Read The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Online
Authors: Scott Mariani
The dark blue Land Rovers with the white tops and the red stripes down the side and CARABINIERI in big white letters across the doors had rolled silently up the drive to the Academia Giordani and were clustered outside the front entrance. The assault team, clad in back paramilitary gear, helmets and goggles, took down the front door with a battering ram and stormed inside. In seconds, the entrance foyer and hallway were swarming with armed cops.
Spartak Gourko had burst through the gallery the moment he heard the crash of the front door. At the same instant, Rocco Massi emerged from the passage that led towards the fire escape. Neither of them hesitated. As the police stormed into the hall waving their submachine guns and riot shotguns, Massi and Gourko opened up on them. The crossfire was wild and devastating. Five, eight, ten cops went down before the return fire drove Massi and Gourko together back down the glass walkway. Panes shattered around them as they sprinted back to the gallery. ‘Anatoly?’ Gourko roared at the Italian. Massi shook his head, as if to say ‘I haven’t seen him’.
A dozen Carabinieri gave chase. Their commander’s eyes opened wide behind his assault goggles when he saw the displays of artwork. His department would have hell to pay if a single canvas was ruined by a stray bullet.
Massi and Gourko didn’t share his concern. As the Carabinieri emerged into the open gallery space, they were waiting for them. Gourko levelled his AR-15 and let off a long burst at the invading cops that took down one man and sent the rest scurrying for cover. Three display cabinets exploded into spinning fragments. Tatters of canvas that had once been a Picasso worth eight million euros floated down through the gunsmoke.
In the side room, the hostages were yelling and screaming in panic. Donatella clutched Gianni tightly to her, covering his eyes. Another deafening exchange of shots, and they could see the two masked gunmen retreating towards them just beyond the doorway.
One of the hostages saw his chance. Until now, the Robert Redford lookalike in the Valentino blazer had said and done nothing. Now he crept to his feet, eyes glued to the gunmen’s backs.
‘No,’ Donatella said. ‘Don’t do it.’
Pietro De Crescenzo tugged at the man’s sleeve. ‘Get down,’ he implored. ‘You’ll get us all killed, you fool.’
The guy wasn’t listening. He snatched his arm away from De Crescenzo’s grip and before they could stop him he was across the room and had attacked Gourko from behind, grasping for his gun and trying to wrest it from his hands.
Gourko was twice as strong and twice as fast. He’d once held off an entire squad of Chechen guerrillas, armed with nothing more than a sharpened entrenching tool, for five hours until reinforcements arrived. This guy wasn’t going to cause him much trouble. He tore the man’s hands from his weapon and sent him flying with a head-butt that drove his teeth into his throat. The guy screamed and started crawling back towards the other hostages, as if he thought he could hide among them. Crazy with rage, Gourko rushed after him into the side room with his AR-15 down at the hip, pulled the trigger and held it back. More than twenty rounds of high-velocity rifle bullets ripped the room apart, drowning out the screams of the hostages. He didn’t stop firing until the magazine was empty.
By then, the screams of the hostages had been silenced.
Spartak Gourko gazed dispassionately at the carnage inside the room, then turned away. Spotting the padded case containing the Goya picture, he snatched it up and slung it over his shoulder. When he ran back out into the gallery he saw the place was being overrun with cops. Massi was pinned down by gunfire. Gourko spat. Raised his AR-15 and let rip with the underbarrel 40mm grenade.
The explosion shook the room and blew out most of the windows. Glass rained down like an ice storm from the ceiling. Where the Carabinieri had been gaining ground a moment earlier, a lake of fire washed over scattered bodies. Burning cops staggered and fell. A shattered Rembrandt turned a blazing cartwheel across the floor.
Gourko and Massi dashed through the smoke and leaped out of the smashed windows and into the grounds, running like crazy. They vaulted over a low wall, and then were rapidly disappearing across the lawns towards the woodland in the distance.
Ben had raced out of the library just in time to see the heavily armed Carabinieri come swarming into the hallway. He waved his arms and yelled ‘No! There are hostages!’ at the top of his voice – but his shout was lost in the noise as the two gunmen opened fire and drove the assault team back towards the entrance foyer. Ben had just enough time to recognise one of the shooters as the hulk he’d encountered earlier; then he had to duck back inside the library, shielding his face from flying splinters as the two thugs shot everything to pieces with their automatic rifles. He ran back to the girl, trying to shield her as best he could from stray bullets, his mind racing to think what he could do to protect her if the gunmen came in here.
