Passenger 13 (Ben Hope eBook originals)

by Scott Mariani

  Ben took the seat opposite him. ‘I’m not hungry. Being hijacked in the middle of the night does funny things to my appetite.’

  ‘If you’re sure. You won’t object if I carry on?’

  ‘You won’t object if I smoke,’ Ben said, taking out his cigarettes. ‘And get me a whisky. Single malt.’

  The hostess reappeared with a trolley, and placed a selection of covered dishes on the table. ‘Excellent,’ Sinclair said, helping himself to chicken casserole and some sautéed potatoes. ‘Some scotch for our guest,’ he instructed the hostess, who departed without a word and returned a few moments later with a matching Waterford decanter and glass.

  Sinclair smacked his lips after a gulp of wine. ‘Excellent,’ he repeated. ‘Now, before we go any further, Major Hope, I must apologise for the very regrettable incident outside your hotel on Grand Cayman. An unfortunate slip that would have been entirely avoided if my subordinates had been properly informed as to who you were. In the event, rather more unfortunate for the men who were hired to go after you.’ Sinclair grinned. ‘I’m also sorry we had to be somewhat forceful with you this evening.’

  ‘You have a piece of chicken between your teeth,’ Ben said.

  Sinclair’s grin dropped and he wiped at his teeth with his napkin.

  ‘Let’s talk about Larry Moss,’ Ben said. ‘I imagine you know who he is. Or was.’

  ‘Indeed I do, Major. Indeed I do.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d care to enlighten me,’ Ben said. ‘That is the reason I’m here, isn’t it?’

  Sinclair chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of chicken, washed it down with another gulp of wine, then looked earnestly at Ben. ‘The information I’m about to reveal to you is strictly classified.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Ben said.

  Sinclair opened the file next to him, slipped out a photograph and laid it down in front of Ben. It showed a nondescript-looking man in his early fifties or so. Chubby-faced, with thinning fair hair and the sallow complexion of someone who’d spent a few too many years living out of a suitcase, raided a few too many hotel mini-bars.

  ‘Larry Moss was one of our agents,’ Sinclair said. ‘One of the top operatives within a special counter-terror unit whose official name needn’t concern us at the minute. His work took him all over the world, under a variety of guises.’

  ‘A spook,’ Ben said.

  ‘To put it bluntly,’ Sinclair said. ‘And Moss was one of our most valuable agents, until while posing as a photographer in Pakistan, ostensibly there to infiltrate a suspected terrorist network, the damn fool fell head over heels in love with a certain young lady by the name of Salima. He thought she was a nurse. Needless to say, she wasn’t.’ Sinclair reached inside his file again and flipped another glossy 6X4 print under Ben’s nose. The Asian woman in the photo was thirty or thirty-two, black-haired and strikingly beautiful.

  ‘Nice, isn’t she?’ Sinclair said. ‘And extremely dangerous. Salima Chopra, born 1972 in Kashmir. Part of a fundamental Jihadist group called Al-Badr. Needless to say, whatever attentions she paid our man Moss were rather less genuine than he foolishly believed. She and her associates were onto him from the start.’ Sinclair shook his head sadly. ‘It’s the age-old story. God knows what he thought she saw in him, but there you are. Male vanity, perhaps. But I won’t bore you with the details. The facts are clear: after scoring a triumph with 9/11, the enemy were determined to press forward to expand their operations all over the world, hitting us randomly wherever we’d least expect it. For that they needed specialised expertise, and Larry Moss certainly had that. In his military days he’d spent eight years with 321 EOD.’

  Ben nodded. 321 Explosive Ordnance Disposal had long been the most prestigious bomb disposal squadron of the British Army, and its most highly-decorated unit.

  ‘To be able to turn a man like Moss, with his vast knowledge of explosives and demolition, would represent a major coup for a terror group like Al-Badr,’ Sinclair said. He sighed. ‘And I’m afraid that’s precisely what happened. How and when the switch took place, we don’t quite know. But it did. Moss vanished from our radar, to reappear some months later, apparently a fully-fledged convert to the enemy cause. We believe it was thanks to information he divulged to Al-Badr that another of our key agents was taken in Islamabad, and found a week later in a basement, battered to death and half-eaten by rats. Did you want some ice with that scotch?’

