The Lost Relic

Chapter Fifty-Six

Lister let out a humourless laugh at her expression. ‘That’s right. Us. The good guys.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Buitoni said.

Lister glanced back at him in the mirror. ‘No? That’s just for openers.’

A million frantic questions crowded into Darcey’s mind at once. Lister had just shared a piece of information which, if it were even half true, could get them all killed. Part of her wished she’d never heard it; the other part wanted to hear more.

‘Keep talking,’ she said.

Lister talked fast as he drove. The Laguna was in thick traffic circling the Place de la Concorde, with the Champs Élysées to their right. ‘OK. Tassoni’s public face is pretty well documented. Born into a wealthy, influential family in 1956. Successful, handsome, charismatic, destined from the start to be a major player, one way or another. What the public don’t know is that Tassoni was connected to organised crime, going back years. Italian mafia, Russian mob, you name it, but none of it ever proved. As far as we can tell, he first ran into Grigori Shikov in Moscow back in the late seventies, as a young guy heavily involved in the Italian Marxist movement. Those ideologies didn’t last long. He and Shikov have been photographed together on numerous occasions since then and are reckoned to be doing a lot of business together. Intelligence services have had surveillance on him for as long as anyone can remember, but he’s never put a foot wrong. Not until earlier this year, when he made one mistake that gave our people the opening we wanted.’ Lister glanced sideways at Darcey. ‘Tassoni liked them young, seemingly.’

Buitoni swore from the back seat. Darcey said nothing.

Lister continued. ‘So they didn’t waste any time approaching him and offering him the deal. The terms were pretty simple. Sell out Shikov to us and walk free, or else be buried forever by an underage sex scandal. Tassoni was quick to agree. The problem was, not even he could offer anything to nail Shikov down solid. Then, just a few days ago, Tassoni contacted our agents. It looked like the perfect opportunity had finally come up. He said Shikov was planning a heist on an Italian art gallery, and he was giving the job to his son, Anatoly. Real piece of work, that one. He and his gang were going to kidnap the three gallery owners from their homes in the night and force them to give up the security codes. In the end, it didn’t happen that way.’

Darcey frowned, working hard to keep up with the welter of details. ‘Hold on. You’re saying British Intelligence had advance knowledge of the robbery?’

Lister swallowed and nodded. ‘It’s all there in the Operation Jericho file. The proper file, that is, not the censored version you’ve seen. My department heads decided to let it play out. The Italian police were never told.’

‘This is really fucked up.’

‘Keep listening. I don’t have a lot of time. It was Tassoni who recruited the Italian team for the job, including his own bodyguard, Rocco Massi. What Rocco didn’t know was that he was a stooge. If he’d been arrested and tried to plea-bargain his way out by giving them his boss’s name, it would’ve been buried. As it happened, he got away clean. But what Tassoni didn’t know was that one of the guys he brought in, Bruno Bellomo, was a deep-cover intelligence agent whose real name is Mario Belli. Are you following this?’

‘Go on.’

‘If things had worked out, either of two things could have happened. One, Anatoly could have led us straight back to his father, in which case Junior and Senior could be arrested together. Jackpot. Alternatively, if the Shikovs were more careful and there was no direct contact, with Belli’s help we were going to pick up Anatoly on his own and lean hard on him. He was a sadistic little bastard, but deep down he was a spoilt weakling who’d have quickly broken down and agreed to give up his father rather than spend the rest of his life in prison.’

Darcey gave a bitter chuckle. ‘I just love the way you people operate.’

‘Let me continue. That’s how it was meant to go down. Everything changed when Anatoly Shikov altered the robbery plan at the last minute. Belli could still have led us to him, no problem. But by turning the robbery from a low-key night raid into the full-on daytime heist it became, it allowed a new and completely unforeseen factor to enter the equation.’

‘And that factor’s name was Ben Hope,’ Darcey said.

‘Neither side could have predicted a guy like that would become involved. A normal person would have been taken hostage with the rest, or killed.’

‘Which was an acceptable risk, as far as your guys were concerned. Collateral damage.’

Lister shot her another sideways glance as he drove. ‘Don’t look at me like that, OK? I’m just a junior. I don’t make these fucking plans.’

‘So Ben Hope helped to save as many hostages as he could. I know the story. Or he just made it look that way.’

Lister shook his head vigorously. ‘You only know what they want you to know, the stuff that’s been allowed into the police report. You don’t know that Hope killed Anatoly Shikov with a poker to save one of the female hostages from being raped. And killed, most probably.’

Darcey didn’t reply. That definitely hadn’t been divulged to her.

‘As if that didn’t screw up the Shikov operation badly enough,’ Lister went on, ‘he also apprehended our guy Belli and hung him out of a window. Which completely put paid to the whole plan.’

‘So now it’s all about containment.’

