The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He half stooped, half fell to the floor. His fumbling fingers closed on the sawn end of a length of four-by-four timber. He dragged it towards him. It felt as heavy as a lead pipe to his oxygen-starved muscles, and he cried out with the effort that it took to pick the piece of wood off the floor and drive its square end straight up like a battering ram at the roof. He almost collapsed from the effort. Nothing happened. He gritted his teeth and put everything he had into a second blow.

This time he felt something give. There was a crack. Splinters of broken tile fell in, grazing his head and shoulders. Suddenly, he could taste fresh air again, and the sensation gave him the strength he needed for one final upward heave. The wood drove up through the roof. Tiles cracked and tumbled down through the ragged hole that had appeared above him.

Gasping, Ben let the length of timber clatter to the attic floor. Reached his hands up out of the hole and dragged himself painfully through, gulping lungfuls of blessed air. Dragging his bag up after him, he staggered to his feet on the slope of the roof, rubbed his stinging eyes and looked round to see the extent of the fire that was consuming the whole villa. The night sky was livid with its blood-red glow.

Below him, the figures of the two masked shooters were disappearing into the shadows, making their way to the perimeter wall. They must have a vehicle hidden nearby, he thought, and from the screech of approaching sirens he could faintly hear through the roar of the fire he understood why they were making their escape. Someone must have seen the red glow and called the emergency services; the perpetrators had no intention of being around when they arrived.

Neither had Ben, if there was anything he could do about it. Now his energy was rekindled and he needed to find a way down to the ground before the damn roof fell in and he found himself right in the heart of the inferno. He ran along the roof, careful not to slip on the sloping tiles. It was a long way down.

Ben would later hazard a guess that what happened next must have been a gas pipe rupturing. He’d never know for sure. All he knew was that the strong blast somewhere below him sent up a fountain of flame and splintering tiles right under his feet as he ran, and sent him flying.

There was nothing he could do to prevent himself from tumbling down the steep pitch of the roof, over and over. The left sleeve of his jacket had caught fire. He let go of his bag as he grappled to arrest his fall by hanging on to the iron guttering, but it came away with his weight.

Then he was falling, flailing in mid-air, trying to control his fall the way he’d learned in parachute training.

He hit the canvas awning below, bounced, rolled and then was tumbling through empty space again. The ground seemed to rush up at him: a terrace or patio area, the concrete amber-lit by the glow of the blazing villa. Thoughts of broken legs, or worse, flashed through his mind.

The impact knocked the breath out of him. But instead of his body being smashed against the hard ground, he sank deep into something soft and spongy that gave under him. Wetness and coldness suddenly enveloped him, a shock after the heat of the fire. In his confusion he realised that he’d missed the concrete and splashed down on the plastic cover of Brennan’s unused swimming pool. The force of his landing had ripped part of the cover from its moorings around the edge, and now the thick, crinkly plastic was wrapping itself around him like a shroud as he sank into the water, trapping his movements. The sleeve of his jacket wasn’t on fire any more — it wasn’t burning that worried him now. He struggled violently to free himself from the plastic cocoon that was hugging his arms tight against his body and preventing him from kicking out with his legs. Water was filling his mouth and throat. He managed to rip an arm free. His fingers closed around something — one of the pool cover anchor cords that hadn’t snapped. He pulled against it, praying that it wouldn’t come free.

It didn’t. He pulled again, felt the plastic shroud loosen its grip around him. Suddenly his other arm was free, then his legs; and he hauled himself gasping and streaming with water onto the tiled edge of the pool.

He looked up as the roof of the villa caved in with a final groan of buckling timbers and collapsed into the burning shell of the house. The flames leapt high into the night sky, sparks and embers flying up like distress signals. The canvas awning over the patio burst alight and began to crumple towards the ground. At the last second, Ben saw his fallen bag lying on the concrete below it, and had to leap to snatch it away before the fiery canopy swallowed it up. Ben carried the bag to safety, inside it the books of the Stamford journal that he’d risked his life to rescue.

Away from the powerful heat of the fire, he began to shudder with cold inside his wet clothing. His whole body was aching from the exertion of his escape from the villa, but he forced himself to break into a run as he crossed the lawn towards the shadows of the trees. He pressed through the branches, reached the wall beyond and lobbed his bag over the top before grabbing a handhold on the craggy stonework and clambering over after it.

The sirens were getting louder and closer every second. Ben could see the swirling lights in the distance as he dropped down on the other side of the wall. By the time the shrieking fire engines appeared and came speeding down the road towards the gates of the villa, he’d already slipped away out of sight.

In a patch of forest a kilometre away, he stripped off his wet things, rubbed himself down with a dry T-shirt from his bag and then changed into fresh things. He zipped up his jacket, shivering in the night air but knowing he’d soon warm up as he walked. Nothing he could do about his shoes, which squelched uncomfortably as he made his way, cross-country, through the darkness.

He still didn’t know whether the Stamford journals would tell him anything. But he’d nonetheless managed to learn a lot from his visit to Madeira. He thought about the masked men who’d shot Brennan, now long gone and no doubt heading for home. They were Americans. Professional killers, without a doubt highly trained former military operatives — perhaps even from a Special Forces background, judging by the unmistakable skills they’d demonstrated that night.

Ben had known those kinds of men turn bad before. The ugly signs were often evident even before they quit the military and went off to pursue private contracts and a career that allowed them to kill for cash, sometimes also for pleasure. He thought back to the Ka-Bar knife used in Kristen’s murder. For decades, it had been the edged weapon of choice for the US Marines. He wondered whether either of the men had served with the Corps.

Whoever these two were, they had access to serious hardware and the means to transport it undetected from one country to another. Which meant there was big money involved: it was no cheap undertaking to hire men like that to do one’s dirty work, equip them accordingly and move them from place to place without getting caught.

So the individual payrolling them would be someone of considerable means. That same someone must have known about the Stamford journals from Kristen’s computer, and the email it contained from her to Gray Brennan in which she’d mentioned them. Somehow, the killer perceived the journals as enough of a threat that they were ready to snuff out anyone who got close to them.

And for reasons Ben didn’t yet understand, it all seemed to revolve around the name McCrory.

He walked faster through the trees, his steps silent, his mind full of cold, brooding rage. The first streaky red-gold tendrils of dawn were working their way into the sky. He’d be off this island in a matter of hours, and he could clearly visualise the mental signpost telling him where to head next.

It was pointing towards Tulsa, Oklahoma.