The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Fifty-Four

The road was quiet and lined with trees. The first fallen leaves of autumn littered the verges, and more drifted down from the branches as she walked, like snowflakes. Catalina felt strangely detached, emotionally numb. Empty of thought, as if she were a machine that existed only to carry out this single purpose. As if nothing existed beyond it. As if this moment was the definitive and final act of her whole life.

It was after eleven a.m. when she eventually came to the high, ivied stone wall that seemed to stretch forever along the roadside, and knew that it marked the boundary of Maxwell Grant’s estate.

Several minutes later, she arrived at the main gate. Set between tall stone gateposts, the ornate black and gilt cast ironwork loomed over her like the forbidding entrance to a Gothic castle. Brushing aside the ivy that half-covered a plaque set into the wall, she saw the carved lettering that read VILLA CALLISTO. Beside the plaque was a small intercom unit for visitors to announce themselves at the gate. Catalina had no desire to be announced. She pushed at the gate. It was heavy. And locked.

She walked on another few metres, skirting the wall until it half-disappeared behind roadside foliage. She glanced to make sure no cars were coming, then squeezed herself in behind the trees where she couldn’t be seen. She laid her bag on the ground at the foot of the wall, taking only the gun which she stuck firmly into the back of her jeans. The wall was at least twice her height, but its rough stonework offered plenty of handholds and footholds. Concealed from the road, she began to climb. It wasn’t difficult.

Until she reached a grasping left hand over the top of the wall to haul herself up, and let out a cry of pain and shock as she felt something lacerate her fingers. Managing to heave herself a little higher, she saw that the entire length of the wall was topped with broken glass set into the mortar.

She gritted her teeth and clung on with her bleeding hand while she pulled the pistol out of her jeans and used its butt as a hammer to knock away as many of the jagged spikes as she could reach. It took a lot of hammering to clear an area wide enough to clamber over without disembowelling herself. She hated Maxwell Grant more than ever.

The climb down was much easier, even with just one good hand, and once back on solid ground she found herself at the edge of the villa’s heavily wooded estate. Her gashed left hand was bleeding. She tore a strip from her blouse to bind it up, clenched her fist tight to stem the blood and set off through the trees.

The estate was as peaceful as a country park. Now she saw lawns beyond the trees; moments later she caught her first glimpse of the house itself. It was a fabulous place, regal and imposing.

Catalina reached the point where the woods thinned out to nothing and the gardens began, and paused. Leaving the cover of the trees made her feel naked and far too easily visible, but she had no choice but to walk straight up to the house. Her cut hand was throbbing badly. The shakes returned as she set out across the lawns, every muscle trembling and rigid. It was just adrenalin kicking in, she told herself. The body preparing itself for the coming fight. Nothing to worry about. She needed to embrace it, use it.

Closer. And closer still. The house growing larger and more ominous with every step, windows like eyes watching her. Her heart beating faster, her breath coming in short gasps.

The long driveway cut up between the formal lawns and terminated in a classically styled courtyard that ran the width of the villa’s facade, surrounded on three sides by a low stone balustrade and tall decorative urns filled with the last of the season’s flowers. There was a Rolls-Royce limousine parked in the courtyard, an old model with gleaming coachwork, all sweeping curves and as big as a barge. The house stood majestically at the end of a broad, stepped path that passed between perfectly trimmed ornamental hedges and through an archway flanked by a pair of carved lions on marble pedestals, bigger than life-size, that seemed to follow her with their eyes as she approached.

Catalina reached the villa. She leaned her back against the cool stone wall and closed her eyes.

‘Forgive me, Raul,’ she said, not for the first time.

Then she took out the gun.

She moved around the side of the house. Froze, hearing a voice.

His voice.

It was coming from inside the villa, and sounded as if he was talking on the phone. She couldn’t make out the conversation, because his words were muffled through a window.

Closer. Closer again. Her injured hand had stopped hurting. It was the adrenalin response flooding the body with hormones like dopamine, one of the most effective natural painkillers known to science. But the shakes were worse, uncontrollable, as if she could no longer govern her own body. Her legs felt as if they were going to wash out under her. Panic was just a hair’s breadth away. Every molecule of her wanted to take flight, run away and never stop running.

Oh, my God, I can’t do this.

Then she saw him, and all her resolve came rushing back into tight, hard focus. He was standing with his back to the window, a broad, wide-shouldered figure in a well-cut silk shirt, talking on the phone inside a room that looked like a study.

She thought, I am going to kill you.

All Grant had to do was turn around, and he would see her standing there on the other side of the window, gun in hand. For a few anxious seconds that felt like minutes, she thought about finding a way inside the house. Then she thought, No. Easier just to shoot him from right here. One bullet to shatter the glass. Then the next one, two, three, four, five, whatever it took, for him.

Grant was still talking, apparently so absorbed in his conversation that he was completely unaware of her presence. Catalina willed herself to breathe calmly. She raised the pistol and took aim at him through the window. Her finger curled around the trigger. She lined up the sights, fighting to control the tremors in her hands.

Then a voice close behind her said, ‘Drop the weapon.’

Catalina felt something hard and cold press against the side of her head.