All the time he’d been talking, Bronson had been keeping a careful watch out of the car windows, just in case any of the police officers decided they needed to widen their search of the local area. He didn’t think it was likely to happen imminently, because he guessed they’d have their hands full at the crime scene. Once more cars and officers had arrived, they’d have enough manpower to cover the whole area, but Bronson intended to be long gone before that happened.
‘You killed two men?’ Angela asked, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.
Bronson shrugged, mentally reliving the sequence of events.
‘It was self-defence,’ he said, ‘and I only just got away with it. If I’d been just a little bit slower I’d be lying dead on the floor of that office back there, and George would probably be looking down the barrel of a pistol as well. I really had no choice.’
Angela didn’t reply, and Bronson held her gaze for a moment, then looked ahead, through the windscreen.
‘We can talk about it later, but now we really must move,’ he said. ‘Are you OK to drive?’
Angela nodded, looking upset but resolute.
As they drove past the end of the road where the warehouse was located, they both glanced to their left. The flashing red and blue lights of the police vehicle were casting kaleidoscope patterns across the front of the building, but nobody was visible outside it. Bronson guessed that the police were still trying to make sense of the scene inside the office and, hopefully, summoning medical assistance for George Stebbins.
As if in answer to his silent thought, as they drove out of the industrial estate and turned back towards the centre of Madrid, an ambulance screamed past in the opposite direction, siren blaring and roof-lights pulsing.
‘With any luck they’ll pump George full of painkillers before they splint and bind his fingers, and he probably won’t be in any fit state to answer questions coherently for a few hours. I just hope he remembers not to mention you, and especially not to mention me.’
Then another thought struck him, and he glanced over at Angela, who was concentrating on driving as quickly as the traffic would allow.
‘What happened to that bloke I flattened outside the building?’ Bronson asked. ‘The one who came out and obligingly left the door open for me?’
Angela glanced at him, then turned her attention back to the road.
‘He stood up a couple of minutes after you’d gone inside. He looked pretty groggy, and kept on holding the side of his head while he looked around him. But then the shooting started inside the building and that certainly got his attention. He reached inside his jacket, but I guess you’d already taken his gun because he obviously didn’t find what he was looking for. He took a few steps over towards the building, then seemed to think better of it. He walked back to the car, got into it and then drove away. It was about then that I put the battery back in the phone and called the police.’
Bronson nodded.
‘One minor mystery solved, I suppose.’
‘So now that George is in good hands,’ Angela asked, ‘can we go home?’
‘I bloody hope so. I just have no idea how.’
86
Angela looked quickly across at Bronson as the car sped along the city streets.
‘But if all of the gang are dead, then surely that’s the end of it? We can just drive to the airport, buy a couple of tickets and fly back to London?’
‘I don’t think it’s going to be anything like that easy,’ Bronson replied slowly. ‘There were only three people inside that warehouse, four if you include the man I tackled in the car park. Pere said they were only a small proportion of the people looking for us. They’ll certainly be covering the airport and the railway stations. About the only way we’re going to be able to get back to England in one piece is if we drive there. Trying to find one car in the vast network of roads that cover France should be almost impossible, as long as we stay off the autoroutes.’
‘That’s a hell of a long way to drive. Are you sure there’s no other way we can travel?’
Bronson shook his head.
‘None that I can think of. If they don’t find us in Madrid, they’ll widen the search and start checking the Atlantic ports like Santander, and probably station men at all the other airports anywhere near here, and on both sides of the border up to the north of us. They’ll be covering Barcelona, Gerona, Reus, Lourdes, Toulouse and Carcassonne, places like that.’
‘That would be a huge manpower commitment,’ Angela objected. ‘Do you really think these people believe that old parchment is important enough to justify that?’
‘I’m afraid I do,’ Bronson replied. ‘The man who seemed to be in charge inside the warehouse did explain something to me. Up till now, you and I have probably both had our own ideas about who, or what organization, is coordinating these people. I think we’ve both been fairly certain that the parchment was probably originally the property of the Catholic Church. Pere pretty much confirmed that, by mentioning Rome and also the fact that the relic had been stolen from them, years ago. But the people who are looking for it aren’t members of the clergy, which I suppose is something of a relief. According to Pere, his organization has been retained by the Vatican to recover the parchment, and he was adamant that we would be hunted down and killed. He told me that we’re facing one of the biggest and most dedicated organizations on the planet, and one of the most ruthless.’
‘You sound like you’re talking about the Mafia,’ Angela said.
Bronson laughed shortly.
‘No, not quite, though there have been links between the Vatican and the Mafia for decades. But if I’m right the people who are looking for us have probably got just as wide a reach as the Cosa Nostra. We’re facing a group with followers in every country, who’ve proved time and time again that they’re both extremely ruthless and very competent, who’ve committed murder on countless occasions and, in nineteen seventy-eight, very probably extended their lethal reach into the heart of the Vatican itself and killed Pope John Paul I.’
87
‘You have just got to be kidding me,’ Angela said, glancing across at Bronson to see the expression on his face. ‘I thought he died of a heart attack?’
‘I wish I was. Nothing about the death of John Paul made sense. He was young, for a pope, fit and healthy, and had no serious medical problems. Ultimately everybody dies of a heart attack because sooner or later it stops beating. What we don’t know is why his heart stopped beating, because there was no autopsy. But we do know that the day before his body was discovered, he had announced his intention to cleanse the Vatican of the influence of members of a so-called Masonic lodge named Propaganda Due, or P2.’
‘I remember,’ Angela said. ‘Roberto Calvi and Blackfriars Bridge.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But I thought it was disbanded after all that controversy over the Banco Ambrosiano?’
‘So did I, but the official view must be wrong. I think it just went underground.’
‘So it’s not the Vatican that is sending out teams of trained assassins to hunt us down? It’s this P2?’
Bronson nodded. ‘That’s what I think. I believe that the sheer existence of that parchment — or more accurately the text that is written on it — poses such a threat to the entire Christian religion that the Church will do anything, and I do mean anything, to destroy it. That’s why they’ve handed over the job to P2, which would have no scruples at all about killing us or anybody else. After all, if they’re prepared to act inside the Vatican itself and assassinate the Pope, murdering us wouldn’t give them a moment’s pause.’