The Lost Relic

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.

Chapter Twenty-Three

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.

Chapter Twenty-Four

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