The Lost Relic

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rome

Ben was up before eight, took a long shower, dressed and sneaked out of the hotel before anyone could collar him. For all he knew, his face was plastered on every news channel and paper in Italy by now. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. He’d always been able to move around unseen, and anonymity had become second nature to him. All at once, it felt as if a giant spotlight were following him everywhere he went, and planes flying overhead trailing banners saying ‘Ben Hope this way’.

The sun was already hot, and the traffic was insane as he ploughed the big Shogun across Rome to San Filippo Neri hospital. The hospital reception desk was as chaotic as the rest of the city. Ben beat a path through the bustle and managed to find out that Fabio Strada was in Room 9 in a private ward on the fifth floor. He avoided the overcrowded lifts and used the stairs.

It was only as he was approaching Room 9 and reaching out to knock softly on the door that he stopped. Until that moment, he’d been driven by pure impulse to see the man. But now that he was here, he didn’t have any idea what to say to Strada face to face.

Hi, I’m the guy who wasn’t able to save your family. How are you feeling today?

At the end of the corridor, sunlight was streaming through tall windows into a little sitting area with armchairs and racks of magazines and a dispensing machine. The place was empty. It would give him a few minutes to get his thoughts in order. He slotted coins into the machine and carried a plastic cup of scalding espresso over to a corner. In Italy, even dispensing machine coffee was good.

He took a seat in the far corner of the room, and sat for a moment thoughtfully sipping his coffee. Someone had left a newspaper on a table nearby, with its front page facing down. He flipped it over.

The first thing he saw was the paper’s title. It was that day’s edition of La Repubblica. The second thing he saw was his own face looking up at him from behind the wheel of the Shogun, and beside that two more full-colour photos showing scenes of the devastation at the Academia Giordani. He swore, then scanned quickly through the article below.

It didn’t get any better. His name was printed maybe six times in two inches of text. The media loved a sensational slogan, and the one they’d picked for him was ‘L’eroe della galleria’. The art gallery hero. The article lingered gushily over the unconfirmed reports that the saviour of the hostages was a former British Special Forces operative, before moving on to quote from Capitano Roberto Lario of the Rome police and the Carabinieri officer who had led the storming of the building. Below was a further quote from Count Pietro De Crescenzo, the gallery’s only surviving owner, lamenting the shocking destruction of several irreplaceable pieces of priceless artwork in the robbery.

Ben wasn’t too interested in the count’s impassioned, outraged attack on the animals who had done this. It was the generic ‘something must be done to bring these monsters to justice’ type of rant he’d heard before, a thousand times. He skipped down a few lines.

Then his eye landed on something that caught his attention. The investigation team had immediately turned up one interesting, and mystifying, detail. At least two robbers had managed to get away clean – whereabouts currently unknown. Which meant, barring some of the larger canvases that would have been impractical for a running man to carry, they could have helped themselves to pretty much any painting they wanted. And yet, the only item that appeared to have been stolen – and the only one, as far as the investigators could make out, the gang had even attempted to steal, as opposed to merely destroying – was a relatively valueless sketch by Goya.

Ben raised an eyebrow at that one. He raised it higher as he read on: while some of the works that had been irreparably damaged or left untouched were worth tens, even hundreds, of millions of euros, the valuers’ estimate of the worth of the Goya was around the half million mark, maybe less.

Now that was strange. Ben guessed he couldn’t be the only Repubblica reader that morning to be wondering what the robbers had been thinking. Had they simply panicked and grabbed whatever they could as their plans fell apart and all hell was breaking loose around them? They might have had no idea of the relative values of the pieces of art in the exhibition.

On the other hand, just grabbing the nearest thing to hand and legging it seemed like the work of opportunists – and these guys hadn’t seemed like mere opportunists. The way they’d managed to get past the security showed a high degree of preparation, of professionalism. They’d done their homework. Then again, Ben thought, professional art thieves didn’t compromise themselves by hanging around the scene of the crime to murder and rape hostages at their leisure. They just took what they wanted in the minimum possible time, then got the hell out of there.

