The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (214 page)

Chapter Seventy-One

‘She’s a crazy, rotten, lying old bitch,’ Darcey said through a mouthful of fillet steak. ‘I don’t like her.’

It was just after 9 p.m. and the night was still warm, a slight breeze wafting in from the sea. Their table for two had been set on the poolside patio of the guest annexe in the grounds of the Renzi villa, where Mimi had insisted they stay the night. The old woman had excused herself from dining with them, as she always retired early with just a cup of warm milk before bed. The food and wine she’d ordered in for them had come from one of Monaco’s best restaurants. They were into their second bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild.

‘She needed to confess to what she’s done,’ Ben said.

Darcey grunted. ‘Talk to a priest, then.’

‘She just wants to make amends. I can understand that. People make mistakes, Darcey.’

‘Oh, sure.’ Darcey didn’t look convinced. ‘People make mistakes. But they don’t wait until they’re about to cop it before they suddenly start coming on all repentant. So are you going to help her?’

‘I told her I would think about it,’ Ben said. ‘And I am. But things are a little complicated at the moment.’

‘You might say that.’

Ben pushed away his plate. He wasn’t hungry any more. He got up and walked through the open patio doors into the luxurious two-bedroomed annexe, went over to the armchair where he’d dumped his bag and undid the straps. Inside, folded up next to his dwindling money supply, was the list of eight different mobile numbers he’d copied from the call records of Spartak Gourko’s phone on the train journey from Milan. Out of the eight, three stood out as the ones Gourko had called most frequently and for longest. Ben had circled those three numbers so many times on the train that the paper was almost worn through.

And now he knew what to say. He perched on the edge of the armchair, turned on Gourko’s phone and dialled the first number on the list. The call cut straight to a mobile answering service. Ben waited for the beep, then left his message. Short and simple, slow and clear.

‘This is a message for Grigori Shikov. You know who I am. I have the Dark Medusa. Call me if you’re interested.’

Getting no reply on either of the other two most-used numbers, he left the same message and then got started on the others. By the time he’d worked his way through to the bottom of the list, he’d had only two replies. The first sounded like a bar or nightclub, loud music booming in the background. He didn’t leave a message. The second was an Italian guy who cut him off before he’d said three words.

Now all he could do was wait and hope that his message would hit its mark.

‘You look tired,’ Darcey said as he returned to the patio table. ‘Maybe you should go to bed.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

‘No, you’re not.’ Their glasses were empty. She grabbed the bottle, but there was no wine left. ‘Shit. Is that all they gave us?’

‘Maybe they thought a bottle of Mouton Rothschild each would be enough,’ Ben said.

‘There’s got to be more booze around here somewhere.’ Darcey jumped up and disappeared into the annexe. She returned five minutes later, wearing a grin and carrying a bottle and two crystal brandy glasses. ‘
Voilá
. Now we know what the little door at the end of the passage is. You need to check out that wine cellar. It’s full of champagne. And look what
I
found. Armagnac, eighteen years old. Fancy a drop of the hard stuff?’

‘You’re a bad influence on me, Darcey Kane.’

‘I will corrupt you yet,’ she said, tearing the foil off the neck of the bottle. ‘If I die trying.’

As she poured out two brimming glasses, Ben used a book of matches to light up one of the Gauloises he’d bought from a kiosk at Monaco station. Still missing that old Zippo of his. He offered the pack to Darcey.

She shook her head. ‘No.’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘Oh, fuck it, go on then.’ She held the cigarette between her lips and Ben struck another match to light it for her. Inhaling too sharply, she gave a little cough. ‘Who’s a bad influence now?’ she spluttered. ‘What the hell are these things? They’ll kill us.’

‘Everyone says that,’ Ben said. ‘But if it’s a choice between these, the Russian mafia and British Intelligence, I’ll take the Gauloises.’

They sat and smoked and sipped the aged, rich brandy in silence for a while. From somewhere down below on the beach, there came laughter and the sound of someone plucking notes on a Spanish guitar – a soulful, melancholy melody that drifted up through the warm night air.

‘Are you going to call her?’ Darcey said.

Ben looked up from his thoughts. ‘Brooke?’

‘That’s who you were thinking about just now, isn’t it?’

It had been. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘Maybe there’s nothing I
can
do. Maybe it’s just over between us, and that’s it.’ He knocked back more brandy and decided he wanted to change the subject. ‘Do you have anybody?’ he asked her.

Darcey shook her head. ‘I’m kind of in-between things right now.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Well, that’s putting it mildly. I’m
very
in-between things. Two years.’

‘Long time,’ Ben said.

‘Long enough for the hurt to fade,’ she said. ‘His name was Sam.’

Ben looked at her.

