Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (22 page)

She heard him hit the call button, with a noisy sniff.

Then, suddenly, twin green eyes loomed out of the night ahead of them. Traffic lights. They’d reached the intersection with the main road.

‘He’s not picking up,’ muttered Patch.

The lights darkened to amber, then to red. Tye saw the traffic on the right at the intersection strain forwards, ready to accelerate away at the first wink of green.

‘Tye, he ain’t answering!’

The Chrysler was still gaining. No way could she stop now.

The traffic started to move, metal animals let off the leash.

‘Hold on, Patch,’ she shouted.

The van ran through the reds and careened out into the oncoming traffic. Cars swerved and horns blared, a dozen tones at once. With no windscreen, the sounds seemed amplified, a deafening soundtrack as Tye spun the wheel this way and that. A huge oil truck almost broadsided them, slamming on its brakes at the last possible moment.

A sickening crunch of metal on metal carried to them as they cleared the chaos, and Tye sent the van screeching down the Via Gianicolense towards the city. She checked the rear-view and saw that the Chrysler had smashed into the side of a tourer, its doors flung open. She glimpsed black-clad figures disappearing into the night.

‘Gee.’ Tye glanced sideways at Patch with a shaky smile. ‘You think they didn’t have insurance?’

‘I think we need to dump this van before it gets so hot it burns our arses.’ Patch looked and sounded utterly exhausted, dropped the phone sullenly in her lap. ‘Coldhardt ain’t home. You think he’s at his girlfriend’s place?’

‘I think …’ Tye began.

But she found she didn’t know what to think any more.

Motti was shoved roughly out of the security station and into the cool night. There were more of Yianna’s bodyguards out here – together with the tattooed bitch from Cairo. He knew that these guys did not mess, so he didn’t struggle. His throat felt like it had been hit with a hammer, and he tasted blood whenever he swallowed.

He glanced at Con, subdued and quiet, allowing the black-clad minders to push her along without protest. He guessed she was thinking on what Yianna had said about Coldhardt. Well, so was he. And it was bull. It
had
to be bull.

Yianna was talking with one of her minders, her voice rising in anger. Abruptly she broke away and limped over to Motti and Con with the help of a gleaming chrome walking stick. ‘Your friends have caused us some inconvenience.’

Motti coughed painfully. ‘Y’know, they’re always doing that. I been meaning to talk to them about it.’

Yianna’s expression stayed sour. ‘But we have you two. That should suffice.’

‘Suffice for what?’

A Mercedes limousine pulled up beside the security
station. The back door opened ominously.

‘We going for a ride?’ Motti croaked.

‘You’re going to visit Samraj. Her
real
home.’ She nodded towards the car. ‘Put them in.’

‘No.’ Con snapped out of her trance as she was shoved towards the back seat. She looked at Yianna, wide-eyed. ‘Not in the back. I can’t go in the back.’

‘No tricks,’ she hissed.

‘It’s not a trick,’ said Motti. ‘She freaks out in the back of a car. Let her go in the front.’

‘Pathetic,’ sneered Yianna.

Con struggled fiercely in the arms of the black-clad figures as they forced her step by step into the car and manhandled her inside. ‘No,’ she kept saying under her breath. ‘No, no, no.’

Motti hurriedly joined her in the back of the limousine. Another man slid in beside him so he and Con were bunched up in the middle. Con’s eyes were tight shut, her breathing erratic. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Motti took her hand and she squeezed it tightly, her nails digging into his skin. ‘Look, she’s going to have a fit or something.’

Yianna got in awkwardly beside the black-clad driver, didn’t even turn round.

The car pulled slowly away and Con shrieked.

‘I’m telling you, she can’t do this!’ Motti saw the sides of Con’s mouth were flecked with spit. She was rocking back and forth, moaning under her breath.

‘’S OK,’ Motti whispered in her ear, trying to hold her. ‘’S OK, sweetheart, it ain’t for ever. We’re gonna get through this,’ he kept whispering, over and over,
though she showed no signs of hearing him. ‘And then it’s payback time.’

As Patch finished telling his sorry story Tye’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of it all. Yianna was sick, she needed the Amrita. Samraj was more likely to get it than her own father – was that what had driven her to betray him?

And what about Coldhardt’s betrayal?

