The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (53 page)

Consciousness returned to Ben in staggered layers. First he was dimly aware of the vibration pulsing through his skull where his head was resting against the hard metal of the wheel arch. His vision was blurry and he felt sick. Suddenly he was aware of being terribly, terribly cold. His body was racked with shivering and his teeth were chattering.

He was sprawled across the floor of a rattling truck. The tin walls around him resonated loudly with the engine and transmission whine. He groaned and shifted, trying to get to his feet. His head was still spinning.

Memories came back to him in fragments. He remembered Ingrid’s flat. Being hit by the car. Before that, the running chase through the streets. Kinski injured.

He remembered now. He’d been drugged.

He grabbed hold of one of the reinforcing braces inside the metal shell and dragged himself upright. The truck was lurching and bouncing and it was hard to stand. There were no windows. He looked at his
watch. It was nearly six o’clock. He must have been on the road for over an hour and a half. Where were they taking him?

The rattling, juddering journey lasted another quarter of an hour, the truck slowing as the road got rougher. He staggered across from one wall to the other as it swerved violently into a turning, then stopped. He heard the sound of doors slamming, and at least three different men’s voices, all speaking in rapid, harsh German. He felt the vehicle reverse, and its engine sound was suddenly echoey and reverberating as though the truck was inside a big metal space.

The doors opened and he was dazzled by the lights. Powerful hands gripped him by the arms and hauled him out of the van. He dropped to his hands and knees on cold concrete and looked around him, blinking. Around him were seven, eight, nine men, all armed with either pistols or Heckler & Koch machine carbines. They all had the look of ex-military, serious faces, eyes cold and calm.

The prefabricated building looked like an old air-base hangar, stretching out on all sides like a vast aluminium cathedral. The concrete floor was painted green. The only furnishings were a tubular chair and a metal table. A fire blazed in a glass-fronted stove with a long steel flue that rose to the ceiling.

Standing in the middle of the huge open space, warming his hands over the stove, was a tall man in black. Sandy hair, cropped short.

Ben narrowed his eyes against the bright lights. He knew this man. Who the hell was he?

One of the men with guns got too close and Ben saw a crazy chance. He lashed out with the rigid edge of his hand, fingers curled. The man let out a choking squawk as his throat was crushed, and fell squirming to the floor clutching his neck. The stubby black H&K was spinning in mid-air when Ben snatched it. It was cocked. He flipped off the safety. He was faster than these men, and he could bring them all down before they got him.

Maybe.

The gun clattered from his hands and he fell to the floor along with it, his whole body quaking in a spasm. Curly plastic wires connected the dart in his flesh to the taser gun that one of the guards was holding-the one Ben hadn’t seen, the one who had come out from behind the truck. The strong electric current flowed through him, controlling his muscles, rendering him completely helpless.

‘That’s enough,’ the tall man in black said.

The pulsing shock stopped. Ben gasped for air, lying flat on the concrete. One of the guards had his canvas haversack. The guard walked over to the tall man and handed the bag to him. The man emptied the bag out on a steel table, spilling out Ben’s roll of spare clothes, his first-aid kit, the Para-Ordnance .45.

But the man was more interested in the box-file. He flipped open the lid and thumbed through Oliver’s notes, nodding to himself. This was the stuff. His instructions were clear.

He bunched the notes up in a big fist, opened the stove door and slammed the papers inside. Ben’s head
sank to the floor as he watched his friend’s notes burst into yellow flame, curl and blacken. This time, they burned away to nothing. Tatters of ash fluttered up the stove-pipe.

Now the man picked up the rolled-up Mozart letter. He jerked away the ribbon and tossed it over his shoulder. He unfurled the old paper and ran his eyes up and down it cursorily, a look of derision on his face.

For a moment Ben thought he was going to burn it too. But then he rolled it back up and dropped it in a cardboard tube. He set the tube to one side, and started sifting back through the stuff on the table. This time his hand came up clutching the CD case. He nodded to himself, checked the disc was there, then snicked it shut and stuffed it in the side pocket of his combat trousers. He looked satisfied. ‘Bring him over here,’ he said to the guards.

