The tall gilded wrought-iron gates were gliding shut.
Oliver aimed the MG at the closing gap and rammed them. He was thrown forward in his seat and the car’s front wings buckled, but he made it through and kept going. The guard yelled at him to stop. He accelerated hard down the icy road.
Within less than a minute he saw the lights of a car behind him, dazzling in his rear-view mirror as it gained in speed. Snow-laden conifers flashed by in the yellow glow of his headlights.
He saw the sheet ice up ahead but it was too late to do anything. He felt the car go into a skid as he hit it and grappled with the wheel, just managing to regain control. The car travelling behind him hit the glassy surface in his wake and spun into the trees at the side of the road.
Twenty minutes later he was back at the guesthouse. He parked the dented MG out of sight around the back and ran up to his room. The storm was gathering and wispy snow was giving way to torrential rain that drummed on the roof. The lamp on his desk flickered as he turned on the laptop.
It seemed to take forever to load up. He didn’t know how much time he had. ‘Come on. Come on,’ he implored.
Logging on to his email account, he scrolled urgently through the inbox to a message entitled The Mozart Letter. It was from the professor. He hit REPLY, his fingers jittery on the keys as he typed.
Professor—Must talk to you again about the letter. Urgent. Will call you. Have discovered something. Danger.
He hit SEND and fumbled for his phone, attaching it to the laptop with a USB cable. Calm. Stay calm. Working fast, he downloaded the video-clip file from the Sony Ericsson onto the hard drive.
He didn’t want to look at the video but knew he mustn’t be caught with it. There was only one place he could send it safely. He would email it to her. Then she’d definitely receive it, wherever she was.
The lights went out halfway through typing the email. In the darkened room, the screen was telling him his Internet connection was broken. He swore, picked up the phone. Dead. The storm had taken out the phone lines too.
Oliver bit his lip, thinking hard. The laptop was still running on its own power. He dug in his briefcase and found the CD-ROM he’d been using to store his research photographs. He slammed it into the laptop’s disk drive and hurriedly copied the video file onto it.
Fumbling in the dark he found the box-set of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. He’d been meaning to post it back to her anyway and had already stamped and addressed the padded envelope. He nodded to himself. It was the only way. He pulled out one of the Mozart discs and put the CD he’d just copied in its place. Grabbing a marker pen, he scribbled a few quick words on the disc’s shiny surface before he placed the music CD on top of it and shut the box. He prayed that if she saw it before he got there, she’d take his warning seriously.
He knew there was a post box not far from the guesthouse, off the square at the end of Fischer Strasse, and he ran downstairs and out into the street. The power was still down, the houses in darkness. The lashing rain had turned to sleet and his tuxedo was quickly soaked as he jogged down the slushy pavements. Dirty snow lay piled against the sleeping buildings. The streets were deserted.
Oliver shoved his package into the post box, his fingers shaking with cold and fear, and turned back to the guesthouse. Now to pack his things and get the hell out of here-fast.
He was fifty yards from the darkened guesthouse when the powerful headlamps came around the street corner and washed over him. The big car bore down on him. He turned to run back the other way but slipped and grazed a knee on the pavement. The Mercedes pulled up next to him. There were four men inside. The back doors opened and two of them stepped out and seized his arms. Their faces were grim. They bundled him into the back seat and the car powered away up through the quiet village.
Nobody spoke. Oliver sat staring at his feet in the darkness. The Mercedes came to a halt, and the men pulled him roughly out of the car.
They were at the side of a lake. The sleet had stopped, and pale moonlight shone down across the water’s frozen surface. The village lights had come back on and glimmered in the distance.
All four men stepped out of the car. They hauled Oliver out too and slammed him against the side. One of his arms was twisted up painfully behind his back and someone kicked his feet apart. He felt expert hands frisking him.
He remembered the phone just a second before they found it in his jacket pocket. Fear rose within him as he realized that in his haste he hadn’t deleted the video-clip.
The men hauled Oliver off the cold metal of the car and he saw the pistol glint in the moonlight. The man holding it was tall, about six-four, and heavily built. His eyes were impassive, and below the line of his sandy crew-cut one of his earlobes was twisted and mangled.
Oliver stared at him. ‘I’ve seen you before.’
‘Walk.’ The man with the gun motioned towards the lake.
Oliver stepped through the rushes and placed one foot on the ice. He walked out across the lake. Ten yards, fifteen. The ice was thick and solid underneath him. Every nerve in his body was screaming, his heart thudding in the base of his throat. There had to be a way out of this.
But there wasn’t, and he knew it. He walked on, slipping on the hard, smooth ice. His tuxedo was soaked with sweat.
He’d walked about thirty yards from the lakeside when he heard the gunshot. He flinched-but there was no impact, no pain. He felt the strike of the bullet resonate through the ice under his feet.
That was when he realized they weren’t going to shoot him.
He watched helplessly as the blue fissure spread from the bullet-hole in the ice and ran past his feet with a slow, ripping crackle. He glanced back at the lakeside. Saw another man reach inside the car, come out with a stubby submachine gun and hand it to the tall man.
