The White Knight

COPYRIGHT HarperNorth Windmill Green Mount Street Manchester M2 3NX A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published by HarperNorth in 2023 1 EDITION Copyright © Scott Mariani 2023 Cover design by Henry Steadman © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023 Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage 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 e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green Source ISBN: 9780008505745 Ebook Edition © May 2023 ISBN: 9780008505752 Version 2023-04-12 NOTE TO READERS This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings: Change of font size and line height Change of background and font colours Change of font Change justification Text to speech Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008505745 DEDICATION In memory of my late brother Francis, my best friend (and a great chess player). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I didn’t have the expertise to write this book alone, and without the invaluable contribution of certain highly skilled and knowledgeable individuals some parts of it couldn’t have been written at all. My eternal gratitude, therefore, goes to International Chess Grand Master Malcolm Pein for his input in designing the epic (or at least, I think it is!) chess match played between Ben Hope and Silvano Scarpa in the novel. Among his many noteworthy credentials Malcolm is a former child prodigy and British Junior champion. He is Manager of the England chess team as well as the chess correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and the founder of the charity Chess in Schools and Communities (chessinschools.co.uk) and the London Chess Centre (chess.co.uk). Many heartfelt thanks also to Danny Rosenbaum, Mike Truran and Carl Portman of the English Chess Federation for their generous technical advice. And needless to say, I couldn’t leave out my brilliant editor Genevieve Pegg and all the team at HarperNorth. EPIGRAPH ‘A single person who stops lying can bring down a tyranny.’ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ‘Imagine what would happen if all billionaires contributed to building a just world.’ Donna Maltz ‘Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.’ Adam Smith Discover the series you can’t put down … ‘A high level of realism … the action scenes come thick and fast. Like the father of the modern thriller, Frederick Forsyth, Mariani has a knack for embedding his plots in the fears and preoccupations of their time’ Shots Magazine ‘The plot was thrilling … but what is all the more thrilling is the fantastic way Mariani moulds historical events into his story’ Guardian ‘Scott Mariani is an ebook powerhouse’ The Bookseller ‘Hums with energy and pace … If you like your conspiracies twisty, your action bone-jarring, and your heroes impossibly dashing, then look no further. The Ben Hope series is exactly what you need’ Mark Dawson ‘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 ‘Hits thrilling, suspenseful notes … a rollickingly good way to spend some time in an easy chair’ USA Today ‘Mariani constructs the thriller with skill and intelligence, staging some good action scenes, and Hope is an appealing protagonist’ Kirkus Reviews ‘If you haven’t read any Mariani before but love fast-paced action with a historical reference, maybe this one won’t be your last’ LibraryThing ‘A breathtaking ride through England and Europe’ Suspense Magazine ‘This is my first Scott Mariani book CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Note to Readers Dedication Acknowledgements Epigraph Discover the series you can’t put down … 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 PROLOGUE The only sounds to be heard in the fine, sunlit room were the distant whisper of the surf and the occasional soft clunk as one of the two silent, deeply concentrated players shifted one of his chessmen over the board. For the last hour, neither had paid the slightest attention to the magnificent sweep of white sandy shore visible from the windows of the beachfront villa, the gently waving palm