The Lost Relic
THE MASTER BESTSELLER RETURNS WITH A SUPER-CHARGED THRILLER THAT WILL SET YOUR HEART POUNDING AND YOUR PULSE RACING.A WEB OF DECEIT.AND BEN HOPE IS CAUGHT UP IN THE MAYHEM…Whilst visiting a former SAS comrade in Italy, a distracted Ben nearly runs over a young boy – and unwittingly walks into his deadliest mission yet.Ben’s involvement with the boy’s family runs deeper as he witnesses their brutal murder at a gallery robbery. A seemingly worthless Goya sketch was the principal target in the bloodbath heist. Now it’s up to Ben to find out the truth behind the elusive painting.Wrongly accused of murder and forced to go on the run, he must get to the heart of the conspiracy while he still has the chance…BEN HOPE is one of the most celebrated action adventure heroes in British fiction and Scott Mariani is the author of numerous bestsellers. Join the ever-growing legion of readers who get breathless with anticipation when the countdown to the new Ben Hope thriller begins…
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SCOTT MARIANI
The Lost Relic
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016
First published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers, 2011
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2011
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN 9780007342778
Version: 2018-07-18
To Noah Lukeman
Contents
Italy
October 1986
The old woman was alone that night, just as she had lived alone in her rambling country house near Cesena for many years. Sheâd spent the evening in her studio, as she did most evenings, surrounded by her precious paintings and her beautiful things, putting the final touches to a piece of artwork she believed to be the finest she had produced in a long while.
The work that was to be her last.
It was just after ten, and the old woman was thinking about going to bed,when she heard the crash of breaking glass and the six armed men stormed into her home. They grabbed her roughly, forced her down into a chair, held guns to her head. Their leader was a big, burly man with a nose that had been broken more than once. He wore a suit and his greying hair was cropped like a brush.
The last time she had heard an accent like his had been a lifetime ago. Sheâd been young and beautiful then.
âWhere is it?â he shouted at her, over and over, with his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his fury when she said she didnât know, that she didnât have it. Sheâd never had it, never even laid eyes on it.
They let her go then, and she collapsed gasping to the floor. As she lay there shuddering with terror and clutching her racing heart, the six men tore apart her home with a violence she hadnât seen in all her seventy-eight years.
By the time the men had realised they wouldnât find what theyâd come so far to obtain, the old womanâs heart had given out and she was dead.
What they found instead was a cracked old diary that she had kept close to her for over six decades. The leader of the men flipped hungrily through its pages, running his eye down the faded lines of the old womanâs elegant handwriting.
His long search was only just beginning.
Western Georgia
250 kilometres from the Russian border
The present day
A warm September breeze rippled softly through the conifers in the mountain ravine. The air was sweet with the scent of pine, and the late morning sunlight twinkled off the faraway snowy peaks. The mother lynx had come padding down from the forest to quench her thirst from a stream, keeping a watchful eye on her cubs as they played and wrestled in the long grass by the bank.