  ‘Keep talking,’ Ben said.

  ‘Moss was a significant danger to us. This was a man who could take a whiz round your local hardware superstore and fill up a shopping trolley in five minutes with enough assorted goodies to knock you up an improvised car bomb capable of taking down an embassy building.’

  Ben could believe it. SAS trained its men to do much the same thing.

  ‘Three weeks ago,’ Sinclair went on, ‘an Intelligence tip-off led to the acquisition of one of Salima Chopra’s associates in Lahore. During interrogation he revealed the location of their safehouse, which was subsequently assaulted by a US Special Forces team. We captured the lot – Salima included. But no Moss. He’d vanished again. All we were able to extract from the lovely lady and her colleagues was that there was a new terror strike in the offing. Moss’s own idea, apparently. An attack that would make the Selfridges bombing in June, the handiwork of one of Al-Badr’s sister groups, look like a mere opening gambit.’

  Sinclair paused for effect. His jaw tightened grimly. ‘This would have been it, the attack everyone has been anticipating for almost two years. The next 9/11. We had every reason to believe that Larry Moss intended to detonate an explosive device in an airliner over London.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ben had finished his cigarette. He stubbed the butt out on the rim of Sinclair’s empty plate and said nothing. He could see where this was leading, and every muscle in his body was tense. His ribs hurt.

  ‘The Cayman Islands offered Moss the perfect environment to tuck himself away and construct the bomb,’ Sinclair said. ‘A device concealable enough to fit in a case, yet powerful enough to rip a sizeable aircraft in two. If he’d managed to pull it off, Moss would have been the first white suicide bomber in history. However, his willingness to die for his cause might have had less to do with religious fanaticism, and more to do with the fact that he was a sick man. He’d been treated for cancer eighteen months earlier. We can surmise that, given his raging alcoholism, it may have come back with a vengeance. But whatever his motivation, we can’t escape the fact that if he hadn’t slipped up at almost the last minute, we’d never have even known it was him, or seen this coming.’

  ‘The credit card payment to Cayman Islands Charter,’ Ben said through clenched teeth.

  ‘Exactly. Moss had likely been operating on cash given to him by his associates. When the money ran out at just the wrong moment, he used his own credit card to book his flight off Little Cayman.’

  ‘So Moss couldn’t be allowed to reach Owen Roberts Airport. Is that what you’re going to tell me next?’

  Sinclair looked shocked. ‘Good Lord, if you’re suggesting that we had something to do with—’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  Sinclair’s face darkened. ‘Absolutely never, on any account, would we have sanctioned such a thing,’ he said emphatically. ‘We were in position to arrest Moss immediately on landing at Owen Roberts. But he must have been drinking, or he must have made some terrible mistake. We only know that, somehow, the bomb detonated on board the CIC Trislander.’

  Ben swallowed the last of the whisky in his glass and poured some more. His heart was beating hard and he could feel that the colour had drained from his face. He made an effort to control the tremor of rage in his voice. ‘One of your dogs slips its leash. You’re scared he’s going to do something terrible. After all, you should know what he’s capable of. I can understand that.’ He paused. ‘What I can’t understand is how you people could justify pinning the blame on a former British so
ldier who risked his neck and almost lost his mind defending his country.’

  Sinclair sighed. ‘Of course. And believe me, I feel terrible about it.’

  ‘You look as if you do,’ Ben said. ‘Sitting there with sauce on your chin and a bellyful of nice Cabernet Sauvignon.’

  ‘What choice did we have?’ Sinclair protested. ‘The public couldn’t be allowed to find out that one of our own agents had gone rogue, and that it was only sheer luck that he didn’t succeed in bringing down an airliner over London. Imagine the bloody riot there’d have been. We had a matter of hours, minutes, to come up with a plausible, watertight cover story. It was tragically unfortunate that Chapman happened to be the pilot on that flight, but his past record and history of severe depression provided us with an opportunity we simply couldn’t afford to miss. The man was already dead. There was no bringing him back.’

