The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (197 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Georgia

Far away over the hills, a wolf’s howl pierced the deepness of the night: a plaintive, mournful sound, like a lament for lost souls. Grigori Shikov turned away from the railing of his balcony and walked slowly back into the shadows and silence of the house to refill his glass with chilled vodka.

He had spoken to nobody since hearing of the murder of his old friend.

First Sonja. Then Anatoly. Now Urbano. So much death. Death all around him.

And there would be more. Always more.

In his study, Shikov opened one of the display cabinets. He laid his hands on the smooth, cool veneer of the old cherry-wood box inside, carefully lifted it out and laid it on his desk. He opened the lid and gazed for a few moments at the pair of antique percussion duelling pistols nestling inside the red velvet lining. The finest Italian craftsmanship, from a more civilised era when gentlemen could settle their disputes honourably, in blood. He ran his fingers lovingly down the guns’ slender barrels. His mind drifted back twenty-six years.

It had been 1985, around the time he’d first seriously contemplated a career in politics, that the then twenty-nine-year-old Urbano Tassoni had presented his friend with the magnificent gift. For a serious amateur historian like Shikov, the cased pair of duelling pistols would have made a fine addition to his collection whatever their background, but Tassoni had had particular reason for picking those specific guns. Aware of his friend’s passion for all things even indirectly connected with the bygone epoch of Imperial Russia, he’d known that the weapons’ unique history would hold a special appeal.

The pistols had once belonged to an Italian aristocrat by the name of Count Rodingo De Crescenzo, a man of small historic consequence save for the little-known fact that, exactly sixty years earlier, he was rumoured to have used these very same weapons to fight one of the last illegal duels in European history. What made the duel especially interesting for Shikov was that the count’s rival had been an exiled Russian prince, who had subsequently died from his wound. By its very nature, the duel had been something the count’s agents had been keen to cover up. No formal charges had ever been brought, nothing had ever been proved. Only a handful of historians, including the antiquarian who had sold Tassoni the pistols, had ever known of the scandalous episode.

On receiving the gift, Shikov had been mightily touched by his friend’s gesture. But when Tassoni had told him the name of the Russian prince who’d been involved in the duel, he’d been completely staggered, blown away to the point of stupefaction. It was too incredible to be a coincidence. For the first and only time in his life, Shikov had been convinced that the hand of Fate was at work.

Prince Leonid Alexandrovich Borowsky. Born into one of the richest and most powerful noble families in Imperial Russia, second only to the ruling Romanov dynasty and Tsar Nicholas II himself. Exiled to Europe after the 1917 revolution and the fall of the Romanov empire and – according to the whispered legend that decades of short-sighted dismissal by egghead historians could not snuff out – the owner of a priceless relic, a unique and exquisite treasure worth killing, even dying for.

In the exclusive circles of wealthy, dedicated, hardcore antiquities collectors to which Shikov belonged, the relic was known as the Dark Medusa. All his adult life, ever since he’d made his first real money and taken his first tentative steps into amassing artefacts of historic value, Grigori Shikov had lusted after it, imagining himself owning it, willing to offer any price to acquire it.

And trying to picture what it looked like. In all the long years since the disappearance of the magnificent relic, nobody had come forward claiming to have actually seen the Dark Medusa. No photographs or drawings of it were known to have survived, and only the sketchiest of descriptions existed in the historic archives. From his arrival in Europe after the Russian revolution to his death in 1925, there were no recorded witness accounts of Prince Leo showing his treasure to anyone; and after his untimely demise at the hands of the Italian count, the Dark Medusa had never again resurfaced.

None of which had been able, now that fortune had gifted him with this incredible discovery, to deter Grigori Shikov from his renewed quest to find it. He’d been forty-eight years old then, at the height of his power and ready and willing to use every bit of it to cut as wide and bloody a swathe as necessary to get what he wanted.

His experience had taught him that men would do anything to protect a secret of this value. That was why, when he’d traced the antiquarian who’d sold the pistols to Tassoni, intending to press any information out of him that might shed light on what had happened to Leo Borowsky’s priceless possession, the brutality of the interrogation had made even some of his hardest thugs blanch. By the time Shikov had been persuaded that the antiquarian really didn’t know anything useful, the man was too badly damaged ever to walk or talk or eat again. Shikov had personally ended his suffering by cutting his throat with a razor.