Lister nodded. ‘Simple as that. Tassoni knew too much. Rocco Massi too. They took them both out together, and covered their tracks by making it look sloppy. The initial idea was to blame it on a tin-pot radical environmentalist outfit, ELF.’

‘But meanwhile, Ben Hope was figuring out the Tassoni connection, and decided to go and pay him a visit.’

‘Which again was completely unforeseen,’ Lister said. ‘I don’t even know how he worked it out.’

‘I’ll be sure to ask him when I catch up with him,’ Darcey said.

‘Only this time, instead of messing up the plans, when he turned up out of the blue it offered a way forward.’

‘How’s that?’ Buitoni asked, frowning.

‘By framing him for the killing and sending someone like you after him, they regain control. Hope turns from being a liability into a valuable asset.’ Lister pointed at Darcey. ‘And once you deliver him to them, they’re going to use him.’

Darcey blinked. ‘Use him?’

‘Tigers and lambs,’ Lister said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Something my boss said. When you want to catch the tiger, you whack a stake in the middle of a jungle clearing. Tether a lamb to the stake. Then all you have to do is wait up a tree with your rifle. Sooner or later, the tiger will come.’

‘I don’t think Ben Hope’s going to be that easy to catch.’

‘You’re missing the point. Ben Hope isn’t the tiger. He’s the lamb.’

Darcey understood. ‘They want to use him as bait.’

Lister nodded. ‘Shikov is the tiger. They know he’ll stop at nothing to avenge his son. They want him to kill Hope, and they want to catch him doing it.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Buitoni groaned from the back seat.

Lister whacked his palm against the steering wheel. ‘The whole thing is full of shit. It’s not what I joined the service for. I can’t stand being part of a manhunt against an innocent man. Not just innocent – Hope risked his life to save those people. Just like he risked his life for his country, and now the bastards are happy to screw him for it.’

‘But you’re part of it, Lister.’

‘Not any more. Not after this. I quit. Well, not exactly.’

‘You just went AWOL?’

‘I can’t let this happen. Someone’s got to stop them.’

‘Aren’t you taking a risk, talking to me?’

‘Bigger than you can even imagine. But I don’t know who else to turn to.’

‘And you’re forgetting one thing. Shikov’s deal with the terrorists. If the sources are right—’

‘Then the Taliban will be in possession of two Black Shark attack helicopters. I know.’

‘Our Apache crews won’t know what hit them. Hundreds of British soldiers will be at risk. All to save one innocent man?’

Lister turned to glower at her. ‘My father was a Royal Marines captain. He died in Iraq for his country. You think I want to endanger our troops out there? Shikov’s deal can’t be allowed to go through. I’m just saying I can’t stand by and let things happen this way. I won’t.’

‘You can’t possibly prove any of this.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘How?’

‘I won’t say another word until you agree to help me.’

‘Help you do what?’

‘We’ve got to end this.’

‘We?’

‘Please. Like I said, I didn’t know who else to turn to.’

Darcey was about to reply, but the words died on her lips as a movement in the rear-view mirror caught her eye. She twisted round in her seat, and Buitoni did the same.

The Laguna had turned away from Place de la Concorde and was heading parallel with the River Seine down the Voie Georges Pompidou. The Louvre was passing by to their left, but Darcey was more interested in the two high-performance sports motorcycles that were weaving through the traffic after them. Their riders were hunkered down low over the bars, passengers perched behind and above them. All four were wearing black leathers, their faces hidden behind opaque visors.

In seconds, the bikes had caught up with the Laguna, peeling apart and drawing up level on either side of the car. The growl of their pipes was throaty and loud. The machine on Darcey’s side was so close that she could clearly make out the Kawasaki logo on its tank.

‘It’s them!’ Lister cried out.

As if in slow motion, Darcey saw the Kawasaki’s pillion passenger reach a gloved hand up to his chest. He tugged at the zipper on his leather jacket. His hand disappeared inside and came out holding a tiny black micro-Uzi submachine pistol on a sling.

Buitoni saw it too and was reaching for his pistol. But Darcey acted faster. Knocking Lister’s hands out of the way, she grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it a hard quarter-turn clockwise. With a screech of tyres, the Laguna swerved to the right and slammed into the bike. The impact sent the car gyrating wildly all over the road. The Kawasaki went down and hit the tarmac with a shower of sparks, then flipped and slammed down on top of the tumbling rider. The pillion passenger somersaulted into a parked Volkswagen with a bone-shattering crunch that Darcey heard even over the roar of the car’s engine.

‘Please,’ Lister moaned. ‘Don’t let them kill me.’

‘Shut up and drive.’ Darcey aimed her Beretta at the weaving second bike. Before she could get off a shot, the machine’s passenger aimed an identical micro-Uzi over the rider’s shoulder and opened fire. Bullets thunked through the body-work, shattering the windows on Lister’s side. The dashboard and inside of the windscreen misted red.