  ‘So you decided to destroy his reputation forever,’ Ben said. ‘You had antidepressants planted in his home. You faked the air traffic control radio recording and paid off Bob Drummond’s gambling debts to make him keep his mouth shut and disappear, and then you concocted a phoney shrink to verify the suicide theory.’

  ‘Disinformation is a key part of the department’s work.’

  ‘I can think of another word to describe it.’

  ‘In this business, we’re sometimes forced to make unpleasant decisions,’ Sinclair said.

  ‘I’ve heard that line before.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean we don’t bitterly regret the collateral damage those decisions sometimes cause. The harm to a man’s good name. The appalling psychological effect on his family. We were extremely distressed when we heard that Chapman’s daughter had walked out in front of a car. Believe me, we do not take these matters lightly.’

  Ben didn’t say anything for a long time. ‘So what now?’ he asked eventually.

  Sinclair spread his hands. ‘Well, naturally, if you were a normal everyday member of the public, we would never have taken you into our confidence like this.’

  ‘No, you’d probably have left me for the sharks,’ Ben said.

  Sinclair ignored the comment. ‘Given who you are, and the fact that as one of Her Majesty’s armed forces you’re bound by a raft of non-disclosure agreements …’

  ‘I keep my mouth shut about this.’

  Sinclair nodded. ‘We’ll make it worth your while, I can assure you. You’ll be well looked after.’

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ Ben said.

  ‘We know we can trust you, Major.’ Sinclair looked at his watch. ‘My, how the time has flown. We’ll be arriving in London in a few more hours. I’d suggest you get some rest.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Thin drizzle was slanting out of a leaden early-afternoon sky as Ben stepped out onto the tarmac at Heathrow’s private jet terminal. ‘God, this is bloody awful,’ Sinclair muttered at his side, putting up an umbrella.

  Entering a country unofficially wasn’t a new experience for Ben. He’d done it all over the world – but even so, the speed with which they breezed through the cursory check-in made him raise an eyebrow. No questions were asked, no passports were needed. A pair of serious-faced men in dark suits joined them, one speaking frequently on a radio, the other remaining silent and sticking very close to Ben. Ben didn’t let it bother him.

  When they were through, Jack Brewster handed Ben the leather jacket and green army bag they’d recovered from the Santa Clara, gave him a wry smile and walked away, motioning for the two dark-suited men to follow and leaving him alone with Sinclair.

  ‘Now,’ Sinclair said with a twinkle. ‘I have a surprise for you.’ He led Ben across an empty VIP lounge, punched a security code to open a door marked STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY, and up a short corridor to a set of fire doors. ‘Here we are,’ Sinclair said with a flourish, pushing through the panic bar and swinging the doors open onto a covered forecourt at the rear of the building.

  The row of parked cars outside made Ben raise his eyebrows a second time:

  a Porsche 911 Turbo; an Aston Martin DB7; a Ferrari Maranello; a Bentley Arnage; a TVR Tuscan S, all lined up like something out of a millionaire’s fantasy.

  ‘Your choice, Major,’ Sinclair said, beaming. ‘If you decide you don’t like the one you picked, you can swap it for another. Just say the word.’

  ‘That one,’ Ben said, and pointed out the tomato-red Ferrari.

  ‘That would have been my choice too.’ Sinclair rattled a set of keys and tossed them through the air to Ben. ‘Didn’t I tell you we’d look after you? And here’s a little something extra,’ he added, holding up a credit card. ‘Now these we don’t give out to just anybody. Special expense account. Everything on the house, so to speak. Our little way of expressing our appreciation. I hope you’ll use it to enjoy the remainder of your convalescence.’

  ‘You bet I will.’ Ben snatched the card from him, climbed into the cockpit of the Ferrari and fired it up. The engine thundered like a twenty-one gun salute. Sinclair grinned a toothy grin, leaned down at the window and was about to say something – but his words were drowned out and he jumped back as smoke poured from the spinning tyres and the Ferrari took off.

  Jack Brewster’s goons opened up a gate. Ben roared through and stepped on the gas. Slashing through the traffic, the Ferrari covered the fifteen miles into central London in a ridiculously short time. The V12 was just getting nicely warmed up as Ben screeched to a halt outside the Ritz in Piccadilly, walked up to the desk and asked for a suite. ‘The biggest you have.’

