‘There’s a secret organisation called the Delian League,’ she began haltingly. ‘An alliance between the different mafia families to co-ordinate their antiquities smuggling operations and split the profits. Don De Luca and Don Moretti head it up. This man-’ she pointed at Faulks-‘was responsible for selling whatever was smuggled out of the country to dealers and collectors around the world. Santos provided the financial backing and laundered the profits for them through the Banco Rosalia.’
‘And this?’ Gallo kicked the rolled up painting.
‘The missing Caravaggio
‘You’re joking!’ Placing his gun down next to him, Gallo knelt and unrolled the first few feet of the canvas before glancing up, shaking his head in wonder. ‘My God, you’re not.’
Without warning, Santos flew forward off his chair, snatched Gallo’s gun up and before anyone had time to move, aimed it at his forehead.
‘Back off,’ he snarled as the armed police belatedly aimed their weapons at him. ‘Put your guns on the floor or I’ll kill him right here.’
The police ignored him, a few even taking a step closer. Santos immediately took shelter behind Gallo, pressing the gun to his temple.
‘You know I’ll do it,’ he hissed, his lips hovering over Gallo’s ear. ‘Tell them to back the fuck off.’ From the wild look in his eyes, Allegra could tell that he meant it.
‘Stand down,’ Gallo ordered in a strangled voice, clearly sensing this too. ‘Stand down, that’s an order.’
One by one, the officers lowered their guns, placing them at their feet, and then backed away. Santos’s three men immediately re-armed themselves, Orlando leaping to Santos’s side, the other two covering off the rest of the room.
‘Now get them out of here.’
Gallo said nothing.
‘Now!’ Santos roared, striking him on the back of his head with the heel of his gun.
‘Fall back the way you came in,’ Gallo ordered grudgingly, clutching his skull. ‘Tell them what’s happening.’
‘Yes, tell them everything,’ Santos called after them. ‘And tell them that if anyone else comes down here, I’ll kill everyone in this room, starting with the colonel.’
There was a pause as Santos waited for the room to empty, a few of the retreating officers glancing nervously behind them in anticipation of perhaps being shot from behind. But the attack never came, and the sound of their leaden footsteps soon faded away. Allegra glanced at Tom, who gave her a grim smile. They were on their own.
‘Get the painting,’ Santos barked. ‘Time to go.’
With Orlando standing guard, the two other men heaved the rolled-up canvas on to their shoulders and staggered towards the entrance. Still holding Gallo’s neck in the crook of his arm, the gun pressed to his head, Santos backed across the room.
‘I’ll be seeing you soon, Antonio,’ Moretti called after him. ‘Sooner than you think.’.
Santos paused, then shoved Gallo into Orlando’s arms and grabbed two grenades from the bag looped around Orlando’s neck.
‘I doubt it,’ he said, smiling as he pulled the pins out and lobbed one, then the other, into the middle of the room.
EIGHTY-ONE
20th March-11.16 p.m.
The first grenade landed at Tom’s feet. Without thinking, he snatched it up, and with a deft snap of his wrist, flicked it through the gap in the glassfronted display case where the painting had been hanging. Hitting the wall, it bounced a short way along the bottom and then exploded.
The room jumped around them, smoke and dust avalanching through the opening, bits of plaster peeling off the walls like the bark on a cork tree, a terrible, angry roar lifting them off their feet and knocking the wind out of them. But, as some primitive, instinctive part of Tom’s brain had no doubt intended, the two-inch-thick armoured glass absorbed the brunt of the blast, its surface cracking but holding firm.
There was to be no such reprieve from the second grenade, however. Having struck the marble table it bounced into Moretti’s lap. He looked up, his eyes beseeching, mouth gaping as De Luca dived out of the way. Then it went off, cutting Moretti in half and sending a meteor shower of shrapnel across the room.
Tom looked up from where he had thrown himself to the floor, barely able to see through the thick smoke that seemed to have blown in like a sea fog. Ears ringing, he staggered to his feet and made his way unsteadily towards where he had last seen Allegra and the others, tripping over De Luca, who had lost a shoe and whose arm was hanging limply at his side, blood leaking from a deep gash to his head. The two halves of Moretti’s body were lying next to him, although the way they had landed made it look as if his legs were growing out of his head. It was a gruesome sight.
Coughing, he knelt by Allegra’s side. She seemed okay if a little disorientated, Moretti having clearly absorbed the worst of the explosion. But both Archie and Dominique were injured-Archie clutching the side of his face, the blood soaking through his fingers, while a shard of hot metal had embedded itself in Dominique’s thigh.
‘Are you okay?’ Tom called, knowing that he was shouting but still barely able to hear himself.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Archie said through gritted teeth. ‘Just go and shoot the bastard.’
With a nod, Tom jumped across to the pile of guns discarded by Gallo’s men, grabbing one for himself and tossing another to Allegra, who was now back on her feet.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, her eyes filled with the same diamond-tipped determination he’d seen when she’d engineered their escape from the car park.
They sprinted back through the various decorated rooms towards the bath complex and the vaulted tunnel that led outside.
‘Wait!’ Allegra called as he turned towards the entrance. ‘Can you feel that?’
He paused, and then realised what she meant. A fresh breeze was tickling his cheek, the air sweet and rich compared to the otherwise brackish atmosphere. Santos must have found another way out.
Turning to her right, she led him down a narrow tunnel that rose in total darkness up a steep incline. Feeling his way along the brick walls, Tom followed closely behind, the breeze getting stronger, until they found themselves in a square chamber. Above them, an iron ladder climbed towards a patch of star-flecked sky. At the foot of the ladder, a body was lying on a bed of rubble. It was Gallo.
‘He’s alive,’ Allegra said, kneeling next to him and pressing her fingers against his neck. Tom wasn’t sure if she sounded relieved or disappointed. ‘Santos must have thrown him back down the hole.’ She pointed at the colonel’s arm, which was bent up at an unnatural angle where he had dislocated his shoulder in the fall.
Tom flew up the ladder, emerging under the disapproving glare of an angel that had escaped damage when Santos had smashed through the gravestone she had been guarding. Hauling himself clear, he reached down to help Allegra climb out, the flickering blue lights on the other side of the cemetery indicating where Gallo’s man had congregated around the entrance to the Merisi tomb.
‘Which way?’
Allegra’s question was almost immediately answered by the sound of an engine being started. They ran to the cemetery wall, Allegra giving Tom a leg up, Tom then reaching down and hauling her up behind him. As he jumped down on to the pavement, an ambulance surged out of the darkness, headlights blazing, Santos hunched over the wheel.
Stepping into the road and taking careful aim, Tom unloaded a full clip into the ambulance’s onrushing windscreen. Allegra, still perched on the wall, did the same. But they both missed, forcing Tom to leap out of the way at the last minute as the ambulance veered past, followed the road round and then disappeared into the night.
‘
‘I had him,’ Tom panted as he clambered back up alongside her. ‘I was aiming right at him.’