She remembered the intimacy between him and Samraj at Demnos’s party. Coldhardt’s evading the question of her whereabouts – ‘
I really couldn’t tell you
’. Because then it might have come out that she didn’t even
own
a mansion in Florence? That the mansion was Demnos’s property all along?

But why would Coldhardt order a covert raid on the house of his own employer? What was the point? And why mislead Motti, Patch and Jonah in their work? Tye would have known if he’d told an outright lie, but Coldhardt was a wily old bastard, he rarely slipped. He chose his words like his suits, tailor-made for the occasion.

She remembered the call with Demnos that morning, though it seemed a lifetime ago.
‘Perhaps a third party is at work, someone playing each of you against the other,’
he had mused, and there was a look in his eyes she hadn’t been able to fathom.

Now, with sudden clarity, she knew.

‘It’s you,’ she breathed.

Coldhardt was working for both Samraj
and
Demnos – and ripping them both off at the same time.

For Demnos, he had used the talents of his children.
For Samraj, he had used his own.

‘I have obtained Samraj’s fragments of the prescription, by covert means,’
he’d told Demnos just that morning. Not ‘we’.
I
. She imagined him rising quietly from the woman’s exotic bedside in the dead of night, sneaking away to steal the secrets of her part of the prescription. Just as he’d sent Motti, Patch and Jonah to steal the fragments that Demnos possessed – for Samraj’s benefit. Perhaps Yianna had been unable to crack her father’s safe. Or perhaps Samraj wanted to be sure that Yianna was not holding out on her.

But why hadn’t Coldhardt explained to them what he was doing? He’d been playing a dangerous game, so why go it alone when they could have helped him? Was he trying to protect them, or did he simply not trust them enough?

Her pride stung at the thought. When she got back she would ask for answers. No. Whatever his temper, she would
demand
them.

But when the battered van drew up outside the castle at last, she knew at once that something was wrong. The gravel in the driveway was churned up, as though a car had left in a hurry. One of the great wrought iron gates stood ajar.

Patch had noticed too. He flung open the van door. ‘Coldhardt?’ he yelled, pelting out into the grounds. ‘Coldhardt!’

She raced after him, catching him up as he stood panting and anxious in front of the retinal scanner. He winked into it, got the match, and they held hands as the lift descended, holding their breaths too.

‘Oh, God …’ breathed Tye.

The hub – Coldhardt’s sanctum and sacred heart, wherever the location – had been trashed. While Patch lingered in the doorway, Tye walked slowly inside. Cabinets had been tipped over, spewing files and papers. One of the screens on the wall was cracked, another smashed right open. The table was overturned. A bloody handprint was smeared on the wall.

‘Someone’s got him,’ she whispered.

‘How could anyone get in
here
?’ said Patch.

‘I don’t know. But he’s gone.’

Patch looked at her. ‘Then … we’re on our own.’

Tye stared at Coldhardt’s desk. The computer had been swept away, and what was left of the smashed-up statuette was standing in its place. She advanced on it slowly. The demon crouched alone in placid marble, its human foe ripped away along with most of its scaly stomach.

She saw it had been placed on a piece of paper and a crumpled handkerchief. Gingerly, she tugged the paper free.

It was a note, scrawled in Coldhardt’s hand:

MISS ME, Cx

Tye touched the paper to her lips, lost in harried thoughts. Kisses from Coldhardt? It seemed unlikely.

‘What the hell are we gonna do?’ Patch wailed, and Tye wished she had a good answer.

Motti’s journey in the limo was mercifully brief, barely half an hour through the outskirts of Rome to some fancy villa on the fringes of the Janiculum. The quaint, picturesque streets were dark and silent, lending a
kind of creepy fairy-tale feel to the journey.

Con was still clutching his hand so tightly that the bloodied skin was blue beneath. She was shuddering and shaking. Seeing her like this hurt far more than anything she could unwittingly do to him. He’d never seen anything like it.

As the big car turned smoothly into a courtyard and started to slow, he realised with a chill that, after tonight, he might never see anything ever again.

‘This is Samraj’s villa,’ said Yianna with a smug smile. ‘
Now
you believe me, perhaps, that you were sent to Florence under false pretences?’

Motti didn’t even look up, cradling Con’s head, stroking her hair. ‘Just let us out of here.’

The big bruisers bundled them outside and towards an intricately carved doorway. Motti kept a close hold on Con, scared she would collapse. She was staring round sightlessly, the real her hiding away in some secret, safer place. Sounded good – Motti wished he could retreat from reality too. Gargoyles peered down from the old stone walls, watching them approach with scuffed lichen eyes.