Ben groaned as they picked him up by the arms and half-dragged him across the hangar. A length of heavy chain hung from a steel beam high up in the ceiling, stopping about seven feet above the concrete floor. There was a gun to his head. His arms were jerked outwards and he felt the cold metal bite of cuffs on his wrists. Two pairs of cuffs, one pair for each wrist. They raised his arms up and clipped the other end of the cuffs to the dangling chain. Then they backed off, eight men standing in a wide semicircle around him. Gun-muzzles were trained on him from every direction. He could just about stand, taking the weight on his feet instead of his wrists.

The big man walked up closer. His head was cocked to one side, his face cracked into a smirk. Ben knew what was coming next.

The man planted his feet, curled his meaty right hand into a fist and put his back into it. He was powerful and he’d done this before. The punch was a good one. Ben flexed his abdominal muscles for the blow, but it wasn’t enough. The wind whistled out of him. His knees sagged and he hung from his chained arms.

‘Good to see you again, Hope. Remember me? I
want
you to remember me.’

Ben got his breath back and rolled his eyes up to look at him. He remembered now.

Small world. Jack Glass. The psychopathic bastard who’d nearly killed him fifteen years earlier in the Brecon Beacons.

Ben’s mind was struggling to put it together. Why Glass, why here, why this?

Glass grinned, flicked a bead of sweat from his brow and started rolling up his sleeves. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.

Ben watched him. He was much heavier than he’d been in SAS selection days, but the extra bulk wasn’t flab. His forearms were thick and muscular, as though he’d been working out with weights for hours every day, year on year. That wasn’t the only physical change Ben noticed in the man. His right ear was badly scarred, the lobe gone, looking like melted wax.

As Ben stared at that ear, connections flew together in his dazed brain. The video-clip. Clara Kinski’s abductor.

‘What are you doing here, Hope?’ Glass sneered. ‘Come to check up on your girlfriend’s dead brother? He’s dead all right. Trust me, I know.’ He drew back his fist and slammed it hard into Ben’s side.

This time, Ben was ready. He tensed his muscles harder and twisted a little to catch the blow in the middle of his stomach instead of the kidney. But it still hurt, badly. The pain exploded, driving the air back out of him. He wheezed and saw stars.

Glass stepped back, rubbing his fist. ‘You don’t have to answer,’ he said. ‘This isn’t an interrogation. You know what that means.’ He tapped the CD case through the fabric of his pocket. ‘I’ve got everything I need from you. I don’t need you alive, you understand?’

A thought came into Ben’s mind, and it worried him.
Why weren’t they asking him about Leigh?

Glass reached over to the table and picked up something dull and metallic. It was a heavy steel knuckle-duster. He held it in his left hand, fanned out his right fingers and slipped the knuckle-duster over them. He clenched it in his big fist, looked Ben in the eye and smiled. ‘I’m going to take my time with you,’ he said. ‘Nice and slow. First I’m going to soften you up. Then—’ He paused and looked round at the other men with a smirk. ‘Well, hey, why don’t I show you?’ He gestured to one of the guards, the short fat one with the grey hair scraped back in an oily ponytail. The guy lowered his MP-5, slung it behind his back, and stepped over to a holdall that was on the floor. He zipped it open.

There was a chainsaw inside. The fat guy primed it with a squirt of petrol in the tiny carburettor. He
hooked his fingers around the end of the start cord and jerked it. The chainsaw buzzed angrily into life in the echoey hangar. The guy gunned the throttle.

Glass nodded to him to kill the saw’s motor. The hangar went quiet again. The guard laid the chainsaw down on the table.

Glass turned back to Ben. ‘Like I said, this isn’t an interrogation. So now here comes the fun part.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going to take you apart one bit at a time, and I’m going to enjoy it.’ Glass pressed his face up close to Ben’s. His skin was pallid and sweaty. ‘Just like I enjoyed killing your friend Llewellyn. That’s right. He was easy too.’

Ben blazed at the words. Glass had just marked himself for death.

If he could get out of this. Right now, it wasn’t looking very certain.

He jerked on the chain. It was solid. The ring of guns was centred steadily on his head. No way out.

He looked past Glass at the chainsaw, imagined the blade coming closer, whirring, gnashing. It would only have to touch him lightly to cause irreversible damage. Where would they cut him first? Not the shoulder or the abdomen-major trauma to a vital organ would kill him too quickly. They wanted sport. A leg, maybe. But not too high up. The blade would come at him sideways, below the knee. The first soft pressure would tear through clothing and split the flesh. More pressure and the saw would bite hard into the bone. It would slice through like nothing.