The search had continued fruitlessly. It had often occurred to Shikov, back in those days, that Rodingo De Crescenzo might have known where the relic was – might even have taken it for himself after killing its owner. If so, where had it gone? The leads were few and far between. Investigations revealed that the count had succumbed to tuberculosis in 1934. His son Federico had been killed in Sudan during World War II. The only surviving descendant was Rodingo’s grandson, Pietro De Crescenzo, not yet thirty but already a leading patron of the arts and very much in the public eye.

The young count’s celebrity wouldn’t have deterred Shikov in the slightest from using brute force to gain information from him. But in October 1986, just when he’d been about to issue the order that would have seen Pietro De Crescenzo strapped to a chair with a gun to his head, Shikov’s search had suddenly veered in a whole new direction. De Crescenzo would never know how lucky he’d been.

It had been while tearing through an obscure, out-of-print book on the European aristocracy of the twentieth century that Shikov had found out about Rodingo De Crescenzo’s short-lived first marriage to the woman who had later gone on to become one of Italy’s most celebrated female artists, Gabriella Giordani. From what he could glean from the brief text, the relationship had ended abruptly in 1925. The same year as the duel.

The discovery had sent Shikov’s imagination into overdrive. The possible motives for two men fighting a duel to the death over a woman were easy enough to speculate about. The question was, what secrets might the former countess have learned from Leo Borowsky before her husband had ended his life?

Shikov had delved deeper. None of the biographies of the artist made any reference to that part of her past. The fact that Gabriella had kept so silent for so many years intrigued him all the more.

His investigators had had little trouble tracking her down. She’d been pushing eighty by then, leading a solitary and reclusive existence in a rambling old country villa outside Cesena in the north of Italy. So alone. So vulnerable. So easy.

Shikov could still remember that starlit night when he and his men had paid their visit to her. He recalled the delirious sense of elation he’d felt as they’d smashed their way into the isolated villa, convinced that he’d found his prize at last. He hadn’t.

What he’d found instead was the cracked, worn old diary, its writing faded with age. For the next twenty-five years, not a week had passed without his returning to re-read it obsessively, like a devout believer drawn to his bible, certain that it contained the key. And he’d been right, in the end. Yet now, just when once again he’d thought he was about to lay his hands on the lost relic of his dreams, his hopes had been dashed a second time in a forgotten Russian cemetery. The map inside the picture frame had been accur ate enough – but someone had got there before him.

Could the search for the Dark Medusa finally be over?

Maybe it was, Shikov thought. Maybe he’d be in his own grave before it was done.

At least he could console himself that he wouldn’t be the only one.

He picked up one of the duelling pistols. The antique lockwork gave a delicate
click-clunk
as he cocked the hammer. He held the gun at arm’s length, sighted down its barrel. Pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a dry snap.

‘Ben Hope, you are dead,’ he said. And that thought, at this moment, was the only thing in the world that gave him any joy.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Manchester

Just after midnight, Darcey Kane was escorted from the helipad on the roof of the SOCA regional HQ by plain-clothes agents who checked her name, rank and number into a register and took away her weapon to be logged into secure storage. Less than three minutes later she was whisked into a large, plush office on the top floor, and found herself alone with a man she’d only ever heard of before but never met.

Sir William Applewood, SOCA’s Senior Director of Intelligence, personally appointed by the Home Secretary, was a heavyset man of sixty-two with skin turned the colour of chalk by the strain of his job. Behind his half-moon spectacles, there were dark rings around his eyes. Maybe the whispered legend that he needed only three hours of sleep a night wasn’t true after all. He glanced up as she was shown into the room, and expressionlessly waved her to a chair across the broad, polished desk from him.

Darcey stayed on her feet. ‘Sir, I would appreciate an explanation as to why I was snatched away from an operation I’ve been working day and night on for three months, just at the point when—’

Applewood flashed a steely look at her. ‘Take a
seat
, Commander,’ he said firmly.

Darcey shut her mouth and did as she was told. Applewood said nothing more for a few moments while he sifted papers on his desk. She could see the open file in front of him was hers. He scanned the text, his eye lingering on a section here and there with a slight flicker of an eyebrow. It was probably as impressed as he could look. Finally he shut the file, leaned back in his reclining swivel chair and gazed at her over the desk.

