The Babylon Idol

Chapter 62

Even after all these years, Anna still had horrible nightmares about Franco Bozza’s attack on her. The memory had never left her: that sense of dread when she’d realised an intruder was in her villa; the maniac suddenly appearing from the shadows and chasing her up the stairs; the violent blow that had stunned her; the blade of his knife slicing her. She’d never forgotten the terror and the pain.

This was worse. Much worse.

With her back to the rocks, there was no escape as Groppione advanced on her. She struggled frantically to fight him off, but it wasn’t enough. He beat her to the ground, pinned her body down with his weight. She smelled his foul breath in her face, heard him laugh, felt his iron grip take a hold of her left hand and prise the little finger free from her clenched fist. Then screamed as she felt the sharp steel bite hard and deep into her flesh, sawing through the cartilage of her finger joint. Then the awful, sickening sensation as the finger came away. He climbed off her, still laughing. She clutched her damaged hand to her chest, unable to look at it but feeling the hot blood jetting out of it and soaking into her jacket. The pain was so stunning that she could barely breathe. Tears flooded down her face. She rolled and writhed, wanted to hit her head on the ground and knock herself out to ease the terrible agony.

‘I don’t think she likes me, boss,’ Groppione said, grinning. ‘Gave me the finger. See?’ He waggled the severed digit in the air, then tossed it away. He wiped the bloodied blade of his clasp knife against his trousers, folded it up and slipped it back in his pocket.

Usberti said, ‘Professor, I am still waiting for your assurance that you have been honest with me. You have nine more fingers and thumbs before we start removing pieces elsewhere. And we have all night. So, I repeat: are you sure?’

Anna mustered up every molecule of air in her body and screamed, ‘I’M SURE!’

‘I believe it,’ Usberti said. ‘She is telling the truth. Which means I now have all the information I need. Consequently, like her associate Kavur before her, Professor Manzini has now reached the end of her usefulness to me and it is time to terminate our association. Over to you, Aldo.’

Groppione lit up like a gluttonous child presented with a giant chocolate Easter egg. ‘Can I do her before I kill her?’

‘The terms of your employment’, Usberti replied calmly, ‘are that you do exactly as I command at all times, in return for which you receive financial recompense plus additional bonuses of a more recreational nature. She is yours with which to amuse yourself as you desire. But do it out of my sight. I have no desire to observe the repulsive things you are capable of.’

That was no problem at all for Groppione, who at that moment was bursting with gratitude towards such a generous and benevolent employer. While Usberti walked off to make himself another pot of coffee, Groppione snatched up one of the lanterns, grabbed Anna by the collar of her jacket and started dragging her over the rough ground towards a recess among the rocks where he could privately exercise all the urges that had been eating him up ever since they’d captured her.

The recess led to a triangular stone cleft, almost a shallow cave, out of the cold wind and just about high enough to stand up in. Perfect, Groppione thought. He hauled her inside, dumped her on the hard ground, set down the lantern to shine on her, and stood at the mouth of the cleft to admire her for a moment before the party began. He took a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and flung it at her. ‘Bandage your hand up with this, bitch. I don’t want you pissing your dirty blood all over me.’

Blinking away the tears of pain, Anna spat at him like a cornered wildcat. ‘Murdering pig. You’re going to die.’

‘See, no, you’re getting that all back to front, babe. You’re the one going to die. But not just yet. First I’m gonna show you what a real man is. Then I’m gonna strangle you with your own panties. How’s that sound?’ He thought it sounded incredibly funny. As he started unbuckling his belt he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

So absolutely hilarious, in fact, that he was still cackling and chortling to himself when something thin and black dropped lightly from somewhere overhead and brushed his ear. He swatted at it as though it were a fly, too preoccupied with his imminent carnal prospects to fully register it. Less than a second later, when the slender rope noose jerked tight around his neck, it was already too late for Aldo Groppione to save himself. He boggled upwards in horror, and then his feet left the ground.

From where Anna lay sprawled on the floor of the rock crevice, it looked as though her would-be rapist was suddenly levitating in mid-air. His hands went to his throat, desperately clawing, legs kicking. His feet jerked another six inches higher, scrabbling like crazy and finding no purchase on the smooth rock. His tongue protruded from his gaping mouth. He tried to cry out, but produced only a dry, rattling croak.

