The Sacred Sword. Scott Mariani

up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.

      Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’

      Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.

      Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.

      ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’

      The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.

      And he was headed right for the edge.

      Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.

      ‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.

      A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.

      Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.

      The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.

      As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.

      At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.

      And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:

       My Dear Friends

       By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.

       The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.

      Chapter Two

       Two weeks later

      Storm clouds scudded darkly overhead as another great rolling wave crashed against the bow of the SeaFrance cross-channel ferry Rodin, sending a plume of white foam and spray lashing across her deck. Most of the nine hundred or so passengers braving the gale warnings to cross over to England that freezing December afternoon were huddled in the luxury of the superferry’s bars and lounge areas.

      Just one man stood on the outer deck. He leaned against the railing, the collar of his scuffed leather jacket turned up, the wind in his thick blond hair, his body moving easily to the heave and sway of the ship. His eyes were narrowed to blue slits against the salt spray as he gazed northwards, just able to make out the shape of the Cliffs of Dover through the murk. He took a draw on his cigarette, and the wisp of smoke was snatched away by a violent gust.

      His name was Ben Hope. Half English, half Irish, just turned forty years of age but still as fit as he’d ever been. In his time he’d been a soldier, before leaving the British Special Forces to plunge deep into the shady world of the international kidnap and ransom business.

      Working freelance as what he called a ‘crisis response consultant’, using methods and skills that conventional law enforcement operatives either weren’t allowed or weren’t trained to employ, Ben had delivered more than a few innocent victims safely back into the arms of their loved ones. More than a few kidnappers had been efficiently dispatched in order for that to happen.

      These days, home was a tranquil corner of rural Normandy, a place called Le Val. It had been a working farm for most of its history – now it was a specialised tactical training centre where military and police agencies, hostage rescue specialists, kidnap and ransom negotiators and insurance execs from all across the world flocked to learn from Ben and his team. The world was still a troubled enough place to ensure they were seldom short of clients.

      It sometimes happened that Ben had to take a business trip to Britain, but this wasn’t one of those times. With Le Val closed for Christmas, he had more personal matters to attend to – both of which, in their different ways, were the reason for his deeply pensive state as he stood there on the deck.

      Tomorrow evening he was due to attend the inaugural opening of the new concert venue at Langton Hall, the Oxfordshire music academy created by Leigh Llewellyn. She’d been one of the world’s most celebrated and talented opera stars. She’d also been Ben’s first love – and much later, and for far too short a time, his wife.

      Her death was a wound that he knew would never really heal. How it had happened was something he refused to think about, though the nightmare still haunted him some nights. The man who’d taken Leigh from him had been called Jack Glass. He had outlived her by only a few minutes.

      As a trustee of the Leigh Llewellyn Foundation, Ben had been invited to cut the inaugural ribbon to open the grand new concert hall, make a speech and present a prize to the most promising young opera singer training at the school. He wasn’t exactly an accomplished public speaker. In his time with the SAS he’d conducted a thousand low-key operational briefings with small teams of men; as a tactical training instructor he was used to giving lectures in the familiar environment of Le Val’s little classroom – but the thought of standing up on a stage and addressing a large audience made him nervous. He was as prepared for it as he could be. It was the least he could do for Leigh’s memory.

      The second reason he was travelling to England made him even more nervous. He’d agonised a long time before deciding to make the stop-off in London on his way to Oxfordshire. London was where Brooke lived: Dr Brooke Marcel, formerly visiting lecturer in hostage psychology at Le Val, as well as something a lot more. The way things had gone between them since the terrible argument in September, Ben didn’t know how Brooke would react to his surprise visit. All he knew was how badly he’d missed her these last few months.

      When the ferry docked at Dover, Ben headed down to the car deck. While the other passengers climbed into their shiny new Vauxhalls and Nissans and Daewoos, he creaked open the door of the battered and ancient ex-military Series II Land Rover that the guys he worked with referred to as ‘Le Crock’, slung his bag on the worn-out passenger seat and drove out into the late afternoon drizzle.

      Le Crock wasn’t the kind of vehicle you could spur along in too much of a hurry – and as he headed for London, Ben wondered if that