The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  ‘You’re making a huge mistake, Harry. There’s still time to back out. Walk away and let her go now, and I won’t come after you.’

  ‘The mistake would be to underestimate me,’ Paxton said. ‘Any tricks from you, and Berg has a green light to do what he wants with her. Don’t even think about trying to find her. You wouldn’t. She could be on any one of a dozen vessels, anywhere in the world. You come within a mile of any of my fleet, and I’ll know about it.’

  Ben stayed silent.

  Paxton reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small object. He tossed it in the air, and Ben caught it. He held it in the palm of his hand and examined it. An inch-and-a-half long, brand name embossed in white on pale blue plastic. It was a computer memory stick.

  ‘Morgan’s research,’ Paxton said. ‘The file you sent me. Still encrypted, of course, but that’s your problem now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, Major, I suggest you’d better get moving. You have seven days, starting now, to find Morgan’s treasure.’

  It seemed absurd. ‘Seven days?’

  ‘You heard me,’ Paxton replied. ‘One week. I’m not a patient man, Benedict. I’ve waited long enough for this. Call it a challenge. You’ve faced challenges before.’

  Ben hung his head. ‘You’ve got me. I’ll do everything you want.’ As he said it, he was thinking about the Browning in his overnight bag, just yards outside the front door in the Mini. It was a delicate matter of timing and luck-but if he could somehow get to it, he could end this quickly. Kill Berg first, then Paxton, then get Zara far away from here.

  Paxton was watching him keenly. ‘I know you so well, Benedict. You could be my son. I know the way you think. Everything that’s going through your mind. You’re already working out ways to get out of this. You think I’m just going to let you walk out of here now, while I’m still inside?’ He shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘You must take me for such an idiot.’ Still holding the SIG in his right hand, he reached inside his jacket with his left hand and came out holding a strange long-barrelled pistol.

  Ben knew what it was. A CO2-propelled tranquilliser dart gun. His heart sank. No way out.

  ‘By the time you wake up, the three of us will be far away,’ Paxton said. ‘You’ll find everything you need on the desk. I wish you a very pleasant journey back to Egypt, and all the best of British luck.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll be keeping in touch for progress reports. Bon voyage, Benedict.’

  He took his time aiming the dart gun. Ben tensed, waiting for it. He threw a last look at Zara, then the pistol coughed in Paxton’s hand and there was a sharp pain as the dart pierced his neck.

  The blackness came quickly. His last sensation was a strange feeling of weightlessness, and his face thudding into the blood-soaked carpet.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It could have been seconds later that he woke up, or it could have been years. He felt himself rise up from the black depths, break the surface and bob up towards consciousness, and flickered his eyes open to a world of blurs and echoes. Nausea hit him like a bad smell, and with it the sick memory of what had happened.

  He was still lying on the floor, but somehow it felt different, harder, colder. His left arm was flung out in front of his face. His eyes fixed on the hands of his watch and for a few seconds they meant nothing to him. Then, as the synapses in his brain started firing again, he understood that it was almost midday and he’d been unconscious for nearly two hours.

  That thought gave him the burst of energy to jerk himself upright. One elbow on the floor. Then one knee, and he was staggering to his feet, shaking his head to clear the grogginess. He pressed his hand to his neck, feeling the sharp pain where the dart had punctured him.

  The room around him was the same, but it had completely changed. He was standing on bare boards, just a few nails and bits of fluff around the edges of the walls to show where the carpet had been taken up. Of all the furniture, only the desk remained, and it had been stripped almost bare. The computer, cameras and surveillance equipment were gone. So was the makeshift table-and the dismembered bodies. There was no sign of what had happened there. Harry Paxton had covered his tracks one more time.

  Ben could smell soap on his hands. They’d even sponged the blood from the carpet off him while he’d been unconscious.

  The acrid stink of something burning outside drew him over to the window. The blind was drawn all the way down, and he yanked it open and looked out through the dusty glass at the back garden. It was overgrown and weedy, surrounded by a high wall. A big fire was burning itself out in the middle of the patchy grass, black smoke wisping upwards from the charred remnants of the rolled-up carpet and what was left of the furniture.

