Conspiracy Thriller 4 E-Book Bundle
Conspiracy Thriller 4 E-Book Bundle
Scott Mariani
Richard Heller
Adam Palmer
O’Bryan O’Bryan
Four addictive conspiracy thrillers at a bargain price.In The Sacred Sword, hero Ben Hope is transported back to the days of Jesus Christ and a buried secret that has staggering implications for the world as we know it.The Istanbul Puzzle is the story of a deadly secret buried deep under Istanbul. Can Sean Ryan unlock the secret before death and destruction are unleashed?When fragments of stone are found in Egypt in The Moses Legacy, language expert Daniel Klein is called upon to decipher their mysterious ancient script. But there are others who are determined to prevent the stone’s explosive origins from being revealed, whatever the cost …The 13th Apostle is a religious conspiracy thriller where the stakes are high. Just one man can crack the code to the greatest mystery the world has ever known, if he survives …
Conspiracy Thriller 4 Book Bundle
Scott Mariani, Laurence O’Bryan, Adam Palmer and Richard Heller
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uaffc4145-90dd-5931-b2f4-2fe3b9234cfb)
The Sacred Sword (#u8b36d2f5-69df-53a3-98ef-2d0201fadf6d)
The Istanbul Puzzle (#ufc3f600d-02e8-5dc5-9477-4ed8aad8021a)
The Moses Legacy (#u8d2b05c2-9c34-59f0-ae47-ed3787989e8b)
The 13th Apostle (#u30cb8c8a-b577-5df4-887d-7d537df734a4)
Copyright (#u90580bf6-dc00-5fc5-8a1d-62373e7ddc12)
About the Publisher (#u5ea0366a-d98e-59b0-a5c8-5679848cbd29)
The Sacred Sword
SCOTT MARIANI
The Sacred Sword
To B.D., without whose inspiration
this story would never have been written
Table of Contents
Title page (#u51f4485a-099d-59a8-8809-c27cc87f6270)
Dedication (#u24ca370e-474b-5479-a01d-40ca1b3b6576)
Prologue (#ubc13febd-e21b-571b-b397-0648f07cfd3b)
Chapter One (#uf1a9b104-4dd0-5932-b0cc-bbad0a64c59b)
Chapter Two (#u2052fb54-409c-5b6f-95a2-a1ac2e1cb7d5)
Chapter Three (#ubdab724c-b539-5cae-85ae-b54d360dba45)
Chapter Four (#ub1426e78-61f3-5ba1-b01d-ca4e7cd0c077)
Chapter Five (#u99e87562-ad16-5f55-881a-be11961aa052)
Chapter Six (#u394b690c-371a-5922-9008-a7677d0a47a6)
Chapter Seven (#ucd586a83-ca7b-5a57-9dc8-1b28cb84a1ea)
Chapter Eight (#u9f67e196-3f1b-588a-a1ac-2c7c5ab2a076)
Chapter Nine (#u1b973247-6697-507c-acb2-cc72598018c9)
Chapter Ten (#ue30f75ce-c1ad-5702-b48b-810291b0c5ab)
Chapter Eleven (#u48466caf-c191-5aca-bfaf-04b73948c662)
Chapter Twelve (#uce260c78-1a40-5b25-99b2-80f31786f4a9)
Chapter Thirteen (#u3ab538f1-4f0a-515f-ba87-f712f431074b)
Chapter Fourteen (#ucbe20139-eceb-5d5c-add4-e8e54525c8e4)
Chapter Fifteen (#u766f93f8-1e69-5298-8762-d23927c3899b)
Chapter Sixteen (#uea723dbb-02ec-593f-915b-3c75e23a715b)
Chapter Seventeen (#u7fba1fb5-8ae3-5e3e-adc6-673a1661f83f)
Chapter Eighteen (#ub5da528b-b8b9-5578-a6b2-281e177368ac)
Chapter Nineteen (#uabee9af7-50cc-50f8-bdc2-aee6c9cdeeb7)
Chapter Twenty (#ub16da9e1-4878-5946-ade8-3a7158e6883d)
Chapter Twenty-One (#ue1946d02-12d8-52d3-8e2d-dca99a87cf5e)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#uc402b6ab-b8eb-577b-9892-775343a7f968)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u7fdf7273-cad5-5163-b1af-e2e556b0206d)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u76d76def-45c8-59d6-ac8f-5ec46bee14d6)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u0113a38f-0f98-5d4d-9ba2-82703423a88f)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#u248fd441-fd90-582f-b3e7-3860c69b1dd1)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u68d81e9a-7e6b-5c9f-9115-3f6b7c096328)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u553a9ee9-1b84-5e08-b42e-54134260cf2f)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#u5bfd84a0-b924-585a-b7fb-037deb7a07f2)
Chapter Thirty (#u805fca9f-bdb4-5428-9aa5-b50b5617b40d)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u02c29843-3f13-5d59-b605-b4116b836c43)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u7dde525e-c970-5455-b568-831d78c8ff9c)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#ufcd60638-f48a-5b4a-9400-475fde19dfc4)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#ubd72f314-2e5c-5376-a702-feea233424ba)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#uefce3bc8-61b4-58f7-9222-372334cb2863)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#u2b63a145-e850-5324-bc8c-1ea26bd35662)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u69f0c549-6271-5b1d-a6ff-9f4e715020b7)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#ue7947cc4-069b-58e8-80a4-5af786535d72)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#uf6ab6680-235d-5c79-8a2c-53cbd5032774)
Chapter Forty (#u4bc875d2-c3b6-518f-b5d5-eb95eeeb1112)
Chapter Forty-One (#u5cf46b2b-43cd-5ea6-800d-d17412a3ed01)
Chapter Forty-Two (#u6ab3caf3-02e8-50cd-b349-9ce594fc3552)
Chapter Forty-Three (#u169c51f1-0ca3-5eb5-9e69-28c693c53064)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u9813fb28-1854-5271-b5b7-549e2f417022)
Chapter Forty-Five (#uc10a1f93-3981-5ddf-91b9-9e53121d285c)
Chapter Forty-Six (#u9f6e08a5-3190-52fd-8f0b-a85ad89af155)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#u073b603c-6bb2-54f2-b510-3a1c95eb9293)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#u14b993f2-e75b-52f7-9fb8-dfe310b036e7)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#u73d66822-bf34-5889-849f-9c2a282af6e7)
Chapter Fifty (#u919b6c1d-d186-5a6f-a8f1-e9e0a08a62a8)
Chapter Fifty-One (#ue425f649-6869-5a36-b950-25eacea577c4)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#u1580f5d3-1f66-5c63-8ed1-a744b5267342)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#uc54c1860-8af5-55ae-bc35-dee9be26d2e0)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#uca09fc5a-592d-542c-bb70-c501c84c6919)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#u4ce02358-a6f8-5d1e-b45e-4c4f1dc967c0)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#u8191e757-ed6a-5b23-8381-0d49e2fd286a)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#u7a4289b1-94da-5c1c-a8c2-738cb764e445)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#ub04a0413-a3d4-5434-8e4e-6da5366f134a)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#u2aa2ea98-4dd8-5499-aa68-8b1e011a190c)
Chapter Sixty (#ud45886ce-eb4c-5fd4-be8e-fe48386625c5)
Chapter Sixty-One (#u0f84a55f-dd0b-54bb-b404-fa1230f9e892)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#u244ba96b-4f82-59d5-be60-afabb7541f94)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#u9aee6812-ee3a-5226-a896-55273d26fe28)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#u8357b125-6a52-5836-8ba8-83ca437fad3a)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#u2d1e1b56-e8d3-5ba9-8141-28e6087fe678)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#u71caf6c2-97b0-5ab2-b118-c958f131752f)
Acknowledgements (#u8952e841-8415-53b9-b08b-fd251d4e0d94)
Read on for an exclusive extract from The Armada Legacy (#u7fea7588-6484-590e-a305-18dae0c8bc18)
About the Author (#u7dbae42a-63d5-56ac-8edf-fe746f7f06d7)
By the same author (#u396f4944-5457-5f3d-89c7-caea9d22e7a7)
Prologue
The Fortress of Masada
Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land73 a.d.
