‘You shouldn’t have,’ he said, taking the package, embarrassed that he hadn’t anything to offer the Arundels in return. ‘Am I allowed to open it?’
‘No!’ Michaela said quickly, reaching out abruptly to stop him tearing open the wrapping — then relaxed and smiled. ‘Not now. You have to promise me that you won’t peek until you’re back in France. Then you can open it and think of us.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said, wondering what it was. Through the Christmas paper it felt like a small hardback book, not much bigger than a diary.
‘Solemnly? You won’t be tempted?’
‘Get me a Bible,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll swear on it. Or maybe it is a Bible?’
‘No,’ Michaela said softly. ‘It isn’t a Bible.’ Her expression was a strange blend of relief and apprehension. She was quiet for a few moments, then said something about needing to check something upstairs, and disappeared.
Simeon was still on the phone to the archdeacon. Left to his own devices Ben went to the annexe to put Michaela’s present away safely in his bag, then wandered outside to the woodshed to gather some logs for the living room fire, which he’d noticed was getting low. The firewood was neatly stacked along the shed wall near the door, a heavy log-splitting axe and a small hatchet resting against the chopping block. He hefted a piece of well- seasoned oak onto the block, grabbed the axe, and with a downward swing cracked the log neatly in two. He set the split pieces aside and grabbed another log. His breath billowed in clouds as he worked.
He felt something nudge his leg, and turned to see what it was. ‘Hey there, Scruffy,’ he said as the dog nuzzled against him, and stroked the coarse fur of his head. The dog wasn’t the prettiest of creatures — the bull neck and alligator snout of a Staffordshire mixed up with the wiry, untameable coat of a Border Terrier — but there was a look of calm intelligence in those wide-set eyes. Criminal or saint: Ben wasn’t too sure which he was.
‘You like being a vicar’s dog?’ Ben said.
Scruffy cocked his head and looked at him curiously, then went off to settle on the floor a few yards away and gnaw contentedly at a piece of wood. If only life could be that simple for humans, Ben thought.
Going on chopping, Ben heard Simeon’s voice from inside the vicarage, calling up the stairs to Michaela that he had to rush out to attend to a church matter. Moments later, the Lotus was roaring off into the distance.
Ben added two more split logs to his growing pile and wondered how it could be that Simeon Arundel — this vicar whom everyone seemed to admire and respect, living this cosy life out here in the tranquillity of the English countryside, writing books on religion and running his churches — was talking about being in danger. It seemed so incongruous and bizarre. The way Ben saw it, Simeon was the last person on earth anyone would want to harm.
He suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He glanced up from the chopping block and through the open door of the barn, just in time to spot Michaela backing away from an upstairs window of the vicarage. In the split second their eyes met, Ben could see the odd look on her face.
Why had she been watching him? He kept seeing her strange expression in his mind as he tossed the split logs into a sack and headed outside. With the dog trotting behind him he lugged the logs inside the house to stack beside the living room fireplace.
As the fire revived, Ben sat with the dog and watched the flames, wondering what secrets were being harboured behind the idyllic face of Arundel family life. Something was going on, and he had the feeling it somehow involved him.
‘It’s all a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it, Scruff?’ he said softly, turning to the dog.
Scruffy licked Ben’s hand. Whatever he knew about it, he was keeping to himself.
Chapter Eight
The road was long and dark as Wesley Holland threaded his way slowly eastwards across New York State to the beat of his windscreen wipers and the steady flurry of snowflakes in his headlights. The snow had thickened so badly shortly after Oneida in Madison County that he’d thought his route might become impassable — but the snow patrols were fighting to keep the roads open in what was turning out to be one of the toughest winters in years.
He kept driving doggedly on, stopping for gas about an hour beyond Schenectady, at the snowy feet of the Appalachian Mountains. He was still suffering from shock, grief-stricken and freezing and exhausted. It was over five hundred miles to his destination; in this weather it seemed like five thousand. No way for a billionaire to be travelling.
Yet there was no way Wesley Holland was stepping on a plane, either. Even if the conditions had been more clement, the fact that all three of his private jets and all eight of his helicopters were registered to him made it far too easy for whoever was after the sword to track his movements. And after a near crash coming into Taipei in 1996, he’d vowed never to set foot on a commercial airliner again. No, by road was the only way. Nobody could track him or find him out here. Nobody in the world except for Simeon Arundel knew about Martha’s. The sword would be safe there.
In the meantime, there it was, locked in its case behind him on the back seat of the car. One of the most important artefacts in history. Perhaps the most important.
Wesley Holland wasn’t a religious animal. Try as he might, he found it impossible to share the fervent spiritual passion that drove men like Simeon Arundel. There were times when it irked him, but more often he found himself actually envying it, feeling excluded and annoyed at himself for being incapable of fully experiencing something that seemed to be able to offer such fulfilment to people who opened themselves to it. He still remembered the light in Simeon’s eyes, and those of Fabrice Lalique, that day in France when he’d first told them about his amazing historical find. But even an agnostic like Wesley couldn’t escape the skin-tingling excitement of such a monumental discovery.
The three had met during the repair of a badly deteriorating medieval church near Millau, which Wesley had been funding entirely out of his own pocket. The contractors he’d hired for the job were an up-and-coming Parisian firm reputed to be the best in the business; Wesley had been there to check out their work. So had a young English minister named Simeon Arundel, recently come into some funds of his own and intent on learning all he could about church restoration. Also keeping a watchful eye on the long-needed project had been the local priest in Millau, Fabrice Lalique.
An American, an Englishman and a Frenchman. It could have been the opening of a joke, but instead it became the start of a friendship. One night over dinner and a very expensive bottle of wine provided by Wesley, he’d decided he trusted the pair of clergymen enough to tell them the secret he’d been yearning to share with someone who could truly understand it, appreciate it, and most of all, keep quiet about it. Their initial reaction on hearing of his discovery had been one of stunned disbelief, just as his had been at first. But when he’d shown them the evidence, their scepticism had turned to fascination, then to wonderment and awe.
Simeon had been speechless at the way his life had just changed.
‘But we ought to tell people about this,’ Fabrice had argued.
‘Be patient,’ Wesley had urged him. ‘The time will come.’
Wesley still believed it would, even after nearly three years of maddening dealings with experts who wouldn’t pull their heads out of their asses and realise what they were being shown. For the first time, though, his excitement was now tempered with doubts. People were dying. Was it all worth it?
Yes, it was, he decided as he drove. If Fabrice had died protecting the secret, and if Coleman and the others had died because of it, then Wesley was damn well going to make sure these thugs, whoever they were, didn’t get their hands on it. Once he arrived at his destination, he was going to hire an army of the toughest bodyguards money could buy.
Let the sons of bitches come find him then. Let them try.
The red of dawn was burning through the snowclouds by the time Wesley realised he couldn’t go on any more without a rest. If he didn’t stop awhile, he was going to drift off at the wheel and crash the car. His tense shoulders sagged with relief when he saw the motel sign a few miles on that said ‘VACANCY’S’. ‘Thank God,’ he mumbled.
