The Lost Relic (37 page)

The bag was empty apart from a spare hundred-round drum magazine for Darcey’s G36 rifle and a military holster containing a well-worn, well-maintained and fully loaded 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol. ‘Take it,’ she said.

Ben looked up at Darcey in confusion. ‘What is this?’ was all he could say.

‘Peace of mind,’ she said simply.

Ben thought back to the afternoon he’d spent with the Scotsman, putting up the greenhouse. It seemed a lifetime ago.
I have my peace of mind, if you know what I mean
, Boonzie had said. Ben glanced at the assault rifle in Darcey’s hands, and back down at the Browning. Peace of mind, indeed. He wasn’t even going to ask where the Scotsman had got hold of a piece of front-line kit like the G36.

‘Came in handy, didn’t it?’ Darcey said.

Ben picked up the pistol and stuffed it into the pocket of his prison overalls, at a loss for words.

‘Confused?’ She smiled, laid the rifle across the Ford’s scuffed bonnet, leaned against the wing and took off her shooting gloves.

‘Pretty much.’

‘I wasn’t always with
SOCA
. I used to be in CO19.’

Ben began to get it. ‘That means you did some training in Hereford.’

‘And Boonzie McCulloch was my instructor,’ Darcey said. ‘He was the best. I never forgot him. So imagine my surprise when it turned out he was the reason you were in Italy in the first place. I took a little trip out to his place in Campo Basso yesterday. When I told him I was assigned to bring you in, he nearly blew my head off. But then I told him some other things I’d found out more recently. After that, he couldn’t do enough to help me.’

‘Things like what?’ Ben asked.

‘Like the fact that I know you didn’t shoot Urbano Tassoni.’

Ben looked hard at Darcey Kane, and could see nothing but sincerity in her eyes.

‘I had my suspicions,’ she said. ‘Too many things didn’t add up. Meanwhile, someone was working hard to keep key evidence out of my sight. The way Tassoni’s surveillance DVDs seemed to go walkies, for instance.’

‘They’d been taken right after the killing,’ Ben said. ‘I checked.’

‘And the whole way it was carried out – I just didn’t think you’d have been that sloppy.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment. So who killed Tassoni?’

‘The people I used to work for.’

‘SOCA?’

She shook her head, pointed at the sky. ‘The gods. The ones tugging on the puppet strings. The people who tell
SOCA
what to do, and set me up to catch you just the same way they set you up to take the fall for their dirty work.’

‘Why me?’ Ben asked.

‘Because you killed Anatoly Shikov,’ Darcey said. ‘Son of Grigori Shikov, the world’s most wanted and elusive Russian mobster, and Urbano Tassoni’s buddy in crime. They were trying to work Tassoni to get to him. Thanks to Tassoni, they knew all about the gallery job in advance. When it went wrong, they decided to cut their ties with Tassoni and pin it on you, just so they could grab you and dangle you out there as bait. They knew Shikov would send someone after you for revenge. Once he’d taken you back home and had you tortured to death, they’d have something to charge him with.’

Ben suddenly remembered. ‘There was a
GPS
tracker in my shoe.’

‘There you go. They’ll have planted it there after they arrested you. That’s how they were planning to catch Shikov in the act. But I wanted to get to you first. I’ve been watching the hospital, waiting until they transferred you to jail. I had a feeling the Russians would make their move then.’

Ben thought long and hard. It all sounded ugly enough to be perfectly plausible. Just one vital piece was missing. ‘How does a field agent become privy to this kind of information?’

‘Three days ago, I met an informant in Paris. A young MI6 agent called Jamie Lister, who decided he still had some integrity left in him. I wasn’t sure I believed him at first, but when someone tries to kill me to stop me finding out the truth, I know I’m onto something.’

‘The informant’s dead?’

‘Along with the guy I was working with, Paolo Buitoni. And that pisses me off too. I don’t like innocent people around me dying.’

‘I can sympathise,’ Ben said. ‘But what do you want from me?’

‘As of three days ago, I’m officially a rogue agent, right there at the top of the hit list. A fugitive, like you.’

‘So?’

‘So, I thought maybe we could help each other.’

‘As in team up together? You and me?’

‘You don’t have to make it sound so terrible.’

‘Haven’t you fallen a little low, Agent Kane?’