‘They will soon be upon us,’ said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.
His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.
Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, there’d be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.
Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?
Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, he’d been one of the few Jewish rebels who’d managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesar’s rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silva’s forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wall’s perimeter stood the Romans’ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebels’ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.
‘Nobody can resist such an army,’ John quavered. ‘The Romans will rape our women, slaughter our children in front of us and make slaves of us all.’
Eleazar closed his eyes in sadness. He already knew what had to be done. Over nine hundred people. As their leader, he had no choice but to make the fateful decision himself. He turned away from the battlements to face the young man. ‘I would rather die a free man than submit to that,’ he said softly.
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘We shall deliver our souls to God,’ Eleazar replied. ‘All of us. The Romans will find none alive.’
But before addressing the grim task that lay before him, he had to ensure that one special duty was taken care of.
He reached down to his belt and drew out the glittering sword that he’d carried with him from Jerusalem. Reverently clutching the bronze hilt with both hands, he raised the blade to his mouth and kissed the cool steel.
‘The sword must be hidden,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it cannot fall into the hands of the Romans.’
They prayed.
And then the final plans were begun.
Chapter One
Near Millau, Midi-Pyrénées, Southern France
December 2nd
The present day
It was as Father Fabrice Lalique was driving home through the dark, misty night that he saw the car behind him again.
Up until then, the fifty-three-year-old priest had been reflecting on the hours he’d just spent with his parishioners Pierre and Madeleine Robichon in the nearby village of Briande, trying to quell the latest bitter dispute between the couple. It was his duty to minister to the social and family problems of his diocese; and God knew that the turbulent Robichons had more than their fair share of those. He’d eventually left them settled and in peace, hands clasped across the kitchen table, but the reconciliation had had to be painfully, exhaustingly coaxed out of them and he’d been at it far longer than intended.
The Volkswagen Passat’s dashboard clock read almost eleven. A heavy blanket of fog hung over the whole Tarn valley, and as Father Lalique headed back along the deserted country roads away from Millau he had to blink and strain to see where he was going. He couldn’t wait to get back to the warm, cosy little rural retreat on the edge of the village of Saint-Christophe where he’d lived alone these many years, pour himself a much-needed glass of Armagnac and go to bed. A nip of brandy might help him forget his own problems, and the worry that had been haunting him for the last several days.
Fabrice sighed. It was probably just a figment of his imagination. Maybe the responsibility of his job was getting to him at last. Perhaps Doctor Bachelard’s advice about early retirement was worth taking after all – when an overtired brain began cooking up ideas that you were being followed and watched, it could be a sign that it was time to take things a bit easier.
‘That’s all it is,’ he thought to himself, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. ‘Foolish to imagine otherw—’
The sudden dazzle of headlights behind him seemed to fill the interior of the Volkswagen. The priest’s heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly as all the anxiety came instantly flooding back. He narrowed his eyes at the rear-view mirror, trying to make out the shape of the lights.
Was it the Mercedes again? The same Mercedes he’d been sure was tailing him yesterday on his way home from the church in Saint-Affrique? And the day before, and last Tuesday as well …? He stared so long into the mirror that he almost missed the bend ahead and had to swerve to avoid the verge.
‘Damn this fog,’ he muttered. But he’d been driving these roads for over a third of a century and knew every inch of them. He’d soon see if he was being followed. Any second now … wait for it … yes, there it was. He swung the car hard right as the junction came up and accelerated as hard as he dared down the narrow lane that would take him the long way round towards Saint-Christophe. He glanced back at the rear-view mirror. Nothing. He felt the heart palpitations begin to subside. There. See? You’re an idiot.
Then the lights reappeared in his mirror and his mouth went dry. He hung another sharp right, then a left, taking him deeper into the web of country lanes. The lights stayed right there in his mirror.
Terrified to go any faster, Fabrice clenched the steering wheel tightly and willed the night to clear. The trees loomed out of the mist. Man and boy he’d roamed in these woods, but now they seemed filled with a sinister life of their own, as if closing in on him, reaching out to grab him in their claws.
He fumbled for his phone and dialled a familiar number. No reply. At the prompt to leave a message, he spoke urgently and breathlessly, his English faltering in his panic: ‘Simeon – it’s me, Fabrice. The thing I told you about; I am sure it is happening again. Just now, tonight. I think someone is after me. Please call me as soon as you can.’
The lights were still there, closer now, white and dazzling through the fog. Now what? Fabrice thought of calling Bernard, the local chief of police – he had his home number on his phone. But Bernard would be deep into a bottle by this time of night, if not passed out in front of the TV.
Then Fabrice thought of his old friend Jacques Rabier, whose farm was just a kilometre away beyond the woods. Groaning in panic, he hit the gas. A heart-stopping series of blind crests and hairpin bends later, he slewed the car through Jacques’ familiar rickety gate and went bumping wildly up the long track towards the farmhouse.
The place was in darkness, shutters closed. Fabrice killed the engine and stumbled across the yard to thump on the front door. ‘Jacques?’ he called out.