  He turned away from the window and walked across to the desk. It wasn’t quite empty. Lying on its surface were two items.

  The first was the computer memory stick that had been in his hand when he’d been knocked out. The second was a drawstring bag, tied at the neck. Ben weighed the bag in his hand, undid the knot and looked inside. There were two stacks of money in there, one larger than the other. He brought each one out in turn. Euros and Egyptian pounds-about a thousand of one and ten thousand of the other. Paxton really had thought of everything.

  As the seconds passed, Ben became acutely aware of his predicament. All he knew was that he had to do what Paxton wanted. There was no choice. Paxton was no ordinary kidnapper. He was an ex-SAS colonel, and he knew Ben’s mind. He’d trained him, educated him, watched him grow into the soldier he’d become. There was no way to outwit him. The colonel had Ben sewn up tight.

  Seven days to find something that had been lost for thousands of years, and he didn’t even know where to start. He picked up the tiny memory stick, held it in the palm of his hand and slipped it into his pocket, feeling his car keys still in there. He hefted up the drawstring bag full of money, slung it over his shoulder and left the house.

  The street was empty outside. Ben walked over to the Mini, bleeped the locks and dumped the money on the back seat next to his overnight bag. Right away, he could see that someone had gone through his things. He checked. The Browning was no longer there.

  He drove slowly, mechanically, back to his flat, parked the car in his usual spot in the underground lot, killed the engine and sat there at the wheel for a long time, staring blankly through the windscreen at the bare concrete wall in front of him. He knew he couldn’t bring himself to go up to the flat. Everything in there would remind him too much of Zara. The imprint of her head on the pillow. The rumpled sheets. Her damp towel in the bathroom. The lingering scent of her perfume. Her note, still lying there on the kitchen table.

  He blamed himself. Why did you let her go?

  He got out of the car and walked. He didn’t know where he was going. Up the ramp to street level, and he took a right and wandered up the alley. In a few minutes he was ambling numbly along Boulevard Haussmann, only vaguely aware of the people around him and the traffic streaming by. He kept walking. Crossed the boulevard and almost got mown down by a bus. He barely noticed it as it lurched to a halt a metre from him, horn blaring. He made it to the other side of the street and kept putting one foot aimlessly in front of the other.

  As he walked, he put his hand in his pocket and held the memory stick tight in his fist. Somewhere inside the tiny electronic device, locked away behind an impenetrable curtain of secret codes and passwords and God knew what kind of techno-gimmickry, might be everything he needed to know. But there was no way in, no way to access it. He’d already tried. It was a dead end.

  Unless…

  He suddenly remembered. The slip of paper he’d found in Morgan’s blazer pocket. The grocery store receipt with the scribbled phone number. He’d completely forgotten about it, thinking it was unimportant. And maybe it was, but right now it seemed like the only scrap he had to go on.

  But what had the number been? He struggled to bring it back. Forced his visual memory to cough it up. Nothing.

  It was only wh
en someone bumped into the back of him that he realised he’d stopped dead in the middle of the street. He stepped aside, muttering an apology.

  He leaned against a railing. He felt sick, and it wasn’t just the after-effects of the tranquilliser drug. He watched as some pigeons strutted about the pavement, pecking in the dirt around a roadside tree.

  Damn, the number wouldn’t come. It had been a British landline number-that much he could remember. But when he tried to focus on it, all he could see was Zara’s face in his mind. The knife at her throat. Berg’s impassive gaze. Paxton’s little smile.

  The roar of traffic seemed to fill his head, making it feel as though his thoughts were being dissolved in a swirling mess of confusion. He felt feverish with it. His mouth was dry, his heart rate was accelerated, his hands were shaking. He was falling apart.

  Damn you, Hope. Get it together.

  He walked on, eyes to the ground, fighting to bring the number back.

  Nothing.

