heel of his shoe when he heard the marching footsteps run right up to the bathroom door.
The handle turned. The door rattled furiously. That flimsy lock wasn’t going to last long.
As the first heavy kick pounded the door, Ben leaped across the room and out through the French windows onto the balcony. It was too high to jump down to the concrete below without risking injury. He craned his neck upwards and saw that there was another balcony window directly above. The old house was built from solid stone, and the masonry had been expertly pointed, with recesses between the blocks that looked just about deep enough to climb.
As more kicks thudded violently against the bathroom door, he jumped up onto the balcony rail, turned to face the wall and dug his fingers into the cracks in the stonework to the left of the window. He swung his legs off the balcony. For a few painful seconds, his fingertips took his weight as he brought up his knees and scrabbled against the wall with the toecaps of his shoes until he found a crack. He was clear of the window now, clinging to the sheer wall like a spider. He reached up with his right arm, groped for another hand-hold and found it. Then the left foot, feeling around for a good purchase, then pulling himself up so he could grab another hold with his left hand. The second floor window was still tantalisingly far above him. He climbed faster.
Down below, the bathroom door burst open with a crash and the two gunmen rushed in, weapons at the hip, knees bent to brace themselves against the recoil. A storm of automatic fire shattered tiles and blasted apart the sink, riddling the walls with holes. Before the men even realised the room was empty, it was destroyed. One of them motioned to the French windows. They ran over to them and burst out onto the balcony.
Ben was clambering over the rail of the balcony above when he looked down and saw the masked gunmen below him, craning their necks down at the ground. They hadn’t spotted him. For a moment he was tempted to jump down and try to take them both – but some kinds of heroics could get you killed in a hurry.
By the time they’d looked up from the balcony below, Ben had disappeared out of sight and was going in through the second floor window.
The two men heard the smash of glass above them and knew what it meant. One grabbed a radio handset from his pocket, hit the press and talk button and said in Italian, ‘This is Scagnetti. I’m with Bellomo. We have a runner.’
The reply that came over the radio was ‘Find him. Kill him.’
It didn’t take Anatoly long to find the piece of artwork his father had sent him all the way to Italy to obtain. The framed Goya sketch looked pretty much the way it had in the photo he’d seen in the old man’s study. Just a plain and, to him, frankly pretty fucking boring picture of some scraggy dude crouched down on his knees. The poor bastard was barefoot and had a desperate expression on his thin face. He was wearing a shapeless robe that could have been a bit of old sacking material, and his hands were clasped together in supplication as he prayed fervently to God for something or other. Salvation, Anatoly supposed. Or maybe just a decent suit of clothes.
Anatoly looked at the picture for a long time and the same two questions kept coming back to him. Why would anybody bother drawing such a dull and depressing picture? And why the fuck would anybody want to own it? You’d have thought the old man would have picked something better.
There was a small plaque on the wall next to the display cabinet that housed the picture. It said
Now
But what the hell. Anatoly sighed and turned back to the Goya. Raising his Steyr, he was about to whack the protective glass casing when he remembered what that prick Maisky had said about the impregnable security shutters that would come slamming down to seal off the whole place if anyone messed with the artwork. Before it could be taken off the wall they had to enter the three codes to disable the secondary alarm system. Right.
Anatoly walked back to the side room, swinging his gun as he went. Passing the food table he scooped a handful of stuffed olives from one of the plates he hadn’t blown apart earlier on. He popped it through the mouth hole of his balaclava and chewed noisily as he approached the clustered hostages. Gourko and Rykov were standing over them with their weapons trained menacingly. Turchin was over by the window, refilling a magazine from loose rounds in his pocket. Rocco Massi and one of his guys were slumped in a couple of canvas chairs, holding their guns loosely across their laps. The two Italians Rocco had sent upstairs hadn’t returned yet.
Anatoly popped another olive and surveyed the crowd of frightened faces, feeling supremely in control. His gaze stopped at the young girl who was in the arms of her mother. Her face was hidden by a mass of blond curls, but running his eye down the curve of her body he liked what he saw. The strap of her pretty little dress was just off the shoulder, showing the flimsy bra strap underneath. She couldn’t be more than fifteen, he thought, and wondered if she was still a virgin. A budding little flower, just waiting to be plucked by ol’ Anatoly. Nice. Very nice.
A couple of the hostages gasped in fear as he stepped forward and reached down abruptly to grab the girl’s bare arm. She let out a whimper as she felt his fingers close tightly on her skin. He hauled her away from her mother, yanking her body round so he could see her face. So adorable. He stroked her cheek lightly. It was sticky with half-dried tears, and that really turned him on. He cocked his head a little to the side, looked into those sweet, moist blue eyes and gave her a crooked smile. ‘Later, babe, later,’ he muttered in Russian.
First, though, he had more pressing matters to take care of. He dumped the girl back down on the floor. Scanning the rest of the hostages he quickly picked out the faces of the three men whose photos his father had shown him. ‘You, you and you,’ he said, pointing with his Steyr.
Rocco Massi stood and jerked his thumb at the three men. ‘Get up,’ he barked in Italian. De Crescenzo, Corsini and Silvestri nervously got to their feet, stiff and rumpled from crouching on the floor. The count was deathly pale. Silvestri dusted off his suit and tried to look dignified. Corsini’s chubby face flushed with indignation; he opened his mouth to say something, but it never came out, because Gourko slapped him hard across the face and then grabbed a fistful of his collar and shoved him brutally towards the door. Corsini stumbled, and Anatoly aimed the toe of his boot at those fat buttocks, sending him sprawling on his face through the doorway.
‘There is no need whatsoever for this violence,’ De Crescenzo stammered. ‘Whatever it is you want, we’re more than happy to comply.’
‘Oh, we know that,’ Rocco Massi said. De Crescenzo and Silvestri were prodded through the door at gunpoint as Corsini picked himself up with a moan.
Anatoly pointed at the closed door a few metres along the end wall. ‘Ask them what’s in there,’ he said to Rocco. The big Italian translated. De Crescenzo cleared his throat and replied, ‘That is the office from which we control the security system.’
‘Open it.’
The count fumbled in his pocket, took out a key ring and unlocked the office door. Anatoly shoved it open and led the way inside. The room was small and quite bare, except for a couple of steel filing cabinets, a worktop with a bank of computer equipment and some office chairs.
The three gallery owners were made to sit. Anatoly leaned against a filing cabinet, twirling his weapon. Rocco stepped up to Corsini’s chair, bent down so that his nose was just inches from the man’s sweaty face, and
