Running the scene through his mind as they walked, he looked round and up at Ivan with a conspiratorial smile. Ivan winked and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
They reached the shower block. Ivan opened the creaky door that led through to the washroom. A row of rusty metal shower heads fixed to the ceiling corresponded with a row of floor drains. It was a pretty Spartan arrangement. Ivan muttered something to the guard, who went off on some errand. Then he got the water running for Rory, turned it up as lukewarm as it would go, and left to give him some privacy.
Rory stripped off his clothes, bundled them on the side and stepped under the water. There was a rough piece of old soap lying on the floor, and he used it to lather himself up.
Ivan stood for a few moments around the corner, listening to the patter of the water on the tiles. Then he peeked furtively out into the corridor. He’d sent Miklós looking for Boris, and he knew that Boris was off duty and had gone off with some of the others to the nearest town, twenty kilometres away, to get his fill of beer and whores. Which meant the stupid Miklós would spend ages scouring the place, and he had time on his own.
Ivan slipped into a small room off the shower block that was used as an office. Inside the room was a desk, heaped with papers.
But he ignored it. Walked quietly over to the wall. Hanging from a hook was an age-faded framed print of Adolf Hitler, posing in uniform with the Nazi flag behind him and, below, the slogan ‘EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FÜHRER’ in gothic script.
He raised a trembling hand to the picture. Lifted the edge of the frame away from the wall.
A smile crept over his face and his heart began to beat faster.
He moved his eye to the peephole through to the shower block.
He watched as the naked boy soaped his smooth, young body. First the upper half. Then the lower half.
Ivan groaned softly to himself and started unzipping his trousers.
Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the mountain, inside the chamber behind the vault door, Adam felt the rising panic of desperation as he faced the task he’d been set.
‘I don’t think—’ His words died in his mouth. He laid his hand on the cold metal shell of Kammler’s machine.
Pelham was leaning against the wall a few feet away, watching him. They’d been there for hours.
‘What don’t you think?’ he said calmly.
‘I’m not so sure I can get this thing to work,’ Adam groaned. ‘I just don’t get it. It’s just… it’s mind-boggling.’
Pelham pointed at the makeshift worktop that had been set up against the wall, and the laptop onto which they’d loaded the research files retrieved from Teach na Loch.
‘You told me that once you had your notes, you’d be able to make it work. It’s cost me a lot of trouble getting them for you.’
‘I know what I said,’ Adam said, fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘But this goes way beyond anything I ever imagined. My notes are useless.’
‘You’re playing for high stakes, Adam. It would be wise not to forget that.’
‘You think I’ve forgotten? I’m doing my best, goddamnit.’ Adam glared at him, then looked back at the machine. It sat there silent, mysterious, unyielding, on its concrete plinth in the middle of the vault. The cold, smooth black metal shell gleamed dully in the lights. It seemed to him that the thing was taunting him, deliberately holding back the dark, terrible, wonderful secrets that were contained inside. Secrets that, he was beginning to fear, its inventor might have taken to his grave. The thought made him want to retch. He lashed out his foot at the bell-like casing.
Pelham peeled himself away from the wall and walked up to him with his hands in his trouser pockets. Adam could see the shoulder holster under his suede jacket, and the butt of the pistol he carried inside.
‘Then your best will just have to be better,’ he said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ben and Jeff leaped in the Land Rover and went skidding down the drive. They found Raymond and Claude unconscious, trussed up in the security hut near the main entrance to Le Val with tranquilliser darts in them. There was no sign of Jean-Yves, until they found the man bundled in the bushes two hundred yards away along the perimeter. All three men were unharmed apart from the effects of the powerful dope that the intruders had used to overpower them. Ben and Jeff loaded them into the Land Rover and carried them back to the house.