No reply. A dog barked in the distance. And then Fabrice heard something else. The soft rumble of tyres coming up the track, and the sound of an engine that wasn’t the clatter of Jacques Rabier’s old Peugeot 504 pickup truck. As the lights appeared through the trees, Fabrice tore himself away from the farmhouse and lumbered awkwardly across the yard towards the big wooden barn where, once upon a time, he and Jacques had played as kids. He pushed open the tall door and ducked inside just in time to avoid being seen in the car headlights that swept across the yard. Their blinding glare shone through the slats, partly illuminating the inside of the barn, the farm machinery covered in tarpaulins, the stack of straw bales against the far wall.
Fabrice didn’t have to search hard for a place to hide. As boys, he and Jacques had used the storage space under the barn floor as their secret den, gang headquarters, pirate ship cabin; in their teens they’d once or twice brought Michelle and Valérie from the village there, to smoke illicit cigarettes and innocently fool around.
As Fabrice stumbled towards the trapdoor, his guts tightened momentarily with the fear that Jacques might have boarded it up or left a piece of machinery across the top of it – but no, here it was, just as he remembered it, lightly buried under dust and straw. His trembling fingers found the edge of the trapdoor lid and lifted it with a creak.
It was a tighter squeeze than it had been in his youth. As he was forcing his bulky shoulders through the hole, he felt a sharp painful tug as something cut into the back of his neck. The little silver crucifix he wore around his neck had got snagged on a piece of rough wood and the slim chain had snapped. But there was no time to start hunting around for it. Fabrice hastily lowered the trapdoor above his head and clambered clumsily down the ladder into the hidden pitch-dark space below. He could barely breathe for terror.
This was crazy. He was a respected church official, not some criminal on the run. He had nothing to hide. His conscience was as immaculate as his professional record and he had no reason whatsoever to flee from anyone – yet some overwhelming primal instinct, so strong he could almost taste it between his gritted teeth, told him he was in appalling danger.
The barn door opened. Footsteps sounded overhead. Three men, it sounded like: they spread out and paced the length of the barn, the darting beams of their torches visible through the cracks in the floorboards as they searched the place briskly and methodically.
Who were these men? What did they want? Fabrice swallowed back his panic, terrified to breathe, convinced that they must be able to hear the hammer-beat of his heart. He inched his way deeper into the shadows, away from the torchlight.
Something moved against his arm and he almost cried out in shock. A rat: he brushed the filthy thing away and it slithered up a beam and through a gap in the floorboards overhead, claws scratching on the wood as it scuttled away. The torchlight suddenly swung towards the sound. Fabrice’s heart stopped as the light lingered over the trapdoor, catching the drifting dust particles in the air.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Just a rat,’ said a voice, and he realised the men were speaking English. ‘He’s not here. Let’s go.’
Fabrice let out a silent, trembling sigh of relief as the footsteps headed back towards the entrance to the barn. They were leaving. Once their car was gone, he’d wait a few minutes before climbing out of here. Should he go back to the car? Get away on foot and alert the police? Wait for Jacques to come home?
The sudden ringing of his phone shattered his thoughts and tore through the silence. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out with horror, the damn thing screeching like a siren as his trembling fingers groped for the button to turn it off. The phone’s screen showed the name of the caller: Simeon Arundel.
The shrill ringtone shut off, but it was too late. The footsteps were pounding the floorboards overhead as the men came running back inside the barn. Torchlight shining directly down through the cracks; the trapdoor lid lifting; a dazzling beam right in his face.
Father Fabrice Lalique wasn’t a fighting man. Never in his adult life had he had to defend himself physically, and his resistance against three strong and determined attackers was as feeble as his cries of ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ as they dragged him through the barn and outside to the waiting Mercedes. His phone was taken from him. Powerful hands bundled him inside the car’s open boot and slammed the lid shut.
Seconds later, Fabrice was being jolted around in his confined space as the Mercedes took off down the bumpy farm track. He beat against the bare metal lid, screamed until his throat was raw – then, completely spent, he gave in to the numbness of despair and curled up in the darkness, barely conscious of the movement of the car or the passage of time.
It was only when the boot lid opened and he looked up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.
Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.
Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’
The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.
And he was headed right for the edge.
Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.
‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.
A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.
Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.
The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.
As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.
At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.
And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Storm clouds scudded darkly overhead as another great rolling wave crashed against the bow of the SeaFrance cross-channel ferry Rodin, sending a plume of white foam and spray lashing across her deck. Most of the nine hundred or so passengers braving the gale warnings to cross over to England that freezing December afternoon were huddled in the luxury of the superferry’s bars and lounge areas.
Just one man stood on the outer deck. He leaned against the railing, the collar of his scuffed leather jacket turned up, the wind in his thick blond hair, his body moving easily to the heave and sway of the ship. His eyes were narrowed to blue slits against the salt spray as he gazed northwards, just able to make out the shape of the Cliffs of Dover through the murk. He took a draw on his cigarette, and the wisp of smoke was snatched away by a violent gust.
His name was Ben Hope. Half English, half Irish, just turned forty years of age but still as fit as he’d ever been. In his time he’d been a soldier, before leaving the British Special Forces to plunge deep into the shady world of the international kidnap and ransom business.
Working freelance as what he called a ‘crisis response consultant’, using methods and skills that conventional law enforcement operatives either weren’t allowed or weren’t trained to employ, Ben had delivered more than a few innocent victims safely back into the arms of their loved ones. More than a few kidnappers had been efficiently dispatched in order for that to happen.
These days, home was a tranquil corner of rural Normandy, a place called Le Val. It had been a working farm for most of its history – now it was a specialised tactical training centre where military and police agencies, hostage rescue specialists, kidnap and ransom negotiators and insurance execs from all across the world flocked to learn from Ben and his team. The world was still a troubled enough place to ensure they were seldom short of clients.
It sometimes happened that Ben had to take a business trip to Britain, but this wasn’t one of those times. With Le Val closed for Christmas, he had more personal matters to attend to – both of which, in their different ways, were the reason for his deeply pensive state as he stood there on the deck.
Tomorrow evening he was due to attend the inaugural opening of the new concert venue at Langton Hall, the Oxfordshire music academy created by Leigh Llewellyn. She’d been one of the world’s most celebrated and talented opera stars. She’d also been Ben’s first love – and much later, and for far too short a time, his wife.
Her death was a wound that he knew would never really heal. How it had happened was something he refused to think about, though the nightmare still haunted him some nights. The man who’d taken Leigh from him had been called Jack Glass. He had outlived her by only a few minutes.
As a trustee of the Leigh Llewellyn Foundation, Ben had been invited to cut the inaugural ribbon to open the grand new concert hall, make a speech and present a prize to the most promising young opera singer training at the school. He wasn’t exactly an accomplished public speaker. In his time with the SAS he’d conducted a thousand low-key operational briefings with small teams of men; as a tactical training instructor he was used to giving lectures in the familiar environment of Le Val’s little classroom – but the thought of standing up on a stage and addressing a large audience made him nervous. He was as prepared for it as he could be. It was the least he could do for Leigh’s memory.
