The Heretics Treasure

Chapter Eleven

Ben snapped back to the here and now, and glanced at his watch. Time was passing quickly, and Paxton was waiting for his decision.

But he already knew what he had to do.

There was no way he could refuse the colonel’s request. He had too big a debt to repay the man. He couldn’t just walk away.

One last time. Then the slate would be clean and it would be over. It was the least he could do for the hero who had saved his life.

And yet…the prospect of carrying out this task filled him with revulsion.

Unable to bear it any more, he jumped up and headed out of the hotel. The street outside was bustling with the first of the season’s tourists. He filtered through the crowds and just followed his nose, trying to keep himself occupied with the ambience of the town, the architecture, the winding backstreets filled with interesting little shops, the colourful sprawl of spring flower displays that San Remo was famous for.

After a while he suddenly realised he’d wandered near to the hotel where Kerry was staying. He checked his watch. A couple of hours had gone by since he’d left her there. He thought about going in to check on her, make sure she was OK. Maybe she’d have time for a coffee or something. The distraction would be good for him, to help get his head straight and calm his thoughts a little.

The hotel wasn’t the finest establishment he’d ever seen, with a smell of damp in the air and a frayed path across the entrance to the reception desk. He guessed Kerry was a traveller on a budget, just passing through. It struck him how little he knew about her.

He walked up to the desk. Behind it was a bleary-eyed man reading a newspaper through a pair of dirty half-moon glasses. He peered over the top of them as Ben approached. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked in Italian.

‘I’m a friend of one of your guests,’ Ben replied. ‘Her name’s Kerry Wallace. I don’t have a room number. Could you call her for me, please?’

The receptionist grunted, chucked down his paper and started leafing through the old-fashioned register on the desk in front of him. He flipped a few pages back and forth, peering through the dusty glasses at the columns of names.

He looked up. ‘There is no Kerry Wallace here.’

‘She’s checked out?’

‘No, Signore, there is no Kerry Wallace on the register. We have had no guest of that name.’

‘She was here two hours ago. I saw her come in. Were you on duty then?’

The man’s brow wrinkled with annoyance. He glared heavily at Ben. ‘I think perhaps you have the wrong hotel, Signore’

Ben glared back at him. ‘No, this is the right place. You’re making a mistake.’

The receptionist let out an exasperated huff. He spun the register around on the counter. ‘See for yourself.’

Ben ran his eye down the open pages. Frowned. Flipped a page. Scanned down the names. Flipped another page. Checked the dates going back a month. The guy was right. Nobody called Kerry Wallace, or Miss K. Wallace, or anything remotely resembling her name, had checked into the hotel.

‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ he said to the receptionist. ‘My mistake.’

The man grunted again and flapped his newspaper back up in front of his face.

Ben left the hotel, puzzled. Had he got it wrong? He’d seen her walk in there. It was perplexing. He thought about it for a moment, and shrugged. A woman on her own, getting into trouble with men chasing her: maybe she’d wanted to be cautious and had given him a false name. But then again, she’d trusted him enough to go off to a strange yacht with him.

What the hell. It didn’t matter that much. As long as she was safe. He had enough on his mind without worrying about Kerry Wallace.

He looked at his watch. He still had quite a while before he had to head back to the harbour for his dinner rendezvous on board the Scimitar. He walked on. It was warm and close, and dark clouds were beginning to gather overhead. The burning electric smell of a coming thunderstorm hung in the air.

He turned into the street where his hotel was, and the tall white building came into view a hundred yards further on. As he walked, he threw a casual glance to his right at a second-hand bookshop. It had a striped awning and stands of old hardbacks sitting out on the pavement. He’d always been drawn to those kinds of places, and sometimes when he was in Paris he’d spend a whole afternoon browsing around the bookshops by the Seine. It took him into a different world, helped him to forget the real one.

He glanced inside the shop. It was shady and inviting, and for a moment he was tempted to go inside, but decided against it. This wasn’t the time.

Just as he was about to walk on, he noticed something inside the shop.

Someone inside the shop, browsing the shelves of dusty hardbacks.

She was wearing cream cotton trousers and a light blue silk blouse that accentuated the colour of her eyes and the gold of her hair. She turned to face him.

It was Zara Paxton.

Ben felt a surge of anger at the way his heart jumped when he saw her. He did his best to cover it up, and walked towards her with a smile. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said.

‘Yes, what a surprise,’ she laughed. ‘I was shopping in the town, and I remembered this little bookshop. It’s got a good poetry section.’ She waved the book she was holding. ‘I found this. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.’

‘It’s good to see you,’ he replied uncertainly.

‘Good to see you too.’

