40

Ahmed grabbed a handful of Angela's hair and pulled her head firmly against the chair. He ran the back of the blade of the flick-knife down her cheeks, first one, then the other, playing with her, the tip of the cold steel leaving a transient white furrow on her lightly tanned skin, a mark that faded into invisibility almost as soon as the blade had passed.

'Which side first?' he muttered, leaning close to her ear. 'It's your face, so you can choose.'

Angela's eyes bulged as she choked behind the tape gag, a thin trickle of mucus running from her nose. Bronson had never seen such terror on any human face, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

'I'll tell you anything I know,' he said desperately.

'Tell me where the tablet is,' the tall man replied, his voice rising almost to a shout at the end of the sentence.

'I don't know,' Bronson said bitterly. 'And I won't know, no matter what you do to me, or to Angela.'

'Then she'll die here, and so will you. Get on with it, Ahmed,' he added.

At that instant there was a sudden noise from the floor above the cellar. The tall man grimaced in annoyance, stood up and turned towards the door. Ahmed stopped moving, his blade resting on Angela's left cheek.

Bronson stared at the door. He heard another noise, raised voices, and the clatter of shoes on concrete. The tall man called out something in Arabic, his irritation obvious from the tone of his voice.

'Wait for me to come back,' he instructed Ahmed, and headed for the stairs.

For two or three minutes there was a confusion of noise from above, shouts of alarm or perhaps anger, a succession of faint thuds, and then silence fell once more. Staring at the flight of concrete steps, Bronson saw a jellaba-clad figure walking down them. He felt a sudden stab of fear. The tall man was returning, and this time there would be no further delays.

But when the figure arrived at the entrance to the cellar, Bronson's brow creased in puzzlement. The man was holding a large piece of cardboard in front of him, which completely obscured his face and most of his upper body.

Bronson glanced at Ahmed, who looked equally puzzled.

'Yacoub?' Ahmed asked.

The answer and what happened next were both unexpected.

'No,' the man said, and dropped the cardboard.

Immediately, Bronson recognized the familiar features of Jalal Talabani, his face grim as he raised the pistol in his right hand, looking for a target.

Ahmed emitted a sudden curse, then swung the flickknife downwards, towards Angela's face, at the same instant as Talabani pulled the trigger. The semi-automatic pistol was fitted with a slim suppressor, and the noise of the shot was little more than a dull pop. The slide flew back, a brass cartridge case tumbled to the ground, and Talabani fired again, then once more.

On the other side of the cellar, Ahmed clutched at his chest and flew backwards, the flick-knife falling from his hand. As he crashed against the wall, a sudden fountain of blood sprayed in a wide arc across the floor.

Talabani ran over to the fallen man, felt for a pulse and then stood up, sliding the pistol into a holster under his jellaba. He bent down again, grabbed the flick-knife and strode across to Bronson.

'Jesus, Jalal. Am I glad to see you,' Bronson gasped.

'You've been lucky, my friend,' the Moroccan police officer said, as the newly sharpened blade of the knife made short work of the cable ties, freeing Bronson from the chair.

'Here,' Bronson said, and took the knife from Talabani. He swiftly cut Angela free, pulling the tape gently off her face.

'Thank God, thank God,' she sobbed, clinging to Bronson with a strength born of pure desperation.

Still holding Angela, Bronson turned to Jalal. 'How the hell did you manage to get here?' he demanded. 'And where are the rest of your men?'

'Somebody telephoned in a report of your kidnapping on the street, and managed to get the number of the van,' Talabani said. 'That was broadcast immediately, and we've had teams out looking for it all night. I was driving past this house – it's on the outskirts of Rabat – when I saw it parked outside. I called for back-up, obviously, but I decided to try to get in myself. There were only a couple of people upstairs, and I managed to take care of them, and that tall one-eyed man as well – his name was Yacoub and he was well known to us – when he came up to investigate, and the rest you saw.'

Bronson shook his head. 'Thank God you did,' he said, 'that bastard you shot down here was just about to start slicing up Angela.'

She gave a sudden shiver as he said the words. 'Let's get out of here,' she muttered, tears streaming down her face.

'Go now, my friend,' Talabani agreed. 'This place will be swarming with police officers any minute now, and I'm quite sure neither of you wants to get involved in a circus like that. Why don't you take my car?' He produced a set of keys from his pocket. 'Go back to your hotel. I can always get a statement from you later.'

'Won't that cause you problems, Jalal?'

'Nothing that I can't handle. Go.'

'Come on, Angela,' Bronson said. 'We're out of here.

Thanks, Jalal. I owe you.'

They climbed the stairs out of the cellar, Angela still clutching Bronson, and walked down the hall towards the wide-open door of the property. Angela shuddered at the sight of two unmoving figures sprawled on the floor of the passageway, their jellabas covered in crimson stains. She stepped over them gingerly, trying to avoid any contact with the bodies. Bronson glanced through an open door into a side room, to see another silent shape lying motionless on the floor. Talabani had obviously been very thorough.

Outside the house, dawn had just broken. Angela stopped and gulped in several deep breaths of fresh air, then suddenly vomited onto the dusty ground.

'God, what a nightmare,' she muttered, pulling a packet of tissues out of her pocket and wiping her mouth. 'How quickly can we get to the airport?'

Two minutes later, Bronson steered Talabani's Renault away from the whitewashed house, back towards the centre of Rabat, Angela sitting beside him, still tense and shaking from her ordeal.

Jalal Talabani stood in the doorway and watched as his car disappeared down the road, then turned back into the property. He strode through the entrance hall, stepping over the two motionless figures sprawled on the floor, and through the open door into a side room.

On a couple of large cushions against the opposite wall a man lay on his back, a large dark red stain marring the front of his jellaba.

'They've gone,' Talabani announced. 'Was that how you wanted it done?' he asked.

The tall man with the frozen face swung himself up into a sitting position on the cushions and leant comfortably back against the wall. He looked across at Talabani and nodded. 'That was exactly how I wanted it done. The two men outside gave you no trouble?'

Talabani shook his head. 'They pulled their pistols when I came in, but they were a lifetime too slow. Why did you want me to kill them?' he asked. 'And Ahmed as well?'

Yacoub stood up. 'Because Bronson had to believe this was for real. He and Lewis had to believe they'd escaped and that I was dead. Only then would they feel safe enough to follow the trail and find the relics. The men – all of them – were expendable.'

'What now?'

'My men are already in position. They'll follow Bronson and Lewis, and when they find what I'm looking for, I'll take it off them. And then I'll kill them.'