The Blue Ring (44 page)

"Do
you see him?" Creasy whispered.

The Owl
grunted back and said in his Marseille-accented French, "I swear on the
grave of my mother that nobody's come round that corner for the last ten
minutes."

Guido's
voice held a trace of anxiety. "I hope Maxie didn't walk into something
unexpected."

Creasy
was about to say some reassuring words when a dull thud sounded beside him. It
was Maxie, down on his stomach and breathing just a little heavily. He said,
"Just one static guard, asleep on a stool in the doorway of the garage. I
could have cut his throat."

The Owl
inched forward on his elbows and whispered across Guido and Creasy, "Which
way did you come back, Maxie?"

"The
same way I went in," Maxie answered. "Around that corner."

"Bullshit!"
the Frenchman whispered. "I had my glasses on that corner all the time. I
never saw you go in and I never saw you come out."

Creasy
heard Maxie chuckle and then whisper to The Owl, "Listen, pussy-cat, I
could have come back here and taken off your trousers without you feeling a
thing."

"Enough,"
Creasy whispered. "That guard will be wide awake as soon as the first
shot's fired. How will you cover him?"

Maxie
chuckled again. "I won't have to. I left him the old wake-up call."

Creasy
and Guido laughed softly. The Owl did not understand. Guido explained,
"Maxie rigged up a frag grenade. I guess about two feet in front of the
guy. He would have pulled out the pin, let the lever click twice and tied it
down with a string and a slip knot, and then looped the string round the guy's
leg. When the bastard wakes up, and stands up, the slip knot unravels, the
lever clicks one more time and we have one less guard to worry about."

The
Frenchman had only one word in his vocabulary. "Merde!"

"He
won't have time for that," Creasy said. He was watching the chapel through
his glasses. The congregation had all gone inside. He turned to Maxie.
"Time to get back to your team. We know there's a back door to the chapel,
leading into an ante-room. When we hit the place that back door has to be
covered."

"Rene
will cover it," Maxie said. "Frank and myself will be stalking the
mobile guards. The static guards are exactly that. There'll be so much
confusion they'll remain static for at least ten seconds. We'll have time to
get back to them."

Creasy
reassessed the deployment of his men. He stretched forward and said to The Owl,
"Go with Maxie." He turned back to Maxie. "Have him in a
position to take out two of the statics; then it's a one on one situation for
you and Frank. Guido and I will hit the chapel."

Guido
said, "That means there's no one up here covering their backs."

Before
Creasy could answer Maxie intervened. "There's no need," he said.
"I've done a complete perimeter of the grounds. There's no one going to be
shooting at us from behind...not unless any of those guards get loose, and that's
not likely."

Guido
nodded and studied the chapel again through his glasses. He turned to Creasy
and whispered, "It looks good...So now we wait for Michael."

"We
do," Creasy answered. "I guess it takes about twenty minutes."

Maxie
slid away behind them, tapped The Owl on the shoulder and whispered,
"Follow me real close...I don't want to lose you."

Gina
Forelli glanced across the aisle at Michael's face. Light and shadow flickered
across it from the candlelight. It was as though his face had been cast from
iron. She assumed his rigidity came from fear or shock. She was wrong. His face
was cast from a white-hot rage. He was looking at the centrepiece of the mass,
an altar covered with a black silk cloth. On it lay the body of a supine child.
Her long blonde hair had been beautifully braided to curl back over her ears.
Her eyes were closed. Her perfectly shaped white body was strapped to the altar
by black silk cords from her wrists and ankles.

At
first he thought that he was looking at a corpse, but then he saw her small
breasts rising and falling gently to the rhythm of her breath. Close to her
head was an upright, golden knife with its tip impaled into a black block of
cork. Long, flickering black candles were arranged in a semi-circle behind her.
Bishop Caprese was standing on the far side of the altar. He had discarded his
purple gown for a black robe. Above his beard, his mouth was set in a straight
rigid line. Above his head, hanging from an unseen thread, was an inverted,
black cross. On each side of the altar stood a black-gowned man and woman, whom
Michael had not seen in the villa. He assumed that they were the spurious
foster parents. On his knees in front of the altar was the Initiate.

