The Lost Treasure of the Templars (24 page)

Devon

The sound of the shot seemed to echo through the wood, and Robin was suddenly aware of the sound of a multitude of flapping wings as rooks and pigeons took flight away from the trees around them.

“David,” she yelled, turning to look at him.

She'd already dealt with the other Italian. He was lying flat on his back, moaning in pain, his left arm cradling his right, which was clearly broken. But before she went to Mallory, she kicked his Beretta to one side, out of his reach, then seized the man around the throat and used a push choke to knock him out.

Then she jumped up and ran the few feet that separated her from Mallory and the other Italian.

She grabbed him by the shoulder, but even as she did so, Mallory moved, rolling sideways off the man he'd been fighting.

Robin looked at the mass of blood covering his chest and gasped in shock.

But Mallory shook his head as he scrambled back to his feet.

“Not mine,” he said, gasping for breath. “I managed to turn the pistol toward him. Then he pulled the trigger.”

They looked down at the heavily built Italian, but it was quickly obvious to both of them that there was nothing they could do for him—even if they'd wanted to. His eyes and mouth were open, and he was clearly not breathing.

“It looks like the bullet went in just below his sternum,” Mallory said, getting his breath back. “But the pistol must have been angled upward, and I think it went straight through his heart.”

He glanced at Robin, who looked a little more disheveled, and her eyes were fixed on the corpse of the man Mallory had shot. Or who had technically died by his own hand, not that that suggestion would be likely to cut much ice with the local police force.

“I think that probably counts as burning our bridges,” she said.

“I could definitely argue self-defense,” Mallory replied, trying to keep his voice level and matter-of-fact while he mentally tried to come to terms with the realization that at best he'd effectively just committed manslaughter. The fact that he'd saved his own life and probably Robin's as well seemed almost irrelevant as he looked down at the body lying in front of him.

“So that's what you're going to say when you end up in the dock at the Old Bailey, is it?” Robin's tone and the expression on her face were entirely serious.

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that,” Mallory replied. “Now we need to get the hell away from here before that other Italian turns up. He seems to me to be by far the
most dangerous of all these people we've met so far, and I've got no intention of ending up in a shooting match here in this wood with him.”

He gestured toward the car.

“Check that the keys are in it,” he said, “and then get in the passenger seat.”

“Forget it. I'll drive.”

Robin turned back to the injured and unconscious Italian and removed the wallet from his jacket pocket—she guessed they would need more funds, especially cash—then jogged over to the parked car, pulled open the driver's door, and dropped into the seat. She started the engine and drove the vehicle a few yards closer to Mallory.

He reached inside the man's jacket and removed the wallet and spare pistol magazine from his pockets. Then he grabbed the dead Italian by the left arm and tugged the body onto its side. The back of the man's jacket was stained a deep red, and Mallory saw at once that the bullet that had killed him had passed completely through his body. But what he couldn't see was any tear or rip in the fabric of the garment, and when he ran the tips of his fingers over the wound, he felt a small hard nodule.

“What are you doing?” Robin asked again through the open window of the car.

“Just a second. I need the pistol—and the bullet.”

Mallory pulled the body the rest of the way, over onto its face, the expression “deadweight” never having seemed more appropriate. Then he slid his hand up the dead man's back, under his jacket, his fingers searching for the bullet that he now knew was there.

In a few moments he found and recovered it, the small conical shape slightly deformed after performing its deadly task. He glanced at it, then took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the blood off the bullet and as much as he
could off his hands, then wrapped the tiny copper missile in the cloth and put it in his jacket pocket. He picked up the pistol he and the dead Italian had been struggling with and dropped it into his pocket. He daren't leave it there because he had no doubt that his fingerprints would be all over it. His eyes caught the glint of brass and he picked up the ejected cartridge case, the last possible piece of forensic evidence.

Then Mallory clearly heard the distant sound of an approaching car, the engine's exhaust a loud rumbling note that he recognized immediately, and he sprinted the few feet to the waiting Ford. He virtually threw himself into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

“Go,” he said, his tone urgent.

Robin needed no other instruction. The car was already in first gear and as Mallory fumbled for his seat belt she dropped the clutch and floored the accelerator pedal. The Ford surged forward, bouncing across the rough ground as the tires scrabbled for grip. The front of the car lifted as the wheels hit the road and bounced up, then slammed down again. Immediately Robin swung the steering wheel hard to the right and simultaneously pulled on the handbrake for perhaps half a second.

The rear tires squealed as the back of the car slid sideways across the road surface, and then the car powered forward again, Robin fighting to hold it in a straight line under full-power acceleration. As Mallory clicked the seat belt's buckle into place, he glanced sideways at her profile. She looked cool and determined, and completely under control behind the wheel, snatching second gear as the needle of the rev counter just touched the redline. That raised another obvious question that he needed to ask her, when—
if
—they finally managed to find themselves somewhere safe.

Mallory twisted around in his seat and looked back down the narrow road, seeing the slightly wobbly but near-parallel black streaks where Robin had used every last bit of the power the comparatively small Ford engine had been able to produce to get them moving away from the wood.