They paused at the doorway while Yianna caught them up, leaning heavily on her stick, her left foot scraping over the gravel. As she pulled out a phony stone in the wall, Motti saw a black plastic pad behind – a ’print scanner by the look of it. Once she’d placed her index finger against it, a green light winked on and a hidden bolt retracted, allowing her to open the door.

Motti half expected them to be taken to a cell. Instead, they were led into an opulent study done out
in art deco style, all black and white, squared-off corners, geometric lines. At once, his attention was taken by the tall Indian woman, her willowy form flattered by close-fitting midnight blue, standing expectantly by a black marble fireplace. She looked about forty, the hard beauty of her face framed by thick, straight black hair. She wore a snake bracelet on her upper arm, the gold curling sensuously twice around the toned, dusky flesh. Its eyes were diamonds, and there was something of their cruel glitter in the woman’s own.

He gave Con’s hand a reassuring squeeze, though probably more for his own comfort than hers, and did his best to seem unflappable. ‘So you’re Samraj, right?’

‘Very astute,’ she said mockingly.

‘Don’t be so hard on the boy. I imagine he’s had quite a night.’

Motti whirled round at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Coldhardt. He was pouring himself a drink from a crystal decanter. The liquid was the same rich, dark crimson as the gash on his temple. His usually immaculate suit looked a little crumpled, his steel-grey cravat was spotted with blood, but his blue eyes were as sharp and clear as always.

‘What is this?’ Motti breathed as Coldhardt sipped from his tiny glass. ‘You seem pretty much at home, man.’

‘So he should,’ said Samraj. ‘He has been here many times.’

Motti went on staring. He realised he was clutching Con to him like a security blanket. ‘You sold us out?’
He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. ‘Is
that
what this is about?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Motti.’ Coldhardt looked irritated, swigged back his drink. ‘I’m a prisoner here, just as you are.’

‘Only because you choose to be so difficult,’ Samraj purred. ‘If you’d accompanied me quietly, I wouldn’t have had to resort to such crude violence.’

Coldhardt inclined his bloodied head in rueful agreement. ‘Just how
did
you gain access to my stronghold?’

She raised her arm until the golden serpent was staring directly at him. ‘In one of the diamonds there’s a miniaturised retinal scanner. When you kissed my hand at the party, you gazed directly into it – a lingering look I recorded for posterity.’

‘And used to create an exact match of my retina to bypass the security lift,’ Coldhardt concluded. ‘Motti, I trust you’ll introduce safeguards to ensure such a breach never happens again?’

‘Oh, I’ll make it my number one job,’ said Motti bitterly, ‘when your girlfriend here sends us back home.’

Samraj turned to him. ‘I had hoped that you and your friends would be at the castle too. I wished to take you all together with a minimum of fuss – so I was delighted when I learned of your plans to enter my premises.’

Motti stared at Coldhardt. ‘You told her?’

‘Since none of you were there, it was obvious you were out on a job,’ he replied calmly. ‘And Ms Vasavi knows very well what we’ve been working on.’

‘Yeah, well. Since this is all so chummy, you think Con could sit down? She’s flipped out.’ He nodded angrily at Yianna, who now hovered behind them with two of her bodyguards. ‘Little Miss Beatch here wouldn’t let her ride up front.’

Samraj smiled at Coldhardt. ‘I told you I had your workforce in my power.’

‘Only two of them.’ Coldhardt shrugged. ‘
I
told
you
they would not be taken easily.’

‘Two will do.’ She turned to her bodyguards. ‘At the first sign of trouble from Coldhardt – kill his children.’

Coldhardt’s face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion. He casually poured himself a little more to drink.

‘So that’s why we’re here. Hostages.’ Motti helped Con over to an antique chaise longue, looked at Coldhardt beseechingly, all efforts at cool exhausted. ‘What’s going on? What
is
all this?’

‘Yes, do tell the poor dears, Nathaniel,’ said Samraj agreeably. ‘Tell them how both Demnos and I approached you, quite independently, to steal the other’s fragments of the Amrita prescription. Explain how you accepted both our offers – and both our advance fees – while keeping your talented little helpers in the dark. Worried they would think less of you, perhaps? Or that they might suspect you would double-cross
them
just as readily?’