The Alchemist's Secret (28 page)

He struggled to think clearly. It was almost as if…as if the writer was playing with the form, toying with the letters…compensating for a lack of letters? Now why would he
do
that?

An
anagram?.

He snatched a piece of hotel notepaper from the table and started scribbling. He began eliminating one letter at a time by circling them, trying to create new words out of the strange phrases. He got as far as
‘
L’UILE
ROTIE
N’A
MAL
...
‘the roasted oil has not wrong’...when he realized it was a blind alley and lost patience with it.

Scrunch.
He threw the paper ball furiously across the room and started again on a fresh sheet.

Five more attempts, and he was beginning to think he’d end up buried alive in crumpled paper. But now it was beginning to look like something coherent.

In another fifteen minutes he had it. He looked down at his sheet. The new words weren’t in French, but in the real author’s native Italian.

It was his
signature.
Ben breathed deeply. It looked as though this was what he’d been searching for all along.

There was only one small problem. Even if what he had here
was
a word-for-word transcription of the elusive Fulcanelli manuscript, he still didn’t have anything worth taking back to Fairfax. If the old man had thought the manuscript was going to offer up some kind of medical prescription, or a simple home recipe for making life-saving potions with easy step-by-step diagrams, he couldn’t have been more mistaken. A cryptic mass of arcane riddles and gibberish wasn’t ever going to help little Ruth. This search wasn’t over yet. It was only just beginning. It was after 6.30 am. Light-headed with fatigue, Ben rested back on the couch and closed his burning eyes.

The night breeze rustled the treetops above him. He sat on his haunches, perfectly still and unseen in the bushes, waiting and watching, as silent and patient as any of the wild predatory creatures that lived in the dark forest around him. His mind was shut off from the pain of his cuts and bruises, the graze on his cheekbone and the rawness of his palms after sliding down through the branches of the trellis. He hardly felt anything any longer. But his rage felt like a bubble of molten steel in his throat.

There was nothing Franco Bozza hated worse than failure, than being thwarted, especially when success had seemed so assured. His prizes had been taken from him, and he was powerless to do anything about it. He’d lost.

For the moment.

He waited a while longer, his breathing slowing down as his fury diminished to a simmering rage. His head cocked as he heard the siren in the distance. The wail of the ambulance grew louder on the empty country road, and then it sped by Bozza’s hiding-place, turning the trees and bushes momentarily blue with its flashing lights.

He watched it approaching the entrance to the villa further up the road, slowing for the turn. Before it got there, car headlights appeared, coming the opposite way. Seconds later a battered Renault passed the ambulance in the narrow road. It seemed to slow as the ambulance turned into the villa’s drive, then it picked up speed and Bozza could hear the rattle of its engine approaching. As it came by, he was already moving through the trees to the hidden Porsche.

He caught up with it easily and quickly. As he drew nearer, he waited for a bend in the road where a junction turned off. He switched off the lights. If the Renault driver was paying attention, it would look as though the car behind had turned off in another direction.

Now he sat focused with all his concentration in the darkened, invisible Porsche, with only the dim tail-lights of the Renault to lead the way down the twisting lanes. After a few miles his quarry slowed and turned into the drive of a small country hotel. He pulled the Porsche over to the side of the road, got out and slipped into the grounds.

Hope and the American woman didn’t see him as they walked inside the hotel, but he was only fifty metres away in the shadows. He was under the trees looking up at the building when he saw lights come on. Middle window, first floor.

Time passed. Around midnight he saw two figures in the window. They were dancing.
Dancing.
Then they disappeared and the windows went dark.

Bozza waited a while longer, methodically calculating the layout of the hotel. Then he circled the building until he found a kitchen entrance that wasn’t locked. He stalked along the quiet corridors until he came to the door he wanted. His spare knife was tucked through his belt.

Bozza was inserting his wire pick into the lock when the strip of yellow light appeared at the bottom of the door to the honeymoon suite. He cursed silently, withdrew the lock-pick and retreated into the dark corridor. Hope was too dangerous to confront without the element of surprise. He’d have to wait longer for his chance.

