The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ben’s abdominal muscles tightened with a jerk and he sprang off the bed. He quickly reached out and turned off the little reading lamp, then crossed the dark room to the balcony window without a sound. He peeled back the edge of one of the drapes and peered out. He could see nothing but a stretch of dimly moonlit lawn and the shadows of the bushes and shrubs that filled the villa’s garden.

He eased silently through the gap in the curtains and stepped out onto the balcony, dropped into a crouch behind the balustrade and listened. The only sound he could hear was the steady, rhythmic chirping of the cicadas.

Then, as he peered through the balustrade, a movement down below caught his attention. It was followed by another. A less trained eye wouldn’t even have picked up on them in the darkness: two flitting shapes crossing the edge of the lawn towards the villa.

They moved with long, fast strides, keeping low, hugging the shadows. The silhouettes of two men who knew how to move silently and unseen over unfamiliar terrain. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Ben had mastered the skill a long time ago, after long and persistent training and years of honing the art of war. He knew right away that the intruders were schooled in it too. Perhaps to the same degree he’d been, or close. In two seconds they’d melted invisibly into the shadows surrounding the villa.

Ben rose to his feet and peered over the edge of the balustrade. Beneath the balcony, the wall of the villa was clad in trellis thickly covered in ivy. It was a twenty, twenty-five-foot drop to the flower borders below. Without hesitation he swung himself over the edge of the balcony and scrabbled downwards, fingers gripping smooth stone and his legs dangling free for an instant before he kicked them towards the wall and let go. He dropped six feet or so before his hands locked onto the trellis and he checked his fall, pulling himself tightly into the rustling ivy. The trellis was strong and held his weight. He quickly found a foothold and began climbing down. In moments, he was standing on the soft earth of the flower beds. Ahead was the open-sided portico that skirted the villa wall and led to the main part of the house. Which way had the intruders gone?

He glanced around him, all his senses sharply focused. He could hear nothing. On the far side of the lawn, close to the high wall that bordered the property, he could just make out two patches of blacker darkness against the deep shadow. They weren’t moving. Even as he trotted silently towards them, he knew what they were.

He crouched next to one of the dead mastiffs and touched his fingers where the moonlight glistened on a shiny, wet patch. Blood, still warm, oozing from a gunshot wound.

He ran back across the grass and entered the portico, his footsteps soft and stealthy on the flagstone floor. He reached the front door of the villa and found it hanging open. They must have gone through the lock in seconds. Whoever they were, they were good. Ben slipped inside the open doorway. The mosaic-floored entrance hall was dark. Ahead of him was the broad corridor that had led him earlier that day to Brennan’s study. To his right, the brass banister rail of the curving staircase gleamed in a glow of light that was coming from above. Ben moved closer to the stairs and heard voices.

Climbing a wooden staircase without a creak in the still of the night was another art Ben had learned a long time ago, and practised many times in the course of his work. But these were marble, with a soft runner up their centre. He bounded silently up them two at a time and reached the first floor, where the banister rail curved elegantly into the wall and formed a landing overlooking the stairs and the hallway below. The voices were clearer up here. From their harsh tone, Ben had the impression that it wasn’t Brennan’s long-lost friends who’d come to visit.

From the landing led a wide passage, and a little way up the passage was a half-open door. The light was shining from the gap. Ben moved closer. The voices grew louder. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He stopped. In the glow from the half-open door he could see the gilded frames of paintings hanging on the opposite wall. And something else.

The centrepiece of the display of antique arms was a Celtic battle shield. Irish, Ben guessed, the circular kind called a targe. Probably four hundred years old, wood and leather banded with iron. Fanned out over the top of the shield was an array of ancient daggers. Framing it left and right, with their blade tips crossed in an X below it, hung a pair of basket-hilted broadswords sheathed in steel scabbards.

Ben reached up and unhooked the one nearest to him. It came away from its wall mounting without a sound. He slipped his hand inside the steel basket and gripped the handle. It felt rough, like sharkskin. He didn’t draw the blade out, for the zing of steel on steel that would give his presence away. He crept closer to the door, the sword substantial and comforting in his grip.

And peered tentatively through the gap into the room beyond.