As he looked, he saw the unmistakable shape of the nose of his own Porsche Cayman just coming into view down the lane about a hundred yards behind them.

Devon

When Toscanelli steered the Porsche into the clearing where he'd told Mario and Dante to wait for him, it had taken him a moment to realize what he was looking at.

He had no idea where the Ford Focus was, and for an instant he wondered if he had somehow managed to overtake it on the road as he made his way out of Exeter. But that didn't make sense: he had to have been at least five or ten minutes behind his colleagues.

He'd taken a couple of minutes checking the Porsche to see if by any chance the relic was in the vehicle, then spent a little more time programming the GPS on the Cayman with the destination he had earlier selected. They would be meeting at a place he'd picked at random, what had looked on the map like a quiet wooded area where they could conclude their business with Jessop away from prying eyes. Only then had he driven the Porsche out of the car park, and he'd managed to catch most of the traffic lights in Exeter at red.

Then he saw the two dark shapes lying on the ground
at the side of the clearing and immediately stopped the car.

He reached Mario first, but a single glance was enough to tell him that the man was dead. Toscanelli sprinted the few feet to where Dante lay, moaning in pain, his right arm clearly broken.

“That bitch,” the injured man muttered. “She—”

“Keep it for later,” Toscanelli snapped, grabbed Dante by the left arm, and with some difficulty hauled him to his feet. He half pulled him across to the Porsche, opened the passenger door, and told him to sit down in the seat. Then he walked back to Mario, checked for the man's wallet—which had obviously been taken by Jessop, who was proving both far more resourceful and much more dangerous than Toscanelli had ever anticipated—and removed the pistol suppressor and mobile phone. There was no sign of either his Beretta or the spare magazine for the weapon.

With the dead body sanitized, or as best he could manage, Toscanelli ran over to where Dante had been lying and picked up that pistol as well, before checking the area to make sure there was nothing he'd missed on the ground. Then he sprinted back to the Cayman and put it in gear.

He suddenly recalled seeing the rear of a car disappearing around a corner as he'd approached the clearing. He hadn't taken much notice of it at the time, because he'd been searching for the rendezvous, but it
could
have been the back of the Ford. He might have missed them by a matter of less than a minute.

But he knew how fast that Porsche could travel. Catching them shouldn't be a problem, he thought confidently as he steered the car back onto the road and set off in pursuit.

“What happened?” he demanded, as he gave the Cayman its head and accelerated hard down the narrow road.

“They did what they were told, no trouble on the way,” Dante said, his face gray with pain. “Then when we got to the clearing we told them to get out of the car and stand to one side, to wait for you. They did, but then Jessop and the girl grabbed each other and hugged. You'd told us to keep them apart, and so Mario and I ran over to them to pull them apart. And that's when it happened.”

“What?” Toscanelli could actually see the Ford now, perhaps five hundred meters in front. He guessed that he would be right behind it in only another three or four minutes.

“Mario pulled Jessop away from the girl and they started fighting each other. I had my hands full with the girl, so I don't know exactly what happened, but there was a shot and then that bitch knocked me out.”

Toscanelli nodded to himself. “I can't believe Jessop's just a bookseller,” he said. “He's acting more like a professional, but a professional what I have no idea. I think we've been given the wrong information about him. He's definitely a lot more dangerous than I had ever expected him to be.”

Toscanelli glanced at Dante again. “And what happened to you? Did you fall or something when the shooting started?”

Dante shook his head. “There wasn't really any shooting, just that one shot that killed Mario. No, it was that bitch of a girl. I grabbed her to pull her away from Jessop, and I really don't know what happened. She kind of spun round and I think she kicked me, but whatever she did she broke my arm, then kicked my legs out from under me. Jesus, it hurt. I've never seen anybody move that fast.
And then she did something to my throat and everything went black. When I came round again the two of them were just driving away.”

That wasn't at all what Toscanelli had expected. He already knew that Jessop was dangerous, but from the sound of it the girl—whoever she was—was every bit as lethal. He'd assumed she was just a secretary, or maybe Jessop's girlfriend, but she was clearly much, much more than that. Suddenly the scene inside the apartment back in Dartmouth began to make much more sense. If the woman was some kind of martial arts expert, it had probably been her who had incapacitated the two armed men he'd sent into the building, as well as attacking the third member of the group just outside the entrance door. He still had no idea what could have happened to Giacomo, what had caused those terrible injuries to his hands, and he guessed he would probably never find out.

Things were going from bad to worse. Mario was dead, Dante useless until his arm could be fixed, and all the evidence they'd so far accumulated had vanished, because it was in the trunk of the Ford. The laptop wasn't too important, because he'd already transmitted the files on the computer to Rome, but they still hadn't recovered the relic, which he guessed might well be in Jessop's pocket.

Toscanelli slammed his fist onto the steering wheel in frustration.