But it would come, it would come.

Ben awoke with a jolt. He could hear the sound of footsteps and movement from the room above. Voices in the corridor outside.

He looked at his watch and swore. It was almost nine. All around him were his notes and scribbles from last night. He suddenly remembered his discovery of the encrypted Fulcanelli signature. He wanted to tell the news to Roberta.

He went into the bedroom and saw that the four-poster was empty. He called her name at the bathroom door, then went in when there was no answer. She wasn’t there either. Where the hell had she gone?

He didn’t like it. He grabbed the pistol, tucked it away out of sight. Left the suite and made his way downstairs. Down in the dining-room, the British tourist group were eating breakfast and all talking loudly. There was no sign of Roberta. He walked into the empty lobby. Through a door, a group of staff were huddled in a circle jabbering in loud, urgent whispers.

He went outside. Maybe she’d gone for a walk. She should have told him. Why hadn’t she woken him?

He walked out of the entrance and across the car-park. The sun was already hot, and he shielded his eyes against the glare from the white gravel. People were milling about. A car-load of new guests were arriving, hauling luggage out of the back of their Renault Espace. There was no trace of her.

As he turned back towards the hotel his pressing thoughts were broken by the sudden shriek of a siren behind him. He spun round. Two police cars were crunching across the gravel in a hurry, throwing up clouds of dust. They pulled up either side of him. Each one had a driver and two passengers. The doors opened, and two cops climbed out of each car and started walking. They were looking at him.

He turned and walked fast away from them.

‘Monsieur?’ All four were coming after him. A radio crackled.

Ben walked faster, ignoring them.

‘Monsieur, one moment,’ the officer called louder.

Ben stopped, his back to them, frozen. The cops caught up with him and circled him. One had the insignia of a sergeant. He was solid and stocky, square shoulders, big chest, somewhere in his mid-fifties. He looked confident, as if he could handle himself. The youngest one was a kid in his early twenties. He had nervous eyes and a shine of sweat on his brow. One hand on his pistol-butt.

Ben knew that if they made a move against him, all four would be disarmed and on the ground before they could get a shot off. The hefty sergeant would be the first to go for. Then the nervy kid. He would be scared enough to shoot. Numbers three and four wouldn’t be a problem. But the two other cops in the cars were out of reach and would have time to get their pistols ready. That was a bigger problem. Ben didn’t want to have to kill anybody.

The sergeant spoke first. ‘Are you the man who called the police?’ he asked Ben.

Officer! I’m the one who called you!’ A guest was coming out of the hotel, a little fat man with grey hair.

‘Pardon me, sir,’ the sergeant said to Ben.

‘What’s going on?’ Ben asked.

The fat guy joined them. He was agitated, breathless. ‘I called you,’ he said again. ‘I saw a woman being abducted.’ He pointed and spilled out the details.

Ben stood back, listening with mounting alarm. ‘It was just over there,’ the fat guy was saying. His words came out all in a stream. ‘He was a big fella. I think he had a weapon…Walked her to a car…Black Porsche…Foreign registration, maybe Italian…She was struggling. A young woman, reddish hair.’

‘Did you see which way the car went?’ the cop asked.

‘Turned left at the bottom of the drive-no, right…no, left, definitely left.’

‘How long ago was this?’

The fat guy sighed and looked at his watch. ‘Twenty minutes, twenty-five.’

The sergeant talked into his radio. Three of the cops stayed to take a statement from the witness and question the staff. The fourth climbed back into his car and it took off up the road.

‘I saw her arrive last night, with her husband,’ the fat man was saying. ‘Wait a minute-now I remember it, he was the man who was standing here just now.’

‘The blond man?’

‘Yes-it was him, I’m sure of it.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘He disappeared a few moments ago.’

‘Anyone see where he went?’