‘Oh, he’s not dead or anything like that,’ she said, catching his expression. ‘Though he fucking well deserves to be. Now happily married to Angie, who
used
to be my best friend and now holds the number two spot on my personal shit list.’ Her brow flickered with anger, and then she relaxed and smiled. ‘So I do understand how you feel, Ben. I was pretty fucked up over it for a while. But then one morning I woke up there in my little flat and I just realised how free I was.’

Ben smiled. ‘Thanks, Darcey.’ He reached out and touched her hand. She didn’t pull away from his touch.

‘Free to do all kinds of wicked, wonderful things,’ Darcey said. She laced her fingers into his, and moved a little closer.

Ben didn’t pull away either.

Darcey stood up, leading him up to his feet. Her smile fell away and she looked seriously into his eyes. As he stood, her arms slipped around his neck and her lips came up to meet his.

Ben closed his eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was tiredness making him dizzy, or the wine, or something else. He was standing on the edge of the cliff, everything happening in slow motion as part of him struggled to keep from tumbling head over heels into the warm, inviting waters below.

‘Her loss, anyway,’ Darcey murmured.

The first kiss was tentative, almost furtive. Then she pulled him in tight and crushed her lips hard against his. He felt her body pressing into him, and realised it was because he was holding her close. He could feel her heart beating fast against his own as the kissing turned more passionate.

She broke away, breathing hard, her face flushed. ‘Come on.’ Gripping his hand, she led him inside the annexe. Before they even got to the bedroom door she was kissing him again. She shoved open the door with her behind, then pulled him to the bed and swung him round with surprising strength. He flopped down on the soft duvet as she quickly stripped off her top and then clambered onto him, straddling him and smothering him with more kisses, giving him no time to think or to want to stop. She rolled over on her back, slipped one long leg out of her jeans, then the other, and kicked the jeans away and rolled back on top of him, giggling as she fumbled for his belt buckle.

Her phone rang inside the pocket of her jeans on the floor.

They both froze.

‘There’s only one person that could be,’ Darcey said, her mouth an inch from Ben’s. She tore herself off him, swung an arm down from the bed and scrabbled for her jeans. The phone was still ringing insistently. Fishing it out, she quickly put it into hands-free mode so Ben could hear, and hit reply.

‘Darcey?’ A man’s voice Ben hadn’t heard before.

‘Mick?’

‘You OK? You sound a little breathless.’

Darcey brushed a tangle of hair away from her eyes. She couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I had to run for the phone. What’s happening?’

‘It was there in the locker,’ Walker said. ‘Just like you said. I got it, no problem.’ He lowered his voice and sounded serious. ‘It’s a file, Darcey. And I think you need to see it immediately. Have you got a fax there?’

Ben pointed through the open bedroom door. There was a compact phone-fax on a stand in the front hallway of the annexe.

‘Hold on, Mick,’ Darcey said. She and Ben ran over to the fax machine, and she read the number out to Walker.

‘Copy that,’ Walker said. ‘Sending it now. You might want to keep it safe, Darce. Original’s going into a bank deposit box first thing tomorrow. You’ll see why when you read it,’ he added cryptically. ‘Keep in touch, OK?’

Moments after Walker ended the call, the little fax machine whirred into life, sucked in the first sheet of paper and its printer went to work.

‘What do you think it is?’ Darcey asked as she hurriedly pulled her clothes back on.

Ben looked at the digital readout on the front of the machine. ‘Whatever it is, there’s twelve pages of it headed our way.’

The colour fax took less than two minutes to print. It was the entire intelligence file on Operation Jericho.

‘Jamie Lister must have smuggled it out of his office when he went AWOL,’ Darcey breathed. ‘Holy shit. Look at this.’

The classified operation was described in fine detail. It was all there, every official stamp, every high-ranking signature. Some names, like Ferris, Blackmore and Yemm, came up over and over. The first two pages consisted of profiles of Grigori Shikov and his son, the latter shown in a couple of photos on the deck of a motor yacht with a pretty blonde in a bikini.

It wasn’t until Ben got to the third page that the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Here was irrefutable black-on-white proof that the senior intelligence chiefs heading up Lister’s department had known about the gallery robbery well in advance from the reports they’d received from their informant Urbano Tassoni.

The next page showed a face Ben remembered from the robbery. Bruno Bellomo, one of the men he’d dangled from the window. His real name was Mario Belli, and he’d been an undercover agent with clear orders, signed and counter-signed by Lister’s superiors.

‘They didn’t care if innocent people got killed,’ Darcey said in disgust. ‘Look at this line: “a degree of collateral damage may be deemed permissible in order to facilitate the operation”. It’s just like Lister said.’

On the following pages was a dry official summary of the Tassoni shakedown, incorporating a series of compromising photos of him with underage prostitutes, and a summary of the deal that he’d been offered. That information alone was enough to cause a major international incident.

And then, on the next page, came the money shot.

‘Fuck me,’ Darcey muttered.

