The Rebel's Revenge Read online

  SCOTT MARIANI

  The Rebel’s Revenge

  Copyright

  Published by Avon an imprint of

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

  Copyright © Scott Mariani 2018

  Cover photograph, Louisiana Background © Denis Tangney Jr / Getty Images

  Cover photograph, Figure © Henry Steadman

  Cover design by Henry Steadman 2018

  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 author’s 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.

  Source ISBN: 9780008235925

  Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008235932

  Version 2018-09-20

  Join the army of fans who LOVE Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope series …

  ‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’

  Andy McDermott, bestselling author of The Revelation Code

  ‘Slick, serpentine, sharp, and very very entertaining. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’

  Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus series

  ‘Scott Mariani’s latest page-turning rollercoaster of a thriller takes the sort of conspiracy theory that made Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code an international hit, and gives it an injection of steroids … [Mariani] is a master of edge-of-the-seat suspense. A genuinely gripping thriller that holds the attention of its readers from the first page to the last’

  Shots Magazine

  ‘You know you are rooting for the guy when he does something so cool you do a mental fist punch in the air and have to bite the inside of your mouth not to shout out “YES!” in case you get arrested on the train. Awesome thrilling stuff’

  My Favourite Books

  ‘If you like Dan Brown you will like all of Scott Mariani’s work – but you will like it better. This guy knows exactly how to bait his hook, cast his line and reel you in, nice and slow. The heart-stopping pace and clever, cunning, joyfully serpentine tale will have you frantic to reach the end, but reluctant to finish such a blindingly good read’

  The Bookbag

  ‘[The Cassandra Sanction] is a wonderful action-loaded thriller with a witty and lovely lead in Ben Hope … I am well and truly hooked!’

  Northern Crime Reviews

  ‘Mariani is tipped for the top’

  The Bookseller

  ‘Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains and rough justice – this book delivers. It’s a romp of a read, each page like a tasty treat. Enjoy!’

  Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘I love the adrenalin rush that you get when reading a Ben Hope story … The Martyr’s Curse is an action-packed read, relentless in its pace. Scott Mariani goes from strength to strength!’

  Book Addict Shaun

  ‘Scott Mariani seems to be like a fine red wine that gets better with maturity!’

  Bestselling Crime Thrillers.com

  ‘Mariani’s novels have consistently delivered on fast-paced action and The Armada Legacy is no different. Short chapters and never-ending twists mean that you can’t put the book down, and the high stakes of the plot make it as brilliant to read as all the previous novels in the series’

  Female First

  ‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’

  Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of The Hunters

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Louisiana, May 1864

  Built in the Greek Revival style, encircled by twenty-four noble Doric columns and standing proud amid a vast acreage of plantation estate, the mansion was one of the grandest and most aristocratic homes in all of the South. Its dozens of reception rooms, not to mention the splendid ballroom, had hosted some of Clovis Parish’s most celebrated social events of the forty years since its construction, positioning Athenian Oaks, as the property was named, at the very centre of the region’s high society.

  On this day, however, the stately house was silent and virtually empty. Deep within its labyrinthine corridors, a very secret and important meeting was taking place. A meeting that its attendees knew very well could help to swing in their favour the outcome of the civil war that had been tearing the states of both North and South apart for three long, bloody years.

  Of the four men seated around the table in the richly appointed dining room, only one was not wearing military uniform: for the good reason that he wasn’t an officer of the Confederate States Army but, rather, the civilian owner of Athenian Oaks.

  His name was Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett. A Texan by birth, he had risen to become one of the wealthiest landowners in Louisiana by the time he
was forty. Now, fifteen years on, the size of his fortune and spread of his cotton plantation were second to none. As was the workforce of slaves he owned, who occupied an entire village of filthy and squalid huts far out of sight of the mansion’s windows.