There was a shout. ‘Sergeant!’ It was the young rookie. He was waving a sheet of paper. The sergeant snatched it from him and his eyes opened wider. The picture was probably about ten years old, crew-cut hair, military look. But it was the writing underneath that drew most of his attention.

ARMÉ ET DANGEREUX

Sixteen minutes later, police tactical response units were massing outside the Hotel Royal. Breaking up into groups, black-clad paramilitary officers heavily armed with submachine guns, short-barrelled shotguns and tear gas grenade launchers surrounded the building. The bewildered guests and staff were herded out and made to assemble at a safe distance in the grounds. Word spread, and soon everyone knew about the dangerous armed criminal the police were looking for. Was he a terrorist? A psychopath? Everyone had their own version of the story.

The man’s trail was soon found at the back of the hotel. Behind the staff car-park was an unmown field of grass leading off in the direction of neighbouring farms. A sharp-eyed police officer found the track where the long grass had been bent over. Someone had recently run through it. The police German Shepherd dogs picked up the scent immediately. Barking furiously and straining on their leashes they led their handlers across the field as armed officers followed close behind. The trail cut across the field and into a clump of woodland. The fugitive couldn’t have got far.

But the trail led nowhere. It stopped at the edge of the woods. The officers looked up the trees but there was no sign of him. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air.

It took a few minutes for the pursuers to realize that their quarry had tricked them. He’d doubled back on himself to leave a false trail.

Muzzles to the ground, the German Shepherds led them back to the hotel. The scent led them round the back, through an entrance into the kitchens. The officers drew their pistols. More joined them with shotguns.

Suddenly the dogs stopped, disorientated, sneezing, pawing at their noses. Someone had spilled a catering-sized container of ground pepper all over the floor.

On the signal, the helmeted, black-clad tactical squad swept through every room of the hotel. Exchanging hand signals, covering one another with their weapons, they moved slickly from corridor to stairway and took one floor at a time, one room at a time, checking every possible corner for the fugitive.

They found a man in the honeymoon suite, but not the one they’d expected to find. He was a fifty-two-year-old Frenchman in his underwear, fastened with his own cuffs to one of the bedposts. His face was red and eyes bulged as the police shooters burst in and pointed their guns at him. Someone had stuffed a hotel hand-towel in his mouth. His name was Sergeant Emile Dupont.

The tactical police uniform was a little baggy for Ben, and the trousers were a couple of inches too short. But nobody noticed as he strode confidently out of the hotel, shouting stern orders at some junior officers. Nobody noticed the non-issue green military bag he was carrying.

And nobody noticed when he made his way through the crowds of chattering guests, slipped into one of the police cars parked out front and quietly drove away.

The witness had said the black Porsche had turned left. He’d been hesitant. Ben took a right. Once clear of the hotel he nailed the throttle, glancing in the rear-view mirror to check he’d got away clean. Messages were coming over his radio. He couldn’t stay with this car for long.

She’d only come downstairs to look at the little clothes boutique off the hotel lobby. Ben had been fast asleep over a bunch of notes and papers in the ante-room. She hadn’t wanted to disturb him. She’d be back in five minutes anyway, with something clean and fresh to wear at last.

The boutique didn’t open until 8.45. She gazed in the window, decided on a jumper she liked the look of, and a pair of black jeans. A few minutes to kill, and the morning air was cool and fresh. She took a walk out front, admiring some of the plants, still trying not to think about yesterday.

She hadn’t noticed the man come up behind her. His approach was silent and fast. Next thing, a black-gloved hand was over her mouth and a prickly cold knife point was pressing against her throat. ‘Start walking, bitch,’ said a hoarse whispering voice in her ear. The accent was thickly foreign.

Across the car-park, half hidden behind a broad ornamental shrub, sat a black Porsche with the doors open. The man was big and powerful. She couldn’t struggle free from his grip on her arm, or scream out with that strong hand clamped over her face. He bundled her into the car and punched her in the face, hard. She tasted blood before she passed out.