What it was that made Lennox open up the way he did, Ben would never know for sure. It was obvious he was a man wrestling with a secret that was bursting to get out, but Ben wasn’t sure if Lennox’s long and detailed confession was motivated purely by deep-seated shame and the need to talk to someone, or whether it was just the drink loosening his tongue. Either way, it didn’t matter. After years in the SAS, Ben had thought nothing could shock or surprise him any longer.
He was wrong.
The story Jaco Lennox told him was seven years old. It was one everybody in the world already knew. Or thought they did. Very few people would have been willing to even contemplate the reality of the version Lennox revealed to Ben that night. Not even Ben himself.
*
He didn’t really believe it at first. Lennox must be out of his mind, or must have frazzled his brain down to the size of a grape with coke and crystal meth and LSD. Ben worked over a thousand possible explanations, each crazier and more improbable than the last – but he was willing to accept almost anything rather than what Lennox had confessed to him. It was easier to dismiss the whole thing, put it out of his head and get on with the job at hand.
Which was what Ben had duly done, ploughing every ounce of energy he had into tracking the missing girl, following up more leads, kicking down doors and dealing with the situation the only way he knew how, and as only he could.
Two weeks later, the case was happily resolved, the kid was safely back in the arms of her parents, and the ex-nanny who, it turned out, had indeed hatched the plan to kidnap her for ransom had been anonymously delivered into the hands of the police (who hadn’t themselves managed to unravel a single lead). The ex-nanny’s boyfriend had been less fortunate. Which had been his own choice, and his own undoing. His first mistake had been to get involved in the first place. His second mistake had been not to cut and run before Ben got to him. The exact details of his demise would never be known. Nor would his remains ever be found, except, perhaps, by the fish that lived in one of England’s biggest and deepest quarry lakes.
Ben only collected payment for his services from those who could well afford them. With the money in his pocket, no further employment offers to chase up, and the things Jaco Lennox had confessed to him still just an unpleasant question mark in his mind, he’d returned to his rambling home on the windswept west coast of Ireland.
There he’d done what he always did in his downtime: cracked open a fresh bottle of Laphroaig single malt, let himself be fussed and nannied by Winnie, his housekeeper, gone for long lonely walks on the beach and smoked and gazed out at the cold implacable ocean and waited for the next call to rouse him back to action. Sooner or later, usually sooner, there was always another call.
When the call had come, it hadn’t been quite what Ben might have expected.
‘Did ye hear the news, laddie?’ said the familiar gruff voice. No “Hello Ben, how are you doing?” No “It’s been a while; what are you up to these days?” But then, his old regimental pal Boonzie McCulloch had always been known for getting right to the point.
‘What news?’ For all Ben knew, England might have been invaded, or London totally flattened in a nuclear blast. He didn’t watch TV, didn’t buy any newspapers. Life on the Galway coast got a little isolated at times. That was how Ben liked it.
‘Lennox is deid.’ Boonzie had long ago retired to live in Italy, but he would take the Glaswegian accent to his grave.
‘Jaco Lennox?’ As if it could have been anyone else.
‘They found the fucker hangin’ from a tree in Epping Forest. Topped hisself.’
Ben wasn’t entirely surprised to hear it. But he could tell from Boonzie’s tone, and the pregnant pause that followed, that there was going to be more to the story. He could almost visualise the knowing look on the grizzled old wardog’s whiskery face.
‘At least,’ Boonzie added cryptically, ‘that’s what we’re told.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning, there’re certain details left oot. Such as the fact that said stiff managed to cuff his ain haunds behind his back and put two boolits in his heid before he stretched his neck. Looks like our Jaco must’ve made some bad acquaintances. Guid riddance, if ye ask me. He had it comin’ a long time.’
‘Would it be too much to ask how you came by this information, Boonzie?’
Another low chuckle. ‘Och, let’s just say someone in CID owed me a wee favour.’ Which was all Ben would ever get out of Boonzie, and he didn’t press the matter. Soon afterwards, they hung up the phone. Boonzie went back to his peaceful retirement, and Ben went for another walk on the beach.
*
For three days afterwards, Ben struggled to reconcile the news of Lennox’s sorry end with what the dead man had revealed to him that night in Peckham. There were suicides, and there were ‘suicides’. Some more discreet than others. But always for a reason. And when certain people went to certain lengths to make sure certain secrets were kept that way, in Ben’s experience it tended to suggest that those secrets were, however unbelievable, however unthinkable, most probably true.
That was why, at dawn on the fourth day, Ben said ‘Fuck it’ and grabbed his bag and was off again. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He needed to find out for himself.
