The Babylon Idol

Chapter 51

This wasn’t the first time Ben had found himself in the presence of one part or another of a decapitated body. But Anna had led a more sheltered life than he had. Her cry of anguish and horror filled the RV. Her knees folded under her and she covered her mouth with her hands.

‘Take her outside, Ugo,’ Usberti said, grimacing. ‘I would rather not have the carpeting covered in vomit.’

Bozza replaced the lid on the cool box, stepped over to Anna and hauled her upright by the arm. He marched her to the door, activated a switch that made it whoosh open, then shoved and dragged her down the metal gangway and let her go so she could bend double at the side of the road and throw up.

‘They don’t call you Mr Charm for nothing, do they?’ Ben said to Usberti. ‘What did you do with the rest of the guy, feed him to your lapdog?’

Usberti shrugged. ‘There is a limit to every man’s usefulness. Regrettably, we reached a stage where Signor Kavur no longer served any purpose to us. Moreover, I see no need to employ the services of two expert historians, when one will do me just as well. Now that she is up to date with her colleague’s latest discoveries, Professor Manzini will be quite able to help us achieve our objective. As for what to do with you, my dear Benedict, I have another purpose in mind. One for which your particular skills qualify you better than any of my men; or should I say, my remaining men. Once again, you have demonstrated your perplexing habit of diminishing my human resources.’

‘They’ll be diminished a lot more by the time we’re done,’ Ben said. He couldn’t point, so he jerked his chin in the direction of Aldo Groppione. ‘Starting with him there. But he already knows that.’

‘Fuck you,’ Groppione said. ‘Boss, I’m telling you, it’s a mistake to keep this fucker alive. He’s tricksy. You can’t trust him.’

‘You can trust me,’ Ben said. ‘You can set your watch by me. Start counting the minutes you have left. I’ll save you till last, Usberti. Just so I can see the look on your face when you’re all alone and it’s time to say bye-bye.’

‘I would expect nothing less from such a worthy opponent,’ Usberti said. He motioned towards Groppione and Starace without looking at them. ‘And I have no doubt that, left to your own fearsome devices, you would have little trouble disposing of these men. But Ugo Bozza is another matter. His lethal expertise is second to none, and he has waited a long time to avenge his elder brother.’

‘Or to join him in hell.’

‘We shall see. As they say, may the best man win.’

Bozza came back inside, shoving Anna in front of him. All the defiance had gone out of her and she looked waxen and utterly defeated. Bozza slung her into one of the long leather sofas that lined the sides of the motor coach’s opulent interior.

‘I believe we have some trash to dispose of,’ Usberti said. ‘Then let us get underway. There is no time to lose.’

‘How about taking off these cuffs for me?’ Ben said. ‘Seems a shame to be travelling in this thing and not be comfortable.’

Starace just snorted in reply. He slung his weapon over his shoulder, grabbed the cool box, carried it outside and drop-kicked it into the scrub bushes that edged the road. He came back inside wiping his hands, then walked over to a digital display panel with a cluster of buttons and pressed one. The door sucked shut behind him. He pressed another, and there was the whirring of an electric motor as some hidden mechanism folded the extending gangway steps into a recess beneath the door. The third button activated a hydraulic system that retracted the extending slide-outs on both flanks of the vehicle. The walls and floor sections closed in, suddenly transforming the RV’s interior back from a penthouse apartment to something resembling a luxury narrowboat.

‘Take a seat, asshole,’ Starace said to Ben, unslinging his weapon and using it to motion at the sofa where Anna was sitting. He leaned back in one opposite, now much closer across the narrowed centre aisle, with the gun resting on his thigh and pointing lazily at Ben.

Meanwhile, Groppione was getting behind the wheel of the starship. The diesel engine started up with a muted snort, rippling the length of the huge vehicle with faint tremors of vibration. Groppione pushed the oversized chrome gear selector into drive and the motor coach shuddered against its brakes. Usberti returned to his throne. His assistant, Bellini, perched on a fold-down seat nearby. Bozza hovered towards the stern end of the coach, his eyes never leaving Ben. Ben ignored him and sat close to Anna, but she was in a world of her own.

There was a hiss as Groppione released the airbrakes. Then they began to roll.

The winding track meandered downhill for several kilometres. The coach had been built to cruise the glass-smooth, arrow-straight interstates of North America, not for hacking through the camel trails of south-eastern Turkey. Groppione was taking it very easy, but still the suspension was rocking and bouncing, and the rear end was swaying like a pendulum through the twists and turns. Ben couldn’t lean back on the soft leather sofa with his hands cuffed behind him, so he sat leaning forward and watched the road.

Nobody spoke. Bellini looked deep in his own worries. Starace’s eyes were closed, but he still had his finger on the trigger of his weapon. Bozza’s were wide open and fixed on Ben like a chameleon watching a fly.

