Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7) (36 page)

Only when the sword had been safely stored away on Wesley’s arrival had he truly been able to relax, helped by a few tots of best Bourbon to restore his shattered nerves after the nightmare trek east.
Calm down. You’re alive. Nobody knows you’re here.
For a while he’d basked blissfully in the knowledge that he was safe. He had everything he needed, enough supplies and food to live comfortably for months without venturing near a town.

But now the pressure was returning, and so were the worries. Wesley was sporadically haunted by visions of death and carnage. Poor Coleman, and Hubert Clemm, and Abigail, and Kat the receptionist at the motel whose name he couldn’t even remember. All these people who’d been senselessly slaughtered. And the reality was that these ruthless killers were still out there, searching for Wesley while he sat on his ass doing nothing.

Why wasn’t Simeon answering his phone any more? Had something happened to him? In a moment of panicky insecurity, Wesley had taken a heavy cavalry sabre down from one of his wall displays. It had last seen action at Waterloo but the blade was still shaving sharp. The weapon was propped against a chair behind him now as he stood at the window, close to hand, just in case.

It was time to start planning his next move. He walked away from the window, picked up the sabre by its steel scabbard and carried it over to the old-fashioned Bakelite dial telephone. The mechanism whirred as Wesley carefully dialled in the prefix that would block his caller ID, followed by Bob Mooney’s direct line at his offices in Rochester.

The instant the lawyer heard Wesley’s voice, he exploded. ‘Jesus Christ, Wesley. Why haven’t you called? Where in hell are you?’

‘Best you don’t know. Somewhere far away.’

‘What’s going on? Everyone here is frantic with worry. The cops need to talk to you. In case you’d forgotten, there’s a murder investigation going on at your house. You can’t just up and disappear like this.’

‘Am I a suspect?’

‘Not that I’m aware of, but I know the way cops think and it doesn’t help that you run off like a fugitive and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.’

‘I have my reasons, Bob. You’ll find out soon enough. That’s not why I’m calling. There’s something I need you to do for me. Can I count on you for this? It’s important.’

Mooney sounded hurt. ‘Hey, how long have we known each other?’

‘Here’s what I want. Find out who’re the best personal protection team in the country. Whatever they charge, pay them double, triple, just make sure you hire them. I want the meanest, toughest sons of bitches you can dig up. I’ll contact you again in twenty-four hours and you give me the number to call.’

A moment’s appalled silence on the phone. ‘Wesley, if you’re in some kind of trouble here—’

‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘Why do you need protection?’

‘Will you do this for me or not?’

‘Naturally I will. Give me your number there so I can put these people in touch with you.’

‘No, Bob.’

‘I’ll know it anyway.’

‘I withheld it.’

Bob seemed amazed that Wesley should be savvy to such modern trickery. ‘Come on, Wes. You gotta give me something.’

‘When it’s the right time, I’ll tell you where I am.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Once everything’s in place. Then I’ll fill you in as best I can. Until then, I’m keeping my mouth shut.’

Mooney let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Is it serious trouble? Tell me that at least.’

‘Pretty serious.’

‘Does it have to do with what happened at the mansion?’

‘Uh-huh. And more besides.’

‘For Chrissakes, Wes, even I can’t hold back the tide for ever. You’ve got to come forward with this. As your lawyer I have to tell you that the weirder you act, the less you’re gonna look like the chief witness and more like the chief suspect. That’s how the cops, and everyone else, are going to see it.’

‘That can’t be helped for the moment,’ Wesley said. ‘I trust you, Bob. Talk to you tomorrow.’

Wesley hung up the phone, picked up his sabre and walked through the airy house to the kitchen to check on how his steak was defrosting. A bottle of 1993 Bordeaux was sitting opened on the side, nothing too ostentatious, a modest little hundred-dollar table wine to go with his dinner. Thinking he’d like to replay those Bach Goldberg Variations that he’d been listening to earlier, he turned back towards the living room.

A man he’d never seen before was standing in the hallway, looking right at him.

‘Wesley Holland?’ the man said.

Wesley sucked in a great lungful of air and felt his knees turn to jelly. He staggered back a step. ‘I’m not Holland. Who the hell are you?’

‘We spoke on the phone,’ the man said. ‘And I never forget a voice.’

