The Lost Relic (3 page)

Sadly, the item his father seemed so desperate to acquire depicted nothing of the sort. Anatoly glanced at the glossy blow-up taken from the exhibition brochure. Just some colourless drawing of a guy on his knees praying. Who would desire such a thing? Obviously it was worth some serious cash, strange though that might seem.

‘You’re not listening to me, boy.’

‘You were saying the alarm system’s a bastard.’

Maisky cleared his throat and cut in politely. ‘That’s putting it mildly. The perimeter protection system is state of the art. If you can get through it, the building is filled with cameras watching from every possible vantage point. The inside of the gallery itself is scanned constantly by photo-infrared motion sensors that could pick up a cockroach. The whole thing is automated, and the only way to override it is to enter a set of passcodes that are kept under lock and key in three separate locations. You need all three to disable the system. Furthermore, the passcodes are randomly re generated each day by computer, in staggered intervals so that the combination’s constantly changing. Any breach of the system will trigger the alarms as well as sending an instant signal to the police.’

‘Seems impossible,’ Anatoly ventured.

‘Nothing is impossible, boy.’ Shikov snatched a printed sheet from his desk and flipped it over.

Anatoly picked it up. There were three names on the sheet, all Italian, all unknown to him. De Crescenzo, Corsini, Silvestri. Beside each name was an address and a thumbnail picture. De Crescenzo was a gaunt-looking man with thinning black hair. Corsini was round and fat. Silvestri looked like a preening popinjay, a man in love with himself even when he didn’t know his picture was being taken. ‘Who are they?’

‘The three men who hold the passcodes,’ Maisky told him.

‘Now here’s the plan,’ Shikov said. ‘Tomorrow evening is the inaugural opening of the gallery. Invitation only, some local VIPs and art critics, people like that, about thirty-five in all. All three passcode holders will be present. Your team will be waiting as they leave, and follow them home. At 3 a.m., you’ll snatch them simultaneously from their homes, bring them back to the gallery and make them enter the codes. How you do it is up to you, but you keep them alive.’

‘Right. And then we go in and grab what we came for.’

Maisky had been waiting for the first sign that the hotheaded young punk was going to handle this in his usual reckless way.
Here we go
, he thought.

‘It’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘Because the only time the owners might have to override the alarm system would be an emergency situation such as a fire, earthquake or other potential threat to the valuable contents of the gallery, the system’s designers built in a function that will send an automatic alert to the police should the override codes be entered. That function is hard-wired into the system and can’t be disabled remotely in any way. It uses a broadband frequency via the optic fibre landline, with cellular backup in the event that the main lines are down. So it’s essential that before you go in, you ensure that the landline is chopped. And that you use this.’ He pointed at a device sitting on a side table. Anatoly had been eyeing it, wondering what it was. A plain black box, about twelve inches long, wired up to four patch antennas.

‘It’s an 18-watt ultra-high power digital cellphone jammer,’ Maisky explained. ‘It will work in all countries and block the signal from any type of phone, including 3G, over a radius of 120 metres. With this in place, the police won’t have a clue what’s going on.’

‘And if any of the owners decides to get smart and punch in a duress signal that could trip the silent alarm, they’re wasting their time,’ Shikov added.

‘So then I can pop them.’

‘Not until you have the item safely in your possession,’ Maisky said as patiently as he could. ‘Once you’re in, you have to take care of the secondary system as well. Each painting is rigged so that any attempt to remove it from the wall will set off a separate alarm.’

‘So what? If the phones are down—’

‘It also fires the automatic shutter system. A sensitive electronic trigger is hooked up to a hydraulic ram system that will slam shutters down to protect the artwork. The shutters will resist attack from bullets, blowtorches, and cutting blades. They will also automatically block every possible exit and imprison the intruder like a trapped rat until the police come and take them away. And there’s no override code for that. It can’t be reversed.’

‘Are you following all of this, Anatoly?’ Shikov said, watching his son closely from across the desk.

Anatoly shrugged, as if to say all this kind of stuff was child’s play to him.

‘Good. Go and assemble four of your best men. I’m thinking of Turchin, Rykov, Petrovich—’

‘And Gourko,’ Anatoly cut in.

