The Lost Relic

Chapter Seventy-Four

The truth was that, back in Monaco the night before, Ben had lied to Darcey about Shikov calling him back after getting disconnected. Ben’s conversation with the mafia boss hadn’t lasted any longer than it had needed to, and had left him unsure whether he was doing the right thing.

When the phone had rung a second time moments later, it had been someone else responding to the message he’d left on the numbers from Gourko’s mobile. Someone Ben hadn’t been expecting to hear from.

In a tight, terse-sounding Russian accent, the man introduced himself as Yuri Maisky. ‘Grigori Shikov is my uncle. I work for him.’

Ben had sat on the edge of the bed, cupping the phone, waiting for more.

‘You say you have the Dark Medusa.’

‘Right here in front of me,’ Ben had said.

‘You are crazy if you think my uncle will deal with you. He will have you tortured and killed.’

‘I’m a careful guy.’

A hesitant silence. The sound of someone teetering on the brink of an irreversible decision. ‘I can offer you another way. Split the Dark Medusa with me, and you can survive this.’

‘What about Shikov?’

‘I will convince him to let you go.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I have a lot of information. A lot of secrets.’

For the next couple of minutes, Ben had listened as Maisky described some of them. The things the man knew were enough to obliterate Shikov and his whole empire forever.

‘And you’d threaten to spill this to the authorities, just to make him call the dogs off me? Why?’

‘Because I want out,’ Maisky had said. ‘Out of this whole thing, before it is too late. I have a wife and a three-month-old daughter. I want the money to take them far away, somewhere safe. A new life for us all.’

Ben had stood up and started pacing the bedroom as he listened. The guy sounded genuine. More than that, he sounded desperate.

‘Shikov’s worth, what? Tens, hundreds of millions? Why wait for this opportunity to come along? You could have blackmailed him any time. Your freedom, in exchange for his.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Maisky had insisted. ‘He would never have given me the money. He would have found a way to fuck me.’

‘I believe it. If it took him the rest of his life. Whichever way you do this, he’s going to hunt you down. There’d be nowhere safe on this planet, for you or your family.’

Maisky had swallowed. ‘It is the only way.’

‘No, Yuri, it’s the way that’ll get your wife and baby butchered in front of you, and then Shikov’s men will put a bullet in your brain. It’s not going to work. But I can offer you a deal that will. Your uncle’s going down, along with his whole organisation. I’m going to take him down.’

‘I don’t want to go to jail.’

‘You won’t. Not if you help me.’

There had been a long, wary silence on the line. Ben could sense the cogs turning furiously in the man’s mind.

‘You have no other options, Yuri. You said so yourself, and you wouldn’t have called me if you did. Now listen carefully, and I’ll tell you exactly why you need to trust me, and exactly what we’re going to do.’

In the silence of the study, Grigori Shikov stared in disbelief at the scattered corpses of his men. He still didn’t move from behind the desk. His face was as bloodless as a waxwork’s. Yuri Maisky stood watching his uncle with an agonised expression.

Ben stepped around one of the dead bodies and faced Shikov across the desk. ‘You weren’t the only person to get my message,’ he said to the old man. ‘Yuri and I had a long talk. He’s decided he doesn’t want to work for you any more. He wants a life. Consider this his resignation.’

Maisky tossed down his gun. ‘Uncle—’

Shikov’s face turned from white to red as he glowered at his nephew. ‘Yuri. This cannot be true.’

‘Yuri wants to cut a deal with the authorities,’ Ben said to Shikov. ‘Nobody knows your organisation better than he does. He can deliver it to them on a plate. Names. Addresses. Deals. Contacts. Locations of dead bodies across Europe. Details of everything you’ve been doing for decades. Enough shit to lock everyone away for ever.’

‘You will die for this, Yuri.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Ben said. ‘He’s going to be just fine. He and his family will have a new identity and a new life far, far away, courtesy of a British government witness protection programme. All he needed was someone like me to help make it happen for him.’

Shikov stared at Ben in bewilderment. ‘But—’

‘I know what you’re thinking, Ben said. ‘I’m not an agent, I’m not a cop. Yesterday I was an outlaw, wanted for murder. Where does a fugitive get the bargaining power to turn round and dictate terms to the law? Let’s just say things are a little different now. Thanks partly to your pal Tassoni, I have a bit of an edge I didn’t have before.’

A strange keening sound came from Shikov’s throat. His whole face was trembling. His hands were splayed out flat and white against the leather desktop.

Ben kept the Colt pointed at him. ‘As for you, Shikov, I promised myself I’d kill you for what you did to Donatella and Gianni Strada and all the other people who died at the Giordani exhibition that day. But now all I see is a weak, sick, sad old man who’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail.’

Shikov suddenly drew in a gasp of air. His body seemed to convulse. He clawed at his jacket pocket, ripping the seam to get at the tube of pills inside. With a trembling hand he scattered the pills across the desk, grabbed two of them in his fist, shoved them in his mouth and swallowed them dry, choking and spluttering.

‘The pills aren’t working any more, uncle,’ Maisky said. ‘You need help. I can see to it that you are well looked after.’

Ben watched as the old man slowly recovered from his coughing fit. He flipped on the Colt’s safety and let the gun dangle at his side. ‘Yuri says you’re dying of congestive heart failure. Says that, at best, you’re looking at a year. If it was up to me, I’d leave you to rot in a dungeon. But I promised your nephew that you’ll spend whatever time you’ve got left in reasonable comfort. That’s part of the deal.’

‘I promise this is all for the best,’ Maisky said.

Shikov stared in hatred.

‘And by the way, Shikov,’ Ben said, ‘I want you to know that your precious egg was dug up and sold on before you were even out of your teens. You’ve wasted your whole life looking for it. The Arab sheikh who paid millions for it in 1955 might not even have it any more. Who knows? And who cares? It’s lost to you. Always was, always will be.’

Shikov seemed to subside internally as he heard the words, like a building rigged with demolition charges that were detonating in slow motion and collapsing it to the ground. He crumpled slowly to the desktop, sinking down in his chair, clutching his chest. His breath came in great gasps, drowning in the fluid on his lungs.

Then his hand darted to the desk drawer in front of him. Before Ben could react, the Russian’s stubby fingers had hooked around the drawer handle and wrenched it open, dived inside and came out clutching an ancient Mauser pistol. Ben hit the floor at the same instant the shot went off. A display cabinet shattered behind him. Shikov swung the barrel of the Mauser towards Maisky—

And Ben shot him through the forehead.

Grigori Shikov’s eyes and mouth opened wide in surprise. Blood coursed down his face from the hole in his skull. The Mauser tumbled from his big hand. A long, whistling, bubbling breath hissed from his lungs, and then his bulk went slack in the desk chair.

Yuri Maisky stared at the dead body of his uncle. Ben turned to him. ‘You OK?’

Maisky ran his fingers down his cheek, nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I’m OK.’

Then his head exploded.