The crime seemed schizophrenic in nature, a contradiction in terms. It was as though the planning phase had been carried out by exactly the kind of person best suited to the job: someone extremely careful, meticulous and thorough; and then been passed down the line to be executed by someone temperamentally altogether different. Someone psychopathically insane.

Ben put the paper down, sipped some more of his cooling coffee and thought about the glaring inconsistencies of the case. His photo stared up at him from the newspaper front page. He shoved it away, feeling even more self-conscious and uncomfortable about being here. It struck him that maybe he should just leave a card for Strada expressing his condolences. There had to be somewhere in the hospital he could buy one. Even just a sheet of paper would do. He could slip it under Strada’s door, or simply hand it in at reception. Then he could get out of here.

Art gallery hero sighted skulking away from hospital.

Just as he was about to get up to go, Ben heard low voices and looked up to see a group of two men and three women shuffle into the sitting area, trailing a couple of sobbing children behind them. All had red eyes. The eldest of the women was sniffing into a handkerchief as they sat down in a circle of armchairs on the far side of the room. One of the men put his arm around her shoulders. Ben watched them from the corner, and saw that one of the women looked like a slightly older, plumper version of Donatella Strada.

The men were looking over at him. One of them nudged the old lady, and she turned her teary gaze on him as well.

They all stood, hesitated, and then the old lady stepped over to him. He got to his feet as she approached.

‘We saw you on the news,’ the old lady said in Italian. ‘We know who you are, Signore.’ She put out her hand. ‘Donatella was my daughter.’

‘My deepest sympathies,’ Ben said. ‘You have come to see Fabio?’ she asked.

Ben nodded. ‘But I don’t know if he’d like to see me. I was just about to leave.’

‘Fabio would want to meet the man who tried to save his wife and child,’ the old lady said firmly, and Ben found it impossible to refuse her as she took his arm and led him back out of the sitting area. She knocked on the door of Room 9. ‘Fabio? It’s Antonella.’ Ben heard a weak voice from inside, little more than a whisper. They went in.

Fabio Strada lay on the bed with his right arm and leg in traction. His head was wrapped in bandages, his neck in a brace. His face was a mass of livid bruises.

The rest of the family followed them inside the room. Little was said. The old lady grasped her son-in-law’s hand and held it tight. She pointed at Ben, and the injured man slowly rolled his eyes across to look at him. The old lady whispered in his ear. Fabio Strada gave an almost imperceptible nod. The grief in his eyes was so deep that Ben had to force himself to return his gaze. For a moment they seemed to exchange a silent conversation that went way beyond anything words could say.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.

You tried. What more can anyone do? I’m grateful.

Then Strada closed his eyes, as if the effort had exhausted him. The old lady smiled at Ben and squeezed Fabio’s hand. Fabio squeezed hers in return. Donatella’s sister was crying softly, one of the children clinging to her leg.

There was a knock at the door, and a tall man of about fifty-five, with chiselled good looks and a trim waistline, thick silver hair and a finely-tailored cream suit, stepped confidently into the room. The heels of his expensive-looking shoes clicked on the floor.

Through the half-open doorway, Ben could make out a group of other men out in the corridor. He couldn’t see their faces, but the way they held themselves looked stiff and official.

‘Excuse me,’ the silver-haired man said in Italian. ‘I came to pay my respects to Signor Strada.’ He glanced around the room, and Ben thought he noticed a momentary frown of recognition as the man’s gaze landed fleetingly on him. Then the man turned round and muttered a command to the people out in the corridor. ‘Wait for me downstairs. Not you. You come on in.’ A photographer with a long-lens Nikon SLR came into the room before the silver-haired man shut the door behind them.