On the ledge above him, Ben tied off the rope, then jumped down. The morphine was still working nicely and he barely felt the jolt in his injured leg. But his stomach twisted and he turned cold when he peered deeper into the rock crevice and saw Anna lying there in the pool of light from the lantern, her face streaked with pain, nursing her mutilated hand.

‘Ben!’ she cried out. He shouldered past Groppione, swinging the dying man like a carcass on a slaughterman’s hook, and fell to his knees next to her. ‘What did they do to you?’

Anna was trying to reply when she saw Janssens appear at the mouth of the cave and her eyes widened in horror. ‘It’s okay, he’s with us,’ Ben said.

Janssens stepped past the hanging, struggling, gasping Groppione, took out Bozza’s Glock and offered it to Ben. ‘I’d happily shoot this rapist scum myself, but I think you’d rather do the honours. One in the balls, then one in the head.’

‘I’m not shooting him,’ Ben said. ‘I’m keeping my promise to him.’

‘What promise?’

‘That I’d stretch his neck like a chicken. Maybe he’s taking it seriously now.’

‘He’s got a strong neck on him. Might take a while.’

‘Fine by me,’ Ben said. ‘In the meantime, run back to the jeep and get me the med kit. Hurry.’

While Janssens was gone, Ben heard the wheeze and rasp of a starter motor and the sound of an engine revving wildly as a truck sped off into the night. Anna heard it too, through the mist of her pain. ‘Usberti—’

‘Let him run. He’s on his own now.’

‘You’re hurt,’ she gasped as she saw his leg.

‘Don’t you worry about me. Let’s get you patched up, okay? Look at me. Breathe. You’re going to be fine. That’s another promise.’

Janssens came running back. ‘The other truck just took off.’

‘I know. We’ll catch up with him after,’ Ben said.

Janssens held up a submachine gun. ‘I found this.’

‘Keep it handy.’ Ben tore open the med kit and pulled out a syrette. He jabbed it into Anna’s arm. ‘This will dull the pain for a while. It’s pretty good stuff, let me tell you.’ Next he pulled out all the surgical dressing left over from binding his leg wound, and got to work. He taped the pressure bandage into place over the bleeding stump of her finger and then looped a thick wrap of gauze round and round her hand. Lastly, he helped her sit up so that he could place a makeshift sling around her neck to keep the arm supported at an upwards angle across her chest. ‘Everything will be all right now,’ he assured her.

Her eyelids began to flutter. ‘I feel strange,’ she murmured.

‘That’s just the morphine kicking in,’ he said. ‘Go with it. Close your eyes and sleep. I’ll take care of you. You haven’t a worry in the world.’

Anna was getting faint. Before she passed out, she whispered, ‘Ben… I… I love you, Ben.’

Which Ben attributed to the effect of the drug on her brain. He gazed sadly at her as she fell unconscious. ‘We need to get her to a hospital,’ he said.

‘What hospital?’ Janssens said.

Ben stood and turned to check on Groppione.

‘Still hanging in there,’ Janssens said. The thin rope was cutting deeper into Groppione’s neck and his eyes looked about to pop out. His tongue was stretched grotesquely out from his mouth. His movements were becoming less and less as his brain was starved of blood and oxygen.

‘That’ll more or less do it,’ Ben said. He patted Groppione’s pockets, found the clasp knife in one of them, and a soft-pack of Italian Nazionali cigarettes and a brass Zippo lighter in the other. ‘Well, well, look what we have here.’ He put the cigarettes and lighter in his own pocket and snapped the knife open. It was still sticky with Anna’s blood. He reached up and sliced the rope, and Groppione flopped to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.

‘That’ll more or less do what?’ Janssens said, looking down at the crumpled heap.

Ben took out the pack of Nazionalis, drew one from the wrapper, screwed it between his lips, clanged the Zippo and took in a deep pull of sweet smoke. He felt better already.

‘Cerebral hypoxia,’ he said. ‘He’ll lie here in a coma until his body starves to death, or something eats him. Maybe someday I’ll get to tell Jeff all about it.’

‘Your friend? The guy he shot, right?’

‘What goes around comes around,’ Ben said. ‘And he had this coming from the moment he pulled the trigger.’

‘What about Usberti?’

Ben took another long, silent drag on the cigarette.

Then replied, ‘Let’s go get him.’