  But it was by virtue of L.W. Garrett’s renown as a physician and scientist, rather than his acumen for commerce, that the three high-ranking Confederate officers had made the journey to Clovis Parish to consult him. For this special occasion they were majestically decked out in full dress uniform, gleaming with gold braid. The most senior man present wore the insignia of a general of the C.S.A. He had lost an eye at the Second Battle of Bull Run and wore a patch over his scarred socket. He had also lost all three of his sons during the course of the conflict, and feared that he would have lost them for nothing if the Yankees prevailed.

  A bitter outcome which, at this point in time, it seemed nothing could prevent. Since the crushing defeat at Chattanooga late the previous year and the subsequent appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as General-in-Chief of the Union forces, the turning point seemed to have come. Rout after rout; the tattered and depleted army of the South was in danger of being completely overrun.

  ‘Gentlemen, we stand to lose this damn war,’ the general said in between puffs of his cigar. ‘And lose it we will, unless saved by a miracle.’

  ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ said the second officer, who was knocking back the wine as fast as it could be served. He was a younger man, a senior colonel known for his fiery temperament both on and off the battlefield. The last cavalry charge he had personally led had resulted in him having his right arm blown off by a cannonball. It had been found two hundred yards away, his dead hand still clutching his sabre. He now wore the empty sleeve of his grey tunic pinned across his chest, after the fashion of Lord Nelson.

  ‘Indeed they do,’ the general agreed. ‘And if that yellowbelly Jeff Davis and his lapdog Lee don’t have the guts to do what’s necessary to win this war, then by God someone else must step in and do it for them.’

  This provoked a certain ripple of consternation around the table, as it was somewhat shocking to refer to the President of the Confederate States of America, not to mention the revered General Robert E. Lee, hero of the South, in such harsh language. But nobody protested. The facts of the matter were plain. The dreadful prospect of a Union victory was looming large on the horizon. Leonidas Garrett, whose business empire stood to be devastated if a victorious Abraham Lincoln acted on his promise to liberate all slaves in North America, dreaded it as much as anyone.

  After another toke on his cigar and a quaff of wine, the general leaned towards Garrett and fixed him with his one steely eye. ‘Mr Garrett, how certain are you that this bold scheme of yours can work?’

  ‘If it can be pulled off, which I believe it can, then my certainty is absolute,’ Garrett replied coolly.

  The third senior officer was the only conspirator present at the top-secret gathering who was yet to be fully convinced of Garrett’s plan. ‘Gentlemen, I must confess to having great misgivings about the enormity of what we are contemplating. Satan himself could scarcely have devised such wickedness.’

  The general shot him a ferocious glare. ‘At a time like this, if it took Beelzebub himself to lead the South to victory, I would gladly give him the job.’

  The objector made no reply. The general stared at him a while longer, then asked, ‘Are you with us or not?’

  ‘You know I am.’ No sir, no display of deference to a man of far superior rank. Because rank was not an issue at a meeting so clandestine, so illicit, that any and all of them could have been court-martialled and executed by their own side for taking part. What they were envisaging was in flagrant contravention of the rules of war and gentlemanly conduct.

  Silence around the table for a few moments. The dissenter said, ‘Still, a damned ugly piece of work.’

  ‘I’m more interested in knowing if we can make it work,’ said the one-armed colonel.

  ‘It isn’t a new idea, by any measure,’ Garrett said. ‘Such tactics, though brutal, have been used in warfare throughout history. Trust me, gentlemen. We have the means to make it work, and if successful its effect on the enemy will be catastrophic. It will bring the North to its knees, cripple their infrastructure and force those Yankee scumbellies to surrender within a month. But I must reiterate,’ he added, casting a solemn warning look around the table, ‘that not a single word of this discussion can ever be repeated to anyone outside of this room. Not anyone, is that perfectly clear?’