It took a few hours to clean up Le Val. Before anything else could be done, the bodies of the six intruders had to be disposed of. That was the easy part. In a sleepy rural area with a population of less than one person per acre of land, where the police very seldom needed to involve themselves in the locals’ affairs, barring the occasional theft of a goat or a chicken, dead men could be made to disappear quickly, privately and permanently.
When that was done, it was time to start on the place itself. Jeff helped Ben to roll up the blood-soaked carpet and rug from the house, carry it downstairs and burn it. The bullet damage in the house and trainee block was going to have to wait.
The dogs were grimmer work. All but Storm were dead, and Ben buried them in the field behind the house while they waited anxiously for Drudi. The retired vet from Palermo was the kind of man who would ask no questions and keep his mouth shut. After he’d carefully removed the crossbow bolt from Storm, he gave his prognosis. No major organs had been affected. Storm had a long recovery ahead of him, but he was going to make it. Ben and Brooke carried the bandaged, heavily tranquillised German Shepherd into the kitchen and made him a bed out of blankets.
As they sat with him a while, Brooke unbuttoned Ben’s shirt to take a look at his chest. There was an ugly purple rectangle on his pectoral muscle where the shape of the Zippo had been imprinted into the flesh by the bullet’s impact. The bruise was going to be spectacular.
She held him tight, tearful and fragile now that the shock of that day’s events was beginning to set in.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispered against his shoulder. He rocked her gently in his arms, kissed her hair. He didn’t want to have to leave her, not now, not ever. But he knew he’d have to. He had unfinished business to take care of, and that meant a trip to Switzerland.
Ben and Ruth touched down at Bern airport first thing the next morning, and after a fast drive up through the mountains in a rental BMW they arrived at the gates of the Steiner residence. The uniformed security personnel on the gate recognised Ben, and there were some amazed glances at Ruth as they were quickly waved through into the estate.
‘So, what’s the plan?’ she asked as they drove on down the private road and the château came into view through the trees.
‘Straight in the front door,’ he replied. ‘Do what we have to do, then get out of here.’
‘What are you going to do to him?’
‘What he deserves.’
As Ben was pulling the BMW up in front of the main entrance, the familiar shape of Heinrich Dorenkamp came scuttling down the steps to meet them. The man had obviously just got the call from the security gate and he looked rattled.
Ben and Ruth climbed out of the car. Dorenkamp stopped in his tracks and stared at her. ‘So it was true what they told me,’ he said. ‘It is you.’
‘Long time no see, asshole.’ Ruth shouldered past him, following Ben up the steps towards the house.
Dorenkamp ran after them. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked nervously.
‘Making a social call,’ Ben said. ‘Where is he?’
‘You can’t see him.’
‘Don’t get in the way, Heinrich, or I’m going to walk right over you. Where is he?’
‘There is a meeting underway. He doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘That’s the way I like it.’ They’d reached the top of the steps. He shoved through the door and into the reception lobby, shoulder to shoulder with Ruth as they marched across the shiny floor and past the glittering warhorse. Dorenkamp stood helplessly in their wake.
<
br /> ‘This place hasn’t changed one bit,’ Ruth said. ‘Then again, some things never do. Where are we going?’
‘Conference room. This way.’ Ben pointed towards the main stairs.
A minute later they were on the second floor. Ben recognised the grand double doorway of the conference room. He went in without knocking.
Steiner was sitting at the top of the long table. Seated down its length to his left and right were a dozen men in grey suits and at varying stages of middle age, obesity and baldness, hunched over open files and whirring laptops that showed colourful flow charts and graphs and columns of figures. The man at Steiner’s right elbow had been in the middle of saying something when Ben and Ruth walked into the room. He shut up. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared up in alarm. Steiner’s face turned chalk-white, and his jaw dropped open.
‘Meeting’s over,’ Ben said. He jerked his thumb back at the door. ‘Everybody out.’
Silence up and down the table. Steiner’s associates all turned to him. His pallor had turned to beetroot-red. He swallowed, hesitated, then gave a stiff nod. The twelve men instantly got up from their seats, hurriedly gathering up their papers and closing down their laptops, stuffing them into briefcases. They filed out timidly past Ben and Ruth, looking down at their feet, none of them daring to say a word.