First one leg, then the other. His limbs would drop
off him like fruit off a tree. Irreversible, whatever happened afterwards. He’d be swinging from the chain, spinning round and round, screaming, stumps thrashing, blood jetting out all over the concrete. He’d see them laughing at him.

That wasn’t going to happen to him. No way.

He jerked the chain again.

The knuckle-duster caught the light of the overhead neons. Glass swung his fist a couple of times theatrically, grunting. He paused, grinned, then drew it back, eyes scanning Ben’s face for his best mark.

Hanging from the chain, Ben kept his eyes on the steel-clad fist and resigned himself to the brutal blow that was going to break his nose and smash his teeth into his throat. There’d be worse to come. He started to close himself down in readiness.

But you could never be ready for this.

The sharp command halted Glass’s fist before it could make contact. Ben let out his breath and his muscles slackened.

Glass lowered his arm and turned as a small man in his sixties walked into the hangar. Ben watched him approach, flanked by four guards carrying MP-5s. He was well groomed, immaculately dressed in a dark suit, sober tie and long tweed overcoat. The black patent-leather shoes clicked on the concrete floor. His face was long and pale, with a hooked nose and unblinking eyes that gave him the penetrating look of a bird of prey.

‘Change of plan,’ he said curtly to Glass. ‘Bring him into the office.’ His accent was German, his English perfect.

Glass looked sullen and disappointed as he barked orders at the guards. He slipped off his knuckle-duster. Two men stepped forward and released Ben from the cuffs. He wasn’t going to fall on the floor, not in front of them. He stayed on his feet, swaying a little, trying hard to focus.

A gun jabbed him in the back and they walked him across the hangar. Through a steel door at the far end was a dark corridor. Glass led the way and opened another door to a sparsely furnished office. The desk was bare, save for a computer hooked up to a pair of screens facing in opposite directions.

The guards threw Ben down into a tubular steel chair facing the desk. He fought the pain and the dizziness, blinking to keep his mind clear.

The smartly dressed old man walked calmly around the desk and sat in the swivel chair opposite Ben. He spoke softly and deliberately. ‘My name is Werner Kroll,’ he said.

Ben knew who he was. The current Count von Adler.

Kroll watched Ben for a minute. His eyes were sharp and intelligent and Ben could only guess what he was thinking. His wizened face had a look of detached curiosity, and a glimmer in his eyes that could have been taken for mild amusement. He dismissed the guards with a small gesture. They responded like well-trained dogs and filed out without a word. They all knew better than to hesitate when Kroll gave them an order.

Glass took the CD-ROM case from his pocket and handed it to Kroll. ‘He was carrying this on him, sir.’

The old man took out the disc and turned it over in his hands. His fingers were long and thin. He popped open the CD-drive of the computer on his desk and inserted the disc. There was silence in the room as the CD loaded up. The old man leaned back pensively in his chair and watched the video-clip without a word.
Ben could see the flickering images reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.

Then Kroll calmly ejected the disc. He turned it over in his hands again, looked coolly at Ben and snapped it in half. ‘Thank you for bringing that to me,’ he said. He scattered the broken shards on the desk in front of him.

Then he picked up the cardboard tube containing the Mozart letter. He reached a finger inside and took out the rolled-up paper. ‘Interesting,’ he said as his eyes darted across it. ‘Very interesting. I begin to understand what this is all about. Mr Llewellyn’s research.’ He sighed and folded the letter in half, then again in quarters. He held the yellowed paper between his slim fingers and ripped it suddenly in two. He kept on ripping until Richard Llewellyn’s prize was lying in tiny tatters across the desk. He reached for a waste-paper basket and carefully swept the pieces into it. Ben sat still and didn’t speak a word.

Glass stood behind Kroll’s chair, with his arms folded behind his back. There was a twisted half-smile on his face. He’d been looking forward to killing Ben Hope. Maybe he still would, if the old man let him. SAS. He could eat SAS for breakfast.

Kroll reached calmly into a briefcase and took out a file. ‘I believe you two gentlemen have a long acquaintance,’ he said conversationally. ‘It must be nice to meet again after so many years.’

Every time I meet him he tries to kill me
, Ben thought, and it almost made him smile. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘My name’s—’

‘Paul Connors,’ Kroll cut in. ‘Yes, we know what your papers say. My compliments to your forger. Very convincing. I wonder why you didn’t use your Harris or Palmer identity this time?’

‘You’ve got the wrong man. I’m a journalist.’