Oliver closed his eyes.
The tall man had a wide grin on his face as he held the weapon tightly at the hip and squeezed off a short fully-automatic blast at Oliver’s feet.
The ice was churned into flying splinters. A spider’s web of cracks appeared all around him. There was nowhere to run. The frozen surface beneath his feet groaned, and then gave way.
The stunning shock of the icy water drove the breath out of him. He clawed at the ragged edge of the hole, but lost his grip. The water closed over his head, filled his nose and mouth, pressure roaring in his ears as he kicked and struggled. In the blackness, he knew he’d slipped under the ice sheet. His fingers slithered helplessly against its underside as he drifted away from the hole. Bubbles streamed from his lips. There was no way up, no way back.
He held his breath, and fought and kicked against the ice until he couldn’t hold it any longer. His body convulsed as the freezing water poured into his lungs.
And as he died, he thought he could hear the killers laughing.
Chapter Two
Southern Turkey
Eleven months later
The two men playing cards at the kitchen table heard the sudden roar of an engine and looked up just in time to see the pickup truck looming in the patio windows.
Then it hit. Glass shards, splinters of timber and shattered brickwork exploded into the room. The truck lurched to a halt with its front wheels and its rust-pitted, plaster-covered bonnet protruding through the ragged hole in the wall.
The men dived for cover, scattering beer bottles, but they were too slow. The truck door flew open. The man who stepped out from behind the dusty windscreen was dressed all in black. Black combat jacket, black ski-mask, black gloves. He watched for a moment as the card players backed away across the room. Then he drew the silenced 9mm Browning from its holster and shot them both twice in the chest, rapid-fire. The bodies slumped to the floor. A spent case tinkled across the tiles. He walked over to the nearest body and put a bullet in its head. Then the other.
The man in black had been observing the secluded house for three days, taking his time, well concealed in the trees beyond the fence. He knew the
routine. He knew that round the back of the house was a garage block that housed a rusted Ford pickup with the keys left in it, and that he could slip over the wall and reach it without being seen from the rear windows where the guys usually sat, playing cards and drinking beer.
He also knew where the girl was.
The dust was beginning to settle in the wrecked kitchen. When he’d made sure the two men were permanently down, the intruder replaced the warm Browning in its holster and made his way through the house. He looked at his watch. Less than two minutes since he’d come over the wall. Things were going according to plan.
The girl’s door was flimsy and buckled off its hinges at the third kick. By then, he could hear her screaming inside the room. He burst in. She was curled up at the far end of the bed, sheets drawn over her, terror in her eyes. He knew that she had just turned thirteen.
The man walked over to her and paused at the edge of the bed. She screamed harder. He wondered whether he would have to give her one of the tranquillizers he always carried with him. He took off the ski-mask, revealing his lean, tanned face and thick blond hair. He put out his hand to her. ‘Come with me,’ he said softly.
She stopped screaming and looked up at him hesitantly. The other men had hard eyes. This man was different.
He reached into his jacket and showed her the photo of him together with her parents. She hadn’t seen them for a long time. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘My name’s Ben, and I’m here to help you. Your family sent me, Catherine. They’re waiting. I’ll take you to them.’
Her cheeks were moist with tears. ‘Are you a policeman?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just a friend.’
He reached his hand out further, gently, and she let him take her arm to guide her to her feet. Her arm felt wasted under the grubby blouse she was wearing. She didn’t protest as he led her out of the room, and she didn’t react at the sight of the two dead men lying on the kitchen floor.
Back outside, she blinked at the sunlight. It had been a while since she’d last left the confines of the house. She was unsteady on her feet, and Ben carried her to the Land Rover he’d left parked fifty yards from the house, hidden in a clump of bushes. He opened the passenger door and put the girl into the seat. She was shivering. There was a blanket in the back and he covered her with it.
He checked his watch again. Five minutes before the other three men would be back, if they kept to their routine. ‘Let’s go,’ he muttered, and walked round to the driver’s side.
The girl said something in reply, but her voice was weak.
‘What?’ he said.
‘What about Maria?’ she repeated, looking up at him.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Maria?’
Catherine pointed back at the house. ‘She’s still in there.’
‘Is Maria a girl like you? They’re holding her?’
Catherine nodded solemnly.
He made a decision. ‘OK, I need you to stay put for a minute. Can I trust you?’
She nodded again.
‘Where is she?’
In three minutes he’d found where they were keeping Maria. To get there he had to walk through a dingy room where some cameras were set up on tripods around a rumpled single bed, with cheap lighting equipment dumped in a corner and a TV and video sitting on a squat table. The VCR had been left running, the sound off. He paused and looked at the images, then realized what he was seeing. He recognized one of the men he’d shot earlier. The naked, writhing girl in the crudely shot film was no more than eleven or twelve.
Rage flashed through him and he kicked the TV off the table. It hit the floor and imploded in a shower of sparks.
Maria’s door wasn’t locked, and when he went into the squalid room his first thought was that she was dead.