They eventually joined a windswept highway and Groppione was able to put on some speed. The road carved through the flat, wintry semi-desert landscape for an hour without meeting any traffic. Usberti seemed to be enjoying the ride, a contented smile on his face as though the golden idol was already in his hands. Or a treasure map with a big red X that marked the spot where all they had to do was start digging. Either he was delusional, Ben thought, or he knew something they didn’t. Was it possible that Ercan Kavur had figured it all out? Found the key to a secret that had eluded the best of the world’s historians for two and a half thousand years?

‘You seem to have a very good idea of exactly where we’re headed,’ Ben said to him. ‘As you’ve press-ganged Professor Manzini into serving as your archaeology consultant, it might be appropriate at this point to fill her in on the details.’

Professor Manzini didn’t seem to give a damn one way or the other. But Ben needed to form a strategy. In tactical planning, if you weren’t thinking ahead, you were going backwards.

Usberti wasn’t about to be drawn, however.

‘All in good time, Benedict. All in good time,’ he said.

Which confirmed what Ben had been thinking, but didn’t detract from his suspicion that Usberti was at least partly delusional. Because no matter how confident he might be that he knew where the idol was, he was seriously underestimating the trouble they were going to have getting there.

And the closer they got to the Syrian border, the more Ben could see the signs of trouble growing. Slowly at first, then with dramatic speed, the highway around them began to crowd with traffic rumbling in both directions. Most of it was military. Dusty olive-green convoys of troop transports, armoured personnel carriers and heavily loaded supply trucks, giant articulated trailer lorries carrying tanks and artillery, formations of four-wheel-drive pickups crammed with men and ordnance. The majority of the army traffic was Turkish, while the rest belonged to Syrian forces allied to President Erdogan’s regime. So far, nobody seemed to be bothering with the RV, but it was only a matter of time before they were pulled over by one lot of soldiers or another.

‘Great plan, Usberti,’ Ben said. ‘This carnival float sticks out like a hot-dog stand at a Jewish wedding. You think you’re just going to go waltzing into the middle of a war zone?’

Usberti said nothing.

Ben knew the border control was up ahead long before Groppione was forced to slow down for it. Both lanes of the highway and a whole stretch of dusty, sandy terrain either side of it were teeming with troops and vehicles. The checkpoint itself was hardly visible through the confusion, but it was clear that what little civilian traffic was attempting to pass through was being stopped and searched. Several vehicles ahead, a dirty, battered Toyota farm truck loaded with goats was rolling at walking pace towards the checkpoint when a group of soldiers clustered around it with rifles pointed and a burly Turkish officer in wrinkled combat DPMs and a blue beret blocked its path with a raised hand. One of the soldiers banged on the driver’s window and made an exaggerated motion telling him to step out of the vehicle. The guy was dressed in Arab garb, wiry and grey-bearded. The soldiers yanked him out of the Toyota. They weren’t being particularly gentle about it. They pushed and poked him around as the officer yelled something in Turkish. The old Arab guy started nervously reaching around inside his garb for his papers, surrounded by threatening guns.

Groppione turned round behind the wheel of the RV and threw a look at his boss that said, ‘What do we do now?’

Usberti still said nothing.

As the soldiers waited impatiently for the old goat farmer to produce his papers, Ben saw the Turkish officer glance over at the RV. As if the huge gaudy bus could be missed, even in all the chaos and half-camouflaged with road dust. The officer issued a brusque nod to some more of his men who were standing on the sidelines. Four snapped to attention and came running over towards the RV, clutching their weapons. MPT-76 battle rifles, standard issue to Turkish infantry. Ben had used one in the past. It was a good tool. Not one that anyone wanted to have pointed at them.

Ben said, ‘Let’s see you talk your way out of this one, Usberti.’

The soldiers came closer. They spread out around the front of the motor coach. Three of them planted themselves right in front of it, aiming their rifles at the windscreen in a triangular formation. The fourth marched up to Groppione’s driver window, which was so high off the ground that he had to stand back to be seen. He used his weapon to rap on the glass and started gesticulating angrily.

‘Boss?’ Groppione said, throwing up his hands. ‘Tell me what to do here? The guy wants to see papers. We don’t have any.’

‘We are going through regardless,’ Usberti replied calmly. He turned and looked at Bozza, who had quietly stepped past Anna and Ben and was standing close to the big leather throne, looking expectantly back at Usberti.

The soldier was still rapping on the window.

The officer who had given the order was stepping away from the goat truck and walking towards them to see what the problem was.

‘We are going through,’ Usberti repeated. ‘Nothing can stand in my way. If God wills it, we will fight our way into Syria. Ugo, shoot the soldiers.’

Bozza responded without hesitation, without the smallest flicker of doubt on his face. He grabbed the submachine gun from Starace. Checked it, flipped off the safety, and walked to the front of the RV.

‘Call him off, Usberti,’ Ben said. ‘He’s about to get us all killed.’

Bozza took aim through the window at the nearest soldier.