Lister let out a high-pitched cry. He fell forward against the steering wheel. His foot pressed down on the gas.

They were right down by the river now, just metres from the water’s edge. The car began to veer towards it. Buitoni yelled something in Italian that Darcey didn’t try to catch as she tossed down her pistol and wrestled with the steering wheel, fighting the weight of Lister’s body to keep the car on the road and trying desperately to kick his foot away from the accelerator.

They flashed under a bridge, almost colliding with a slow-moving three-wheel delivery vehicle. The motorcycle came at them again, its pillion passenger letting off another stream of bullets from his Uzi. Buitoni cracked off three shots, but they all went wide as the Laguna veered wildly from side to side.

The road curved away to the left, and suddenly there were trees flashing by between them and the river’s edge. Lister’s body slumped hard to the right as Darcey took the corner, pushing her back and tearing the wheel out of her hand. The Laguna was doing a hundred kilometres an hour as it hit a grassy verge, went into a violent skid, crashed into the trees, flipped and rolled. It came to a rest on its caved-in roof and lay still by the water’s edge.

Darcey opened her eyes. She was suspended by her seatbelt in the upside-down car and covered in blood. The shock of it numbed her for an instant, until she realised the blood was all Lister’s. He was dangling from the driver’s seat, blood bubbling from his lips as he gasped and tried to speak. The inside of the car was littered with spilled debris. Fragments of glass lay everywhere. Lister’s phone charger dangled from its wire, and loose change had showered from his pocket.

‘Paolo,’ Darcey coughed, trying to twist round towards the back seat to face Buitoni. ‘You OK?’ She released the clasp of her seatbelt, fell onto the padding of the car’s ceiling, and crawled across to him. ‘Paolo!’

Buitoni didn’t reply.

He couldn’t. His neck had been broken in the crash. Through the shattered car window, Darcey saw the motorcycle pull over at the side of the road just thirty metres away. The pillion stepped off first, still holding the Uzi. Then the rider dismounted, let the bike down onto its side-stand and they both calmly started walking across the road towards the river’s edge.

Darcey remembered her Beretta. After a few frantic seconds of searching, she realised with an icy jolt that it must have fallen out of the smashed window as the car rolled. She tried to get to get to Buitoni’s, but it was trapped under the weight of his body and she couldn’t budge him.

‘We need to get out of here,’ she said to Lister. ‘Now.’

Lister tumbled from the tangle of his seatbelt and sprawled beside her on the upturned ceiling of the car. He tried to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was a gout of blood. She could see it was too late for him. He’d be dead in minutes, and that knowledge was in his eyes. He reached out with a trembling hand. Extended his bloody index finger.

Darcey realised he was pointing at one of the spilled coins, a mixture of UK currency and euros, that littered the upside-down ceiling of the car. His fingertip prodded weakly at a pound coin. He was fading fast. As his hand fell away, she stared at the bloody fingerprint he’d left on the Queen’s head on the back of the coin. Lister raised his hand again, holding up his index finger. His eyes implored her. Understand. Please understand what I’m trying to tell you.

Lister splayed out his hand, thumb and fingers together. Then folded the little finger and ring finger in.

He was making a number.

One. Five. Three.

‘What’s one-five-three?’ she asked him urgently. She glanced back at the bloodied pound coin. Did he mean money? A hundred and fifty-three what? Million? ‘I don’t understand!’

The motorcyclists were now just twenty metres away. The rider had opened his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster. As he walked, he nonchalantly drew a pistol. The pillion passenger held his Uzi at the hip and let off a rasping blast of gunfire. Darcey ducked as bullets punched through the bodywork and ricocheted around the inside of the car.

When she looked up again, Lister was dead. A round had blown out his temple.

She scrambled out of the car. Gunfire ripped up the ground around her as she sprinted away through the trees at the river’s edge.

There was only one place to go.

She ran straight for the concrete bank and dived into the waters of the Seine. In mid-air, she filled her lungs and prepared herself for the imminent shock of the cold water. She gasped as her body knifed into the surface, then began swimming ferociously, driving deep underwater with strong strokes. The water roared in her ears. Bullets stabbed past her, leaving little spiralling trails. She swam harder, thrashing through the water until her heart was pounding and her lungs felt ready to burst.

When Darcey surfaced with a gasp, she was a hundred metres downriver, hidden by the arched support of a bridge. She huddled against the side and watched as the two motor-cyclists returned to the crashed Laguna. One of them tossed a small black object in through its broken window.

Almost instantly, flames engulfed the car. The motor-cyclists turned and started running back towards the bike. A police siren began to wail in the distance. Then a second.

As the motorcycle roared off, the burning Laguna blew apart.