He stood there for a second, feeling awkward. ‘I’ve decided what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘I’m taking the job. Going to Cairo.’

‘Harry will be so pleased. It’s kind of you to help him.’

Another silence. ‘Well, see you this evening, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be staying overnight on board, and I guess I’m leaving in the morning.’

‘Ben, do you fancy going for a drive? I could show you the town,’ Zara said suddenly as he was about to turn away. She looked down at her feet, tugged at a lock of her hair. ‘If you feel like it, that is, and you’ve got some time. My car’s just around the corner.’

He hesitated, nodded. ‘Why not?’

She talked animatedly as they walked-a little too animatedly, he thought. Like she was nervous. So was he, and he didn’t like the feeling. He worried that his answers to what she was saying were monosyllabic and trite. But the harder he tried to relax around her, the more he felt choked, and hated himself for it. I shouldn’t have agreed to this, he thought desperately.

‘This is it,’ she said, pointing at a sleek black BMW Z4 Roadster convertible at the side of the street. She tossed her handbag in the back of the open-top car, bleeped the locks and they settled into the cream leather seats. She twisted the ignition and the engine rasped into life. As she put the lever in first gear, her hand brushed his. It was only the slightest contact, but she drew her hand away as though she’d touched a hotplate. She blushed. ‘Sorry.’

‘My fault,’ he said, and cringed at his reply. Jesus, Hope.

They drove for a while, and she pointed out various architectural features of San Remo town. He listened, nodded, feigned interest. But he was more interested in her, and he felt bad about it. He shouldn’t be here. This was all wrong.

But after a few miles around San Remo and its outskirts, something else was beginning to crowd his thoughts. Most normal civilians would have no way of telling when a professional surveillance team was following them. But Ben Hope was no normal civilian. He’d spent almost half his life watching his back, and a well-developed knowledge of surveillance techniques, coupled with a sixth sense for when he was being watched, was a combination he knew he could pretty much rely on.

Back in the streets after Kerry’s hotel, he hadn’t been so sure of it. Just a feeling. Then, when the big Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle had passed three times as he walked, he’d started taking more notice. The rider was wearing a black leather jacket and full-face helmet with a tinted black visor, and he couldn’t be sure-but it looked like a woman riding the bike.

When the dark blue Fiat slipped into the traffic behind Zara’s Roadster and sat on their tail for three full kilometres, staying back in the traffic, trying too hard to make it look casual, he knew what was happening. The bright sunlight playing on the windscreen blotted out the faces inside. Two men, he thought. Who were they, and what did they want?

She noticed him looking in the driver’s mirror. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Not exactly wrong,’ he said. ‘But not exactly right. Someone’s following us.’

She looked at him in surprise, then peered in the mirror, frowning with concern. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘Who?’

‘I was wondering that myself.’

‘What should we do?’

‘We could stop the car, get out, walk back to that coffee bar we just passed, sit tight and see what happens. Or we could act stupid and try to lose them, in which case they’ll know we know.’

‘Who cares what they know?’ she said. ‘I’ll lose them.’

‘You think?’

‘Hold tight.’ She dropped down two gears and the engine note soared as she pressed hard on the gas. Ben felt himself pressed back into his seat. A gap opened up in the traffic ahead and Zara darted the sports car through just before it closed again. She laughed as she swerved across the road to avoid an oncoming van while a chorus of horns sounded angrily. She ignored them and stamped harder on the pedal. The BMW surged powerfully forward. Zara flashed through a red light, skilfully weaving in and out of more honking traffic.

Ben glanced back in the mirror. The dark blue Fiat was gone, left behind somewhere in the mayhem she’d created.

‘How long did you say you’ve been living in Italy?’ he asked over the noise of the engine.

‘We’re never in one spot for long. Harry takes the Scimitar all over the place. Why do you ask?’

‘Just that you drive like an Italian.’

She smiled with pleasure. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Did I scare you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I want to show you something,’ she said. They were heading away from the town now, and out onto a winding coastal road with the sea on one side and sloping forests on the other. She took the bends fast and confidently, braked hard and took a turn to the left, accelerating smartly up a dusty single-track lane.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see.’

The lane led steeply upwards, trees flashing by on each side. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers and vegetation. The storm was still gathering overhead.

Another couple of turns, and Ben was sure that whoever had been following them was truly left behind. But that didn’t make him feel any happier about it.

Zara bumped the car down a rough track and pulled over onto a grassy verge. ‘We’re here?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘This is it. We can walk the rest of the way.’

He followed her up the winding track through the trees. As they walked, her smile faded. ‘Who would be following us, Ben?’

