The Lost Relic

Chapter Sixty-Two

With the doors shut, the inside of the prison van quickly turned into an airless sweatbox under the Rome sun. It was a jarring, jolting ride, and Ben steadied himself as best he could against the bare metal wall, trying to keep his mind blank of thoughts of where they were taking him and the fate that awaited him.

Nobody had even mentioned a lawyer yet. No phone calls, no contact with the outside world. Jeff Dekker at Le Val must be tearing the world apart trying to find out what was going on.

And Brooke . . . she’d know, too. She’d know that Ben had been caught just a few kilometres from her place in Portugal. Would she guess that he knew her secret? That he’d seen her there with . . . with whoever this guy was?

What am I going to do, Ben asked himself. If he ever got out of this mess, could he even bear to see her again? Did he want to hear what she had to tell him? Should he just try to forget that the last few months had ever happened? He had no answers. He felt lost, and so very alone.

The prison van must have been on the road for some twenty minutes when a sudden violent swerve sent Ben and his travelling companion sprawling across the bare metal seats. Ben was about to say something when he heard the sound of gunfire outside – a ragged string of single shots cracking off somewhere behind the van, followed by a long sustained burst. The two of them dived for the floor as a flurry of percussive impacts clanged against the flank of the vehicle. But Ben quickly sensed that the prison van wasn’t the principal target of whoever was doing the shooting.

The van was suddenly rocked in the shockwave of a huge explosion that was deafening even from inside. Something other than bullets cannoned off its side: flying pieces of whatever it was that had just been blown apart nearby. The van went into a skid, its tyres shrieking as the wheels locked, then hit something solid. With nothing to hold on to, Ben and his companion were hurled forwards, hit the sheet metal partition separating them from the cab, and sprawled to the floor.

A second explosion boomed out. Ben smelled the acrid stink of burning fuel and plastic. They heard the front doors of the van opening, the sounds of men yelling. Then more shots, and yells turned into screams.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shooting stopped. Ben turned towards the van’s rear doors as he heard running footsteps and more voices. They weren’t Italian.

He hadn’t heard the sound of the Russian language since that day in the art gallery.

The voices were drowned out by a final blast of gunfire from right behind the van, a ripping flurry of bullets chewing through the locks. The doors flew open. Sunlight flooded into the back of the van.

Two men stood framed in the open door, holding stubby black submachine guns. From the cold efficiency in the guy’s eyes, Ben could tell that the one on the left had done this kind of thing before. Ex-military, a gun for hire.

The one on the right, with the buzz-cut hair, who looked as if he’d had his face torn off and stitched back together with a nail and string – he was different. This wasn’t just a job for him. If a shark could smile, it would have contemplated its next meal the way the guy was looking at Ben right now. He jerked the barrel of his SMG. ‘Get out,’ he said in guttural English.

Ben guessed it was meant for him. Big surprise. He stood up, keeping his head ducked low, stepped towards the back door and jumped out.

The guy with the scar shouldered his weapon, and before Ben could react, he fired a single shot into the back of the van. The second prisoner’s head exploded in a red mist and he slumped to the metal floor. The scarred guy’s companion unholstered a pistol and aimed it at Ben’s heart. There wasn’t much Ben could do but stare at the scene around him.

What must have been a normal street on the edge of Rome just moments earlier now resembled a scene from Kosovo at the height of the Bosnian war. The two police Alfas that had been escorting the prison van were burning wrecks. One car was lying roofless and twisted on its side, flames pouring out. A charred arm sticking out of the driver’s window was all that remained of the cops inside. The other car was buried under the front of the van, crumpled and blackened like a Coke can tossed in a fire. The bodies of the van driver and prison guards were littered bloodily across the road.

They weren’t alone. Through the smoke, Ben could see at least half a dozen dead passers-by strewn about the pavements, cut down as they went about their business. A taxi was stopped in the road, its horn stuck and blaring. The inside of its shattered windscreen was smeared with blood.

One of the Carabinieri had obviously managed to leap clear of his car before it exploded. Not clear enough. He was crawling pitifully away from the burning wreckage, dragging himself with bloody fingers. His legs were ablaze.

Six men had done all this in under a minute. Four of them were heading back in a group towards a big black Mitsubishi SUV nearby, carrying automatic weapons and a couple of ex-Soviet rocket-propelled grenade launchers. As they passed the burning cop, the tallest of the men casually shot him in the back of the head. It wasn’t meant as an act of kindness. One of the others let out a laugh.

The badly-scarred Russian shoved Ben roughly towards the Mitsubishi. ‘Walk,’ he said.

Ben walked. The hijackers didn’t even seem to be in a hurry as they climbed aboard the seven-seater SUV. Ben was bundled in the middle of the centre row with the pistol still aimed at his heart. The man with the scar sat beside him. He gave a command to the driver in Russian, and the Mitsubishi took off.