Michael
glanced around him and realised the skill of the organisation. The mood had
been perfectly created. From hidden loudspeakers high up on the walls a
Gregorian chant floated down, deep and rhythmic and hypnotic. There was incense
in the air, no doubt wafted through the chapel from hidden fans. No film
director could have surpassed the mood of that moment.

The
thin line of the Bishop's mouth moved. In a strong baritone voice, he recited
the Lord's Prayer backwards. The congregation chanted in unison.

Michael
turned and looked behind him. At the back of the chapel was a long table,
covered by a black cloth and laden with bowls of food. Fruit, almost overripe;
huge mounds of grey caviar nestling in beds of ice; undercooked joints of ham,
beef, lamb and game.

Surrounding
it all was a ring of jugs containing heavy red wine. There were no knives or
forks or plates. Michael knew that after the sacrifice the frenzied
congregation would strip naked and gorge themselves, using only their hands,
letting the juices and blood run over their bodies...before they mixed those
bodies with each other.

To the
left of the altar were three men. He recognised Donati and Hussein. He also
recognised the third man from Rene's description passed on by Satta, which had
been passed on by Gandolfo. The face under the cowl was dark, and the deep eyes
were darker. He knew he was looking at Gamel Houdris, the supreme leader of
'The Blue Ring'. He saw the dark eyes looking back at him.

Abruptly
Michael realised that this was not going to be a long ceremony. There was no
need for minor animal sacrifices to wind up the anticipation of this
congregation. He glanced around and was able to see some of their faces,
dripping with sweat in the cool air, mouths slack, and eyes already
half-glazed. Days, maybe weeks, of anticipation had turned them into starving
animals whose gluttony for evil craved to be sated.

Again
the Bishop was speaking and gesturing at the Initiate, and then gesturing at
the poised knife. Michael could not understand the words but knew they were in
Latin. At the same time he realised that he might have waited too long.

At once
he discarded the carefully timed plan. He reached to his waist and felt the
outline of the tiny transmitter. He pressed the button and sent out the code:
three quick bleeps and one long one.

The
Initiate had risen to his feet. He stepped up in front of the altar and stood
looking down at the naked child.

Michael's
mind was ice-cold. It flicked along like a computer. He could almost see what
was happening in the darkness outside: Creasy's team moving swiftly towards the
chapel, Maxie's team moving to take out the guards, Jens revving the engine of
the van a kilometre away, Satta hearing the beeps from his own receiver three
kilometres away and ordering his men to move.

The
Initiate had reached for the knife. He plucked it from the cork and with both
hands held it high above the child's heart. The Bishop was intoning a prayer in
Latin, no doubt backwards. His eyes were also fixed on the child's breasts. Michael
glanced around at the congregation. All their eyes were transfixed on the
altar. With his left hand he pulled up the hem of his gown past his knees and
to his waist. With his right hand he reached across and pulled out the heavy
Colt. The Initiate raised the golden knife higher.

Michael
shot him in the back of the head. The unsilenced explosion echoed around the
chapel. The Initiate was hammered forward over the child's body. Blood and
brains sprayed the face of the black-clad bishop. Michael fired two shots into
that face. Both hit the open mouth. Then there was confusion, screams. Michael
twisted away from his pew and ran down the aisle to the back. He turned at the
table and shouted in Italian the words he had practised. "Stand still! Who
moves dies."

The teams had moved the instant that Michael's signal came over the airwaves. Maxie
was only ten metres away from one of the mobile guards. A one-second burst from
his SMG spun the man around and dropped him. Another mobile guard twenty metres
away was shouting in panic. A two-second burst cut him down. In a blur of
motion Maxie changed the magazine and ran in the direction of one of the static guards.