The second reason he was travelling to England made him even more nervous. He’d agonised a long time before deciding to make the stop-off in London on his way to Oxfordshire. London was where Brooke lived: Dr Brooke Marcel, formerly visiting lecturer in hostage psychology at Le Val, as well as something a lot more. The way things had gone between them since the terrible argument in September, Ben didn’t know how Brooke would react to his surprise visit. All he knew was how badly he’d missed her these last few months.
When the ferry docked at Dover, Ben headed down to the car deck. While the other passengers climbed into their shiny new Vauxhalls and Nissans and Daewoos, he creaked open the door of the battered and ancient ex-military Series II Land Rover that the guys he worked with referred to as ‘Le Crock’, slung his bag on the worn-out passenger seat and drove out into the late afternoon drizzle.
Le Crock wasn’t the kind of vehicle you could spur along in too much of a hurry – and as he headed for London, Ben wondered if that might have been his unconscious motive for taking the old Landy: he wasn’t in any particular hurry to reach his destination. Twice he was seriously tempted to give it a miss, bypass London altogether and head northwest straight for Oxfordshire. The second time that thought occurred to him he very nearly gave in to the temptation – but by then he was already entering the outskirts of the city and Brooke’s place in Richmond was just a few more miles away.
‘Fuck it,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m here now. Let’s see it through.’
Chapter Three
The rain was threatening to turn to sleet by the time Ben pulled up across the street from the large red-brick Victorian house where Brooke lived. He killed the engine, and for a few seconds his thoughts turned to the whisky flask in his bag that he’d topped up with fifteen-year-old Islay malt before setting out from France. Instead he reached for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. Anything to delay the moment where he’d have to walk up to the door of Brooke’s flat on the ground floor.
As he sat and smoked and watched the rainwater streaming down the window, he wondered again whether turning up like this unannounced was the right thing to do. And he thought back again to the events of three months ago that had left his personal life in such a mess.
Life had never turned out as quiet as he’d have liked it, but the previous September had been an eventful time even for him. It wasn’t every month that you got wrongly accused of murder, dragged into an intrigue involving Russian mobsters and harried across most of Europe by an army of police commanded by a particularly determined, ambitious female SOCA agent named Darcey Kane.
But narrowly avoiding being tortured to death, crushed in a car wreck, getting incarcerated in an Italian prison or pulverised by a Russian attack helicopter hadn’t been the worst things that had happened to Ben that month. None of them had remotely compared to the shock of seeing Brooke in the arms of another man.
Injured and on the run, Ben had been heading for Brooke’s secluded holiday place in the Portuguese countryside, thinking it would be empty and he could lie low there for a while and recuperate. He’d been wrong. Approaching the cottage in darkness, he’d been surprised to see a light in the downstairs window, and peeked through the shutters. The sight he’d witnessed had made him recoil. Brooke and the unknown man had been sitting by candlelight, drinking wine, both obviously fresh from the shower. There was only one possible conclusion to draw.
Ben had slipped away unseen. From Portugal he’d beaten a hazardous path to Italy, from there to Monaco, then Georgia and back to Rome. Along the way, he and Darcey Kane had joined forces to defeat the gangsters who were trying to kill them, and unmask a conspiracy at the heart of British Intelligence. One of the toughest parts of the job had been escaping the amorous clutches of the – he had to admit it – extremely attractive and alluring raven-haired Darcey. When it was all over and they’d ended up at a loose end together in Rome, she’d made it very clear to him that her idea of a weekend in the eternal city wasn’t about visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum. ‘I won’t give up, you know’ had been Darcey’s disappointed parting words to him as he headed back home to France. ‘I always get my man in the end.’
The first thing Ben had done on his return to Le Val had been to check the diary for Brooke’s next lecture. He’d made sure he wasn’t around when she arrived, and as a pretext to stay away for the two days of her visit he’d made up a story about needing to drive to Nantes to check out a new security system for the armoury room, and from there to Paris to see a prospective client. In reality, he was lying low in a hotel just a few miles away in Valognes. He was all too aware of how weak and pathetic he was acting, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sooner have faced a charging bull than get into a confrontation with Brooke.
Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who was Ben’s right-hand man at Le Val, had finally cracked under the strain of having to cover for him all the time, and called him on his mobile. ‘Jesus, Ben. What the hell is going on with you two? She’s upset and confused. First she comes back from holiday to find out that her boyfriend’s been arrested and chased all around Europe by the cops, now you’re avoiding her like she’s got leprosy. You can’t go on like this, mate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Brooke’s flight home from nearby Cherbourg back to London had been booked for 7.15 on the evening of her second day. Just after eight, feeling quite miserable and shamefaced, Ben had come skulking back to Le Val and headed for the farmhouse kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. He’d been so preoccupied that he’d failed to sense anyone else’s presence in the room.
‘Were you just going to sneak around behind my back?’ Her voice sounded taut with emotion.
Ben almost dropped his glass. He whirled around.
Brooke got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been waiting for him. Her face was flushed almost as red as the auburn of her hair, and there was a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Aren’t you even going to tell me who she is, then?’
‘Who?’ Ben managed, totally confused.
Brooke snorted. ‘Who? Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve talked to her, Ben. She called here. You were off sneaking around trying to avoid me, so I happened to pick up the phone.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? “Lovely time together in Rome? Must do it again sometime?” Not ringing any bells?’
Ben stared blankly for a moment, then it hit him. ‘You mean Darcey Kane?’ The instant it came out, he knew how feeble it sounded.
Brooke’s eyes had misted over and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Of all the guys in the world, Ben Hope, I never would have thought you would do this to me. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.’
‘Stop right there. This is insane.’
‘What were you doing in Rome?’
‘You know what I was doing in Rome. Trying to stay out of jail. You saw the news, didn’t you?’
‘I know you had a terrible time, and I’m sorry,’ Brooke snapped. ‘I mean, what were you doing with her?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Then what’s she talking about?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,’ Ben said, and then added, ‘You, of all people.’
Now he was in trouble. He regretted it instantly.
Brooke glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He was committed. Point of no return. ‘You know perfectly well. I saw you and your fancy-man in Portugal.’
‘My what?’ Brooke exploded.
‘You heard me.’
‘You went to my place?’
‘I needed somewhere to go. I didn’t think you’d be there. I saw you through the window. The two of you looked very cosy together. Don’t insult me by denying it.’
‘Ben! That was Marshall – my brother-in-law!’
Ben reeled. ‘You’re having an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’
‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’
‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’
‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’
Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.
‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’
‘The candles … the wine …’
‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’
Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’
‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’
‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’
‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’
‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.
Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’
The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.
In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.
Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.
When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.
