itself, as if a silent, slow-motion nuclear mushroom cloud was unfolding inside him. The light in his eyes dulled. He faltered, then gradually crumpled lower and lower, inch by inch, until his forehead was resting on the desk.
Maisky had never seen him this bad. He raised his hand, and Gourko stopped talking.
‘Uncle? Are you OK?’
No reply. For a few seconds, Maisky was convinced that the old man had suffered another heart attack. The big one they’d all been grimly waiting for. Visions of him lying dead in his casket, of the long winding funeral procession, unfolded in his mind’s eye. A hundred black limousines crawling in single file towards the cemetery.
On the sideboard was a carafe of water and some crystal tumblers. Maisky hurried over to it, poured a glass of water and was about to start opening desk drawers to look for another bottle of pills when he saw the old man raise his head and open his eyes. No tears. No red. Just a depth of silent rage that sent a chill down Maisky’s backbone.
Shikov drew in a long breath. He held it for what seemed like forever, then let it out, slowly. His lips rolled back from his teeth. He reached down and tore open the middle drawer of his desk, thrust his hand inside.
And came out with a gun.
His old Mauser automatic pistol. An ancient nineteenth-century collector’s piece, but still in perfect condition. The weapon gleamed dully with oil. Its barrel was long and tapered. Maisky stared at it, and for one terrible moment he believed the Tsar was going to shoot them both. Gourko, for having failed to save Anatoly’s life. Him, Maisky, for having failed to warn him against sending his son to Italy.
Unfair. Brutal, even. But then, unfairness and brutality were traits Grigori Shikov was well known for. Maisky waited for the muzzle of the gun to swing his way. Waited for the explosion of the shot, the punch of the high- velocity 7.63mm bullet ripping into his body.
It didn’t happen. Instead, Shikov flipped the pistol over in his right hand, gripping it like a hammer by its long barrel. He reached out with his left, grabbed the edge of the framed sketch and smashed the rounded wooden butt of the gun into the glass. Kept hitting it over and over again, until the frame was hanging in pieces, the card mount was battered and buckled and the picture itself was a crumpled mess.
Then Shikov dropped the ruined artwork down on his desk among the broken glass and splinters and dust, breathing hard. The sketch tore in two as he ripped it from the wrecked frame. He shoved his fingers between where the sketch had been and the twisted backing board, and with a deep grunt of satisfaction he drew his hand out clutching a yellowed old piece of folded paper. His hands trembled with excitement as he unfolded it. He hunched over it, studying it intently.
Maisky had never seen Gourko look baffled before. Only Shikov and his nephew had known what had lain hidden inside the sketch’s frame for more than eighty years.
Shikov finally tore his gaze from the paper and looked up at Maisky.
‘Get the Gulfstream ready,’ he rumbled.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a ruined church near St Petersburg, in Russia,’ Shikov said. ‘To bring back the Dark Medusa.’
Ben was up before eight, took a long shower, dressed and sneaked out of the hotel before anyone could collar him. For all he knew, his face was plastered on every news channel and paper in Italy by now. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. He’d always been able to move around unseen, and anonymity had become second nature to him. All at once, it felt as if a giant spotlight were following him everywhere he went, and planes flying overhead trailing banners saying ‘Ben Hope this way’.
The sun was already hot, and the traffic was insane as he ploughed the big Shogun across Rome to San Filippo Neri hospital. The hospital reception desk was as chaotic as the rest of the city. Ben beat a path through the bustle and managed to find out that Fabio Strada was in Room 9 in a private ward on the fifth floor. He avoided the overcrowded lifts and used the stairs.
It was only as he was approaching Room 9 and reaching out to knock softly on the door that he stopped. Until that moment, he’d been driven by pure impulse to see the man. But now that he was here, he didn’t have any idea what to say to Strada face to face.
At the end of the corridor, sunlight was streaming through tall windows into a little sitting area with armchairs and racks of magazines and a dispensing machine. The place was empty. It would give him a few minutes to get his thoughts in order. He slotted coins into the machine and carried a plastic cup of scalding espresso over to a corner. In Italy, even dispensing machine coffee was good.
He took a seat in the far corner of the room, and sat for a moment thoughtfully sipping his coffee. Someone had left a newspaper on a table nearby, with its front page facing down. He flipped it over.
The first thing he saw was the paper’s title. It was that day’s edition of
It didn’t get any better. His name was printed maybe six times in two inches of text. The media loved a sensational slogan, and the one they’d picked for him was
Ben wasn’t too interested in the count’s impassioned, outraged attack on the animals who had done this. It was the generic ‘something must be done to bring these monsters to justice’ type of rant he’d heard before, a thousand times. He skipped down a few lines.
Then his eye landed on something that caught his attention. The investigation team had immediately turned up one interesting, and mystifying, detail. At least two robbers had managed to get away clean – whereabouts currently unknown. Which meant, barring some of the larger canvases that would have been impractical for a running man to carry, they could have helped themselves to pretty much any painting they wanted. And yet, the only item that appeared to have been stolen – and the only one, as far as the investigators could make out, the gang had even
Ben raised an eyebrow at that one. He raised it higher as he read on: while some of the works that had been irreparably damaged or left untouched were worth tens, even hundreds, of millions of euros, the valuers’ estimate of the worth of the Goya was around the half million mark, maybe less.
Now that
On the other hand, just grabbing the nearest thing to hand and legging it seemed like the work of opportunists – and these guys hadn’t seemed like mere opportunists. The way they’d managed to get past the security showed a high degree of preparation, of professionalism. They’d done their homework. Then again, Ben thought, professional art thieves didn’t compromise themselves by hanging around the scene of the crime to murder and rape hostages at their leisure. They just took what they wanted in the minimum possible time, then got the hell