Oh no
, Maisky thought, his heart going icy.
Not Gourko
. Anatoly’s closest crony, the scarred bastard who’d been dishonourably drummed out of the Russian army’s Spetsnaz
GRU
Special Forces unit for beating one of his officers half to death with a rifle butt. The kind of gangster who gave gangsters a bad name, and one of the few other people who frightened Maisky even more than his boss.

‘You have two hours,’ Shikov said. ‘And then you’re on your way to Italy. You’ll rendezvous with our friends on the ground.’

‘How many in the team?’

‘Ten. Eight men inside, two on the outside.’

Anatoly nodded. ‘Hardware?’

‘Everything you need.’

Anatoly smiled. He could trust his father to be thorough on that score.

When Anatoly had left the room a few minutes afterwards, Shikov gathered up the scattered paperwork and slid it into a drawer. It would be burned later. Maisky circled the desk, frowning. His head was full of things he wanted to say. Things like, ‘Are you so sure you can trust Anatoly with this? He’s wild and irresponsible and his friends are all maniacs, especially Spartak Gourko. How can you be so blind, uncle?’ But he had the good sense to say nothing at all.

Yuri Maisky wasn’t the only one keeping his thoughts to himself. As Anatoly walked away from the boathouse, flip-ping his Ferrari keys in his hand, he was already thinking about how overcomplicated and boring his father’s plan was.

He had other ideas.

Yup, this
was
going to be fun.

‘A
job
?’ Boonzie said, raising his eyebrows.

The sun was beginning to dip over the hills, throwing a wash of dramatic reds and purples across the skyline. Ben nodded. Crouching on the ground beside the new greenhouse foundations, he fished out his Zippo lighter and a pack of the same Gauloises cigarettes he always smoked.

‘Those fuckers’ll kill you,’ Boonzie muttered.

‘If something else doesn’t beat them to it. Want one?’

‘Aye, why not. Chuck them across.’ Boonzie kicked over the empty barrow and used it as a seat while he lit up.

‘At the place where I live in France, I run a business,’ Ben explained. ‘We’re out in the countryside; not so different from this place in a lot of ways. But we don’t make pesto sauce. We do K and R training work.’

Boonzie didn’t need Ben to spell out that K and R stood for kidnap and ransom. Ben went on talking, and Boonzie listened carefully.

In the seven years since Ben had quit the army, locating and extracting victims of kidnapping, often children, had become his speciality. He’d called himself a
Crisis Response Consultant
– a deliberately vague euphemism for someone who went out and solved problems that lay way beyond the reach of normal law enforcement agencies. His work had taken him into a lot of dark corners. His methods hadn’t always been gentle, but he’d got results that few other people in his line of work could have achieved.

The bottom line, always, was helping those in need. After many successes and a few too many scrapes, he’d left the dangers of active field work behind to focus on passing on the skills and knowledge he’d acquired – still helping the innocent victims of ruthless criminals across the globe, but now doing it from behind a desk instead of from behind a gun.

The facility he’d set up, nestled in the Normandy countryside, was called Le Val. It had been growing busier by the month. Police and military units, hostage negotiation specialists, kidnap insurance execs, close-protection services personnel, had all flocked to attend the courses he ran there with his assistant, ex-
SBS
officer Jeff Dekker, and a couple of other ex-military guys. Dr Brooke Marcel, half French, half English, an expert psychologist based in London, had been his consultant and regular visiting lecturer in hostage psychology until – three months or so ago – their stumbling relationship had developed into something deeper.

In terms of the success of the business, Ben couldn’t have asked for more. Le Val was lucrative, it was filling a very real need, and it was safe.

But there was a problem. It had started as just a grain of discomfort, like a tiny niggling itch he couldn’t scratch. Through the long, hot summer, it had grown until it followed him like a shadow and he couldn’t sleep at night for thinking of it.

Why he felt this way, where the demons that were driving him so crazy with restlessness had come from, he had no idea. All he knew, with a certainty that frightened him, was that the life he’d created in France was one he no longer wanted.

Boonzie McCulloch was the first person he’d chosen to confess his secret to, and even after thinking about little else for days it wasn’t easy to do. When he’d finished outlining the work he and his team did at Le Val, he took a deep breath and came right out with it.

