Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword

‘Sure,’ the woman said nonchalantly. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Will Hillel be in later?’ Ben asked.

‘He doesn’t come in that often. Might pay a visit late afternoon. Who’s calling?’

Ben ended the call without replying, and immediately started hunting for Hillel’s Coffee House online. Its colourful website quickly confirmed that it was a popular all-hours cafe in Zion Square, off Jaffa Road in downtown West Jerusalem, owned and run by Hillel Zada and his wife Ayala.

When Ben saw the photo of the place he realised he couldn’t have been more wrong about it. The coffee house was as upmarket as any five-star restaurant in London, Paris or Rome. Its smiling owners were pictured standing in front of the bar, surrounded by glitzy decor that had quite obviously had a ton of money thrown at it. Ayala was in her fifties, tiny and trim, much-bejewelled, dark-haired with streaks of grey. Her husband was a large, burly guy around age sixty, decked out in a loud flowery shirt that had four buttons open and revealed two gold neck-chains, each as thick as a rope. An even chunkier gold identity bracelet dangled from one thick, hairy wrist.

It wasn’t the first time Ben had laid eyes on the Israeli. He was the same man who’d been photographed in the group shot with Wesley, Simeon and Fabrice Lalique. ‘Got you,’ Ben muttered under his breath.

A groan came from the sofa, and Ben turned to see that Rabier had woken up. ‘You’re back,’ the Frenchman muttered. ‘What time is it?’ He glanced at his watch and swore, then got up stiffly and yawned and stretched his way over to the surface where he kept his tray of shot glasses and one of his nefarious unlabelled bottles. ‘So how did it go? Did Madame Lamont give you any trouble?’

‘She was as good as gold,’ Ben said.

Rabier filled two glasses, slid one across the table to Ben and sat down heavily in a chair with the other. He raised his glass. ‘Salut.’

‘Salut.’ It wasn’t really what Ben needed, but he took a sip anyway and felt a trail of fire melt downwards through his body. ‘Where’s Jude?’ he asked when his tongue regained sensation.

Rabier smacked his lips and jerked his thumb at the ceiling. ‘In the spare bedroom. Sleeping like a baby, last I saw him.’

‘I’ll go and check on him.’ The bare wooden stairs were near the kitchen door. Ben climbed them softly and peered in through the door of the room where Jude was still fast asleep. He hovered in the doorway a moment longer than necessary, then quietly shut the door.

‘Out for the count,’ he said as he returned to the kitchen.

Rabier smiled. ‘I have never seen anyone so exhausted.’

‘He’s been through a lot the last couple of days.’

‘You don’t look too fresh yourself, my friend. You should rest.’

‘There’ll be time for that later,’ Ben said.

‘Yes, in the grave,’ Rabier chuckled. ‘Then have another drink. This stuff of mine clears your head.’

Ben somehow doubted that. He showed Rabier the sketch pad. The Frenchman gazed sadly at his dead friend’s artwork, then his brow furrowed as he turned the pages to the drawings of the sword. ‘What kind of sword is this?’ he murmured, scratching his beard.

‘One I don’t think you’ll find in the war museum in Paris. My guess is it’s eastern. Let’s see if we can find anything like it.’ Ben ran another web search on his phone, entering ‘middle eastern sword’ and clicking ‘images’.

A host of material came up on the tiny screen. He scrolled down through dozens of pictures featuring Islamic shamshirs and mamelukes, wicked-looking Afghan warrior sabres and daggers; there were several images of scantily clad female belly dancers, some thin, some fat, performing with a variety of great curved scimitars balanced on their heads. He saw nothing that very closely resembled the sword in the priest’s sketches, the nearest match an ancient Egyptian sickle sword called a khopesh.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, returning to study the more detailed of Lalique’s two sketches. ‘Whatever it is, it’s old. Really old. Nobody’s used swords like this for a thousand years, or maybe even longer.’

They sat and smoked a while, and talked about dead friends, lost wives. ‘My Brigitte was eaten by the crab, you know, cancer,’ Rabier said. Ben told him a little about Leigh. It felt good to talk. Finally, it seemed that even Rabier’s appetite for his homebrewed rocket fuel had abated, and he bubbled up a pot of espresso on the gas stove. Ben gratefully accepted a cup of the scalding coffee. ‘About your offer, Jacques. To look after Jude for a while. If it still stands…’

‘He can help me on the farm. There will be plenty to occupy him here. You were thinking of going somewhere?’

Ben nodded. ‘This isn’t over yet. And it’s not going to get any easier or less dangerous.’

Rabier reached across to a fingermarked drawer of the kitchen dresser, yanked it open and lifted out the black powder revolver. ‘Take it,’ he said, sliding the gun across the tabletop.

‘Thanks, Jacques, but I can’t take that where I’m headed. Nor the shotgun. You can hang onto it for me.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Toulouse airport, then Jerusalem via Paris. But say nothing about that to Jude. He’s liable to come after me and I don’t want him any more involved in this than he has to be.’

Rabier grinned. ‘I have already forgotten. And now, my friend, I am going to bed.’

‘In which case I’ll say au revoir, Jacques. I won’t be here when you awake. And thanks again.’

Ben napped for an hour on a lounger in Rabier’s living room, resting his head on a mildewy cushion and covered with an old blanket that smelled of mould. When he awoke and returned upstairs to the spare bedroom, he found Jude still sleeping off the trauma of the last two days. He said a silent goodbye and left.

Ben slipped outside into the pre-dawn gloom to the Laguna, rolled quietly down the track to the road and set off on the eighty-mile journey to Toulouse airport. The snow had stopped and the roads were clear, piles of brown slush caked high at the roadsides. Traffic was heavy in the lead-up to Christmas.

Ben regretted having gone off without offering any explanation to Jude, but it was the only way. He would have insisted on coming along. Ben had already placed him in too much danger, and the risks were mounting. The farm was the best place for Jude while Ben followed the trail. Thanks to Jacques Rabier, the only potential witnesses to the incident at the ruined church were now languishing under several tons of well-rotted manure. Nobody could implicate Rabier, and nobody could have any idea where Jude was. The Frenchman might be a bit crazy, but Ben trusted him.

Twenty minutes from Toulouse airport, a strange irregular knocking sound started up from the back of the car. It paused for a moment, then started up again. Ben pulled off the busy road into a layby, got out and walked around the car. He could see nothing. Then he heard it again: thump, thump. Coming from inside the boot. Ben stared at the back of the car for a moment, then swung open the boot lid.

Jude’s face peered up from inside. ‘You bastard, you were going to leave me behind, weren’t you?’ He jumped up and hopped out onto the slushy verge. Traffic whooshed past as he squared up to Ben at the roadside. ‘Now who can’t be trusted?’

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Ben said angrily. He felt like stuffing Jude back in the boot and returning him to Rabier’s.

‘Don’t you get it yet? I’m going to see this through. I don’t care about anything else.’

‘How did you know I was leaving?’

‘I heard you and Rabier talking.’

‘You were asleep.’