She shrugged. ‘You’re somewhat rusty, maybe. Somewhat past your peak. But I’ve seen worse.’

‘Flattery isn’t going to change my mind, Darcey. Why should I trust you?’

‘Because I’m a wonderful and sincere person and I’m completely on the level here. You have nothing to fear from me, I swear.’

‘I’ve heard that line from you before.’

‘Please.’

‘I stayed in Italy so I could take care of certain business,’ Ben said. ‘My business, not yours.’

‘You want payback for what happened at the gallery. You want to go after Grigori Shikov. I know that now.’

Ben nodded. ‘He and Tassoni planned the robbery together. Now Tassoni’s dead. I don’t care who did it. All I know is that Shikov is next. And that’s none of your concern.’

‘Getting Shikov absolutely
is
my concern,’ she said firmly.

‘You want to catch the big fish? Reckon if you score enough little Brownie points your former employers will let you go back to your old life?’

Darcey’s face tightened. ‘You think I’m just a career girl?’

‘You’ve been doing a good job of it so far, by the looks of things.’

‘Well there might be more to me than you think, Ben Hope.’

‘Surprise me,’ he said. He could see a glow burning in her eyes, like a storm building.

‘You know what the Black Shark is?’ she asked him.

‘The Russian Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopter,’ Ben said. ‘Probably the most sophisticated combat chopper ever built. It can run rings around our Mk1 Apache, and it carries enough weapons payload to destroy a city. But I don’t see the connection.’

‘Imagine those being deployed against our forces in Afghanistan.’

Ben could imagine it. It wasn’t a pretty picture. ‘So?’

‘So maybe I feel I have a moral obligation to stop that from happening,’ she said. ‘And maybe there are things going on behind the scenes here that you don’t know about. Like, for instance, the fact that Grigori Shikov is just about to sign a deal that would put two stolen Black Sharks into the hands of the Taliban. We’ve got to stop that deal from going through.’

Ben stared at her.

‘Jamie Lister was willing to put everything on the line for something he believed in,’ Darcey went on. ‘To stop innocent people from dying and bad people from killing. And guess what – I feel I need to do the same. I want to do something good. You don’t know what it feels like, being used as a pawn in someone’s dirty little game. I’d never go back to that again.’

‘Believe me, I know exactly what it feels like,’ Ben said. ‘It’s why I left the army. But I don’t think you came here to listen to my life story.’

‘Will you help me, Ben?’ she asked. He could see from the look in her eyes that she meant every word.

‘And then what?’ he said. ‘When it’s over? They’ll keep coming after you. They won’t stop until you’re dead.’

In the distance, a car was approaching along the main road. They both watched as it neared the entrance to the picnic area, then passed by and carried on out of sight.

‘I know they will,’ Darcey said. ‘And you, too. It’s too late to go back.’

‘You might be right,’ he said.

‘We’re together in this, Ben, whether we choose it or not.’ Darcey’s face relaxed a little. ‘Besides, you need me more than you think you do.’

He smiled. ‘Really? I need you?’

‘Look at you, for Christ’s sake. You won’t make it three kilometres looking like that. You don’t even have any shoes.’

Ben glanced down at himself. The blue overalls were streaked with dirt and torn where he’d been struggling against the Russians. One of Darcey’s bullet hits had left a conspicuous blood spatter across his chest and shoulder. His socks had worn through from running over the rough concrete forecourt earlier, and the grass was prickling his feet through the holes.

‘Think you can find me something to wear without getting caught?’ he said.

‘Says the man who gets himself nicked for bar-room brawling. I’ll manage. So is that a yes?’

‘All right. But we do this my way. And you have to call me Sir.’

She grinned. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘Well, maybe that part’s negotiable.’ Ben picked up Boonzie’s G36 rifle, stuffed it back in the holdall, zipped the bag shut and slung it in the van. ‘Do you have any money?’

‘Not much,’ she admitted.

‘Where’d you get the vehicle?’

‘Stole it.’

‘I have some cash,’ he said. ‘It’s in my bag, in a locker.’

‘At the airport. I know. I watched you put it there. Then let’s go.’ Darcey climbed in the driver’s side. ‘You’d better ride in the back.’

‘We’ll have to ditch this thing afterwards,’ he said, climbing in next to the holdall and slamming the back doors shut behind him. ‘We can take a train to Monaco.’