‘Thing is, I’m giving serious thought to leaving it all behind,’ he admitted with a frown. ‘I don’t mean I want to sell up. Just walk away, leave it in Jeff’s hands. He can run the place, no problem, with a little help from the other guys, and Brooke. And you, if you’re interested.’

Boonzie took a draw on his cigarette, said nothing. His eyes were narrowed to slits against the falling sun.

‘You were the best instructor I ever knew,’ Ben said. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have come and take over the number two position.’

‘What about you?’ Boonzie asked. ‘Where are you going?’

Ben was quiet for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure what I want. Maybe I need some time to figure that out.’

‘Every man has to settle down sometime, Ben. It comes to us all.’

‘I don’t know if I’m the settling kind. God knows I’ve tried. Just doesn’t seem to work for me.’

‘You never were happy unless your arse was on fire,’ Boonzie chuckled, and then looked serious. ‘What about this Brooke lassie? Sounds like you and she have something going.’

Ben glanced down at his feet. ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ he muttered. ‘Sometimes I’m not so sure. For a while she’s been acting—’ His voice trailed off. He bit his lip.

‘What?’

Ben let out a long sigh. ‘Listen, I don’t want to lay my personal problems on you. What do you think about my offer? Is it something you’d ever consider?’

Boonzie didn’t reply. He thoughtfully stubbed out the butt of his cigarette on the belly of the upturned barrow.

Ben already knew the answer. He’d known it the moment he’d got here, and it had been so obvious and predictable that he almost hadn’t asked the question. So he wasn’t very surprised when after a few more moments’ deliberation, looking genuinely pained, Boonzie shook his head.

‘Flattered you should ask me . . .’

‘But no?’

‘That’s the way it has to be. I’m sorry, Ben.’

‘Say no more, old friend.’

‘Would
you
leave this?’

‘Not in my right mind, I wouldn’t.’ Ben stood up and dusted himself off.

‘No hard feelings, then?’ Boonzie said, concern in his eyes.

‘Don’t be daft. I’m happy for you.’

‘You’ll stay for dinner, though, aye? Be our guest for the night?’

‘Of course.’

Boonzie had been right about Mirella’s cooking. Dinner was a simple dish of tagliatelle mixed with a basil pesto sauce of the most vivid green, topped with grated parmesan and accompanied by a local wine. It was as far from fancy cuisine as you could get, but just about the best thing Ben had ever tasted and he ate a mound of it with relish under the chef’s approving gaze. As they sat up until late around the plain oak table in the small dining room, he almost managed to forget all the troubling thoughts that had been on his mind lately. Boonzie told stories, more wine was poured, the fresh night air breezed in through the open windows and the cicadas chirped outside. It was after one when Ben insisted on helping the couple clear up the dishes, and Mirella showed him up to the guest bedroom.

He was awake long before dawn, edgy and feeling the need to go for a run. He slipped out quietly and spent an hour jogging in the open countryside, pausing a while to watch the sunrise before returning to the house to shower and put on clean jeans and a light denim shirt over a navy T-shirt that said ‘
TYRELL
Genetic Replicants – More Human than Human’. A present from Brooke. She was a big
Blade Runner
fan. Ben hadn’t seen the movie.

Breakfast was in the kitchen, eggs laid that morning scrambled with butter and toast as Mirella fussed and Ben kept protesting that he’d had enough delicious food to last him a week.

‘No hard feelings,’ Boonzie said again, frowning at him over a steaming cup of espresso. ‘About what we discussed?’

‘None whatsoever, Archibald,’ Ben said.

‘Piss off. So where’s next? S’pose you’ll be heading back to France?’

Ben shook his head. ‘I have a flight booked from Rome to London tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Business trip?’

‘It’s a long story.’

Boonzie and Mirella waved as Ben climbed into the Shogun. He waved back, took a last glance at the tranquil haven they’d made their home and then drove off down the bumpy track towards the road.

Ben headed roughly south-southwest with the rising sun behind him, aiming more or less in the direction of Naples with the intention of veering slowly towards Italy’s west coast. From there, he’d follow the coastal road through a hundred seaside towns and villages until eventually he reached Rome.