  Then his feet reached the edge of the pavement. He looked up, and suddenly he knew where he was. He’d walked all the way up to the Place de la Trinité. Ahead of him across the busy square, nestling behind trees, was the dome of the Trinity church. It somehow seemed to beckon to him.

  He crossed the square, walked up the steps to the entrance and went in. The inside of the church was cool and dark and rich with the pungent smell of incense. His footsteps echoed off the time-smoothed flagstones and carried up to the vaulted ceiling as he made his way up the aisle and settled in a pew. The traffic rumble was far away. Diaphanous light filtered in through the stained glass windows. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, felt the serene atmosphere penetrate his senses, purge away the confusion and shine clarity into his thoughts.

  He visualised himself in that stinking tenement building back in Cairo.

  Finding Morgan’s blazer on the stoned-out girl with the angel tattoo.

  Searching through the pockets back at Morgan’s flat.

  Finding the crumpled piece of paper.

  Reading the number.

  Come on.

  Reading the number.

  Suddenly, it came to him. His heart jumped. He opened his eyes, grabbed a pen from his pocket and scribbled the number on the back of his hand.

  He stared at it. Yes, it was right. He was sure of it. The area code was 01334, but he’d no idea where in the UK that was. Then there was the main body of the number, and then the three-digit extension, 345. That part had been easy to remember.

  He stood up. Stronger now, somehow. More focused. Clearer.

  He walked out of the church, leaving its cool serenity behind. The building was surrounded by pretty, well-tended gardens railed off from the street. The trees rustled lightly in the breeze, and little sparrows hopped across the lawns. Ben headed for an old wooden bench under a gnarly oak. He sat down on the edge of it, took out his phone, glanced again at the number on his hand and punched it out on the keys.

  After four rings his heart was already sinking. Maybe this wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Maybe the number meant nothing. If the junkie girl had been wearing the blazer for a few days, the piece of paper might have been hers. Doubts gripped him.

  On the sixth ring, an answerphone cut in.

  ‘University of St Andrews. Faculty of History,’ said the female voice on the recorded message. She spoke with a lilting Scottish accent. ‘If you know the extension number you require, please enter it now. Otherwise, please hold for an operator.’

  This didn’t sound like a contact a Cairo dopehead would have. Ben entered the extension and waited. Then swore under his breath as another answerphone kicked in after a couple of rings.

  ‘Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Dr Lawrence Kirby. I’m not around right now, so please leave your message—’

  Ben killed the call before he got to the beep. So now he knew whose number he had. This was suddenly looking more promising. Maybe not much, but better than nothing.

  Leaning back on the bench, he did an Internet search on ‘Dr Lawrence Kirby, St Andrews University’. His phone’s search engine took him straight to the Faculty of History website, where he found Kirby listed in the directory of staff members. He clicked on the name, and a thumbnail photo appeared with a two-line bio. The picture showed a somewhat bemused-looking, pasty-faced individual who hadn’t shaved that morning. He had a wild shock of black hair, a tuft of it hanging down across his brow.

  Ben gazed at it. Is this fucker going to be any use to me? he wondered.

  He laid the phone down next to him and took out his cigarettes and lighter. Lit up, watched the smoke curl away on the wind and tried hard not to think of Zara. It didn’t work. He finished the cigarette and went straight into another. After a few minutes he snatched up the phone and dialled Kirby’s number again.

  This time, there was no answerphone, and it kept ringing and ringing. Just as he was about to hang up, a man’s voice answered breathlessly, as though he’d been running to get the call.

  ‘Dr Kirby?’ Ben said.

  ‘Speaking,’ the voice panted.

  ‘Dr Lawrence Kirby?’

  ‘This is he,’ the voice replied jovially. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘You don’t know me. I’m calling about Morgan Paxton.’

  The phone went dead.

  Ben swore. He tried again. This time, Kirby answered on the second ring.

  ‘We got cut off,’ Ben said.

  ‘No, we didn’t.’ Kirby didn’t sound so jovial any more. ‘I cut you off.’

  ‘Why did you do that? I was just trying to talk to you.’

  ‘I cut you off because I don’t know any Morgan Paxton.’