And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.
Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.
No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.
With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
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Scott Mariani
Richard Heller
Adam Palmer
O’Bryan O’Bryan
Four addictive conspiracy thrillers at a bargain price.In The Sacred Sword, hero Ben Hope is transported back to the days of Jesus Christ and a buried secret that has staggering implications for the world as we know it.The Istanbul Puzzle is the story of a deadly secret buried deep under Istanbul. Can Sean Ryan unlock the secret before death and destruction are unleashed?When fragments of stone are found in Egypt in The Moses Legacy, language expert Daniel Klein is called upon to decipher their mysterious ancient script. But there are others who are determined to prevent the stone’s explosive origins from being revealed, whatever the cost …The 13th Apostle is a religious conspiracy thriller where the stakes are high. Just one man can crack the code to the greatest mystery the world has ever known, if he survives …
Conspiracy Thriller 4 Book Bundle
Scott Mariani, Laurence O’Bryan, Adam Palmer and Richard Heller
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uaffc4145-90dd-5931-b2f4-2fe3b9234cfb)
The Sacred Sword (#u8b36d2f5-69df-53a3-98ef-2d0201fadf6d)
The Istanbul Puzzle (#ufc3f600d-02e8-5dc5-9477-4ed8aad8021a)
The Moses Legacy (#u8d2b05c2-9c34-59f0-ae47-ed3787989e8b)
The 13th Apostle (#u30cb8c8a-b577-5df4-887d-7d537df734a4)
Copyright (#u90580bf6-dc00-5fc5-8a1d-62373e7ddc12)
About the Publisher (#u5ea0366a-d98e-59b0-a5c8-5679848cbd29)
The Sacred Sword
SCOTT MARIANI
The Sacred Sword
To B.D., without whose inspiration
this story would never have been written
Table of Contents
Title page (#u51f4485a-099d-59a8-8809-c27cc87f6270)
Dedication (#u24ca370e-474b-5479-a01d-40ca1b3b6576)
Prologue (#ubc13febd-e21b-571b-b397-0648f07cfd3b)
Chapter One (#uf1a9b104-4dd0-5932-b0cc-bbad0a64c59b)
Chapter Two (#u2052fb54-409c-5b6f-95a2-a1ac2e1cb7d5)
Chapter Three (#ubdab724c-b539-5cae-85ae-b54d360dba45)
Chapter Four (#ub1426e78-61f3-5ba1-b01d-ca4e7cd0c077)
Chapter Five (#u99e87562-ad16-5f55-881a-be11961aa052)
Chapter Six (#u394b690c-371a-5922-9008-a7677d0a47a6)
Chapter Seven (#ucd586a83-ca7b-5a57-9dc8-1b28cb84a1ea)
Chapter Eight (#u9f67e196-3f1b-588a-a1ac-2c7c5ab2a076)
Chapter Nine (#u1b973247-6697-507c-acb2-cc72598018c9)
Chapter Ten (#ue30f75ce-c1ad-5702-b48b-810291b0c5ab)
Chapter Eleven (#u48466caf-c191-5aca-bfaf-04b73948c662)
Chapter Twelve (#uce260c78-1a40-5b25-99b2-80f31786f4a9)
Chapter Thirteen (#u3ab538f1-4f0a-515f-ba87-f712f431074b)
Chapter Fourteen (#ucbe20139-eceb-5d5c-add4-e8e54525c8e4)
Chapter Fifteen (#u766f93f8-1e69-5298-8762-d23927c3899b)
Chapter Sixteen (#uea723dbb-02ec-593f-915b-3c75e23a715b)
Chapter Seventeen (#u7fba1fb5-8ae3-5e3e-adc6-673a1661f83f)
Chapter Eighteen (#ub5da528b-b8b9-5578-a6b2-281e177368ac)
Chapter Nineteen (#uabee9af7-50cc-50f8-bdc2-aee6c9cdeeb7)
Chapter Twenty (#ub16da9e1-4878-5946-ade8-3a7158e6883d)
Chapter Twenty-One (#ue1946d02-12d8-52d3-8e2d-dca99a87cf5e)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#uc402b6ab-b8eb-577b-9892-775343a7f968)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u7fdf7273-cad5-5163-b1af-e2e556b0206d)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u76d76def-45c8-59d6-ac8f-5ec46bee14d6)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u0113a38f-0f98-5d4d-9ba2-82703423a88f)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#u248fd441-fd90-582f-b3e7-3860c69b1dd1)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u68d81e9a-7e6b-5c9f-9115-3f6b7c096328)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u553a9ee9-1b84-5e08-b42e-54134260cf2f)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#u5bfd84a0-b924-585a-b7fb-037deb7a07f2)
Chapter Thirty (#u805fca9f-bdb4-5428-9aa5-b50b5617b40d)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u02c29843-3f13-5d59-b605-b4116b836c43)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u7dde525e-c970-5455-b568-831d78c8ff9c)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#ufcd60638-f48a-5b4a-9400-475fde19dfc4)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#ubd72f314-2e5c-5376-a702-feea233424ba)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#uefce3bc8-61b4-58f7-9222-372334cb2863)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#u2b63a145-e850-5324-bc8c-1ea26bd35662)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u69f0c549-6271-5b1d-a6ff-9f4e715020b7)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#ue7947cc4-069b-58e8-80a4-5af786535d72)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#uf6ab6680-235d-5c79-8a2c-53cbd5032774)
Chapter Forty (#u4bc875d2-c3b6-518f-b5d5-eb95eeeb1112)
Chapter Forty-One (#u5cf46b2b-43cd-5ea6-800d-d17412a3ed01)
Chapter Forty-Two (#u6ab3caf3-02e8-50cd-b349-9ce594fc3552)
Chapter Forty-Three (#u169c51f1-0ca3-5eb5-9e69-28c693c53064)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u9813fb28-1854-5271-b5b7-549e2f417022)
Chapter Forty-Five (#uc10a1f93-3981-5ddf-91b9-9e53121d285c)
Chapter Forty-Six (#u9f6e08a5-3190-52fd-8f0b-a85ad89af155)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#u073b603c-6bb2-54f2-b510-3a1c95eb9293)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#u14b993f2-e75b-52f7-9fb8-dfe310b036e7)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#u73d66822-bf34-5889-849f-9c2a282af6e7)
Chapter Fifty (#u919b6c1d-d186-5a6f-a8f1-e9e0a08a62a8)
Chapter Fifty-One (#ue425f649-6869-5a36-b950-25eacea577c4)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#u1580f5d3-1f66-5c63-8ed1-a744b5267342)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#uc54c1860-8af5-55ae-bc35-dee9be26d2e0)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#uca09fc5a-592d-542c-bb70-c501c84c6919)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#u4ce02358-a6f8-5d1e-b45e-4c4f1dc967c0)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#u8191e757-ed6a-5b23-8381-0d49e2fd286a)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#u7a4289b1-94da-5c1c-a8c2-738cb764e445)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#ub04a0413-a3d4-5434-8e4e-6da5366f134a)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#u2aa2ea98-4dd8-5499-aa68-8b1e011a190c)
Chapter Sixty (#ud45886ce-eb4c-5fd4-be8e-fe48386625c5)
Chapter Sixty-One (#u0f84a55f-dd0b-54bb-b404-fa1230f9e892)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#u244ba96b-4f82-59d5-be60-afabb7541f94)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#u9aee6812-ee3a-5226-a896-55273d26fe28)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#u8357b125-6a52-5836-8ba8-83ca437fad3a)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#u2d1e1b56-e8d3-5ba9-8141-28e6087fe678)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#u71caf6c2-97b0-5ab2-b118-c958f131752f)
Acknowledgements (#u8952e841-8415-53b9-b08b-fd251d4e0d94)
Read on for an exclusive extract from The Armada Legacy (#u7fea7588-6484-590e-a305-18dae0c8bc18)
About the Author (#u7dbae42a-63d5-56ac-8edf-fe746f7f06d7)
By the same author (#u396f4944-5457-5f3d-89c7-caea9d22e7a7)
Prologue
The Fortress of Masada
Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land73 a.d.
