The Babylon Idol

Chapter 19

On they went, reaching insane speeds as they zigzagged this way and that through the maze of narrow streets that was the heart of the old city, so tight in places that the van was scraping its sides to squeeze between the lines of parked cars on one side and the walls of shops and houses on the other. Oncoming traffic veered onto the kerb to avoid a collision, adding to the cacophony of angry horns. A lone motorcyclist braving the chill did a panic-brake to avoid being run down, lost control of his machine and went sliding off in a shower of sparks.

The van skidded right, left, right again. Ben grimly chased on after it, battering past the traffic that swerved aside to let them through. The police sirens were still there in the background but he couldn’t see any cop cars in his mirror — yet.

Suddenly the street opened up and they were tearing through one of Florence’s great landmarks, the Piazza del Duomo. The lit-up Gothic facade of Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral towered magnificently over them like a giant black-and-white cake. Its great dome and Giotto’s bell tower stood shrouded in mist. On a less freezing cold night the square might have been crowded with pedestrians, and Ben was thankful it was almost deserted as the two vehicles went chasing across it at breakneck speed, sliding and fishtailing on the slippery paving stones.

The chase had to end soon, and it wasn’t going to end well for either of them if the lunatic behind the wheel of the van kept this up much longer. The night was murky and with only one working headlamp between them, it was virtually certain that either the van or the car was going to end up piling into a wall or a lamp-post.

Just when Ben was steadily gaining on his target, he had to brake hard and almost lost control as a taxicab pulled out in front of him. Gritting his teeth he saw the van’s tail-lights vanishing off ahead and jammed the accelerator down hard in pursuit. The cold air streaming into the car was whipping the breath from his lungs and making his eyes water, while his fists were going numb on the steering wheel.

They were carving southwards now, away from the cathedral district. The Alpina was closing the gap once more — but now Ben could see the inevitable flashing blue lights in his rear-view mirror. More lights were in the sky above, strong white search-lamps cutting through the mist as the Florence police helicopters joined the chase.

He couldn’t give up. The van was just thirty yards ahead of him, racing up a narrow street called Via del Moro, veering left and right and scattering rubbish bins into the Alpina’s path and sending Ben into a slalom that took up what width the street had to offer. The end of the street raced towards them and Ben glimpsed another square and a big junction up ahead, flanked with red lights. Traffic was streaming across their path, but the van roared across the junction without slowing down and Ben had no choice but to go right after it, bracing himself for a collision that never happened as cars streaked and swerved past and horns chorused all around him.

Ben realised they’d reached the point where the River Arno bisected the city. Ahead of him, the wildly careering van was heading for the Ponte alla Carraia, one of the most famous bridges in Florence. Behind, the lights of police cars behind were filling the street in an ocean of blue. The beat of helicopters was clearly audible over the wind and engine roar.

Ben chased the van onto the five-arched stone bridge. Either side of them, the waters of the Arno were a broad stretch of black between the city lights. He gunned the throttle and the rear of the van seemed to accelerate towards him. With a crunch of buckling metal the Alpina rammed it, the impact jarring Ben against the steering wheel. The van wobbled. The Alpina fell back, came on again, rammed the van a second time.

Halfway across the bridge, the van’s crumpled rear doors suddenly burst open. And that was when Ben realised that the big guy wasn’t alone inside it. Another man in body armour and a black ski mask crouched on the floor of the van, facing the open doors. In his gloved hands he was clutching a long, bulky shape that Ben didn’t need headlights to recognise.

The rocket launcher filled the back of the truck with a blinding flash as it fired. At point-blank range the missile would tear a car in half and incinerate anything inside in a fireball hot enough to melt steel. And nobody could miss at this distance, not even from inside the back of a wildly swerving and rocking van.

Ben wrenched the BMW’s steering wheel violently to the right. Felt himself thrown to the left as the car went into a skid. There was a bright orange-white explosion behind him. The missile had hit one of the chasing police cars, ripping it to pieces. Ben scarcely had time to register it as the Alpina, skidding out of control, crashed violently into the low side wall of the bridge. The impact flung him almost over the wheel. The car’s nose dropped. The blackness of the river rushed up to meet him.

Then it hit.

The torrent of foaming water burst through the cracked windscreen and swallowed Ben up with an icy shock that felt as if it could stop his heart. He groped around inside the sinking car, bubbles erupting from his mouth. The Alpina was going down fast as the river flooded in through its broken windows. He could hardly see. One groping hand found the strap of his bag. The other found the door handle, but the door wouldn’t open, so he turned himself round and kicked it hard with both feet to burst it open against the pressure of the water. The car was turning end over end as it sank. Ben grasped his bag and launched himself from the open door. His lungs were bursting. He would not drown. He would get out of this.

He kicked and struggled through the black water, only half-sure of which way was up. His head broke the surface and he gave a wheezing gasp. Sirens and thudding helicopters filled his ears. Treading water, he looked up. The bridge seemed a long way above him, and he could see nothing past the angle of its side wall. Just the fierce glow from the burning police vehicle and the flicker of blue lights lighting up the night sky above. The blazing wreckage must have blocked the whole bridge.

A chopper was circling over the river where they’d seen the BMW go down. Its searchlight was combing the water. Ben gulped air and dived back below the surface, swimming hard until his lungs couldn’t take it any more and he resurfaced. He looked back at the hovering choppers. They hadn’t spotted him, or they’d be turning the spotlamps his way.

Ben swam on until he reached the far bank, which was sloping and thick with reeds. The cold water seemed to have drained every last reserve of strength from his body, but somehow he managed to drag himself ashore, coughing and spluttering, breath rasping, his clothes streaming and his whole body shuddering with the crippling chill. He had to find shelter, dry himself off, seek warmth, or he could go into hypothermic shock.

He made it up the bank and hauled himself over a wall that separated the riverside from the street. Then he ran, or staggered, towards the quayside buildings that could hide him from the hovering choppers. Pausing against a wall, he looked around him. He could see another bridge further downriver, running parallel with the Ponte alla Carraia and dotted white and red with the lights of slow-moving traffic. Before the bridge, on his side of the river, a car park was set off the street behind a low wall. He broke into a run towards it and saw the camper van sitting in the shadows. He made his way towards it.

Ben had broken into a good number of considerably more secure vehicles in his time, and it didn’t take much to force the lock. Nor did it take much to get the engine started without a key. Shaking so badly that he could hardly control the steering, he pulled out of the car-park entrance and drove for ten minutes until he was well away from the drama; then he found a quiet spot off the street and pulled up.

The camper had a small stove running off a butane bottle. Almost praying out loud that it would work, he turned on the gas and pressed the piezo-ignition lighter switch, and his prayer was answered by the whoosh of blue flame. He quickly pulled down all the blinds so that he couldn’t be seen from outside, then returned to the stove and stripped off his wet clothes. The spare clothing in his bag wasn’t any less soaked. Naked and shivering, he huddled as close to the heat as he could without burning himself and rubbed his hands, arms and thighs to get the circulation going again. They said that alcohol only made the body lose heat even more, but what did they know? A few swigs of whisky from his flask made him glow inside, even if it was an illusion.

When he felt warm enough to drag himself away from the stove he wrung out his clothes over the sink, then hung them up to dry over a cupboard door. Inside his bag he found his passport and the rolls of cash still perfectly dry within their plastic wrapping. He wasn’t so sure about his phone, which he’d have to take apart to let the water trapped inside evaporate before using it again.

His gun was lost, now somewhere at the bottom of the Arno along with his car, but he’d have had to abandon both anyway, where he was headed next: to the airport, and from there to Olympia, Greece.