‘Oh, he’s not dead or anything like that,’ she said, catching his expression. ‘Though he fucking well deserves to be. Now happily married to Angie, who
Ben smiled. ‘Thanks, Darcey.’ He reached out and touched her hand. She didn’t pull away from his touch.
‘Free to do all kinds of wicked, wonderful things,’ Darcey said. She laced her fingers into his, and moved a little closer.
Ben didn’t pull away either.
Darcey stood up, leading him up to his feet. Her smile fell away and she looked seriously into his eyes. As he stood, her arms slipped around his neck and her lips came up to meet his.
Ben closed his eyes. He couldn’t tell if it was tiredness making him dizzy, or the wine, or something else. He was standing on the edge of the cliff, everything happening in slow motion as part of him struggled to keep from tumbling head over heels into the warm, inviting waters below.
‘Her loss, anyway,’ Darcey murmured.
The first kiss was tentative, almost furtive. Then she pulled him in tight and crushed her lips hard against his. He felt her body pressing into him, and realised it was because he was holding her close. He could feel her heart beating fast against his own as the kissing turned more passionate.
She broke away, breathing hard, her face flushed. ‘Come on.’ Gripping his hand, she led him inside the annexe. Before they even got to the bedroom door she was kissing him again. She shoved open the door with her behind, then pulled him to the bed and swung him round with surprising strength. He flopped down on the soft duvet as she quickly stripped off her top and then clambered onto him, straddling him and smothering him with more kisses, giving him no time to think or to want to stop. She rolled over on her back, slipped one long leg out of her jeans, then the other, and kicked the jeans away and rolled back on top of him, giggling as she fumbled for his belt buckle.
Her phone rang inside the pocket of her jeans on the floor.
They both froze.
‘There’s only one person that could be,’ Darcey said, her mouth an inch from Ben’s. She tore herself off him, swung an arm down from the bed and scrabbled for her jeans. The phone was still ringing insistently. Fishing it out, she quickly put it into hands-free mode so Ben could hear, and hit reply.
‘Darcey?’ A man’s voice Ben hadn’t heard before.
‘Mick?’
‘You OK? You sound a little breathless.’
Darcey brushed a tangle of hair away from her eyes. She couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I had to run for the phone. What’s happening?’
‘It was there in the locker,’ Walker said. ‘Just like you said. I got it, no problem.’ He lowered his voice and sounded serious. ‘It’s a file, Darcey. And I think you need to see it immediately. Have you got a fax there?’
Ben pointed through the open bedroom door. There was a compact phone-fax on a stand in the front hallway of the annexe.
‘Hold on, Mick,’ Darcey said. She and Ben ran over to the fax machine, and she read the number out to Walker.
‘Copy that,’ Walker said. ‘Sending it now. You might want to keep it safe, Darce. Original’s going into a bank deposit box first thing tomorrow. You’ll see why when you read it,’ he added cryptically. ‘Keep in touch, OK?’
Moments after Walker ended the call, the little fax machine whirred into life, sucked in the first sheet of paper and its printer went to work.
‘What do you think it is?’ Darcey asked as she hurriedly pulled her clothes back on.
Ben looked at the digital readout on the front of the machine. ‘Whatever it is, there’s twelve pages of it headed our way.’
The colour fax took less than two minutes to print. It was the entire intelligence file on Operation Jericho.
‘Jamie Lister must have smuggled it out of his office when he went AWOL,’ Darcey breathed. ‘Holy shit. Look at this.’
The classified operation was described in fine detail. It was all there, every official stamp, every high-ranking signature. Some names, like Ferris, Blackmore and Yemm, came up over and over. The first two pages consisted of profiles of Grigori Shikov and his son, the latter shown in a couple of photos on the deck of a motor yacht with a pretty blonde in a bikini.
It wasn’t until Ben got to the third page that the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Here was irrefutable black-on-white proof that the senior intelligence chiefs heading up Lister’s department had known about the gallery robbery well in advance from the reports they’d received from their informant Urbano Tassoni.
The next page showed a face Ben remembered from the robbery. Bruno Bellomo, one of the men he’d dangled from the window. His real name was Mario Belli, and he’d been an undercover agent with clear orders, signed and counter-signed by Lister’s superiors.
‘They didn’t care if innocent people got killed,’ Darcey said in disgust. ‘Look at this line: “a degree of collateral damage may be deemed permissible in order to facilitate the operation”. It’s just like Lister said.’
On the following pages was a dry official summary of the Tassoni shakedown, incorporating a series of compromising photos of him with underage prostitutes, and a summary of the deal that he’d been offered. That information alone was enough to cause a major international incident.
And then, on the next page, came the money shot.
‘Fuck me,’ Darcey muttered.
Tassoni’s picture, with the word ‘ELIMINATED’ stamped in official red across his face. Below it was the codename of the operative who’d carried out the job, with the signature of the chief who’d sanctioned it – Mason Ferris. The next page was a still from the suppressed security footage, showing the real assassin arriving at Tassoni’s house several minutes before Ben.
The final printed sheets consisted of Ben’s military record and some satellite images of him walking through the streets of Rome the night of the shooting. He was too dazed to even look at them.
‘Waste of time, eh?’ Darcey beamed.
That was when they heard the phone ring again. It was a different ringtone from before. The phone Ben had taken from Gourko. He laid the fax printout on a table, dug the phone out of his pocket and answered it. The voice on the other end was deep, gravelly, and hard as titanium.
‘This is Grigori Shikov,’ the voice said. ‘You have something that I want.’
‘You’d better believe it,’ Ben said to Shikov.
A rasping chuckle down the phone. ‘This is the problem. Why should I believe you have the Dark Medusa?’
‘Because I’m sitting here looking at it,’ Ben said. ‘Let me see. I’d say the egg’s about eight inches high, white gold, diamond-encrusted, with images from classical mythology around the outside.’
Shikov was silent for a moment. ‘And on the inside?’ he said suspiciously.
‘The Medusa herself, you mean? The miniature bust is made of bloodstone, dark with little flecks of red. Scary-looking lady. What are those eyes made of? Alexandrite, isn’t it?’
‘Where did you find it?’ Shikov said, audibly shaken and fighting to cover the tremor in his voice.
‘In Bezukhov’s grave,’ Ben replied. ‘Right where the map said. You were just a little too late, Shikov.’ It was a
