The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Twenty-Five

The two intruders were dressed in black, from their combat boots to their ski masks. Black cordura holsters strapped to their hips. Black Glock pistols, one holstered and the other pressed tightly into Professor Gray Brennan’s right temple.

The bed was a tall antique four-poster that dominated the far end of the room. Its fleur-de-lys covers were thrown back as if the two men had dragged its occupant bodily out of it as he slept, giving him a rude awakening. Now they were holding him in a chair in the middle of the room with his wrists bound.

One man stood behind the chair with a gloved hand cupped under Brennan’s chin and the pistol at his head. Ben noticed the peculiar magazine loaded into the weapon’s butt: not the usual double-stack box magazine, but an ultra-high-capacity double-drum mag. As if its user had anticipated the need to let off a hundred rounds in a hell of a hurry. The other man was standing in front of the captive with his back to the doorway. He was saying, ‘Okay, asshole, one more time. Where are the fuckin’ books?’

Ben took in the accent right away. An American, from one of the southern states, somewhere like Alabama or Louisiana. A thin, greasy blonde ponytail stuck out from the back of his ski mask. He was wearing his Glock in a left-handed holster. That sounded a note of recognition in Ben’s mind.

‘You don’t tell us, I’m gonna watch your brains spatter all over that wall,’ the man with the southern accent said. ‘Your choice, douchebag.’

There’d been a struggle, even though Brennan was hopelessly overmatched. The front of his silk pyjama top was ripped, showing a welt of diseased and broken skin underneath. A vase of flowers on a table near the bed had been upset, the brightly coloured flowers trampled into the rug by the intruders’ boots. The scent of flowers filled the room. So did another smell. A sharp tang that was strangely familiar to Ben.

Mint.

It was the same faintly unpleasant odour of nicotine gum he’d caught on the breath of one of Kristen’s killers, that day on the beach.

The ponytailed man with his back to Ben was the one doing the chewing. With a chill of anger, Ben noticed the Ka-Bar combat knife in its sheath on the man’s belt.

No coincidence. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that he was looking at the knife that had been used to murder Kristen.

The situation inside the room was surreal. Most men dragged out of bed at two in the morning, bound and held in a chair with a gun to their head by masked attackers, would have been ready to wet themselves in terror. Ben had seen more than a few of those. But not Brennan. He was grinning up at his captors as if he’d just remembered a good joke. If Ben found it weird, the two masked men found it even weirder. It was hardly the reaction they’d expected, and that was pissing them off.

As shocked as he was to see these two men here, Ben knew he had the element of surprise on his side. He knew he could rush into the room unsheathing the heavy broadsword and split the gum-chewing bastard diagonally from shoulder to hip before he even had time to turn around. But the element of surprise would only take him so far. It wouldn’t prevent his companion with the drawn pistol from pumping half of that big drum magazine into Ben before the sword could touch him. And that didn’t make a lot of sense tactically.

The ponytailed guy drew his Glock. He thrust it furiously in Brennan’s face and then averted the muzzle ninety degrees to let off a silenced double-tap that punched a pair of holes in the bedroom wall. ‘Last chance. Where are they?’

‘I know exactly what books you’re talking about, and I know exactly where they are,’ Brennan replied crisply. ‘But I won’t tell, so you’ll just have to shoot me. Right here between the eyes. Go on, get on with it.’

The masked men stared at him.

‘I repeat, I have no intention whatsoever of co-operating,’ Brennan informed them. ‘I am a witness to this assault and you have no choice but to silence me. What’re you waiting for?’

In the brief silence that followed, Ben realised that nothing he could do would save Brennan. And that was the way Brennan wanted it.

The two men glanced at one another. The one holding him in the chair shrugged. ‘This guy’s nuts.’

The other nodded. ‘Do it.’

Then the pistol at Brennan’s temple fired. The impact of the bullet at extreme close range sent the historian toppling sideways, spilling out of his chair as he dragged it down with him. By the time he flopped to the floor, he was already dead.

He hadn’t suffered. Probably hadn’t registered anything more than an infinitesimal white flash as the bullet passed through his brain and out the other side. His killers couldn’t know it, but it was the kind of clean, merciful death their victim must have prayed for a thousand times since his illness had struck. A doctor in a Swiss euthanasia clinic couldn’t have given him a quicker end.

But they weren’t going to get a medal for it.

‘Now what?’ said the one with the smoking pistol. ‘We’re never gonna find them.’

‘No worries,’ said the other, cracking a grin through his mask. ‘Sometimes Plan B is just plain more fun. Let’s torch this place and get out of here.’ He flicked his pistol on safe and thrust it back in its holster, turning towards the door as he did it.

He stepped out of the bedroom and into the corridor.

Ben was waiting for him there.