Near Ravenna, Italy

When Leigh woke the next morning, Ben was already into his ninth phone call. The local directory didn’t have a listing for a Professor Arno, so he was having to try each Arno in turn. He’d worked his way down half the list before deciding to give up and pay a personal visit to the music institute where the old scholar had taught.

They ate a rushed breakfast in the pensione and drove the Citroën into Ravenna. They parked near the centre and walked through a pedestrian zone over the cobbled streets. It was out of season, and the town was quiet.

Past the Church of St Vitale, the Istituto Monteverdi was a tall and narrow building fronted with white stone columns and a flight of steps. A glass doorway led into a reception foyer. Their footsteps rang off the marble floor and echoed up to a high ceiling. From somewhere above them they could hear a cello playing, and from another room the sound of a woman singing arpeggios to piano accompaniment. The music mixed together in a discordant swirl that reverberated off the stone walls of the old building.

They approached the desk. The receptionist was a steely-haired woman dressed in black. She scowled at them. ‘Can I help you?’

‘We’re looking for Professor Arno,’ Ben said in Italian.

The woman shook her head. ‘Professore Arno does not teach here any longer. He is retired.’

‘Perhaps you could give me his phone number?’ As Ben asked, he knew he’d be refused.

‘We do not give out numbers.’

‘I understand, but this is very important.’

The woman crossed her arms with a severe look. ‘I am sorry. It is not possible.’

Ben was reaching for his wallet. Bribery was always an option, although this one didn’t look the sort. Leigh stopped him. ‘Let me deal with her,’ she said in English.

The woman was staring at them with a hostile expression. Leigh smiled and spoke in fluent Italian. ‘Signora, please call your Director.’

The woman looked shocked. ‘Why?’

Leigh smiled again. ‘Tell him Leigh Llewellyn is here and would like to speak to him. It’s urgent.’

The mention of Leigh’s name had an immediate, almost magical effect. The hostile receptionist was suddenly all smiles and apologies for not having recognized the famous soprano before. She led them up a flight of stone stairs to the first floor.

Leigh caught Ben’s look. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I thought we’d agreed you were to keep a low profile.’

‘Can you think of a better way?’

‘I’m sure I could.’

‘Like putting a gun to her head?’

‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ he muttered.

The receptionist hammered on a door and stuck her head through. She fired a burst of rapid Italian that Ben didn’t follow. A man’s voice replied from inside the room. ‘La Llewellyn? Qui?’

The Director burst out of the office. He was a short man, plump and round in a dark suit. He greeted them with furious pumping handshakes and ordered the receptionist to bring coffee and biscuits. ‘I am Alberto Fabiani,’ he said with a broad smile. He couldn’t take his eyes off Leigh. ‘This is a great honour, Maestra. What can I do for you?’

They sat at his desk and Leigh repeated their need to see Professor Arno. Was it possible to be put in contact with him?

Fabiani looked unsure. He breathed in through his teeth.

‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Leigh asked.

‘No, no, he is not dead,’ Fabiani said hastily. ‘Not yet. He lives in the countryside about ten kilometres from here. I will gladly put you in touch with him. But I feel I should warn you…’ The Director paused. ‘Francesco Arno is a good man. In his day, he was thought of as one of the greatest Mozartian scholars of all time. But he is old now. Over the years he has become-how should I say it-strano.’

‘Strange? How?’ Ben asked.

Fabiani shrugged. ‘His beliefs. His obsession. He became more eccentric as time passed, and he clashed more and more with his peers until, frankly, my old friend and colleague was becoming something of an embarrassment to the Istituto. Even the students came to mock him. They would take a delight in winding him up. Once they got him started he would rant on for hours. His lectures became a farce.’ Fabiani smiled sadly. ‘I have to say that I was not entirely sorry when he announced his retirement.’

‘What were these beliefs of his?’ Ben asked.

Fabiani rolled his eyes. ‘If you speak to him, you will find out soon enough.’

Austria

The same morning

The man was solid and powerful. He was an inch under six and a half feet tall and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds-none of it fat. He walked naked to the edge of the springboard, feeling it flex under his weight, and bounced a couple of times. His strong leg muscles hardened. He took a breath and launched himself.

His body hit the water in a perfect dive, hardly making a splash, and he knifed deep into the pool, then surfaced and swam fast. He forced thirty lengths out of himself, then heaved himself out of the water and walked to the chair, where his clothes were lying neatly folded. He was barely out of breath. Through the windows of the indoor pool, the snow-covered grounds of the estate swept away to the pinewoods in the distance.

The man scraped back his sandy hair. He reached for a towel, and as he dried himself he admired his trim shape. His muscled arms and torso bore the scars of nine bullet wounds and three knife slashes. He remembered exactly how and where he’d got each of them. Each had its own story. What they all had in common was that none of the people who’d given them to him had lived for more than three minutes afterwards.

The man was forty-three years old. He was a Londoner by birth and a former British Army soldier. His name was Jack Glass.

When he was drunk he would sometimes boast about his exploits in the legendary SAS. He even had the regimental winged dagger emblem tattooed on his upper right arm. He liked people to see it.

The truth was that he’d been rejected for service in the regiment many years before. A psychological evaluation had exposed certain traits that the regimental heads felt would not be an asset. His unsuitability for the Special Air Service had been confirmed when he’d tried to throttle the officer who’d informed him of his failure to make the grade. He’d been returned to his regular unit in disgrace, court-martialled and kicked out of the army.

He’d drifted around after that, run out of money. Like a lot of army leavers he’d been forced to take on menial jobs for a while. With his court-martial record he couldn’t even get security work.

One rainy London night he’d been at the bar of a pub when he’d met an old contact who had offered him paramilitary work in Africa. The money was excellent and the work was perfect for Glass. He’d accepted immediately and was on a flight three days later. He’d never returned to Britain.

In the Congo, Rwanda, Liberia, he’d worked for whoever paid the most. Suppressed anti-government rebels. Burned schools. Destroyed villages. Executed whole families caught up in bloody tribal wars. He did whatever he was told to do, took the cash and asked no questions.

Liberia was where he’d picked up the scar on his ear. The lobe had been ripped off by a bullet from an AK-47. The person holding the rifle was a black child of nine or ten, a little girl. It was the last round in the magazine of her AK. When she saw him standing there clutching his ear and screaming at her, she dropped the rifle and ran.

Glass had gone after her. He chased the screaming child deep into the bush. Brought her down, knelt on her chest, pinned her arms over her head with one hand. With the other hand he’d drawn out his bayonet, placed the point against her ribs. When he drove the blade slowly deep inside her little body he felt the struggles diminish and saw the life leak out of her eyes.