  Throughout the meeting, a young female negro servant dressed in a maid’s outfit had been silently hovering in the background, watching the levels in their wine glasses and meekly stepping up to the table now and then to top them up from a Venetian crystal decanter. Nobody acknowledged her presence in the room, least of all her legal owner, Garrett. As far as he was concerned she might simply have been a well-trained dog, rather than a human being. A dog, moreover, that could be whipped, chained up to starve, or used as target practice without compunction or accountability at any time, just for the hell of it.

  Like Garrett, none of the three Southern-born officers gave an instant’s thought to the possibility that this young slave girl could be absorbing every single word of their discussion. And that she could remember it perfectly, so perfectly that it could later be repeated verbatim. Nor did any man present have any notion as to who the negro servant woman really was. Her role in the downfall of their plan was a part yet to be played. Just how devastating a part, none of them could yet know either.

  ‘So, gentlemen, we’re agreed,’ the general said after they’d spent some more time discussing the particulars of Garrett’s radical scheme. ‘Let’s set this thing in motion and reclaim the South’s fortunes in this war.’ He raised his glass. ‘To victory!’

  ‘To victory!’ The toast echoed around the table. They clinked glasses and drank.

  Her duty done, the slave humbly asked for permission to excuse herself and was dismissed with a cursory wave, whereupon she slipped from the room to attend to the rest of her daily chores. Though if any of them had paid her the least bit of heed, they might have wondered at the enigmatic little smile that curled her lips as she walked away.

  Chapter 1

  Ben Hope had often had the feeling that trouble had a knack of following him around. No matter what, where or how, it dogged his steps and stuck to him like a shadow. If trouble were a person, he’d have felt justified in thinking that individual was stalking him. If he’d been of a superstitious bent he could have thought he was haunted by it, as by a ghost. Whatever the case, it seemed as if at every juncture of his life, wherever he went and however he tried to steer out of its path, there it was waiting for him.

  And it was here, pushing midnight on one sultry and thus-far uneventful September evening in the unlikely setting of a tiny backstreet liquor store in Clovis Parish, Louisiana, that he was about to make trouble’s acquaintance yet one more time.

  If the most recent round of airport security regulations hadn’t made it more bother than it was worth to carry his old faithful hip flask across the Atlantic among his hand luggage, and if the bar and grill where he’d spent most of that evening had stocked the right kind of whisky to satisfy one of those late-night hankerings for a dram or three of the good stuff that occasionally come over a man, then two things wouldn’t have happened that night. First, there would have been nobody else around to prevent an innocent man from getting badly hurt, most probably shot to death.

  Which was a good thing. And second, Ben wouldn’t have been plunged into a whole new kind of mess, even for him.

  Which was less of a good thing. But that’s what happens when you have a talent for trouble. He should have been used to it by now.

  It was nine minutes to midnight when Ben walked into the liquor store. It was as warm and humid inside as it was outside, with a lazy ceiling fan doing little more than stir the thick air around. An unseen rad
io was blaring country music, a stomping up-tempo bluegrass instrumental that was alive with fiddles and banjos and loud enough to hear from half a block away.

  The sign on the door said they were open till 2 a.m. Ben soon saw he was the only customer in the place, which didn’t surprise him given the lateness of the hour and the emptiness of the street. Maybe they got a rush of business just before closing time.

  The entire store could have fitted inside Ben’s farmhouse kitchen back home in Normandy, but was crammed from floor to ceiling across four aisles with enough booze to float a battleship. A glance up and down the heaving displays revealed a bewildering proliferation of beer and bourbon varieties, lots of rum, a smattering of local Muscadine wines and possibly not much else. He was resigned to not finding what he was looking for, but it had to be worth a shot.

  Alone behind the counter sat an old guy in a frayed check shirt and a John Deere cap, with crêpey skin and lank grey hair, who was so absorbed in the pages of the fishing magazine he was reading that he didn’t seem to have noticed Ben come in.

  ‘How’re they biting?’ Ben said with a smile over the blare of the music, pointing at the magazine. The friendly traveller making conversation with the locals.