A crease deepened in Kroll’s wrinkled brow. ‘Games? Must we? We know exactly who you are. No point in pretending.’ He held up the pieces of the CD. ‘And we know precisely why you’re here.’ He flipped open the file. ‘You are Benedict Hope,’ he said quietly. ‘An interesting life. Private education. Attended Christ Church, Oxford, where you read Theology.’ He looked up and raised his eyebrows quizzically. ‘Unusual choice of subject. Evidently the Church was not your true vocation. You terminated your studies after two years to join the British Army. You were officer material but you enlisted as a private. You displayed great aptitude and rose rapidly through the ranks. Selected for 22 Regiment, Special Air Service. Something of a reputation for being a maverick, a little rebellious against authority, and the medical reports highlight a recurring drink problem. But it seems that none of that marred your career too badly. Decorated for bravery in the second Gulf War, left the army with the rank of Major.’

Ben said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the old man.

Kroll smiled. ‘No need to be modest. Your impressive record is the only reason I haven’t allowed my friend here to dispose of you as he saw fit.’ He looked back down at the file. ‘I see here that for the last several
years you have been working freelance as a
crisis response consultant.
Rather an interesting euphemism for what you do, wouldn’t you say?’

There was no point in keeping up the pretence any longer. ‘What do you want?’ Ben asked quietly.

‘An opportunity has just arisen. I have a job for you.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘The job you were trained to do.’

‘I’m retired.’

‘Come now, Major,’ Kroll said. ‘I know everything, and I do mean everything, about you, so please save yourself the trouble of lying to me. I can even tell you the name of the client who hired you for the Turkish assignment from which you were returning home when you went to meet Leigh Llewellyn. You escorted her to Langton Hall in Oxfordshire, where you damaged some precious equipment of mine. You’ve been a trouble to me ever since. Now-let me show you how I deal with people who are a trouble to me.’

‘I think I get the picture,’ Ben said.

‘Indulge me, please.’ Kroll reached out to a remote keyboard and tapped with a long, thin finger. Images flashed up on the screens. ‘This was broadcast on the ORF2 television news earlier today,’ Kroll said.

The female reporter was dressed in a heavy coat and fur hat. Snow was streaking down as she spoke. Behind her, the ruins of a grey-stone building were smouldering and smoking. Black timbers littered the burnt-out shell, and little patches of flame still flickered here and there. Emergency vehicles bumped
across the rough terrain with lights flashing, and a helicopter was thudding overhead.

The building was so completely devastated that it took Ben a moment to recognize it.

Kroll saw the horror in his face and smiled. His bony hand touched the remote and the volume rose.

‘…disaster. It is believed that the blaze, in which at
least twenty-five Dominican nuns perished, may have
been caused by a spark from an open fire. The tragedy
has already prompted a demand for new health and safety
regulations across…’

‘What have you done with Leigh and the child?’

Kroll hit the remote again and the picture cut to black. ‘I was coming to that. I have some bad news for you. I am afraid the beautiful Ms Llewellyn did not survive the incident.’

Behind him, Glass suppressed a snigger.

‘I would have preferred to take her alive,’ Kroll went on. ‘I was looking forward to meeting her in the flesh. But unfortunately for her, it appears that someone taught her how to operate a firearm. I wonder who that might have been?’ He smiled. ‘She took it upon herself to open fire on my men, and they were obliged to take her down.’

Fingers of ice curled around Ben’s spine and held it tight. ‘You’re a liar.’

Kroll reached into his briefcase and laid something on the desk. It clunked on the wood. ‘Is this familiar to you?’

It was a gold locket. Dull, dirty, and spattered with russety spots of dried blood.

Glass’s shoulders quaked and a grin spread across his face. Kroll shoved the locket across the desk. ‘Look more closely.’

Ben picked it up and turned it over in his hands. They were beginning to shake. The letters
LL
were finely engraved on the back.

‘Open it,’ said Kroll.

Ben pressed the little catch with his thumb and the locket popped open. His heart was pounding, and when he saw what was inside all hope left him and he closed his eyes. The miniature photos faced one another inside the opened locket. On one side was Oliver, on the other Richard and Margaret Llewellyn.

The last time Ben had seen it, it had been hanging around Leigh’s neck.

He slowly snapped the locket shut and let it fall back on the desk.

He swallowed. His mouth was dry. ‘That’s no proof.’