But moments later he realised that the gunfight had moved to the gallery room. He ran back out into the hall and was met by the gun muzzles of the Carabinieri. He raised his arms and laced his fingers over his head. As they closed in on him, he explained that he was one of the exhibition visitors. Rough hands started hauling him away towards the entrance foyer.
That was when the grenade went off inside the gallery. The whole building seemed to rock.
‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled the Carabinieri sergeant who’d been clutching Ben’s arm. He let go of Ben and ran with the rest of his men towards the shattered glass walkway as thick black smoke billowed out into the hall.
Nobody was stopping him in the chaos, so Ben followed them through the acrid smoke. For the first time since the robbery had started, he found himself back inside the exhibition room.
However many more gunmen there’d been, they were all gone now. In their wake they’d left a battlefield. Burning bodies of fallen cops, some dead, some maimed and trying to roll out the flames and crawl to safety. Broken glass covered everything. Many of the precious exhibits were destroyed.
Ben didn’t care about those. His heart was in his mouth as he looked around him, peering through the smoke. No sign of the hostages anywhere – then he looked through the open door to the side room and saw something.
A foot. Someone lying motionless. Ben ran. He burst into the room.
He stared.
He’d found the hostages.
Or what was left of them. Thirty or more bodies lay strewn and piled across the floor. Some lying flat. Some propped against the wall. Blood everywhere, and plaster and dust and debris and scattered bottleneck shell cases from an automatic rifle.
Ben heard a groan. A survivor. He rushed over and saw a dusty hand groping out from the piles of bodies, and a pale face staring at him streaked with dust and blood. It was Pietro De Crescenzo, the count. As Ben looked around him, he realised one or two others were stirring.
And then he saw Donatella and Gianni.
Ben staggered back and slumped against the opposite wall and closed his eyes and felt sick and then the room was filling with shouting Carabinieri.
He scarcely even noticed them haul him to his feet and half-carry him away. Barely registered the chatter of radios and the screech of the sirens, the chaos around him as he was led outside, or the paramedics who sat him down and covered him with a blanket.
The ambulance ride was just a faraway dream.
Dark was falling by the time the fleet of ambulances wailed into the ER bays at San Filippo Neri hospital in Rome and the injured were urgently whisked away by medical staff. Ben refused the wheelchair that the paramedics tried to shove under him. After a few minutes he was taken into a brightly-lit treatment room where he was given a form to fill in and left alone for a while. He sat on a bed with his head in his hands. Didn’t look up when he heard the nurse come to attend to his shoulder. Didn’t speak to her as she gently cut away his bloodied T-shirt and began cleaning his wound. He hardly noticed the sting of the surgical spirit or the prick of the anaesthetic needle as she prepared to stitch him up. He was far away, caught up in a dark storm of rage and guilt and despair.
For the first time in his life he’d voluntarily allowed the police cowboys to compromise a delicate, volatile hostage situation. It went against all his training, all his experience. And look what had happened as a result.
What were you thinking?
I had no choice.
Yes, you did. You could have saved those people.
It didn’t matter how tightly he closed his eyes or ground his fists against them. He couldn’t shut out the image of Donatella and Gianni lying dead. Their staring eyes. Their clothing ripped up by bullets, the pool of their merged blood glazing on the floor. He saw the boy’s face looking up at him as they’d walked down the road together earlier that day. Saw the young mother’s expression of relief and joy as he’d brought her son back to her. She’d been so warm, so vivacious. The kid so inquisitive and smart, his whole life ahead of him.
Now the two of them were lying on slabs somewhere in this very hospital. And that could have been prevented.
It was insupportable.
Ben didn’t notice the nurse leave the room. Time passed – it could have been minutes or days, he had no sense of it. Then a voice broke into his thoughts, speaking his name. He looked up to see two men standing there, both wearing dark suits.
He instantly figured them for police. One of them stood back near the doorway as the other stepped towards him. ‘Signor Hope?’ he repeated. ‘I am Capitano Roberto Lario of the Arma dei Carabinieri here in Rome.’ His English was accented but fluent.
For a long moment, Ben stared at him and said nothing. A hundred emotions welled up inside him, and a thousand things to say. But he wasn’t the only one who was hurting. The sense of shock and grief hanging over these men was palpable, and he could see the tight grimness in their faces and the dark circles around their eyes that signified more than just fatigue from working late shifts. There was little to gain from unleashing his anger at these guys.