  ‘You remember his name pretty well, though.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re talking about,’ Kirby answered, sounding panicked. ‘You must have the wrong number.’

  ‘It’s the right number and, if you let me explain, you’ll understand why I need to talk to you. It’s important.’

  There was a pause on the other end. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you. I don’t know who Morgan Paxton is.’ Kirby hung up again.

  Ben turned off his phone. OK, if that’s the way you want to play it, Kirby, he thought. St Andrews. East coast of Scotland, just north of Edinburgh.

  Fuck it. He could be there in a few hours.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ben hammered the Mini the fourteen miles northeast to Paris Roissy airport and got on the first plane bound for Edinburgh. After a short flight, he stepped down on Scottish soil. The air was colder and crisper than France, but he wasn’t interested in taking in his surroundings. At the Avis car rental outlet he picked out a Mercedes SLK two-seater sports that seemed about right for someone in the kind of hurry he was. Settling into the snug black leather interior, he entered his destination into the sat nav and hit the road fast and hard. Edinburgh shrank away quickly to nothing in his mirrors. He blasted across the giant suspension bridge spanning the Firth of Forth and carved northwards up the twisting A roads of the east coast until he reached St Andrews.

  He vaguely remembered from his theology studies that the old university town had at one time been the religious capital of Scotland, steeped in the blood of butchered, tortured and burned martyrs. Its violent past was hard to imagine as he drove through the quiet streets, past ivied university buildings, cafés and hotels. It didn’t take him long to locate the Faculty of History. He left the car and walked along a path overlooking the sea, with the ruins of the medieval cathedral behind him and the craggy remains of St Andrews castle and the coastline stretching out in a wide curve ahead in the distance. He filled his lungs with the fresh, salty air and tried hard, for the millionth time, to keep Zara from the foreground of his thoughts but knew it was impossible.

  Arriving at the fine stone building that housed the Faculty of History, he walked in the iron gates, crossed a small car park and shoved through the front entrance into a large reception area. There was nobody at the des
k. He glanced around him. A row of chairs, some historical prints framed on the wall, a broad staircase winding upwards. On a panel by the bottom of the stairs were the names of the academic staff with their room numbers and a little push-button LED that showed who was in. Ben ran his finger down the list until he found Kirby and a room number-42. The little light next to it was on.

  He headed up the stairs, two at a time. A bunch of students were heading down, clutching books and folders, chatting among themselves. They glanced at him as he went by, and he ignored them. At the top of the stairs, a sign pointed right for rooms 21 to 45. He batted through a fire door and strode quickly up the narrow, neon-lit corridor. When he got to room 42 he checked the name-plate on the door: DR LAWRENCE KIRBY’.

  Ben pushed in without knocking, and found himself in a large office. The place was a chaotic sprawl, books and papers and yellowing crumpled copies of the Guardian everywhere, piled high on the desk, stacked in heaps on the floor. At the back of the room was a dusty window, and between it and the cluttered desk stood the man Ben instantly recognised from the Internet page as Lawrence Kirby.

  Kirby had been in the middle of stuffing a huge book into a crammed, battered leather briefcase on his desk when Ben burst in. ‘Can’t you kn—’ he started. His voice trailed off, and he froze, staring at Ben. He was exactly like his photo, except maybe a little scruffier, and the unruly shock of black hair hung even lower over his brow.

  Kirby dropped the book and walked out from behind the desk. He was wearing frayed cord trousers, his shirt was hanging out under his tweed sports jacket. He was a few pounds overweight and moved awkwardly. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. His eyes darted up and down, as though he were nervously sizing Ben up.

  ‘I’m the one you didn’t want to talk to on the phone,’ Ben said. ‘Remember?’ The draught from the opening of the door had blown some documents off the desk, and he stooped quickly to pick them up. The top one was a car insurance renewal form with Kirby’s name and home address on it. ‘You dropped these,’ he said, trying to keep his tone more friendly. He could see Kirby was rattled, and he didn’t want to seem a threat to the man. He laid the papers down on the desk and smiled.