But he could still retrieve the situation. All he had to do was catch up with the Ford. Dante could shoot left-handed, and now there was no time or need for finesse. As soon as they were within range, Dante could pepper the Ford with bullets, and it really didn't matter what he hit—the people inside it, the tires, or the engine—anything to stop it. Then they'd pick over the wreckage, take
anything that would be useful to the experts back in Rome, and set fire to the car after making sure that Toscanelli's pistol, the one he'd used to kill the three men in Dartmouth, was placed somewhere near Jessop's body.

That would close one open question, because then the police would be able to prove that the three men had been killed by a pistol in Robin Jessop's possession. Of course, that wouldn't provide an answer to the other obvious question that would be asked after the event—who had fired a dozen or so rounds into the Ford?—but that really wasn't his problem.

Toscanelli smiled for an instant. Perhaps if Dante was fairly careful with his shot placement, one or perhaps even both of the people in that car might still be alive when he lit the fire, and for a brief few seconds he relished the pleasurable anticipation of listening to their screams as the flames from the burning petrol licked across their bodies and began to roast their living flesh.

Devon

“You drive like a man,” Mallory said as Robin powered the Ford around another corner, the tires just kissing the grass verge that formed the apex. “And I mean that as a compliment,” he added.

Robin didn't even glance at him, her entire attention focused absolutely on the road ahead, reading the bends and setting up the car for each curve.

“The product of a misspent youth,” she replied.

“What were you? A getaway driver for a gang of bank robbers?”

A smile appeared fleetingly on her face. “Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. I passed my test at seventeen, and then my father insisted that I learn how to drive properly, as he put it. He enrolled me in a race driver school and made sure I got a competition license. I've still got it, actually, though I haven't raced for a few months now.”

Mallory nodded. “Every hour that I spend with you produces yet another surprise, something completely unexpected. I suppose you can also fly a plane?”

“Yes. I went solo after nine hours,” Robin replied, “but my PPL—Private Pilot's License—has lapsed because I didn't bother doing the right number of hours each year. My father really wanted a boy—a boy he intended to call Robin, in fact, hence the male spelling—but when I appeared and no other children seemed to be forthcoming, he decided to make the best of a bad job. Learning to fly, the car racing, and the martial arts were all his idea. I'm also quite good on a motorcycle, and I can shoot as well, but I'm better with a shotgun than a pistol.”

“He sounds like an interesting man.”

“He was,” she said simply.

Mallory didn't miss the past tense.

“What happened?” he asked. “If you don't mind talking about it.”

“I don't, but not right now, because I can see your Porsche in the rearview mirror. He's maybe a quarter of a mile behind us, but he's gaining fast. I don't think there's much chance of this Ford Focus actually outrunning him, no matter what I do.”

“Frankly,” Mallory replied, twisting around in his seat to stare out of the rear window of the Ford, “it would be a bit embarrassing if you did. I'd never be able to take my car seriously again.”

She was right. Unless there was another black Porsche Cayman driving down that lane, which seemed unlikely at best, the Italian wasn't that far behind them. Mallory had the Beretta pistol in his pocket, but he doubted they would survive a firefight with a man as ruthless and determined as the Italian appeared to be. Their best, and perhaps their only, chance of survival lay in getting away from him.

As he turned to face forward, Robin hit the brakes hard and simultaneously sounded the horn. On the left-
hand side of the road a metal gate stood open, and just emerging from it was a large, worn tractor, the dull red paint competing for dominance with large patches of rust. Hitched to the back of the tractor was a wide trailer, hay bales stacked on it.

“That could be our salvation,” Robin murmured.

At the sound of the Ford's horn, the tractor driver had stopped abruptly, the front end of the vehicle extending about a third of the way across the lane and leaving a comparatively narrow gap between it and the hedgerow opposite.

It was narrow, Mallory guessed too narrow, to allow them to drive through, but once she was certain that the tractor wasn't going to move again, Robin pressed down on the accelerator and the car surged forward.

“Are you sure—” Mallory began, and then shut up, because the answer to his unspoken question was obvious. If she didn't think there was enough room to get the car through the gap, Robin wouldn't be aiming for it.

She didn't slacken speed, but actually continued accelerating. The wheels on the right-hand side of the car bounced over the uneven ground that formed the verge on that side of the road, the door mirror rattling against the errant branches that stuck out of the hedgerow while others scraped along the side of the car.

Robin had got it wrong, Mallory suddenly thought. The gap was too narrow for the car. He was sure of it.

Involuntarily he pulled his seat belt tight and braced his legs against the end of the foot well in front of him.

The rusty red shape of the tractor loomed ever closer, seeming to rush at them, and at that moment Mallory closed his eyes.

Then he opened his eyes again, ashamed of his brief instant of panic. Now he could see that Robin actually
was going to miss the front of the tractor by at least an inch, and that was all that mattered. Scraped paintwork was one thing, but ramming into the front of a piece of heavy agricultural machinery would end the pursuit instantaneously.

The somewhat battered front of the tractor flashed by the side window of the Ford at what seemed to Mallory to be an utterly insane speed. And then they were past it. Robin gave the steering wheel of the car the briefest of flicks, and the Ford bounced off the verge and back onto the metaled road surface, still accelerating.