‘You get away from me,’ Wesley rasped. He gripped the hilt of the sabre and rattled the weapon out of its steel scabbard.

‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ the man said, moving forward a step.

Wesley didn’t believe that, not for one moment. He could see the purposeful look in the stranger’s eye, and was ready to make a lunge with the blade and then run like hell for the vault. He’d lock himself in down there, even if it meant starving to death. Anything was preferable to what these people would do to him.

‘Another step closer and I’ll run you right through, mister. I mean it.’ His hand was shaking so badly he could barely grip the sabre hilt.

‘Why don’t you put that down, so we can talk?’ the stranger said.

‘Who are you?’ Wesley quavered. ‘What do you want from me?’

At that moment, another figure appeared in the hallway. He was a younger man of about twenty, with a shock of fair hair. Wesley peered at him. He could have sworn the young man looked familiar.

‘I’m Jude Arundel,’ he said. ‘You were a friend of my father’s.’

A stunned silence in the hallway.

It was Wesley who broke it. ‘What do you mean, I
was
a friend of Simeon’s?’

‘He’s dead,’ Jude said tightly. ‘So is my mother. They were killed by the same people who are after you.’

Wesley suddenly felt unsteady on his feet. He staggered over to a chair and slumped heavily into it, dropping the sabre to the floor and sinking his face in his hands. ‘Oh, no. I warned him. I told him to be careful.’

‘We’ve come a long way to see you, Mr Holland.’ Ben picked up the fallen sabre, replaced it in its scabbard and propped it against the wall. ‘My name’s Ben Hope. I’ve known Simeon and Michaela Arundel for twenty years, and I was with them when they died. I was staying at their home the night you called there.’

‘How did you find me here?’

‘Not too easily, you’ll be pleased to know,’ Ben said. ‘You did a pretty decent job of covering your tracks.’

‘I was lucky, that’s all. They very nearly got me on the road.’

‘Have you told anyone where you are?’

‘You have to be kidding. Not even my lawyer knows.’

‘All the same,’ Ben said, ‘do you keep a gun in the house? Any kind of gun’ll do.’

‘There’s a Revolutionary War musket in the vault,’ Wesley told him. ‘It hasn’t been fired in centuries, though.’

‘Forget it.’

Wesley sighed. ‘I need a drink. Let’s go into the kitchen.’

Dinner was forgotten for the moment. Wesley settled onto a padded stool and emptied a third of his ’93 Bordeaux into a large wineglass. Both Ben and Jude declined the offer of a drink.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss, son,’ Wesley said after a few gulps.

‘Thanks,’ Jude muttered.

Wesley turned to Ben. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘You tell him,’ Jude said to Ben. He walked over to the window and turned his back for a few moments. It was getting darker outside. The distant meteorological observatory tower was lit up, throwing a red light across the water.

‘Their car was forced off the road,’ Ben said. ‘It was set up to look like an accident.’

‘Did they suffer?’ Wesley whispered.

‘No,’ Ben lied. ‘It was very quick.’ He glanced over at Jude, paused, and then went on. ‘I don’t think it was as quick for Fabrice Lalique. But you already knew about that.’

‘I didn’t know whether to believe the suicide story or not,’ Wesley admitted. ‘At the time, it seemed crazy to start spouting conspiracy theories.’

‘In my experience,’ Ben said, ‘the truth is often crazier than what you read in the papers. I’m pretty certain the killers were the same people who planted the paedophile material on his computer. You have some very nasty and powerful enemies, Mr Holland.’

‘You got that right,’ Wesley grunted. ‘These ruthless sonsofbitches can track you from your credit card and God knows what else. Who the hell are they?’

‘That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.’

‘How should I know who they are?’

‘Because of the sword.’

Wesley drained his glass, set it down and looked long and hard at Ben, then at Jude. ‘You know about the sword?’ he said slowly.

‘We’ve just come from Jerusalem,’ Jude told him.

The billionaire’s eyes widened in amazement. ‘You found Hillel?’ Then a terrible thought struck him. ‘He’s not—?’

‘He’s alive and well and still enjoying his semi-retirement,’ Ben said. ‘He drove us to Masada and showed us where he made his discovery back in 1963. We know how much you paid him as a reward for finding it. We know just how important it is to you, and how important it was to Simeon and Fabrice. We know everything about the sword, except what really matters. What is it, where is it, and who would want it so badly they’d kill you, us, or anyone else to get it?’