‘They will soon be upon us,’ said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.
His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.
Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, there’d be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.
Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?
Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, he’d been one of the few Jewish rebels who’d managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesar’s rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silva’s forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wall’s perimeter stood the Romans’ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebels’ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.
‘Nobody can resist such an army,’ John quavered. ‘The Romans will rape our women, slaughter our children in front of us and make slaves of us all.’
Eleazar closed his eyes in sadness. He already knew what had to be done. Over nine hundred people. As their leader, he had no choice but to make the fateful decision himself. He turned away from the battlements to face the young man. ‘I would rather die a free man than submit to that,’ he said softly.
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘We shall deliver our souls to God,’ Eleazar replied. ‘All of us. The Romans will find none alive.’
But before addressing the grim task that lay before him, he had to ensure that one special duty was taken care of.
He reached down to his belt and drew out the glittering sword that he’d carried with him from Jerusalem. Reverently clutching the bronze hilt with both hands, he raised the blade to his mouth and kissed the cool steel.
‘The sword must be hidden,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it cannot fall into the hands of the Romans.’
They prayed.
And then the final plans were begun.
Chapter One
Near Millau, Midi-Pyrénées, Southern France
December 2nd
The present day
It was as Father Fabrice Lalique was driving home through the dark, misty night that he saw the car behind him again.
Up until then, the fifty-three-year-old priest had been reflecting on the hours he’d just spent with his parishioners Pierre and Madeleine Robichon in the nearby village of Briande, trying to quell the latest bitter dispute between the couple. It was his duty to minister to the social and family problems of his diocese; and God knew that the turbulent Robichons had more than their fair share of those. He’d eventually left them settled and in peace, hands clasped across the kitchen table, but the reconciliation had had to be painfully, exhaustingly coaxed out of them and he’d been at it far longer than intended.
The Volkswagen Passat’s dashboard clock read almost eleven. A heavy blanket of fog hung over the whole Tarn valley, and as Father Lalique headed back along the deserted country roads away from Millau he had to blink and strain to see where he was going. He couldn’t wait to get back to the warm, cosy little rural retreat on the edge of the village of Saint-Christophe where he’d lived alone these many years, pour himself a much-needed glass of Armagnac and go to bed. A nip of brandy might help him forget his own problems, and the worry that had been haunting him for the last several days.
Fabrice sighed. It was probably just a figment of his imagination. Maybe the responsibility of his job was getting to him at last. Perhaps Doctor Bachelard’s advice about early retirement was worth taking after all – when an overtired brain began cooking up ideas that you were being followed and watched, it could be a sign that it was time to take things a bit easier.
‘That’s all it is,’ he thought to himself, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. ‘Foolish to imagine otherw—’
The sudden dazzle of headlights behind him seemed to fill the interior of the Volkswagen. The priest’s heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly as all the anxiety came instantly flooding back. He narrowed his eyes at the rear-view mirror, trying to make out the shape of the lights.
Was it the Mercedes again? The same Mercedes he’d been sure was tailing him yesterday on his way home from the church in Saint-Affrique? And the day before, and last Tuesday as well …? He stared so long into the mirror that he almost missed the bend ahead and had to swerve to avoid the verge.
‘Damn this fog,’ he muttered. But he’d been driving these roads for over a third of a century and knew every inch of them. He’d soon see if he was being followed. Any second now … wait for it … yes, there it was. He swung the car hard right as the junction came up and accelerated as hard as he dared down the narrow lane that would take him the long way round towards Saint-Christophe. He glanced back at the rear-view mirror. Nothing. He felt the heart palpitations begin to subside. There. See? You’re an idiot.
Then the lights reappeared in his mirror and his mouth went dry. He hung another sharp right, then a left, taking him deeper into the web of country lanes. The lights stayed right there in his mirror.
Terrified to go any faster, Fabrice clenched the steering wheel tightly and willed the night to clear. The trees loomed out of the mist. Man and boy he’d roamed in these woods, but now they seemed filled with a sinister life of their own, as if closing in on him, reaching out to grab him in their claws.
He fumbled for his phone and dialled a familiar number. No reply. At the prompt to leave a message, he spoke urgently and breathlessly, his English faltering in his panic: ‘Simeon – it’s me, Fabrice. The thing I told you about; I am sure it is happening again. Just now, tonight. I think someone is after me. Please call me as soon as you can.’
The lights were still there, closer now, white and dazzling through the fog. Now what? Fabrice thought of calling Bernard, the local chief of police – he had his home number on his phone. But Bernard would be deep into a bottle by this time of night, if not passed out in front of the TV.
Then Fabrice thought of his old friend Jacques Rabier, whose farm was just a kilometre away beyond the woods. Groaning in panic, he hit the gas. A heart-stopping series of blind crests and hairpin bends later, he slewed the car through Jacques’ familiar rickety gate and went bumping wildly up the long track towards the farmhouse.
The place was in darkness, shutters closed. Fabrice killed the engine and stumbled across the yard to thump on the front door. ‘Jacques?’ he called out.
No reply. A dog barked in the distance. And then Fabrice heard something else. The soft rumble of tyres coming up the track, and the sound of an engine that wasn’t the clatter of Jacques Rabier’s old Peugeot 504 pickup truck. As the lights appeared through the trees, Fabrice tore himself away from the farmhouse and lumbered awkwardly across the yard towards the big wooden barn where, once upon a time, he and Jacques had played as kids. He pushed open the tall door and ducked inside just in time to avoid being seen in the car headlights that swept across the yard. Their blinding glare shone through the slats, partly illuminating the inside of the barn, the farm machinery covered in tarpaulins, the stack of straw bales against the far wall.