Ben couldn’t place the silver-haired man, though his face looked strangely familiar. Fabio Strada’s family clearly had no doubt about who he was, and they seemed to act defer-entially towards him as he stepped over to the bedside and bent low over the injured man. The photographer snapped away as he spoke.

‘Signor Strada, I am Urbano Tassoni.’

The name was one Ben couldn’t help recognising, even though he made no effort to keep up with current affairs. Tassoni was a top Italian politician, a prime contender in the upcoming Presidential elections. And you didn’t have to follow the news closely to have heard the stories about the guy’s glamorous playboy lifestyle, the dalliances with actresses and supermodels. The media worshipped him almost as much as he exploited them.

Nice PR opportunity, Ben thought. Making sure you got your picture taken paying your respects to the injured widower. Strada’s family seemed to accept the intrusion; in their position Ben would have thrown him out of the window, and the photographer’s Nikon with him.

‘Words cannot express my sorrow at your loss, Signor Strada,’ Tassoni went on gravely. ‘I myself am divorced and have never known the joy of parenthood. It makes it all the more heartbreaking for me to hear of this terrible tragedy that has befallen your family. May there be some comfort in knowing that Donatella and Gianni will never be forgotten. And I give you my personal guarantee that I will not rest until every last perpetrator of this terrible crime has been brought to justice.’

As Tassoni spoke, Ben noticed the one flaw in his immaculately-groomed appearance – a red weal on his cheekbone, as though he’d recently been punched. The photographer had clearly been ordered to shoot his good side only. Tassoni finished expressing his condolences, nodded solemnly to all, and then graciously exited the room with the photographer in his wake. Ben saw his chance to slip away at the same time. He said his last respects to the injured man and his family, then left them to their private grieving.

He’d done what he’d come here to do. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be.

Tassoni was talking to the photographer in the corridor. Seeing Ben coming, he turned and gave a well-practised smile. ‘Signor Hope,’ he said, and Ben groaned inwardly.

‘I wish to thank you for your heroic efforts,’ Tassoni said in English. ‘All Italy is in your debt.’ He shook Ben’s hand with such vigour that it tugged painfully on the stitches in his shoulder. Ben winced a little.

‘I’m sorry. You were injured.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve been in the wars yourself, it seems,’ Ben said.

Tassoni touched his fingers to the weal on his face. ‘This is nothing. A minor fracas.’

Ben looked at his watch. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I should get going. I have a flight to catch later on.’

‘You are leaving Italy?’

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’

‘I regret very much that you could not stay longer,’ Tassoni said. ‘As it happens, I am free for the rest of the day. A rare luxury, I can assure you. I have some paperwork to go through at home this afternoon, but you would be a most welcome guest for dinner there this evening. I am a simple bachelor, but I do appreciate the finer things in life.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Ben said.

‘You are a connoisseur of wine?’

‘I’ve been known to pull a cork or two.’

‘Then it would be my pleasure to introduce you to some of the treasures from my little cellar, over a dish of homemade pollo ripieni. My mother’s recipe. I once had the honour of cooking it for your prime minister.’

‘He isn’t my prime minister,’ Ben said. ‘You are not a political animal, as they say?’

‘Just not a hopelessly gullible one.’

Tassoni smiled. ‘But a man of strong opinions. I respect that. What do you say, Signor Hope? Just you and me, man to man, setting the world to rights?’

‘You, me, and half of Italy’s press. How cosy,’ Ben wanted to say, but he kept it to himself. ‘That’s a generous offer. Thank you, but I’m afraid I’ll be in London by this evening.’

‘Then perhaps you are free for lunch? I know an excellent restaurant not far from here.’

‘Another time, perhaps,’ Ben said.

‘As you say, another time.’ Tassoni slipped a business card from his jacket. ‘Should you ever find yourself in Rome again.’

‘You never know,’ Ben said, taking the card. He stuffed it in his jeans pocket without looking at it. They parted with a nod, and Tassoni headed for the lifts while Ben made his way back to the stairs.