The Babylon Idol

Chapter 23

The big man’s companions had got what they’d come for, but Ben realised now that he’d been wrong about their intentions. Their mission wasn’t to kill Anna Manzini, and she wasn’t dead. The shots he’d heard had been for Kambasis, who most certainly was.

They had Anna and were dragging her in the direction of the van. It was just like Anna Manzini to go walking in winter wearing high-heeled shoes, and she was kicking out with them at her attackers for all she was worth. The victim was proving to be quite a handful, keeping both of them much too busy for them to think about where their large companion had gone. Too busy, also, for either of them to notice Ben walking towards them with their companion’s machine pistol in his hand.

Thirty yards away, Ben steadied the weapon over a ruined wall and took aim, but the light was fading fast and he couldn’t risk a shot at this range for fear of hitting her by mistake. Then, as he watched, Anna used another weapon on the one who was clutching her arm: her teeth. He let out a howl as she bit his hand, let go of her and staggered back a step.

One step was enough to make him a safe target. Ben centred the glowing red dot of the optical sight on the guy’s chest, magnified twice in the reticule. Fired. Saw the dark shape crumple and fall.

Two down. One remaining. Not for long, either.

The third guy saw his comrade go down, and he did what all frightened amateurs do when holding a loaded weapon and coming under fire from unknown, unseen assailants. He grabbed Anna and pinned her against his chest like a human shield, then started blasting off shots in all directions, as though a whole regiment was hiding among the ruins. Next he must have spotted a movement in the semi-darkness as Ben advanced closer, because he aimed the pistol over Anna’s shoulder and loosed off two more shots in Ben’s direction. He wasn’t much of a marksman even when he knew what to shoot at.

But now Ben had a problem, because he couldn’t shoot back. If he was going to save her, he had to get in closer. And the closer he got, the easier a target he would become.

He hurdled a low wall, then another, and raced for the nearest cover between them and him: the workshop of Phidias. The pistol cracked three, four, five times and bullets spat off the stonework as Ben darted into the semi-intact building. Keeping his head low he stole a glance through a ragged hole in the wall that had once been a magnificent arched window, just in time to see Anna’s kidnapper holster his pistol and unclip something else from his belt.

It wasn’t a gun.

The small object sailed through the window, bounced and rolled to a halt near Ben’s feet. The quarter of a second he stared at the khaki-painted metal canister before he reacted was all the time he needed to know what it was, or more importantly what it contained. Forty-three grams of TNT and dinitronaphthalene wrapped in a wire shell and aluminium casing that would burst outwards into lethal shrapnel, blowing a crater in the ground and destroying everything within a ten-metre radius, including himself if he didn’t move very, very fast.

So he did.

The percussive blast ripped through the air behind him as he dived for a gap in the wall at the rear of the workshop. The explosion lit up the shadows with a bright flash, searing the back of his neck with its heat. The outer wall where the window had been blew outwards, stone blocks crashing down. Ben hit the ground with a painful scrape and instantly rolled back up to his feet, still clutching the gun. Running through the acrid smoke that engulfed the remains of the building he skirted the shattered wall and emerged from the other side. Anna’s captor had redrawn his pistol and was pressing it to her head as he hustled her away. By now he must have realised he was on his own, and he was desperate. In one tiny twitch of his trigger finger, he’d blow her brains out even if he didn’t intend to.

But not if Ben could get him first.

Ben stepped out of the smoke and said, ‘Hey.’

The guy stopped and turned, whirling Anna around with him with the pistol pressed to her temple. The light was fading fast but Ben could see the expression of surprise on his enemy’s face. As well as the look of utter amazement in Anna Manzini’s dark eyes. Of all the people she might have expected to appear at this moment, Ben Hope must have been the last.

‘Is that the best you’ve got?’ Ben said to the guy, jerking a thumb back at the demolished workshop behind him. ‘Your boss should have told you, I’m not that easy to get rid of.’

‘I’ll kill her,’ the guy said in Italian.

‘Then why haven’t you already?’ Ben said. ‘Like you did the others?’

The guy said nothing. He was doing everything he could to shield himself behind his hostage, but she was five-nine in high heels and he was six-one in combat boots, which was making it hard for him to hide. At this range, his head was as big as a pumpkin through Ben’s sights and the optical red dot was trained right on the middle of his brow.

‘Put the gun down,’ Ben told him. ‘This isn’t going to end well if you don’t.’

Confusion flickered in the man’s eyes. He ground the muzzle of the pistol against the side of Anna’s head, and her face contorted in pain and fear. ‘Ben—’ she gasped, but the guy clamped his other hand over her mouth and stifled her words.

Ben took a step closer, the weapon unwavering in his grip, the red dot of his sight hovering over his target like a bright crimson drop of blood. He said, ‘Let’s deal. You do three things for me, in the exact order I tell you, and I’ll do something for you. One, lose the weapon. Two, let her go. Three, tell me who sent you. If you do those things, I’ll let you walk. Your choice.’

The guy shook his head. Sweat was pouring off his face, even in the chill of the falling winter night. ‘If I drop the gun, you’ll kill me.’