Fabrice didn’t have to search hard for a place to hide. As boys, he and Jacques had used the storage space under the barn floor as their secret den, gang headquarters, pirate ship cabin; in their teens they’d once or twice brought Michelle and Valérie from the village there, to smoke illicit cigarettes and innocently fool around.
As Fabrice stumbled towards the trapdoor, his guts tightened momentarily with the fear that Jacques might have boarded it up or left a piece of machinery across the top of it – but no, here it was, just as he remembered it, lightly buried under dust and straw. His trembling fingers found the edge of the trapdoor lid and lifted it with a creak.
It was a tighter squeeze than it had been in his youth. As he was forcing his bulky shoulders through the hole, he felt a sharp painful tug as something cut into the back of his neck. The little silver crucifix he wore around his neck had got snagged on a piece of rough wood and the slim chain had snapped. But there was no time to start hunting around for it. Fabrice hastily lowered the trapdoor above his head and clambered clumsily down the ladder into the hidden pitch-dark space below. He could barely breathe for terror.
This was crazy. He was a respected church official, not some criminal on the run. He had nothing to hide. His conscience was as immaculate as his professional record and he had no reason whatsoever to flee from anyone – yet some overwhelming primal instinct, so strong he could almost taste it between his gritted teeth, told him he was in appalling danger.
The barn door opened. Footsteps sounded overhead. Three men, it sounded like: they spread out and paced the length of the barn, the darting beams of their torches visible through the cracks in the floorboards as they searched the place briskly and methodically.
Who were these men? What did they want? Fabrice swallowed back his panic, terrified to breathe, convinced that they must be able to hear the hammer-beat of his heart. He inched his way deeper into the shadows, away from the torchlight.
Something moved against his arm and he almost cried out in shock. A rat: he brushed the filthy thing away and it slithered up a beam and through a gap in the floorboards overhead, claws scratching on the wood as it scuttled away. The torchlight suddenly swung towards the sound. Fabrice’s heart stopped as the light lingered over the trapdoor, catching the drifting dust particles in the air.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Just a rat,’ said a voice, and he realised the men were speaking English. ‘He’s not here. Let’s go.’
Fabrice let out a silent, trembling sigh of relief as the footsteps headed back towards the entrance to the barn. They were leaving. Once their car was gone, he’d wait a few minutes before climbing out of here. Should he go back to the car? Get away on foot and alert the police? Wait for Jacques to come home?
The sudden ringing of his phone shattered his thoughts and tore through the silence. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out with horror, the damn thing screeching like a siren as his trembling fingers groped for the button to turn it off. The phone’s screen showed the name of the caller: Simeon Arundel.
The shrill ringtone shut off, but it was too late. The footsteps were pounding the floorboards overhead as the men came running back inside the barn. Torchlight shining directly down through the cracks; the trapdoor lid lifting; a dazzling beam right in his face.
Father Fabrice Lalique wasn’t a fighting man. Never in his adult life had he had to defend himself physically, and his resistance against three strong and determined attackers was as feeble as his cries of ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ as they dragged him through the barn and outside to the waiting Mercedes. His phone was taken from him. Powerful hands bundled him inside the car’s open boot and slammed the lid shut.
Seconds later, Fabrice was being jolted around in his confined space as the Mercedes took off down the bumpy farm track. He beat against the bare metal lid, screamed until his throat was raw – then, completely spent, he gave in to the numbness of despair and curled up in the darkness, barely conscious of the movement of the car or the passage of time.
It was only when the boot lid opened and he looked up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.
Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.
Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’
The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.
And he was headed right for the edge.
Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.
‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.
A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.
Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.
The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.
As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.
At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.
And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Storm clouds scudded darkly overhead as another great rolling wave crashed against the bow of the SeaFrance cross-channel ferry Rodin, sending a plume of white foam and spray lashing across her deck. Most of the nine hundred or so passengers braving the gale warnings to cross over to England that freezing December afternoon were huddled in the luxury of the superferry’s bars and lounge areas.
Just one man stood on the outer deck. He leaned against the railing, the collar of his scuffed leather jacket turned up, the wind in his thick blond hair, his body moving easily to the heave and sway of the ship. His eyes were narrowed to blue slits against the salt spray as he gazed northwards, just able to make out the shape of the Cliffs of Dover through the murk. He took a draw on his cigarette, and the wisp of smoke was snatched away by a violent gust.
His name was Ben Hope. Half English, half Irish, just turned forty years of age but still as fit as he’d ever been. In his time he’d been a soldier, before leaving the British Special Forces to plunge deep into the shady world of the international kidnap and ransom business.
Working freelance as what he called a ‘crisis response consultant’, using methods and skills that conventional law enforcement operatives either weren’t allowed or weren’t trained to employ, Ben had delivered more than a few innocent victims safely back into the arms of their loved ones. More than a few kidnappers had been efficiently dispatched in order for that to happen.
These days, home was a tranquil corner of rural Normandy, a place called Le Val. It had been a working farm for most of its history – now it was a specialised tactical training centre where military and police agencies, hostage rescue specialists, kidnap and ransom negotiators and insurance execs from all across the world flocked to learn from Ben and his team. The world was still a troubled enough place to ensure they were seldom short of clients.
It sometimes happened that Ben had to take a business trip to Britain, but this wasn’t one of those times. With Le Val closed for Christmas, he had more personal matters to attend to – both of which, in their different ways, were the reason for his deeply pensive state as he stood there on the deck.
Tomorrow evening he was due to attend the inaugural opening of the new concert venue at Langton Hall, the Oxfordshire music academy created by Leigh Llewellyn. She’d been one of the world’s most celebrated and talented opera stars. She’d also been Ben’s first love – and much later, and for far too short a time, his wife.
Her death was a wound that he knew would never really heal. How it had happened was something he refused to think about, though the nightmare still haunted him some nights. The man who’d taken Leigh from him had been called Jack Glass. He had outlived her by only a few minutes.
As a trustee of the Leigh Llewellyn Foundation, Ben had been invited to cut the inaugural ribbon to open the grand new concert hall, make a speech and present a prize to the most promising young opera singer training at the school. He wasn’t exactly an accomplished public speaker. In his time with the SAS he’d conducted a thousand low-key operational briefings with small teams of men; as a tactical training instructor he was used to giving lectures in the familiar environment of Le Val’s little classroom – but the thought of standing up on a stage and addressing a large audience made him nervous. He was as prepared for it as he could be. It was the least he could do for Leigh’s memory.