She was the girl in the video. She was still breathing, but heavily doped. A grimy vest and knickers were all that covered her thin body. He lifted her carefully from the bed and carried her back through the house and out to the Land Rover. He gently laid her on the back seat, took off his jacket and placed it over her. Catherine reached out for her hand and looked up at Ben with questioning eyes.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he said softly.
The sound of an approaching vehicle made him tense. They were back. The Land Rover was well hidden from their view. So was the pickup truck, which was still sitting half-buried in the hole in the kitchen wall at the back of the house, but they’d find that soon enough.
Ben climbed into the driver’s seat and listened. He heard voices as one of the three men got out. The creak of the iron gates. The roll and crunch of the Suzuki’s tyres on the gravel. The engine burbling through a shot muffler as it pulled up in front of the house. Car doors opening and slamming. Footsteps and laughter.
He pulled his door quietly shut and went to twist the key. They’d be out of here before anyone could react. Then Catherine would be back with her family and he’d hand Maria over to the authorities he could still trust.
His hand stopped halfway to the ignition. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He saw them again. The images on the TV. Big hands pawing at young flesh. Bad teeth flashing in wide grins. The imploring eyes of the girl on the bed.
He looked over his shoulder at Maria’s slight body lying slumped in the back. Catherine was frowning at him from the passenger seat.
Fuck it. He reached down under his seat and drew out his back-up weapon. The shotgun was an Ithaca 12-gauge, black and brutal, less than two feet long from its pistol grip to its sawn-off muzzle. Its tube magazine was loaded up with 00-Buck rounds, the type that would let you into a barricaded room without needing to open the door.
He swung his legs out of the Land Rover. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he told Catherine.
The three men were just at the front porch by the time he walked up behind them. Two of them, the fat one and the long-haired one, were joking about something in Turkish. The third guy looked serious, tattoos, slicked-back hair, jangling a bunch of keys. He had a Chinese Colt 1911-A1 copy tucked in his belt, behind the hip, hammer down in amateur fashion.
When the metallic clack-clunk of the Ithaca slide-action cut the air, all three of them wheeled around with wide eyes. Nobody had time to reach for a gun. A cigarette dropped from an open mouth.
He stared at them coldly for half a second before he emptied the Ithaca’s magazine into their bodies at point-blank range.
Chapter Three
Somewhere over France
Two days later
Benedict Hope gazed out of the window of the 747 and took another long sip of whisky as he watched the white ocean of cloud drift by below. Ice clinked in his glass. The whisky traced a burning path across his tongue. Airline Scotch, some nameless blended thing, but better than nothing. It was his fourth. Or maybe his fifth. He couldn’t remember any more.
The seat next to him was empty, as was much of the business-class section of the plane. He turned away from the window, stretched out and closed his eyes.
Three jobs this year. He’d been busy, and he was tired. It had taken two months in Turkey to track down the men who were holding Catherine Petersen. Two long months of dirt and sweat, following false trails, chasing up dud information, overturning every stone. The girl’s parents had despaired many times of ever seeing her alive again. He never made promises to people. He knew there was always a chance of sending the subject home in a body-bag.
That had only happened to him once. Mexico City, one of the big kidnap-and-ransom hotspots of the world. It hadn’t been his fault. The kidnappers had slaughtered the child even before the ransom demands. Ben had been the one who found the body. A young boy, just short of his eleventh birthday, stuffed in a barrel. He had no ears and no fingers. Sometimes the kidnappers weren’t even doing it for the money. He still didn’t like to think of it, but the half-repressed memory drove him on.
He’d persisted in Turkey, just as he always persisted. He’d never given up on anyone, ev
en though there were plenty of times when it seemed hopeless. Like with a lot of these jobs, there had been nothing, no leads, just a lot of people too frightened to talk. Then a chance piece of information unlocked the whole thing and led him right to the house. People had died for it. But now Catherine Petersen was back with her parents and little Maria was being looked after until her family could be traced.
Now all Ben wanted to do was go home, back to the sanctuary of the old house on the remote west coast of Ireland. He thought about his private, lonely stretch of beach, the rocky cove where he liked to spend time alone with the waves, the gulls and his thoughts. His plan after the Turkish job had been to rest there quietly for as long as he could. Until the next call. That was one thing he could be sure of. There’d always be another call.
And it had come sooner than he’d expected. Around midnight the night before, and he’d been sitting in the hotel bar with nothing more to occupy him than a row of drinks, counting the hours before he could get out of Istanbul. He’d checked his phone for the first time in a week. There had been a message waiting for him, and the voice was one he knew well.
It was Leigh Llewellyn. She was about the last person he’d expected to hear from. He’d listened to the message several times. She sounded tense, nervous, a little breathless.
‘Ben, I don’t know where you are or when you might get this message. But I need to see you. I don’t know who else to call. I’m staying in London, at the Dorchester. Come and find me. I’ll wait here as long as I can for you.’ A pause. Then, in a tight voice: ‘Ben, I’m scared. Please, come quick if you can.’
The message was five days old, dated the fourth of December. On hearing it he’d cancelled the Dublin flight. He’d be at Heathrow in less than an hour.
What could she want from him? They hadn’t spoken for fifteen years.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 34