The Mozart Conspiracy

Chapter Forty-Two

Slovenia

From where Clara had fallen in the snow, she could see the two black helicopters sitting side by side in the field on the other side of the convent buildings. There were more men getting out of them and striding quickly among the buildings. They wore some kind of white overalls and carried small black things. She gaped.

The small objects were guns. Like the one that the man standing over her was pointing at her head.

He grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. She let out a cry of fear and pain. He clamped his hand over her mouth.

A big black shape came streaking around the corner. Max’s eyes were alert and his body stiffened as he saw the man clutching Clara. He growled, advanced and charged at him. He grabbed the man’s arm and dragged him off the little girl, pulling him to the ground and shaking him like a rag doll. Clara was screaming. Two more men appeared through an archway. They aimed their guns at Max and fired. The dog howled and thrashed on the bloody snow.

Leigh saw it all from a distance as she ran through the snow towards the convent. The running figures vaulted the wall into the grounds and circled the buildings, kicking open doors and cocking their weapons. Over the noise of the helicopters she could hear a new sound. The nuns had stopped singing, and now it was their cries of terror and panic that were coming from the chapel’s arched windows. A sound that was cut short by the chattering of suppressed gunfire.

One of the men bundled Clara roughly under his arm and carried her kicking and thrashing and screaming towards the waiting choppers. Leigh’s heart was hammering furiously. As she watched, one of the nuns burst out of the chapel, her face contorted in horror. She made it halfway across the courtyard before she was cut down by a blast from a gun. She collapsed on her face, the black-and-white habit stained with red. They got her by the ankles and dragged her body towards the chapel, leaving a thick trail of blood on the snow. Through the open chapel door Leigh could see the men throwing dead nuns in a bloody, twisted heap at the foot of the altar.

She would have done anything to help Clara, but there was nothing she could do except run the other way. She sprinted back to the cottage. Nobody had seen her. She crashed through the door and ran inside. She was shaking violently.

The shotgun on the rack. She looked up at it for an instant, then grabbed it down. Her hands trembled as she rummaged in the drawer for some cartridges. She thrust a fistful of them into her jacket pocket, opened up the gun’s action the way Ben had shown her, and slipped a round in each barrel.

She burst out of the cottage.

Run like hell, Leigh.

She dashed through the passageway leading to the farm. She let out a cry as a man stepped out pointing a gun at her head.

His face was hard, his eyes serious as he stared down the twin bores of the shotgun. ‘Drop the weapon,’ he warned, levelling his own.

Leigh didn’t have time to think. She wrapped her fingers around the two triggers and let off both barrels. Right in his face. The gun kicked violently back, making her stagger.

The impact of the gun at extreme close range was devastating. The man’s features disintegrated. Blood flew up the wall. She could taste the thick saltiness of it on her lips. She spat and ran on again, jumping over him and away from the convent. As she stumbled through the snow she feverishly reloaded the shotgun the way Ben had shown her.

Another man saw her and gave chase. She reached the low perimeter wall and vaulted over it, making for the cover of the trees.

He had orders not to kill her unless necessary. He fired a warning spray at the snow around her feet as she ran. Passing the snowman she’d built with Ben the day before, she turned and let off a barrel. The boom echoed across the valley.

He felt the sharp bite of stray pellets in his thigh, slapped it and saw blood on his fingers. Angry now, he raised his weapon, this time to bring her down. Orders be damned. He’d seen what the bitch had done to Hans.

She was zigzagging across his line of fire, feinting left and right to put him off. He squeezed the trigger. The chatter from the weapon churned up the snow and gouged the bark off a tree to her left. Then his magazine was empty. He slung the gun behind his back and drew the combat knife from the sheath on his belt.

Twigs and branches raked at her clothes and whipped her face as she darted through the dense forest. The long shotgun caught on a branch and was torn from her grip. She started to run back for it, but he was gaining on her. She gasped and staggered on. But where could she run to? The steep drop down to the river was just up ahead. She’d run herself into a trap.

The man saw the fallen shotgun and picked it up. There was a hammer cocked. One barrel gone, one to go. He smiled to himself. She was just twenty yards away, and the brightly coloured quilted jacket was an easy target against the forest.

He took aim and fired.

The shotgun kicked back against his shoulder with a rolling boom. The double barrel jerked upwards with the recoil and through the smoke he saw her go down.

She staggered and went down on one knee. For a moment she clutched at a sapling, trying to stay upright. Then she pitched headlong into the thicket and tumbled head over heels down the slope, crashing down with a crackle of twigs.

The man walked coolly up to the edge of the thickly wooded drop. It was a long way down. He could hear the rush of the river below. He looked down at his feet. Where she’d fallen, the snow was stained red.

He craned his neck, peering down. He saw her, far below. She was lying tangled in the snowy reeds near the water, one arm outflung, her black hair spread across her face. There was blood on her lips and her exposed throat, and all down the front of her torn jacket. Her eyes were open and staring up at the sky.

He watched her for ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. She wasn’t moving. No breath. Not a flicker in the eyes. He unzipped a pocket and took out a small Samsung digital camera. He switched it on and zoomed in on the body until it filled the frame. He took three shots of it and then put the camera back in his pocket.

Something glinted gold in the corner of his eye. He reached out and snatched the little gold locket from where it had snagged on a naked twig. He held it out on his palm. It was spattered with bright blood.

The convent was burning now, and the screams had been silenced. The first chopper was already rising up into the sky, rotors beating through the black smoke.

He turned and started walking back.