Darcey twisted the ignition. ‘Tuxedos, roulette tables, superyachts. Wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

‘Nor me,’ Ben said. ‘Not really my style. I was thinking about visiting an old lady there.’

‘See, now, that’s much more like it. An old lady.’

‘Her name’s Mimi Renzi,’ Ben said. ‘And I’m pretty certain she has something interesting to tell us.’

Ben waited, hidden in the back of the van and impatient to get out of his prison overalls, while Darcey did the rounds of a street market in one of Rome’s many little squares. She came back a quarter of an hour later with a pair of white training shoes, jeans and a T-shirt, as well as the biggest pair of sunglasses she’d been able to find and a cheap designer version of a military fatigue hat in desert camo. Ben held out the T-shirt. Its glittery logo proclaimed ‘Yeah, Baby!’.

‘That’s the last time I send you shopping for me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to look like an idiot in these things.’

She pointed at the crowds of tourists milling around the piazza. ‘You want to blend in, don’t you? Now hurry up and get changed. I won’t look.’

She only took two little peeks as he peeled off the prison overalls and started pulling on the clothes she’d got him. ‘Who is this Mimi Renzi?’ she asked.

‘The former maid and longtime companion of the artist Gabriella Giordani,’ Ben said. ‘Before all this happened with Tassoni, she tried to get in touch with me. Said she had something important to tell me. I don’t know what, and I didn’t care at the time, but now I want to find out.’

Darcey frowned. ‘And this is relevant because . . .?’

As Ben finished dressing and laced up the training shoes, he ran quickly through what he knew about the counterfeit Goya. ‘My bet is that the real artist was Gabriella Giordani herself. Back when she was a young countess, she had to paint in secret because her husband didn’t allow it. I think she forged ‘The Penitent Sinner’ – maybe for money, maybe just for the hell of it. Pride in her skill or something. I don’t know. The point is, Shikov sent his son to steal it even though he knew it was a fake. His man Gourko told me as much before you crashed the party.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Only one possible reason,’ Ben said, tucking the Browning into the waistband of his new jeans. ‘There’s something about that sketch. Something that goes way beyond any inherent value it could have, even if it was genuine. When I talked to Pietro De Crescenzo in Salamanca, he couldn’t come up with any ideas. But I have a feeling Mimi knows. And I have a feeling it’s going to help lead us to Shikov.’ He pulled the floppy rim of the fatigue hat down low over his face, and clambered into the front passenger seat.

‘Very nice,’ Darcey said, glancing him up and down. ‘A definite improvement. Though I have to say, those overalls really brought out the colour of your eyes.’

‘Please,’ Ben said, and slipped the sunglasses over them.

They made it out of Rome and southwards to Fiumicino without an army of Carabinieri coming after them. Leaving the Ford on the far side of the car park, they merged with the crowds funnelling inside the airport building. A newspaper stand in the lobby was screaming with the latest reports of the dramatic shootout in the streets of Rome and the disappearance of Urbano Tassoni’s killer as his armed gang sprung him from police custody.

‘You just can’t stay out of the news, can you?’ Darcey said. Ben didn’t reply. Security cameras watched them from all sides, and it felt as if every one of them was staring right at them as they crossed the busy lobby. Ben tried not to worry about them, and fretted instead that some resourceful cop going through his things after his arrest might have figured out what the little key tagged ‘187′ was for. At the enquiries desk he did his best rendition of a hapless British tourist who’d lost his wallet with his luggage locker key inside. Darcey handed over the ten euro fine, the attendant went to fetch a duplicate key, and suddenly Ben had one less thing to worry about. Five minutes later he had his old green canvas bag slung over his shoulder, still containing his wallet and cash, and they were heading back towards the car.

Forty-seven minutes after that, shortly before midday, they parked the stolen Ford for the last time near Stazione Termini, Rome’s main railway station. After pressing nervously through the crowds under the watchful eye of armed police, Ben bought tickets and they boarded a Trenitalia express heading for Milan and connecting to the Riviera train service to Monaco.

‘First class,’ Darcey noted as they found their seats, which faced across a table by the window. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to impress me, Ben Hope?’

Ben dumped his green bag on the seat next to his and shoved the holdall under the table. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. First’s quieter. I’d prefer to stay away from crowds right now.’