Two hundred metres away Frank also opened fire with his SMG. He was in a fortunate
position. The other two mobile guards had been lax; they had stopped for a
whispered chat and the drag of a shielded and shared cigarette thirty metres
from his crouched position. It was not shielded enough. He got them both with a
full burst. Like Maxie, his magazine change was a work of high-speed art. He
also turned towards the villa and his targeted static guard.

From the back of the villa they heard the crump of a grenade. That static guard had
just heard his wake-up and goodbye call. Neither Maxie nor Frank had time to
take care of the other static guards. The Owl did that. They heard three short
bursts from his SMG, a single scream and then another burst.

Maxie crouched and looked at the chapel. The red light from the high window suddenly
turned bright white. He knew that Creasy and Guido were inside. He ran towards the back of the chapel.

Only Gamel Houdris got away. He combined the survival instincts of a snake, a fox
and a hungry shark. When the front door of the chapel crashed open and the
first flares blinded the room, he pulled his cowl further over his head and
screamed at Donati and Hussein. "The back door! Get to the back door!"

They could not see, but he pushed them towards it. Behind him he heard Delors scream
in agony as a bullet smashed into his right knee.

Once behind and below the altar their eyes functioned again. Donati opened the door
and ran out, followed by Hussein. Houdris paused, watching and waiting. They
had not gone five metres before Rene cut them down. Hussein did not die
immediately. He scrambled to his feet, clutching his torn belly, and with the
rage of a wounded bull charged his attacker. Another burst from Rene's SMG
slammed him back and down. Houdris heard the click of the magazine being
changed. In a crouch, he ran into the darkness and towards the distant trees.

From behind him he heard the stutter of the SMG. He threw himself to the ground. A
bullet plucked at his robe and seared the skin at his waist. He rolled and kept
rolling until he crashed into some low bushes. Bullets whiplashed over his
head. He crawled into the trees. Minutes later he dragged himself to the top of
the drystone wall. He looked back towards the villa and the chapel. External
lights had come on now. He saw a black mini-van pull up and black-clad, armed
men jumping into it, then he heard the scream of its tyres as the engine revved
and it pulled away.

He waited, considering his options. He was dressed in the black robe and nothing
else. Obviously the black-clad men had not been the law. He saw some of the
congregation coming out of the chapel, walking around like zombies. He
considered going back down but rapidly changed his mind as the headlights of
several vehicles swept into view. He saw the two cars, the three jeeps and the
two armoured personnel carriers. He saw the uniformed carabinieri spew out of
the vehicles. He turned and jumped from the wall.

A westerly wind had blown away the clouds, and the thin curve of the moon cast
little light onto the clearing in front of him. A black-clad man was standing
there, five metres away. A man with a square, scarred face, cradling a submachine-gun.

Houdris leaned back against the stone wall. He recognised the man who had burst into
the chapel and thrown the flares. The man moved slowly forward until he was
standing a metre away. His voice was deep and carried a trace of an American accent.

"You die tonight. You can die making a joke with your past. You would not have died
for the evil you have done tonight or the evil you have done these past twenty
years. You die for the evil you did to a woman in Malta twenty years ago. You
die for a woman who sat so often on a dry-stone wall to catch a glimpse of her
son, whom you fathered and discarded."

The mind of Gamel Houdris was trying to understand the words when the man tossed
aside the submachine-gun, reached out with his square hands and slowly
strangled the supreme leader of 'The Blue Ring'.

The girls had long gone home. Blondie was in her over-furnished suite of rooms,
putting the last of her curlers into her hair. The doorbell rang. She cursed
eloquently in three languages, glanced at her watch and went to her door. As
she opened it she heard Raoul moving down the corridor. He was also cursing
quietly. Whatever over-sexed drunk had arrived at four in the morning would get
short shrift from him.

She stood on the upper landing and listened as Raoul opened the front door. She
dimly heard voices. Raoul's voice was not angry. She put on her flowered
nightdress and went down the stairs. The voices were now coming from the
kitchen. Creasy was sitting at the kitchen table. In all her years she had
never seen his eyes so tired. His whole body seemed bloodshot.

"Michael?" she asked.