‘Pretty serious.’
‘Does it have to do with what happened at the mansion?’
‘Uh-huh. And more besides.’
‘For Chrissakes, Wes, even I can’t hold back the tide for ever. You’ve got to come forward with this. As your lawyer I have to tell you that the weirder you act, the less you’re gonna look like the chief witness and more like the chief suspect. That’s how the cops, and everyone else, are going to see it.’
‘That can’t be helped for the moment,’ Wesley said. ‘I trust you, Bob. Talk to you tomorrow.’
Wesley hung up the phone, picked up his sabre and walked through the airy house to the kitchen to check on how his steak was defrosting. A bottle of 1993 Bordeaux was sitting opened on the side, nothing too ostentatious, a modest little hundred-dollar table wine to go with his dinner. Thinking he’d like to replay those Bach Goldberg Variations that he’d been listening to earlier, he turned back towards the living room.
A man he’d never seen before was standing in the hallway, looking right at him.
‘Wesley Holland?’ the man said.
Wesley sucked in a great lungful of air and felt his knees turn to jelly. He staggered back a step. ‘I’m not Holland. Who the hell are you?’
‘We spoke on the phone,’ the man said. ‘And I never forget a voice.’
‘You get away from me,’ Wesley rasped. He gripped the hilt of the sabre and rattled the weapon out of its steel scabbard.
‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ the man said, moving forward a step.
Wesley didn’t believe that, not for one moment. He could see the purposeful look in the stranger’s eye, and was ready to make a lunge with the blade and then run like hell for the vault. He’d lock himself in down there, even if it meant starving to death. Anything was preferable to what these people would do to him.
‘Another step closer and I’ll run you right through, mister. I mean it.’ His hand was shaking so badly he could barely grip the sabre hilt.
‘Why don’t you put that down, so we can talk?’ the stranger said.
‘Who are you?’ Wesley quavered. ‘What do you want from me?’
At that moment, another figure appeared in the hallway. He was a younger man of about twenty, with a shock of fair hair. Wesley peered at him. He could have sworn the young man looked familiar.
‘I’m Jude Arundel,’ he said. ‘You were a friend of my father’s.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
A stunned silence in the hallway.
It was Wesley who broke it. ‘What do you mean, I was a friend of Simeon’s?’
‘He’s dead,’ Jude said tightly. ‘So is my mother. They were killed by the same people who are after you.’
Wesley suddenly felt unsteady on his feet. He staggered over to a chair and slumped heavily into it, dropping the sabre to the floor and sinking his face in his hands. ‘Oh, no. I warned him. I told him to be careful.’
‘We’ve come a long way to see you, Mr Holland.’ Ben picked up the fallen sabre, replaced it in its scabbard and propped it against the wall. ‘My name’s Ben Hope. I’ve known Simeon and Michaela Arundel for twenty years, and I was with them when they died. I was staying at their home the night you called there.’
‘How did you find me here?’
‘Not too easily, you’ll be pleased to know,’ Ben said. ‘You did a pretty decent job of covering your tracks.’
‘I was lucky, that’s all. They very nearly got me on the road.’
‘Have you told anyone where you are?’
‘You have to be kidding. Not even my lawyer knows.’
‘All the same,’ Ben said, ‘do you keep a gun in the house? Any kind of gun’ll do.’
‘There’s a Revolutionary War musket in the vault,’ Wesley told him. ‘It hasn’t been fired in centuries, though.’
‘Forget it.’
Wesley sighed. ‘I need a drink. Let’s go into the kitchen.’
Dinner was forgotten for the moment. Wesley settled onto a padded stool and emptied a third of his’93 Bordeaux into a large wineglass. Both Ben and Jude declined the offer of a drink.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss, son,’ Wesley said after a few gulps.
‘Thanks,’ Jude muttered.
Wesley turned to Ben. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘You tell him,’ Jude said to Ben. He walked over to the window and turned his back for a few moments. It was getting darker outside. The distant meteorological observatory tower was lit up, throwing a red light across the water.
‘Their car was forced off the road,’ Ben said. ‘It was set up to look like an accident.’
‘Did they suffer?’ Wesley whispered.
‘No,’ Ben lied. ‘It was very quick.’ He glanced over at Jude, paused, and then went on. ‘I don’t think it was as quick for Fabrice Lalique. But you already knew about that.’
‘I didn’t know whether to believe the suicide story or not,’ Wesley admitted. ‘At the time, it seemed crazy to start spouting conspiracy theories.’
‘In my experience,’ Ben said, ‘the truth is often crazier than what you read in the papers. I’m pretty certain the killers were the same people who planted the paedophile material on his computer. You have some very nasty and powerful enemies, Mr Holland.’
‘You got that right,’ Wesley grunted. ‘These ruthless sonsofbitches can track you from your credit card and God knows what else. Who the hell are they?’
‘That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘How should I know who they are?’
‘Because of the sword.’
Wesley drained his glass, set it down and looked long and hard at Ben, then at Jude. ‘You know about the sword?’ he said slowly.
‘We’ve just come from Jerusalem,’ Jude told him.
The billionaire’s eyes widened in amazement. ‘You found Hillel?’ Then a terrible thought struck him. ‘He’s not—?’
‘He’s alive and well and still enjoying his semi-retirement,’ Ben said. ‘He drove us to Masada and showed us where he made his discovery back in 1963. We know how much you paid him as a reward for finding it. We know just how important it is to you, and how important it was to Simeon and Fabrice. We know everything about the sword, except what really matters. What is it, where is it, and who would want it so badly they’d kill you, us, or anyone else to get it?’
Wesley hesitated. ‘You have to realise, it’s very hard for me to trust you. You don’t understand how important this is.’
‘You have no choice but to trust us,’ Ben said. ‘You’ve been pretty clever so far, not to mention lucky, but these people won’t give up so easily.’
‘I’m safe here,’ Wesley insisted. ‘And I can hold out for a long, long time.’
‘You can’t stay hidden for ever. You’re all over the TV and internet. It’s just a question of time before someone recognises you and word gets out that the mysterious billionaire is holed up on Martha’s Vineyard. Then these people are going to come for you. They’ll torture you until they have the sword,