chance in a thousand of not getting lit up by one himself before he got to the door. He felt a bullet rake the left shoulder of his leather jacket, bursting into a flash that burned his ear. He dived flat on his front and slid painfully across the floor as another burst zipped past him like tracer and shredded one of the drapes hanging over the high windows, instantly setting it alight. The hallway was filling with smoke and flame. The shooter kept his finger on the trigger, spraying bullets wildly. Bullets thunked into the door, exploding on impact and sending burning chunks of wood spinning through the smoke.
Ben knew he’d never make it to the door. Scrambling for a grip on the polished floor, he leapt to his feet. Changed course and sprinted up the corridor in the direction of Brennan’s study. The shooters reached the bottom of the stairs and trained their weapons on him, both firing now. One of the ornamental plant pots exploded into fiery fragments of ceramic. Ben reached the bend in the corridor. His sore shoulder cannoned off the opposite wall. He staggered, kept running. Behind him, the whole corridor was a tunnel of fire. The flames licked and danced up to the ceiling, spreading fast and blocking the way for his pursuers.
Ben’s mind darted back and forth between two options as he ran. He needed to get out of here, and fast, because if a bullet didn’t take him down, the rapidly spreading fire surely would. But the volumes of the Stamford journal were still lying where he’d left them, on the bed in the guest annexe. If there was even a chance that the diaries could solve the unanswered questions that filled his head, he owed it to Kristen to rescue them from the fire. He hesitated, but only for an instant. He’d come this far. There couldn’t be any turning back.
Half blinded by smoke, he kept moving.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Hold your fire,’ said the one whose name was Matt Ritter. He lowered his own weapon and put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. The corridor the running man had disappeared into was a wall of flames.
Billy Bob Moon turned to him with a look of disgust. ‘Tell me that wasn’t the same prick we ran into in fuckin’ Ireland.’
‘Can’t tell you he wasn’t,’ Ritter replied.
Moon spat out a chewed-up ball of nicotine gum. It was red with blood. ‘Sonofabitch damn near stove my brains in. I don’t care what he’s doing here. All I know is, I’m gonna kill him.’
‘You MARSOC pussies are all the same,’ Ritter said. ‘Quit your whining and let’s move.’
The front door was burning fiercely from the incendiary rounds that had punched into it. Ritter crunched through it with his combat boot. After five kicks there was a ragged hole big enough for a man to pass. He burst through the blazing wood and outside, followe
d by Moon. They turned back to face the villa and emptied another fifty rounds apiece into the doorway and windows, until fire and smoke were pouring out of them. Ritter holstered his weapon, grabbed an incendiary grenade from his belt and lobbed it through a shattered window. The two of them averted their faces from the hot explosion that shook the villa.
‘I love it,’ Moon said, unclipping one of his own grenades and tossing it in after the first. Another blinding flash and deafening boom. When they turned back to face the house, the whole front of it was a raging inferno.
Sometimes Plan B is just plain more fun. In this case their orders were to burn the place to the ground if Brennan didn’t give up the books the boss wanted. Neither man was much concerned with what exactly they contained or why the boss had such ants in his pants about them. They were just some bunch of old books. Paper and card and leather. They were combustible, and they needed to be disposed of. And that was good enough for them.
Ritter turned away from the burning house and stepped over to shine a torch through the window of the VW Touareg parked in the courtyard nearby. He could see paperwork lying on the front passenger seat. It was a car rental agreement. He used the solid aluminium head of the torch to smash the window. Reached in and grabbed the rental agreement and ran his eye down to where the name of the customer was printed, then to the box underneath containing the guy’s signature. Ben Hope. Who the hell was Ben Hope?
He flicked the sheet of paper back inside the broken car window and said to Moon, ‘Let’s finish this. You go that way. You see him, you take him down.’