The second reason he was travelling to England made him even more nervous. He’d agonised a long time before deciding to make the stop-off in London on his way to Oxfordshire. London was where Brooke lived: Dr Brooke Marcel, formerly visiting lecturer in hostage psychology at Le Val, as well as something a lot more. The way things had gone between them since the terrible argument in September, Ben didn’t know how Brooke would react to his surprise visit. All he knew was how badly he’d missed her these last few months.
When the ferry docked at Dover, Ben headed down to the car deck. While the other passengers climbed into their shiny new Vauxhalls and Nissans and Daewoos, he creaked open the door of the battered and ancient ex-military Series II Land Rover that the guys he worked with referred to as ‘Le Crock’, slung his bag on the worn-out passenger seat and drove out into the late afternoon drizzle.
Le Crock wasn’t the kind of vehicle you could spur along in too much of a hurry – and as he headed for London, Ben wondered if that might have been his unconscious motive for taking the old Landy: he wasn’t in any particular hurry to reach his destination. Twice he was seriously tempted to give it a miss, bypass London altogether and head northwest straight for Oxfordshire. The second time that thought occurred to him he very nearly gave in to the temptation – but by then he was already entering the outskirts of the city and Brooke’s place in Richmond was just a few more miles away.
‘Fuck it,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m here now. Let’s see it through.’
Chapter Three
The rain was threatening to turn to sleet by the time Ben pulled up across the street from the large red-brick Victorian house where Brooke lived. He killed the engine, and for a few seconds his thoughts turned to the whisky flask in his bag that he’d topped up with fifteen-year-old Islay malt before setting out from France. Instead he reached for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. Anything to delay the moment where he’d have to walk up to the door of Brooke’s flat on the ground floor.
As he sat and smoked and watched the rainwater streaming down the window, he wondered again whether turning up like this unannounced was the right thing to do. And he thought back again to the events of three months ago that had left his personal life in such a mess.
Life had never turned out as quiet as he’d have liked it, but the previous September had been an eventful time even for him. It wasn’t every month that you got wrongly accused of murder, dragged into an intrigue involving Russian mobsters and harried across most of Europe by an army of police commanded by a particularly determined, ambitious female SOCA agent named Darcey Kane.
But narrowly avoiding being tortured to death, crushed in a car wreck, getting incarcerated in an Italian prison or pulverised by a Russian attack helicopter hadn’t been the worst things that had happened to Ben that month. None of them had remotely compared to the shock of seeing Brooke in the arms of another man.
Injured and on the run, Ben had been heading for Brooke’s secluded holiday place in the Portuguese countryside, thinking it would be empty and he could lie low there for a while and recuperate. He’d been wrong. Approaching the cottage in darkness, he’d been surprised to see a light in the downstairs window, and peeked through the shutters. The sight he’d witnessed had made him recoil. Brooke and the unknown man had been sitting by candlelight, drinking wine, both obviously fresh from the shower. There was only one possible conclusion to draw.
Ben had slipped away unseen. From Portugal he’d beaten a hazardous path to Italy, from there to Monaco, then Georgia and back to Rome. Along the way, he and Darcey Kane had joined forces to defeat the gangsters who were trying to kill them, and unmask a conspiracy at the heart of British Intelligence. One of the toughest parts of the job had been escaping the amorous clutches of the – he had to admit it – extremely attractive and alluring raven-haired Darcey. When it was all over and they’d ended up at a loose end together in Rome, she’d made it very clear to him that her idea of a weekend in the eternal city wasn’t about visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum. ‘I won’t give up, you know’ had been Darcey’s disappointed parting words to him as he headed back home to France. ‘I always get my man in the end.’
The first thing Ben had done on his return to Le Val had been to check the diary for Brooke’s next lecture. He’d made sure he wasn’t around when she arrived, and as a pretext to stay away for the two days of her visit he’d made up a story about needing to drive to Nantes to check out a new security system for the armoury room, and from there to Paris to see a prospective client. In reality, he was lying low in a hotel just a few miles away in Valognes. He was all too aware of how weak and pathetic he was acting, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sooner have faced a charging bull than get into a confrontation with Brooke.
Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who was Ben’s right-hand man at Le Val, had finally cracked under the strain of having to cover for him all the time, and called him on his mobile. ‘Jesus, Ben. What the hell is going on with you two? She’s upset and confused. First she comes back from holiday to find out that her boyfriend’s been arrested and chased all around Europe by the cops, now you’re avoiding her like she’s got leprosy. You can’t go on like this, mate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Brooke’s flight home from nearby Cherbourg back to London had been booked for 7.15 on the evening of her second day. Just after eight, feeling quite miserable and shamefaced, Ben had come skulking back to Le Val and headed for the farmhouse kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. He’d been so preoccupied that he’d failed to sense anyone else’s presence in the room.
‘Were you just going to sneak around behind my back?’ Her voice sounded taut with emotion.
Ben almost dropped his glass. He whirled around.
Brooke got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been waiting for him. Her face was flushed almost as red as the auburn of her hair, and there was a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Aren’t you even going to tell me who she is, then?’
‘Who?’ Ben managed, totally confused.
Brooke snorted. ‘Who? Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve talked to her, Ben. She called here. You were off sneaking around trying to avoid me, so I happened to pick up the phone.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? “Lovely time together in Rome? Must do it again sometime?” Not ringing any bells?’
Ben stared blankly for a moment, then it hit him. ‘You mean Darcey Kane?’ The instant it came out, he knew how feeble it sounded.
Brooke’s eyes had misted over and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Of all the guys in the world, Ben Hope, I never would have thought you would do this to me. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.’
‘Stop right there. This is insane.’
‘What were you doing in Rome?’
‘You know what I was doing in Rome. Trying to stay out of jail. You saw the news, didn’t you?’
‘I know you had a terrible time, and I’m sorry,’ Brooke snapped. ‘I mean, what were you doing with her?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Then what’s she talking about?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,’ Ben said, and then added, ‘You, of all people.’
Now he was in trouble. He regretted it instantly.
Brooke glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He was committed. Point of no return. ‘You know perfectly well. I saw you and your fancy-man in Portugal.’
‘My what?’ Brooke exploded.
‘You heard me.’
‘You went to my place?’
‘I needed somewhere to go. I didn’t think you’d be there. I saw you through the window. The two of you looked very cosy together. Don’t insult me by denying it.’
‘Ben! That was Marshall – my brother-in-law!’
Ben reeled. ‘You’re having an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’
‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’
‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’
‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’
Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.
‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’
‘The candles … the wine …’
‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’
Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’
‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’
‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’
‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’
‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.
Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’
The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.
In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.
Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.
When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.
And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.
Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.
No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.
With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
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Scott Mariani и Richard Heller
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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