‘Takes one to know one,’ Ben said.

Anger flashed in Cleaver’s eyes. ‘What, you think I should have refused Augusta’s generosity? It’s been years since the book came out. All the money’s gone, and a lot more besides. I’m deep in debt. You have no idea what it costs to run an operation like mine – and well, maybe we did overstretch ourselves a little.’

‘It looks like you’ve been selling off the art and furniture,’ Ben said.

‘I have. Things have been awful difficult. Augusta was offering me a lifeline. I had to take it. I’d have been crazy not to.’

‘Cut the crap and tell me what you did.’

‘OK. Whenever she was around Augusta, little Miss Bradbury’d be acting all virtuous. Long skirts, high collar blouses. Just dripping with good ol’ Christian piety, like butter wouldn’t melt. But I knew she was screwing around all over town. I knew what she was getting up to behind Augusta’s back, and right under her roof, with the likes of Skid McClusky. To name just one of her many conquests while she was in Savannah.’

‘Your men told you this?’

Cleaver nodded and mopped more sweat. ‘I had a few guys follow her around. I knew I’d get some dirt on her. And it wasn’t hard to dig up. She was sneaking her fellas into the carriage house. More than one at a time, sometimes.’

Ben guessed where this was leading. ‘So you got your guys to catch it on video. And you used it to turn Miss Vale against her.’

‘Augusta never knew who sent the tape,’ Cleaver said. ‘It was from a well-wisher. She never mentioned it to anyone. But I could tell it soured her. Next time I was there for dinner with her and Zoë, there was this atmosphere. That’s when I knew my plan had worked. The money was mine again for sure.’

‘But then Zoë turned on you,’ Ben said.

‘She guessed I had something to do with the change in Augusta. A while later, when she’d left the US and I thought I’d never hear her name mentioned ever again, I got a call.’

‘I know. Twenty-five grand up front, and ten million later.’

‘Then you know everything,’ Cleaver said. ‘I paid, and I’ll pay more. No problem.’

‘Just like that? Why?’

‘Why do you want to know? I’ve told you the truth. I’m ready to pay her the money. If something’s happened to her, it’s got nothing to do with me. Now, sir, if you don’t mind, I think this conversation is over. I have business to attend to.’ Cleaver started getting to his feet.

‘Stop. You’re not going anywhere.’ Ben raised the gun again.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I want the rest. I want to know about the prophecy.’

Cleaver slumped back down in his chair. ‘So that’s why you were so keen to talk prophecies last night.’

‘What was in the box that Skid McClusky delivered to you?’

‘Just a fragment of pottery. Nothing more.’

Ben remembered what Tom Bradbury had told him that day in Summertown about Zoë’s discovery of ancient pottery fragments. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why pay ten million for a piece of pottery?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Cleaver said.

‘You’re not leaving here unless you do.’ Ben cocked the gun. ‘And you’d better believe it. So talk.’

‘I had it carbon dated,’ Cleaver replied wearily. ‘It was the right age.’

‘The right age for what?’

Cleaver looked up at him abruptly. ‘The right age to have been around when the Book of Revelation was written.’

Ben stared and blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘She let me see one tiny piece,’ Cleaver said. ‘She still has the rest of it.’

‘The rest of what?’

‘The rest of the evidence. She says that she found a collection of pottery tablets engraved in Ancient Greek, going back to biblical times. She says they prove beyond any doubt that St John wasn’t the author of Revelation.’

‘And?’

‘And that’s it. That’s all I know about them. She didn’t give me a lot to go on. But I have to believe she means what she says, and that it’s true. I can’t afford not to.’

‘You don’t sound very sure of your ground,’ Ben said.

‘All right. All right. I’ll level with you. You’ve seen my book. You know what it’s about.’

‘That John the Apostle spoke to you.’

Cleaver nodded and made a face.

Ben smiled. ‘You’re trying to tell me that John didn’t really speak to you.’

‘No, of course he didn’t,’ Cleaver muttered. ‘How the hell could he? He’s been dead for nearly two thousand years.’

‘I didn’t really think he had, Cleaver.’

‘I only said it to give me an angle,’ Cleaver said desperately. ‘An edge over all of the other End Time preachers out there.’

‘You mean the honest ones,’ Ben said. ‘The ones who aren’t just taking everyone for a ride.’

‘Whatever. But everything I’ve built is based on that book. All of this.’ Cleaver gestured at the view from the window. ‘Millions of Americans buying into the idea that I have a direct line to St John. That he personally vouched for the truth of all the prophecies that he wrote in the Book of Revelation. And now that little bitch says she’s dug up something that could screw it all up for me. The evidence that theology scholars have been looking for for centuries to end the debate about who the real author of Revelation was.’

‘But she’d bury the evidence for ten million dollars.’

Cleaver made a helpless gesture. ‘That’s what she said. And I had to take it seriously, didn’t I? I mean, if she was just some two-bit student, I could call her bluff. But she isn’t. She’s a respected academic, believe it or not. She writes books. If she tells people about this, they’ll take it seriously. Hell, she could get on TV with it. A hundred of your goddamned scholars waiting in the wings to pounce on it. It would finish me. No more book sales. It would mean the end of my political career.’

‘And bye bye to the hundred million dollars.’

Cleaver nodded sadly. ‘The little inchworm threatened to tell Augusta. Said she’d make me out to be a big con artist.’

‘But you are,’ Ben said. ‘You just admitted it.’

Cleaver gazed out of the window for a few moments, then turned and looked hard at Ben. ‘Sure. I’m a con artist. I’m a hustler. But that’s all I am. I never hurt anyone. I never sent anyone to Greece. I don’t know about bombings or leg-breaking. I met Skid McClusky once, when he brought me the box. That’s it. I gave the man his money and he left.’ Cleaver’s face was turning red. He stood up behind the desk. ‘I’m leaving now. You can shoot me if you want to. But you’d be shooting an innocent man.’

‘If I find out you’ve been lying to me,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll come back. And I will kill you. Up close or from a thousand yards away, you won’t see it coming. You know that.’

But as he watched Cleaver walk out of the room, something was telling him that he’d got this whole thing very, very wrong.

When Senator Bud Richmond had first started out in politics, he’d been just another hapless rich boy aiming vaguely for the top. The son of a Montana logger who’d worked his way up to become a multimillionaire industrialist, Bud had never done a proper day’s work in his life and was more concerned with his golf swing, his lady friends, his fishing trips and his beloved Porsche 959 than with serious business.

Two years ago, Irving Slater, his chief of staff and personal assistant, had been despairing of Richmond and on the point of handing in his resignation. As he saw it, he was still only thirty-seven and wasting a promising career on an indolent jackass who thought politics was just a game.

But then something had happened: a pair of unconnected incidents, six months apart, that had turned Bud Richmond’s world around and ended up presenting Irving Slater with the chance of a lifetime.

One day shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Richmond had been about to board an airliner heading from his home state of Montana to Washington DC when he’d had a premonition. Like a faraway voice in his head, he’d said later, telling him that under no circumstances should he get on that plane. To the great irritation of Irving Slater, he’d refused to board it and waited for the next one. When his intended plane had crashed on takeoff with few survivors, he’d started talking miracles.