‘I’m Ben Hope,’ he said.
Lario held something out to him. A white shirt, neatly pressed and folded. ‘I hope it is the right size.’
Ben took it and put it on. It was tight around the chest and uncomfortable against the thick dressing the nurse had wrapped around his shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
‘I must ask you some questions,’ Lario said. ‘A car is waiting downstairs.’
Ben sat quietly and closed his eyes as the unmarked police Alfa Romeo 159 sped through the streets of Rome. Nobody spoke. Fifteen minutes later, the car was ushered inside a secure compound by armed guards. Lario and his silent companion escorted Ben into a building with heavily barred windows. Inside, Italian flags and the heraldic symbol of the Carabinieri adorned a broad foyer. The same grim atmosphere hung over the whole place as Lario led the way up an echoing flight of steps and along a corridor to an office. His quiet companion disappeared as Ben was shown inside. Lario offered coffee. Ben politely refused.
The police captain’s desk was littered with a ton of paperwork. He cleared a pile to one side, laid a notepad and a file in front of him and launched into what sounded to Ben like the beginning of a long spiel about the terrible events of that day.
Ben cut in. ‘How many survived?’
Lario puffed out his cheeks. ‘Eleven.’
‘Out of thirty.’
‘Thirty-one visitors to the exhibition, the gallery’s three owners and two receptionists. Plus the boy. Thirty-seven in all.’ Lario paused, watching the expression on Ben’s face. ‘I have also lost many men. Seventeen dead, three who may not survive, a further eight severely injured.’
‘Not what I would call a highly successful operation,’ Ben said.
Lario spread his hands, seemed about to say more, then held it back. ‘No.’
‘What happened to the girl?’ Ben asked. ‘About fifteen, blonde. She was in the library.’
‘Claudia Argento. She is being treated for shock. Her parents also survived.’
‘I’m glad,’ Ben muttered, and he meant it. ‘Now, Signor Hope. I know it has been a long and difficult day. But I need you to tell me everything you know.’
Ben explained how he’d become separated from the rest of the guests as the attack started. ‘So I didn’t see all the intruders. But we’re obviously dealing with a professional outfit. Some of them were Italian, some Russian. How many have you arrested?’
‘Two,’ Lario said. ‘And this is something I have been anxious to understand, Signor Hope. We found the two men hanging from a window, their feet bound by a length of fire hose.’
‘I was able to overpower them,’ Ben said. ‘I got lucky, that’s all.’
Lario nodded. He tapped the file on his desk with his fingertips, then flipped it open. Ben recognised the faxed sheet inside. ‘I have read your military record,’ Lario said. ‘That is to say, as much of it as the British Home Office has allowed me to see. I understand you are a man – how shall I put it – of very specific skills.’
‘Used to be,’ Ben said. ‘I’m retired now.’
‘Of course. Tell me, Signor Hope. One of the arrested men has several fingers missing from his left hand. My officers found the fingers in the building. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts as to how this injury could have occurred.’
Ben shrugged. ‘I really couldn’t say. Maybe the guy caught his fingers in a door, or something.’
Lario’s mouth twitched into what could have been a tiny smile. He made another note on his pad.
‘Did you find the two inside the kiln?’ Ben said.
Lario looked blank.
Didn’t think so,
Ben thought. ‘There’s a ceramics classroom on the second floor. Inside one of the kilns you’ll find two of the Russians. Alive, of course, if they haven’t suffocated by now.’
Lario looked at him for a second, then snatched up his phone and fired a stream of commands in rapid Italian.
‘Make a note of this too,’ Ben said when he’d finished. ‘Out of the robbers your men allowed to escape, one has a particular distinguishing feature. An ocular heterochromia.’ When Lario looked blank again he explained, ‘Different colour eyes. One brown, the other hazel. It’s not that obvious, but you’d see it if you looked closely. What’s even more distinctive about him is his physique. Not hugely tall, probably no more than six-three. But built like a tank. A bodybuilder, possibly a steroid user.’
Lario was making notes as Ben talked. ‘And this man was Russian or Italian?’
‘I didn’t hear him speak.’
‘This is useful information nonetheless,’ Lario said. ‘Thank you.’ He paused, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I am wondering whether you can also enlighten me regarding the two dead criminals we have found. One was in the fire escape, and had been shot with a 9mm automatic weapon. The other was in the library where we found Claudia Argento.’