Wesley hesitated. ‘You have to realise, it’s very hard for me to trust you. You don’t understand how important this is.’

‘You have no choice but to trust us,’ Ben said. ‘You’ve been pretty clever so far, not to mention lucky, but these people won’t give up so easily.’

‘I’m safe here,’ Wesley insisted. ‘And I can hold out for a long, long time.’

‘You can’t stay hidden for ever. You’re all over the TV and internet. It’s just a question of time before someone recognises you and word gets out that the mysterious billionaire is holed up on Martha’s Vineyard. Then these people are going to come for you. They’ll torture you until they have the sword, and then if they’re feeling merciful they’ll put a quick bullet in your brain.’

‘Or else they’ll feed you to the great whites,’ Jude added, jerking his thumb in the direction of the ocean.

It seemed to have the desired effect. The billionaire gulped, then gave a reluctant nod. ‘All right. The sword is here. Come with me, and I’ll show it to you.’

Wesley led Ben and Jude along a bare white passage. At the end of it was a metal doorway with no handle and no visible hinges, just a shiny blank panel mounted on the wall to its right.

‘I don’t generally go for newfangled technology,’ explained the owner of several leading electronics corporations, ‘but I’m willing to admit it has its uses now and then.’ He pressed his palm flat against the panel. After a very slight pause while the scanner did its work, an LED blinked, there was a click, and the door opened.

‘This way,’ Wesley said, showing them through. Beyond lay a downward flight of steps, immaculate and white, leading to a heavier security door equipped with a keypad and a rotary combination lock.

‘It’s where I store some of my knick-knacks when I’m not around,’ Wesley told them. ‘Seeing as the place is empty a lot of the time. Hold on while I key in the codes. They’re long ones.’

As the billionaire fiddled with the vault door, Ben noticed Jude’s drawn expression and felt sorry that wounds had been reopened by talking about the car accident. He touched Jude’s shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked softly. Jude nodded. Ben patted him on the arm.

A solid metallic ‘thunk’ sounded from the massive innards of the vault door, and Wesley heaved it open with an effort. The vault was an octagonal room, thirty feet across, that seemed to have been cast out of solid steel. Inside, it was like a museum.
Knick-knacks
, Ben thought, looking around him at the artwork that hung behind glass on the metal walls. He was no expert, but recognised a couple of Van Goghs and a Cézanne. There was no need to ask if they were real, or if the hundred or so swords of various shapes and sizes that hung on wall racks were cheap mail-order reproductions.

‘What’s that?’ Jude said, pointing at an object on a display stand.

‘It’s a Fabergé egg,’ Ben said.

‘How come you know so much?’

Ben just shrugged.

‘Oh, that stuff’s nothing compared to what you’re about to see,’ Wesley said, waving them across to a plinth on which lay a black oblong case, a little under four feet long. Ben and Jude stood either side of him as he produced a key from his pocket and clicked open the locks, then opened the lid.

‘There it is,’ Wesley breathed, his eyes glowing.

The case was lined with thick protective foam padding. Nestling inside was the sword that Ben recognised from Fabrice Lalique’s drawings. They had been a close likeness of the curious sickle-shaped blade and curved hilt. The latter was bronze, age-tarnished to a dark reddish patina. The steel of the blade was dull and pitted with the centuries, here and there showing traces of its former glory.

It wasn’t a large weapon, nothing like as imposing as many of the medieval battle swords in the vault, with their long triangulated blades and cruciform hilts, some of them obviously intended to be wielded with two hands, and even then with some difficulty. Nor was it any more ornate than Lalique’s drawings had suggested. The metalwork of the hilt was plain and unadorned, and only the faint inscriptions on the blade hinted at any kind of special craftsmanship – to Ben’s eye, at least.

One thing you didn’t have to be an expert to notice was that the sword had been used in battle. The blade was notched here and there where its edge had clashed against the edge of another sword, armour plate or shield. The weapon had been a witness to the bloody reality of history.

As delicately as handling a newborn baby, Wesley reached into the case and lifted out his trophy. He held it up to show them with a look of reverence, as if choirs of angels were bursting into song inside his head.