‘Very well. I wanted to spare you this, but you are stubborn.’ Kroll tapped another key and suddenly Leigh was on the screen.

She was lying sprawled in a thicket.

Her eyes were glazed and dead. There was blood on her face and all down her front.

He sat still for a moment. It was impossible. But his eyes were telling him it was true. Screaming it. She was dead. Leigh Llewellyn, gone like smoke.

There was so much he’d wanted to say to her.

He felt faint, drifting in a black void. He swayed in his chair. His eyes clamped shut.

‘Beautiful even in death,’ Kroll said, gazing at the
screen. ‘But she won’t remain so for long, after the wild animals have found her. They may have done already.’

Ben couldn’t speak. Then, out of the emptiness inside him, a massive wave of rage came surging up. He snapped open his eyes. The first thing he saw, the only thing he could see, was Kroll sitting there with that impassive look on his face. It was the look of a scientist observing the death throes of a laboratory animal and calmly noting the details.

Ben hurled himself across the desk. The blow he aimed at the old man’s neck would have crushed his windpipe against his spine. They could have done what they wanted to him after that, but he would have had the pleasure of watching Kroll die a panicked and tortured death within about fifteen seconds.

But Glass was quick, and the frame of the 9mm came down hard on Ben’s head before he could reach the old man. Kroll kicked out with his shiny shoes and his executive swivel chair rolled out of range. The door burst open and the guards stormed in. They grabbed Ben and threw him back in his chair. His wrists were cuffed roughly behind his back with the chain through the steel tubing.

Kroll wheeled himself back towards the desk and straightened his tie. ‘Evidently you cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.’

Ben shook blood out of his eye. ‘You’re a dead man, Kroll.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Kroll. ‘We haven’t finished yet. There was one survivor of the incident in Slovenia.’ He pressed another key and brought up another image.

Ben’s shoulders dropped.

It was Clara Kinski. They’d taken her.

The cell looked small and dank. She was tied down to a bare mattress on an iron-framed bed, her small wrists and ankles strapped to the bars with duct tape. She was blindfolded and struggling weakly, as though her strength was giving out.

‘That is a live webcam image,’ Kroll said. ‘I can prove it to you by sending an email order this very moment to have one of her fingers removed as you watch. Would you like that?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I wouldn’t. But I know what I
would
like to see.’

A strange, wild light in the prisoner’s eyes disconcerted Kroll for an instant, but he hid it with a smile. ‘You are in no position to be defiant, Major,’ he said. ‘I am about to make you a proposal, and I suggest you consider it carefully. Based on your decision, the child either lives or she dies. It’s as simple as that.’

Ben shut his eyes for a long moment. In his mind, Leigh was looking at him. She smiled. He opened his eyes again, controlling his heartbeat and his breathing. ‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly after a long pause.

‘Tell me if you recognize this person.’ Clara disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a picture of a handsome man in his early forties. He was well-tailored but casual, and the snap looked as though it had been taken at some kind of VIP function.

‘I don’t know who he is,’ Ben muttered truthfully.

Kroll watched him closely, as though assessing whether or not to believe him. He nodded. ‘You should
follow politics, Major. That is Philippe Aragon. The candidate for the EU Commission Vice-Presidency. He is your target.’

‘I’m not an assassin.’

‘That is precisely what you are. And you like to keep your skills well-practised. It isn’t long since you gunned down five men in cold blood on your little mercy mission in Turkey.’ Kroll waved that aside. ‘Anyway, I didn’t say I wanted him assassinated. We want you to bring him to us. We will take care of him.’

‘I imagine you will,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve seen the sick things your Order of Ra does to people.’

‘The Order of Ra!’ Kroll’s wrinkled face split into a yellow smile and he twisted his neck to grin up at Glass. Glass smirked.

Kroll wiped his mouth and his grin faded. ‘It has been a long time since anyone has called us by that ridiculous old name. The Order of Ra is part of history, my young friend. It is as much a relic as its founder, my great-great-great grandfather Viktor Kroll.’

‘But I see you keep up some of your traditions,’ Ben said. ‘Bullet in the head too modern for you people?’

‘Some people are worth no more than a bullet,’ Kroll said. ‘For men like Philippe Aragon we reserve a special kind of reception.’

‘Like ritual execution,’ Ben replied.

Kroll shrugged. ‘Some traditions are worth keeping.’

‘What are you going to do, cut his tongue out the way you did to that other guy-whoever he was?’