‘Darcey Kane. Age thirty-five. Joined the force as a constable in April 2000. Rapid promotion, then three years with Merseyside police Matrix rapid response team. From there, graduated to CO19 Specialist Firearms Command. Top of your division for speed and accuracy both on the range and the field. Showed exceptional leadership and decision-making qualities. Fluent in five languages. Proficient in all forms of combat. Extensive experience of hostage and raid situations, eighteen major arrests to your credit. Left the police service at thirty-four to take up present duties at SOCA. How’s your first year with us been?’

‘Excellent, sir.’ She felt like adding, ‘Until some arsehole decided to compromise my operation.’

Applewood’s stare was cold and penetrating, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘You’ve come a long way, Darcey. As you know, we monitor the performance of our agents very closely. Certain people believe you’re capable of a great deal more than your current position allows. They feel we might be wasting your talents.’

So now she had an inkling of what this was about. She fought back a smile. ‘Certain people, sir?’

Applewood raised his index finger at the ceiling, as though pointing to some imaginary floor above. ‘Let’s just say, the
gods
.’ He allowed himself a brief chuckle, then became serious again. ‘An assignment has landed on my desk tonight that requires an exceptionally gifted agent. I’m in agreement with the suggestion that it might be time to let you spread your wings.’ The cold stare bored into her. ‘What do you think?’

Darcey’s mind was racing and she could barely sit still. In her mind she was turning cartwheels across the desk. But she controlled herself and remained completely impassive, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. ‘I think I’d like that very much, sir.’

‘Thought you would.’ Applewood kicked his chair back from the desk, pulled out a drawer and reached for another file, which he skimmed across the polished surface at her.

The front of the file was printed with the usual eyes-only heading in bold red capitals that went with a high-level clearance document.

‘Operation Jericho?’ she said.

‘Read it,’ Applewood replied.

Darcey flipped the file open. The first thing she saw was the face of the man whose photo was clipped to the top page. Good-looking guy, she thought as she instinctively memorised his likeness. Blond hair, not too short. Strong features. The blue eyes showed a depth of intelligence. And pain, too, somewhere in there. She scanned quickly down the accompanying text, soaking up information. In police evaluation tests she’d shown she could read a complex eighty-page document in under three minutes and retain every single detail. The police psychologists had called it eidetic memory. They’d also done their best to prove she was cheating, until she proved them otherwise.

She’d got faster since then.

It took her just a second or two to see that this guy was more than just a pretty face. The military resumé that filled the page was enough to make her purse her lips. She read down the list, flipped the page, read more. Everything was heavily stamped with dire Ministry of Defence confidentiality warnings. There was enough detail of unofficial black ops missions to war zones the British army weren’t even supposed to have been involved in to cause some serious embarrassment within the highest echelons of government. It wasn’t the kind of information that a few decades of Official Secrets Act suppression could dilute enough to be allowed into the public domain. The data in this file would never be seen by anyone outside the corridors of power while anyone remotely connected to it was still living.

Darcey was extremely aware that in the last few short moments she’d taken a bigger leap up the security clearance ladder than in eleven long years of her career to date.

The gods, indeed. She’d been chosen. All her hard work had finally paid off and now the doors were opening for her. The feeling was giddying, and her heart began to thump.

‘Ben Hope,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Full name Benedict. Age thirty-nine, retired from 22 SAS, rank of major, now resident in France, occupation specialised security consultant.’

‘Specialised security consultant,’ Applewood said. ‘Covers a lot of ground, doesn’t it?’ When he grinned he looked like an alligator. ‘I want you to familiarise yourself with this man. He’s your next target. I
expect
results, Commander.’

Darcey narrowed her eyes. There was just one small piece of information missing. ‘Why do we want him?’

‘You’ll be fully briefed in the air.’

What might Hope have done to attract this kind of attention, Darcey thought. Her mind sprinted through the possibilities. Terrorism, arms dealing, drugs. Another ex-hero gone rotten. It didn’t really matter how, or why. She was locked on her target. From this moment until the moment he was hers, he was all she’d care about.

‘Where am I going?’ she asked.

‘Rome. Naturally you’ll have full command of the operation, answerable only to me. How fast can you be ready?’

‘I’m ready now,’ Darcey said.

‘Tired?’

‘Not on your life, sir.’

‘Then go and get your man, Commander,’ Applewood said. ‘There’s a car waiting for you downstairs. Your plane leaves in exactly twenty-four minutes.’