As the last of Steiner’s colleagues shuffled out, Dorenkamp appeared in the doorway. ‘Sir, shall I call security?’ he asked his boss.
‘There’ll be no need to do that,’ Ben told him. ‘But you can get Frau Steiner and Otto up here right now. Double quick.’ He snapped his fingers.
‘W-why?’ Dorenkamp stammered.
‘Because we’re having a family reunion,’ Ben said. ‘And I want everyone to hear what the Great Man has to say for himself.’
Dorenkamp left, and they heard his jittery steps echo away down the hall as he went to attend to his duty.
Steiner was still staring wide-eyed at Ruth. The look of noble pride had completely melted away.
‘You have a lot of explaining to do, Steiner,’ Ben said.
‘I know,’ Steiner murmured with a weary nod.
‘And then you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.’
Steiner said nothing. Ruth was looking at him like he was something she’d scraped off her shoe.
After a few moments’ silence, there were footsteps outside the door, and then it swung open and Silvia Steiner walked into the room. She looked just as well-groomed and elegant as Ben remembered, in a grey linen trouser suit and a gold necklace. She was followed by Otto, dressed as though Dorenkamp had fetched him straight from the golf course. Ben wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d still been clutching his driver.
The PA was about to creep away when Ben called him back inside. ‘I want you here too, Heinrich.’ Dorenkamp hesitated, then walked in and shut the door behind him.
Otto slouched nervously to the back of the room and leaned against the wall next to the French windows. He smiled uncomfortably at Ruth and gave a little wave. ‘Hi there, cousin.’
But Silvia was the one Ben was watching. She let out a gasp as she saw Ruth there. ‘Luna!’ They embraced tightly. Tears were in Ruth’s eyes as she hugged her mother, and Ben could see the love that was there.
Silvia turned to her husband with a look of complete confusion. Steiner said nothing, just hung his head. Then Silvia turned to Ben with a frown of recognition. ‘What is going on here?’ she breathed.
‘Let me introduce someone to you,’ Ruth said to her. ‘This is my brother Benedict. The one he—’ she pointed at Steiner ‘—told me died in a plane crash. Does he look dead to you?’
Silvia gaped at Ben a moment longer, then turned aghast to her husband. ‘Is this right?’ she said softly. ‘Max, is this true? This man is her brother?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ Ruth said hotly. ‘He lied to you, to me, to everyone.’
‘Max, please say something,’ Silvia muttered. She seemed unsteady on her feet for an instant, and had to lean against the table for support.
Maximilian Steiner said nothing for a long while. Then he heaved a sigh and pressed his hands flat on the table. ‘What she says is true. I lied. I knew there was a brother still living. I paid to have the story of the plane crash fabricated.’ He looked at Ruth. ‘And years later, when you hired your own investigator, I protected my lie by buying him off too. I’m sure you have already worked that out for yourself.’
‘But why, Max? Why?’ Silvia burst out. ‘Good God, does this mean her real parents are still alive too? That we took their child—’
‘They’re dead,’ Ben said. ‘You didn’t take anyone’s child.’
‘But they didn’t die the way I was brought up to believe,’ Ruth said. ‘All my life. Just lie after lie.’
Steiner held up his hands. ‘Can I speak? Can I explain?’ He paused, searching for the right words. ‘Very well. I admit that I have been untruthful. But I did it only to protect you, Luna.’
‘Forget Luna,’ she said. ‘My name’s Ruth. Protect me? From what?’
‘To protect you from the terrible knowledge that your real mother took her own life over the shock of your loss. And that your father’s death was a direct result of it also. How could I burden a child with such guilt?’
Silvia was staring at him in utter horror, her fingertips white on the backrest of the conference chair she was leaning on.
