The Sacred Sword
IAN ANCIENT SWORD. A LONG BURIED SECRET.ONE MAN WILL UNCOVER THE MYSTERY.It’s Christmas, and on a trip back to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford – now they are the Reverend and Mrs Arundel.Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michael are wiped out in a devastating road crash. Convinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it.In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past.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 Sacred Sword
Copyright
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, 2012
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2012
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.
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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: 9780007342815
Version: 2018-07-18
Dedication
To B.D., without whose inspiration
this story would never have been written
Contents
Prologue
The Fortress of Masada
Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land73 a.d.
âThey will soon be upon us,â said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.
His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.
Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, thereâd be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.
Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?
Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, heâd been one of the few Jewish rebels whoâd managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesarâs rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silvaâs forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wallâs perimeter stood the Romansâ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebelsâ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.
