The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 18



‘That wasn’t the brightest of moves, was it?’ Guido muttered. ‘That could have been the owner, a civilian, and you might have just killed him.’

‘And how would that be a problem?’ Marco asked, as the two men stood near the foot of the staircase in the old house and peered upwards.

‘If it was the owner, he might have known where the relic was.’

The other man shook his head.

‘I know that’s what Stefan said, but I think he’s wrong. If anybody actually knew where the relic was hidden, it would have appeared in an auction room somewhere long before now. And whoever it was running up those stairs, it wasn’t the owner of this house. It’s dark up there, and the owner would have put some lights on. I mean, why wouldn’t he, in his own house? We both saw that the courtyard door had been forced, and to me that can mean only one thing: the men in the other group, the ones who broke into the cenotaph, are following the same trail we are.’

‘And they got here first, you mean?’

‘Precisely,’ Marco confirmed. ‘And they’re still here and they’ll be carrying weapons. According to the newspaper reports, they had pistols when they broke into the cenotaph, and that was an unopposed operation, so they’ll certainly be carrying some now. So what we don’t do is assume that shot of mine killed or wounded one of them, and go blundering up the stairs to finish off the job, because if we do we probably won’t survive. They’ll be up there, occupying the high ground, pistols in hand and just waiting for us to walk into their sights.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We leave the house, right now.’

‘That’d be a good way of pissing off Stefan. Are you sure you want to do that? Just run away?’

‘I didn’t say we’d run away. I just said we’d leave the house,’ Marco responded. ‘And we make it obvious that we’ve done so.’

‘And then?’

‘That will give whoever’s up there enough time to try to find the relic – that’s assuming it’s here, of course – and then we can take it off them when they come out. And take them down at the same time. And if they don’t find it, we can still eliminate them - take them out of the equation. You got a problem with that?’

Guido shook his head.

‘Works for me,’ he said. ‘Good thinking.’

Without another words, both men turned back towards the kitchen and the side door of the property.