He wasn’t alone. As Ben watched, a pair of men came sprinting up the stairs. From the black ski-masks and the stubby Steyr machine pistols in their fists he guessed they didn’t have invites to the exhibition either.
One of them slung his weapon behind his back and grabbed Marcello Peruzzi roughly by the arm while the other jabbed the muzzle of his gun at his head. ‘Downstairs with the others, grandpa,’ he snarled in Italian.
Marcello struggled weakly, protesting, and tried to lash out with his walking stick. The gunman clubbed him hard across the face with the butt of his weapon, twice, beating him down to his knees. He collapsed onto his belly and the second guy let go of his arm as he began convulsing.
Watching the scene in horror from the shadows of the passage, Ben remembered the heart pills.
The masked men stared down at Marcello as he folded up in agony on the carpet. ‘He’s having an attack,’ one of them said.
‘Fuck him, he’s dead anyway.’ The man pointing the gun casually placed the muzzle against Marcello’s neck and touched off the trigger. A deafening triple-shot burst crackled out across the landing and up the passage. The 9mm bullets ripped into Marcello’s body and his distressed heart stopped for ever.
Ben recoiled into the bathroom, unseen, and turned the lock.
Down below, Anatoly and the rest of his team had rounded up the crowd of exhibition guests. The gallery was filled with shouts of rage and frightened screams and the blast of fully-automatic fire as the intruders let off bursts into the ceiling. It was a technique intended for one purpose only – to strike terror into their victims and reduce them into a state of complete helplessness – and it was very effective. The thirty-five or so guests gave no resistance, allowing themselves to be herded like sheep across the gallery, their shoes crunching on the broken glass from shattered overhead lighting. It took under half a minute to shove everyone into the corner of the side room and make them huddle on the floor across from the refreshments table. The white-haired woman in the blue dress was looking around desperately for her husband and wailing loudly in panic. Rocco yelled at her to shut up, and when she kept on wailing Anatoly grabbed a half-finished bottle of Chianti from the refreshments table, took a long swig out of it and then hurled it at her. The base of the bottle caught her across the forehead and she fell back with a gasp. Another woman and the bearded guy in the sandals caught her as she keeled over.
‘How dare you!’ the bearded guy shouted. ‘This is an outrage!’
Gourko delivered a kick to his stomach that folded him double before slamming a knee into his face. He collapsed, wheezing, blood pouring out of his busted nose into his beard.
Gourko laughed.
The Robert Redford type in the Valentino blazer glowered at him, but did nothing. Crouching among the other hostages, Count De Crescenzo exchanged looks of horrified disbelief with his business partners Corsini and Silvestri. The bearded guy huddled into the arms of the woman he was with. The woman in the blue dress was slumped against the wall in shock, blood running from the cut on her forehead.
‘Am I going to get any shit from you fuckers?’ Anatoly screamed in Russian at the cringing assembly. ‘Am I?’ He didn’t care that they wouldn’t understand him. They’d understand this. He aimed his machine pistol at the table and let off a rattling blast that smashed bottles and plates into flying pieces. ‘Am I?’ he screamed again. Wine and food spilled onto the floor. The hostages cowered in terror.
Gianni Strada was pale and shaking as he clung to his mother. The boy was holding her so tightly that it hurt. Donatella struggled to contain her own panic as the armed men strode up and down the room. The one who frightened her the most was this maniac with the blond ponytail sticking out from under his mask. Was that Russian he was talking? Sounded like it to her. What was happening? How could this be happening? Was no alarm being raised?
Gianni suddenly let out a strange, high-pitched keening sound that dissolved into racking sobs. He clung to her even tighter, grasping handfuls of her hair. She could feel his tears wet against her neck.
‘You. Make that little ratshit quiet or he dies in the next two seconds,’ Anatoly raged, jabbing the gun an inch from her face.
Donatella didn’t need a translator. She closed her eyes and stroked her son’s hair, murmuring words of comfort in his ear. Gianni’s sobs quietened to a low whimper.
Anatoly unslung the padded case from his shoulder and laid it down on the table. He beamed at the hostages.
‘Good. Now let’s get down to business,’
Ben paced the bathroom, thinking hard. There was no telling how many armed men were down there, and how many other people had been hurt. He dug in his jeans pocket for his phone.
It was a rare thing for Ben to call the cops. In the kinds of situations his work had often involved him in the past, the last thing he needed was the police getting under his feet. But today he was just a tourist. He was unarmed, he had no idea what was happening, and he had no other options.
He punched 112 into the phone keypad, the emergency number for the Carabinieri. Italy’s paramilitary gendarmerie were widely disliked but in a situation like this, with their rapid firearms response capability, they were the best people for the job. Fractions of seconds felt like drawn-out minutes as he waited for the dial tone.
And nothing happened. His phone was dead, just like Donatella’s. His battery was about three-quarters charged and he was getting a good reception. Yet the phone was utterly useless. There was only one explanation, and that was that the intruders were using a cellphone blocker. The kind of equipment that police and counterterror units used to isolate cells of suspects before moving in. Which meant that what was happening downstairs was no ordinary armed raid – and with no way to call for outside help, Ben was going to have to deal with it on his own.
Another burst of shots from down below made him think of Donatella and Gianni Strada. He imagined the boy’s terror. Felt his blood turn from icy cold to burning hot at the thought of anyone harming either of them. He thought of old Marcello Peruzzi lying dead at the top of the stairs. Thought of all those other people down there, helpless, vulnerable, frightened. His teeth clenched so hard that they hurt.
The muffled clump of footsteps running up the passage was audible through the bathroom door. Voices outside.
Ben glanced around him. In a moment like this, just about any household item could be turned into an improvised weapon. His gaze locked on the mirror above the sink. He was just about to smash the glass with the heel of his shoe when he heard the marching footsteps run right up to the bathroom door.
The handle turned. The door rattled furiously. That flimsy lock wasn’t going to last long.
As the first heavy kick pounded the door, Ben leaped across the room and out through the French windows onto the balcony. It was too high to jump down to the concrete below without risking injury. He craned his neck upwards and saw that there was another balcony window directly above. The old house was built from solid stone, and the masonry had been expertly pointed, with recesses between the blocks that looked just about deep enough to climb.
As more kicks thudded violently against the bathroom door, he jumped up onto the balcony rail, turned