  Minutes later, Sinclair’s expense account was down £3,800 and Ben’s sole, decidedly non-designer, piece of luggage was being taken up to the split-level grandeur of the Royal Suite. Ben’s next act was to call up room service and have the kitchen run him up an extremely sumptuous, very late lunch, at an exorbitant premium he was more than happy to pay. The bottle of wine he ordered to go with it cost more than a full tank of fuel for his Ferrari. While he was on the phone he arranged for a hotel lackey to run across the street to Davidoff of St James’s, the cigar merchants, to fetch him a box of Cohiba Esplendidos. He’d been in town less than an hour, and already Sinclair’s expense account was taking a hell of a battering.

  After eating his mid-afternoon lunch at the head of the table in his own private dining room overlooking Green Park – antique crystal, finest porcelain and silverware – Ben retreated to a master bedroom that would have made Marie Antoinette blush, flopped on the giant bed and lit up a cigar. When he’d smoked it to the stub he napped for almost three hours, then showered and changed into the last clean clothes that were stuffed in the bottom of his canvas bag.

  By now it was after seven-thirty, and the drizzle had cleared into a fresh, pleasant evening. Ben called back down to room service and ordered a limo for the evening. ‘The biggest and most expensive one you can get me,’ he specified. When the sixteen-seater glittering white stretch monstrosity arrived, complete with mirror ceiling, giant TV and fully-stocked bar, Ben had the chauffeur drive him a decadently short distance down St James’s Street to a noisy bar where a single measure of ordinary whisky cost over six pounds.

  Several hours passed before he finally emerged, now accompanied by two cackling, high-heeled young women whose names he was fairly sure were Linzi and Bev. He had the waiting chauffeur ferry them back along St James’s Street to the Ritz, where he escorted his noisy companions into the hotel bar, fired up another Cohiba Esplendido and ordered three bottles of the most expensive champagne they had, at £500 a throw.

  Sometime after dawn the following morning, a dishevelled, puffy-eyed Linzi and Bev came teetering uncertainly out of the lift and exited the revolving doors of the Ritz lobby under the disapproving gaze of the front desk attendant. Three hours later, after a lavish breakfast, Ben checked out, climbed into the Ferrari and blasted out of London.

  He headed north-west on the M40 towards his old stamping-ground, Oxford. Leaving the motorway, he skirted the city and took the fa
miliar A40 west. Cheltenham; Gloucester; Ross-on-Wye; over the Welsh border towards Abergavenny: the road grew emptier and the countryside greener the closer he got to his destination. He stopped off in Brecon to buy some provisions at the local Co-op with his own money, as well as a hefty piece of roasting beef from Mr Evans the butcher.

  He was back at the cottage by midday. The grass in the front garden was an inch longer than he’d last seen it, but nothing else had changed by the banks of the burbling River Usk: the events of the wider world didn’t make much of an impact out here.

  Shifting down a couple of gears after his time in London, Ben spent most of the afternoon strolling by the river and exploring the surrounding countryside. Beyond the fence at the rear of the cottage, a broad meadow filled with wild flowers led to a stretch of woodland, untouched for centuries and thick with ancient gnarly sycamores, beech and laurel. Ben wandered in there a while, sometimes straying off the public footpath that wound for half a mile through the trees, crouching now and again among the ferns to examine the tracks of foxes and badgers on the moist, leafy forest floor. Twice he met a fellow walker on the footpath, smiled and wished them a good afternoon.

  Back at the cottage, a light meal; then he settled in a comfortable armchair by the living room window with a glass or two of Laphroaig and the book he’d been slowly working his way through before leaving for the Caymans, Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics. Just after eleven o’clock, he laid the book down, rubbed his eyes and climbed the stairs to his bedroom for an early night. Seven minutes later, his bedroom light went out and the cottage fell into pitch darkness.

  Not long afterwards, they came for him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The team leader waited until the cottage windows had been dark long enough for the target to fall asleep. He carried out a final, silently efficient check of his machine carbine and then muttered the command into his throat mike that his two colleagues hidden among the trees had been waiting to hear.