Tassoni’s picture, with the word ‘ELIMINATED’ stamped in official red across his face. Below it was the codename of the operative who’d carried out the job, with the signature of the chief who’d sanctioned it – Mason Ferris. The next page was a still from the suppressed security footage, showing the real assassin arriving at Tassoni’s house several minutes before Ben.

The final printed sheets consisted of Ben’s military record and some satellite images of him walking through the streets of Rome the night of the shooting. He was too dazed to even look at them.

‘Waste of time, eh?’ Darcey beamed.

That was when they heard the phone ring again. It was a different ringtone from before. The phone Ben had taken from Gourko. He laid the fax printout on a table, dug the phone out of his pocket and answered it. The voice on the other end was deep, gravelly, and hard as titanium.

‘This is Grigori Shikov,’ the voice said. ‘You have something that I want.’

Chapter Seventy-Two

‘You’d better believe it,’ Ben said to Shikov.

A rasping chuckle down the phone. ‘This is the problem. Why should I believe you have the Dark Medusa?’

‘Because I’m sitting here looking at it,’ Ben said. ‘Let me see. I’d say the egg’s about eight inches high, white gold, diamond-encrusted, with images from classical mythology around the outside.’

Shikov was silent for a moment. ‘And on the inside?’ he said suspiciously.

‘The Medusa herself, you mean? The miniature bust is made of bloodstone, dark with little flecks of red. Scary-looking lady. What are those eyes made of? Alexandrite, isn’t it?’

‘Where did you find it?’ Shikov said, audibly shaken and fighting to cover the tremor in his voice.

‘In Bezukhov’s grave,’ Ben replied. ‘Right where the map said. You were just a little too late, Shikov.’ It was a wild bluff. The Russian had only to ask one hard question, and it was over. Ben knew he needed to steer the conversation away fast. ‘So do you want it or not? I have other buyers interested.’

‘How is this possible?’ Shikov asked. ‘It’s possible because I’m smarter than you,’ Ben said.

‘I want it,’ Shikov said. ‘You must meet me. We will talk.’

‘Right. And then you’ll have your men kill me, for Anatoly.’

‘My son was a worthless piece of shit,’ Shikov said. ‘So was Tassoni. The egg means much more. Trust me. I am a businessman. But I also must trust you to come alone.’

‘You think I’d bring the cops?’ Ben said. ‘Think again. I’m a fugitive, wanted for murder. Tassoni might have been a shit, but he was an important shit.’

‘Then we have a deal. You give me what I want, I give you what you want. The egg, for your life.’

‘Not good enough. I need to disappear after this, Shikov. I want money.’ As he talked, Ben carried the phone into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

From outside the door, Darcey could hear him talking but couldn’t make out the words. She paced, chewing her lip and wondering why he’d shut her out like that. After a minute or so, he’d gone quiet. The phone rang again, and she heard him answer it and talk a while longer. Almost twenty more minutes went by before he finally emerged from the bedroom and she attacked him with questions.

‘Well?’

‘We set up a meeting,’ Ben said. ‘We figured halfway house. Berlin.’

‘What was all that about money?’

‘To make it believable that I really have the egg. Nobody would let it go for free.’

‘Who called you afterwards?’

‘Shikov lost his signal for a minute. He called back.’

‘This RV in Berlin. A precise location?’

Ben nodded.

‘You’re not thinking of going?’

Ben didn’t reply.

‘It’d be madness, Ben. Don’t you see? This is perfect. I’ll call Applewood. We’ll spring the biggest trap in history and stick Shikov in a cage where he belongs. Anybody tries to fuck with us, we have
that
.’ She pointed to the fax printout on the table. ‘Our ticket to freedom. That information right there is all the bargaining power we need to buy us both our lives back.’

Ben grinned at her. ‘You know, you’re right.’

‘Damn right I’m right.’

‘Let’s celebrate. Did you say there was champagne down in the cellar?’

‘Enough bottles to knock out the whole of Monaco,’ she said.

‘You go and fetch one. I’ll grab two glasses from the kitchen.’

‘Now you’re talking, Ben Hope.’ Darcey trotted down the passage and unbolted the little door that led down to the wine cellar. She skipped down the concrete steps. The cellar was like a maze. Tall racks surrounded her, filled from floor to ceiling with row after row of dusty bottles. She drew one out, brushed away cobwebs. A vintage Moët. This would do just fine. As she ran her eyes over the label, she was thinking about when the bottle was empty and how she was going to haul Ben back in the bedroom and . . .

The cellar door banged shut. She heard the creak of the bolt sliding home.

‘Ben!’ she yelled. She flew up the steps, still clutching the bottle.

There was something on the top step that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. A dinner plate, and on it a whole roast chicken, cellophane-wrapped, cold from the fridge. Next to that was a two-litre bottle of mineral water. Propped against the bottle was a scrawled note that said simply:

Sorry.

B

Darcey beat against the cellar door. ‘Let me out, you bastard!’

But Ben was already gone.