‘I lied to you too,’ Steiner told his wife gravely. ‘I thought I was doing it for the best. Perhaps I was wrong. I can see that now.’
‘You deprived our child of her own brother,’ Silvia said slowly. ‘You say you wanted to spare her pain. But you brought her up believing this person she loved was dead. How could you have done such a terrible thing?’
‘I knew who he was,’ Steiner said, motioning at Ben. ‘My sources told me that he had gone wild. Joined the army. A reckless and wayward young man, not yet twenty. I thought for a very long time about contacting him. But how could someone like that have taken on the responsibility of a child? He could have been killed in action, and then she would have suffered the pain of his dying anyway, but worse.’
‘How very fucking noble of you,’ Ruth said.
Tears had formed in Steiner’s eyes. ‘And we loved her,’ he said to Silvia. ‘I saw how happy you were, from the moment we found this beautiful little girl living in the desert and brought her into our lives. After what we had gone through, I couldn’t bear that my dear wife could lose another child.’
Silvia Steiner slumped against the table with her head in her hands, weeping openly. Ruth ran over to her and held her. ‘What’s he talking about?’ she asked. ‘What child?’
Dorenkamp spoke for the first time. ‘He is referring to little Gudrun,’ he said solemnly. ‘You never met her. She died, aged seven.’
‘She fell off the pony I had bought her for her seventh birthday.’ Steiner was staring down at the tabletop as he spoke, talking barely above a whisper and fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘Her neck was broken. She was paralysed. The doctors believed they could save her. But shortly afterwards she slipped into a coma. Nine days later, she was dead.’
Ruth looked as though she’d been slapped. ‘You knew about this all along?’ she asked Dorenkamp. Dorenkamp nodded.
‘And you, Otto?’
Otto was still standing by the window, looking down at his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘They told me never to tell you about it.’
Steiner looked at Ruth with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Why do you suppose we never allowed you to have a pony, no matter how bitterly you wanted one? I was only trying to protect you. That is all I have ever done.’
‘It’s why you insisted on the Flash-Ball weapons,’ Ben said. ‘You knew that one of the gang trying to kidnap you was your adopted daughter.’
Steiner nodded sadly. ‘I was terrified that she would be harmed if I sanctioned the use of lethal firearms. It’s also why I tried my best to keep the police out of it. I hoped we c
ould resolve the situation and come back together again as a family.’
Silvia looked up, wiping her tears away. She pointed at Ben. ‘Max, when you hired this young man. You knew who he was?’
Steiner shook his head vehemently. ‘I promise you, I was completely unaware of it. When the team leader, Captain Shannon, was injured, the name he gave me for his replacement was Benjamin Hope. I noticed the similarity with the name Benedict, but I put this down to mere coincidence. It was not such an uncommon name, after all. But then, one night after I had sacked the team, you, Silvia, made a remark to me that made me think again.’
‘I remember,’ Silvia sniffed. ‘I had been trying to place his face. He looked so strangely familiar to me. We were getting ready for bed, when it suddenly occurred to me that the person he reminded me of was our own Luna.’
‘So you did more poking around,’ Ben said to Steiner. ‘All you had to do was check out my website.’
‘That is what I did, and I soon realised that Captain Shannon had misinformed me about your name. I thought back to what I had seen that day in the woods – the way you let the kidnapper escape so easily, as though you had suddenly been stunned by something you had seen. It seemed strange to me, and stranger still that this could have been the result of mere incompetence as I had initially assumed. Why would a man of such skill and training have done such a thing? Only when I discovered your real name did I realise the truth.’
‘And you never thought to share this with me?’ Silvia asked him.
‘He wanted to tell you,’ Dorenkamp replied. ‘It was me who warned him against it.’
‘We decided to wait and see what happened,’ Steiner explained. ‘I had a feeling that Luna’s brother would go searching for her. That is his expertise. If anyone could find her, it would be him. I thought it would help to bring our family back together.’
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 162