‘Anatoly Shikov,’ Ben said.
Lario wrote it down. ‘You seem well acquainted with his name.’
‘I overheard their conversation.’
‘I see. That was careless of them. Now, this Shikov. The nature of his death was unusual, to say the least. I suppose you would have no idea as to how he came to have an axe buried in his skull?’
An axe. Ben suppressed a grim smile and kept his face expressionless. As if he’d fall for that old trick. ‘I’m afraid I really have no idea.’
‘I see.’
‘Except that there seemed to be some kind of quarrel going on between the thugs,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t ask me why, but it seemed to me that they were fighting among themselves. That’s how I was able to overpower the two I locked up. They’d shot each other in the foot. So perhaps that also accounts for the axe. Maybe the severed fingers, too. Who knows?’
Lario looked at him. ‘Excuse me. Did you just say “in the foot”?’
‘That’s right. Your officers will confirm it when they find them.’
Lario stared at Ben for a long time, as if searching behind his eyes for any sign of a lie. His lip curled up into another faint, wry smile. ‘I suppose we shall never know what really happened.’
‘It was a very confusing time,’ Ben said. ‘It all happened so fast.’
‘I imagine you are no longer used to being, how do you say, in the thick of the action?’
‘As you’ve seen from my record, it’s been a few years since I left the army. These days, the scariest thing I have to face is completing my tax returns.’
‘Then I do not wish to tire you. I think our business is concluded for now, Signor Hope.’ Lario got to his feet. He jutted out his chin. ‘On behalf of the government and people of Italy,’ he said grandly. ‘I thank you for what you have done.’
Ben stood, and they shook hands. ‘I really did very little.’
‘As you say. Nonetheless, we are grateful to you.’ Lario pointed out of the office window at the gated forecourt down below. ‘You will find your car outside. My men found your passport and personal belongings inside and I took the liberty of having it brought here. Ask the duty sergeant for the keys.’
‘So I’m free to go?’
Lario nodded. ‘Though I regret you may be requested to return to testify at some stage during the investigation. Should that need arise, I presume you can be reached at your business address in France?’
‘That’s right,’ Ben said, and headed for the door.
‘Signor Hope?’
Ben turned. Lario was leaning against his desk, watching him with a curious expression. ‘I would not of course allow you to leave so freely if I thought for one moment there were any . . .
irregularities
in your account of the events. You follow my meaning?’
‘Irregularities such as . . . ?’
Lario waved his hand. ‘No matter. I am sure it is quite plausible these men shot one another in the foot. Just as I am sure there must also be an explanation for this poker incident, as well as the severed fingers.’
‘So it was a poker,’ Ben said.
‘My mistake.’
‘When thieves fall out . . .’ Ben said. ‘You know better than me how these things go.’
‘Quite,’ Lario replied graciously. ‘It is of little consequence. And I am sure I need not worry about any . . .
irregularities
taking place during the rest of your stay in Italy?’
‘Not in the least.’ Ben smiled. ‘Why would you?’
‘You are right. Why would I?’
‘In any case, I’m leaving for London tomorrow.’ Ben glanced at his watch. It was after one. ‘Or should I say, later today. My flight’s at four in the afternoon.’
Lario was about to reply when the phone rang on his desk. ‘Excuse me.’ He picked up. ‘Lario.’
There was silence for a few seconds as he listened, a deep frown spreading across his face. He sank down against the desk, sighed and ruffled his hair.
Whatever it was, even on a night like this, it was bad news.
‘Is Strada going to be OK?’ Lario said in Italian.
Ben’s heart went cold at the mention of the name.
Lario’s brow creased into an even deeper frown. ‘Poor guy. To lose his family like that and then . . . OK. Yeah. Thanks for letting me know.’ He hung up the phone, sighed loudly and rubbed his face with his hands.
‘Strada,’ Ben said. ‘As in Fabio Strada?’
Lario looked surprised. ‘You know him?’
‘I met his wife Donatella and son Gianni at the gallery.’ It was hard to say their names. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Fabio Strada has been involved in a serious car accident. He was apparently driving home late from work when his sister called him with the news of the deaths of his wife and son.’ Lario made a face. ‘
Una isterica.
Silly woman. It should not have happened this way. Strada was so stricken with shock that he lost control of the car.’ Lario shook his head sadly. ‘Thank God he was not too badly injured. He was taken to the same hospital you have just come from.’