‘I don’t know.’ Not us, he thought. Whoever it was, it was him they wanted. Which meant it was his concern, and he didn’t want to burden her with it. He put his hand out to reassure her, touched her arm. ‘It was probably nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m just paranoid. Wanted man in several countries. Too many unpaid parking fines.’

She laughed but didn’t move away from the touch of his hand, and he dared let it linger there for a few seconds before snatching it away guiltily. She led him to a break in the trees up ahead. ‘This is what I wanted to show you. Isn’t it fantastic?’

Ben followed her gaze across the bay. From up here you could see the whole coastline, the sea stretching flat out to infinity. The sky was dull and leaden, but the view was spectacular.

‘I come here sometimes just to look at it.’ She paused. ‘And to be alone.’ She frowned up at the darkening clouds. ‘Looks like we’re in for some weather.’

As she said it, the first heavy raindrop spattered on Ben’s shirt. Then another.

‘Here it comes,’ she said. ‘We’d better take cover.’ She pointed. A few hundred yards away, just visible through the greenery, a half-built house stood alone in a weed-strewn building site. ‘Race you to that house,’ she said. Her eyes were lit up with excitement, and her cheeks were flushed.

She took off, sprinting across the rough ground, and he followed her. The rain was coming faster and faster, soaking his shirt. As he ran he watched her, thinking how lithe and athletic she was. She jumped over a low fence and reached the half-finished house a second before him. They ran inside the shelter of the bare block walls, and listened to the rain hammering on the roof. She was giggling, only a little out of breath. Her silk blouse clung to her. She brushed her wet hair back from her face. ‘That was fun. I win.’

He looked around him. ‘Who owns this place?’

‘Someone who ran out of money halfway through the build, I think. It’s been like this for ages. Nobody ever comes here.’ She wiped down her face and neck. ‘God, I’m soaked through.’

The rain outside had become a storm. There was a flash of lightning, closely followed by a long, rumbling clap of thunder. ‘This has been building all day,’ she said.

Ben walked over to the glassless window and looked out. ‘I love storms.’

‘Really? Me too. I can never understand why people are afraid of them.’

Another lightning flash split the dark sky.

‘You said you like to come up here to be alone.’

She nodded.

‘Why do you want to be alone?’

She didn’t reply for a moment. There was a silence, just the thunder crashing above them and the rain drumming on the tiles of the roof.

Then she said, softly, ‘I need to get away from him, sometimes.’

‘From Harry?’

She nodded again, biting her lip. ‘Ben, I haven’t been completely honest with you.’

He frowned, waited for more.

‘You know earlier on, when we bumped into each other in the bookshop and I told you I just happened to be in the area?’

‘Yes?’

She paused. Flushed, turned away from him. ‘I kind of lied. I wasn’t interested in the bookshop. In fact, I’ve never been there before. I don’t even like poetry.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I was there because of you. I wanted to see you. But I got scared, so I hung around trying to pluck up the courage to go into the hotel and ask for you. I was about to walk away when you turned up.’

He sighed. Put a hand on hers. It was trembling. ‘Zara, I-’

‘I want to leave Harry,’ she said, the words tumbling out. ‘I’m not happy with him. Just when I was about to tell him it was over, we heard about Morgan’s death. I couldn’t do it to him then.’

He didn’t reply. The rain was pounding even harder now, the storm right overhead. Lightning flickered in the sky, and another crash of thunder shook the house.

She ran her hands up his arms and pulled him towards her. ‘I know what you think,’ she breathed, her voice half drowned out by the roll of thunder. ‘You think I’m just some frustrated wife looking for an adventure. But I’m not, Ben. It’s not like that. When I saw you this morning, I…I’ve never felt…’ she broke off.

He wanted to say he’d had the same feeling, but he couldn’t find the words. It was all wrong, being here with her. She was Harry Paxton’s wife.

She shivered again. Looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. And at that moment, all logic deserted him. Their lips touched, just a little. Then the kiss became passionate.

He backed off, pushing her away. ‘No. This isn’t right. I can’t do this. I owe everything to Harry Paxton. I mean everything.’

She looked up at him, blinking in confusion. ‘What are you talking about? I thought you and he were just-’

‘He saved my life, Zara. He took a bullet for me. Nobody’s ever done that for me. I can’t betray him.’

She stepped back, eyes widening. ‘He never said anything about that.’

‘He wouldn’t. That’s the kind of man he is.’

The storm was moving quickly on. The black clouds were dissipating, and rays of sun were filtering through. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Zara shivered. They stood for a moment in uneasy silence.

‘We’d better get you out of those wet things,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. ‘Let’s go back to my hotel.’