‘Think about it,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t have a lot of choices here. You know as well as I do that if you shoot her, your boss won’t be too pleased with you. He must already be pretty pissed off that his paid killers shot the wrong guy when they tried for me, as I’m sure he knows by now. And if he’s who I think he is, and if he’s half as ruthless as he used to be, he just might decide to gralloch you like a deer if you screw this up as well.’

‘He’ll kill me if I go back empty-handed,’ the guy said.

‘You may be right,’ Ben said. ‘But that’s your problem, not mine. If you want to take my deal, it’s a limited time offer. You have three seconds.’

The guy hesitated for two of them. Before the third ticked by, he tossed the gun and let Anna go. She ran to Ben, still staring at him in disbelief.

Her would-be kidnapper now stood alone and helpless.

‘Good move,’ Ben said to him. ‘You just bought yourself some time. You’re two-thirds of the way to me letting you walk. Now let’s keep it going. Why don’t you confirm what I already know, and tell me who sent you?’

‘The old man,’ the guy said, with a look of terror.

‘I’m allergic to vague answers,’ Ben said. ‘When I hear them, I get this uncontrollable twitch in my right index finger. Let’s try that one again, shall we?’

The guy gulped and glanced around him, as if dreading that his boss might hear him give his name away.

‘Usberti,’ he muttered in a low voice, almost boggle-eyed with fear. Usberti had always had that effect on people.

‘Massimiliano Usberti? Just to be clear on this. We’re talking about the archbishop.’

The guy nodded. Anna’s eyes had filled with horror at the mention of the name. She was too stunned to speak.

‘Funny thing is,’ Ben said, ‘I’d heard he got carved up in a bizarre boating accident. Imagine, the media getting something like that wrong. Have you actually seen him? In person? Spoken to him?’

The guy nodded again, more emphatically.

‘Before or since he died?’

‘He didn’t die. That was all a setup.’

So now there was no more doubt over who was behind all this. Ben demanded, ‘Why were you ordered to kidnap this woman? What does Usberti want with her?’

‘I only do what I’m told. I promise you, I know nothing.’

‘How about your name? Do you know that?’

‘Federico Casini.’

‘What about your friend there?’ Ben asked, waving the gun towards the body of the man he’d shot. ‘And the big fellow who’s underneath all those rocks?’

Federico Casini gulped. ‘Renato Zenatello. The big guy’s name is Ennio Scorceletti.’

‘All right, Federico. You’re just a foot soldier, so I believe you when you say you don’t know much. You fulfilled your side of the bargain and I’m letting you walk. Here’s what’s going to happen next. You’re going to go back to your boss and take your chances that he doesn’t skin you alive and have you turned inside out. And you’re going to deliver a message for me.’

‘Message?’

‘That’s exactly right. You’re going to tell Usberti that Ben Hope is coming for him. Tell him there isn’t a crack or a hole on this planet where he can hide and I won’t find him. And that when I do, I’m going to feed him feet first through a mincer. Slowly, with a glass of chilled champagne in my hand and a string quartet playing a Strauss waltz in the background. Think you can remember that, Federico?’

Casini nodded.

‘Then get moving.’

Casini couldn’t suppress the grin that spread all over his face. He turned and started walking away through the ruins. Five yards. Ten. Faster and faster, jittery in his step and on the point of bolting.

Anna was clutching at Ben’s arm, blinking with shock and confusion. Ben said quietly to her, ‘You okay?’ and she gave an uncertain nod.

Ben watched Casini hurry away. Observing his body language, and reading his thoughts. This guy knew perfectly well what awaited him if he delivered a message like that to Massimiliano Usberti. Casini was going to run a thousand miles in the opposite direction, go to ground on the far side of the world and never show his face to his employers again. Then new employers would pay him to do more dirty work. And more innocent people would die. Scumbags like Casini just couldn’t help but be what they were.

Ben said quietly to Anna, ‘Close your eyes.’

‘Close my eyes?’

‘I don’t want you to see this.’

Casini had managed to get some twenty or so paces away when Ben called out, ‘Hey, Federico.’

Casini froze and slowly turned back to stare at him.

Ben said, ‘I changed my mind. I’ll tell him myself.’

Casini’s mouth dropped open. The MPX spoke once. Its single report was flat in the cold, damp air. Casini flinched, then dropped to his knees. He put his hands to the bullet wound in his midriff, gaped at the blood leaking through his fingers.

‘You… you said… you’d let me walk,’ he croaked.

‘And I did let you walk,’ Ben said. ‘Twenty whole paces. Which I’m betting is more of a sporting chance than you and your cronies gave to my friends Pascal Cambriel and Luc Simon. Not to mention my friend Jeff, who sadly can’t be here today. Because I know how much he’d have loved to put this second bullet in you. I’m just going to have to do it for him, and tell him all about it when I get home so we can have a good laugh.’ Ben glanced at Anna. ‘Anna, you didn’t close your eyes.’

She shook her head vehemently, with a defiant set to her jaw. ‘I want to see him get what’s coming to him. They killed that poor innocent man.’

‘Fair enough.’ Ben raised the MPX, placed the optical red dot on Federico Casini’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. To the sound of the final gunshot that would be heard among the ruins of Olympia for a very long time, the kneeling figure keeled over backwards, twitched once and lay still.

Anna was trembling. Ben took her hand gently in his and said, ‘Let’s get away from here.’