Yet back then in late October, it had all seemed too impossible, too monstrous. Even to him, the man who couldn’t sleep at night because of the things he’d done in the course of what he had once considered his duty, his profession, his calling. ‘Queen and country’, they called it. He’d often thought about that expression, and had eventually come to decide it was a misnomer, for two reasons. Firstly, Ben very much doubted whether the Queen of England, or for that matter whoever might succeed her, or any modern-day reigning monarch, or for that matter again any ruler figure whose face and name were known to the public, knew half of what really went on in the dirty, bloody world of international politics and the conflicts it gave rise to. Secondly, the unsuspecting public who made up the vast majority of the country knew, or were allowed to know, even less. So, by logical deduction, it was clear that these activities were not carried out either for Queen, or for country, or on their behalf, with their consent or even with their knowledge. They went on purely in order to further the agenda of those few, those invisible and nameless few, who held the only true power – not just on a national level, but a global level.
In his thirty-three years, many of those spent fighting to protect the interests of those powers, Ben had seen enough, learned enough, deduced enough, to know that the only truths worth knowing in this world were those kept carefully hidden behind a smokescreen. Nothing else was real. Not governments, not elected representatives, not nations, not democracy. Everything the public saw, or was allowed to see, was an illusion.
And everything the public heard, or was allowed to hear, was a lie.
These people even lied to their own.
And so, when it came to information of the kind that Jaco Lennox had spilled to him, it was easy to understand the motive of the secret keepers. Easy to understand why they’d do anything, everything in their power to prevent loose tongues from wagging. The alternative was simply not an option.
Ben could understand it, but he couldn’t forgive it. If Lennox’s story was true – if even a quarter of it was true – this one went way too far off the scale for that.
Two months and a lot of miles later, Ben now believed he’d covered as many angles and dug up as much evidence as he needed. He was ninety-five percent certain that what he’d uncovered, however disconcerting, was more than just the booze-addled ramblings of a worthless former soldier on the edge of mental breakdown.
That was the reason why he was here tonight, prepared to do whatever it took to press the final truth from a man he had once admired and respected with all his heart.
And then, if Ben’s worst fears were proven right, he would have no choice but to kill that man.
3
It was late now. The te
mperature was dropping fast and frost was forming on the heather as Ben lay hidden in his observation point, scanning every inch of the house and buildings through his binoculars. The single light in the upstairs window stayed on, casting a dull glow across the front yard, but he saw no movement from within. Nothing stirred. The only sound was the low whistle of the night wind across the glen. It was chilling him down steadily, beginning to bite through his clothes, and he knew he’d have to get moving before he started going numb. The first serious sign of hypothermia kicking in was a dulling of the mental faculties. That was something Ben couldn’t afford to happen here tonight.
After thirty minutes of observing, Ben finally emerged from his observation point and began the slow, painstaking final approach down the hillside and across the open ground towards the house. From here on in was the time of maximum danger, where he would be the most vulnerable to being spotted. The lie of the land was extremely exposed, not a tree or a bush or a rise behind which he could hide until he reached the stone wall that surrounded the property.
The wall was some fifty yards from the house at its nearest point, forming a wide rectangle that was completely closed off apart from the pillared double gateway in front. A beaten-earth track that served as a driveway led for sixty yards in a straight line right up to the main entrance. There was nothing between the gates and the house except a stone stable block converted into a long, low garage, slightly off to the left, and a barn to the right, both half-lost in shadow. To use either building as cover, he would still have to cross a good stretch of open ground in full view of the house’s dark windows. He didn’t like it much. If a powerful torch beam or security floodlight should suddenly blaze into life, he’d be caught in it like a lamped rabbit. But his instinct told him that wasn’t going to happen. Everything he’d seen so far convinced him that the element of surprise was in his favour.
Ben didn’t know it then, but that was a deadly mistake.
He reached the wall ten yards to the left of the gates and skirted along its edge, his footsteps crunching lightly on the frosty grass. He paused at the thick stone gate pillar to check his weaponry one last time before stepping up to the gates.
The black iron bars gleamed dully in the faint glow from the lit-up window sixty yards away. They were unchained. Ben ran his eye up their length, all the way up to the spikes at the top, looking for a security system that would sound off the moment he tried to open them. But there was nothing. He took a deep breath, gently placed a gloved hand against the bars of the left-side gate and gave a push.
The gate swung open a couple of feet, smoothly and silently. It was very much like Liam Falconer to keep his hinges well oiled. And to Ben, it was another small sign that his visit wasn’t expected. He stepped through the gap and started walking, very slowly, up the beaten-earth driveway. Fifty yards from the house. Step by step, thinking about tripwires, alarm mines, motion sensors, infra-red security cameras.
Forty-five yards from the house. He paused. Watched. Everything was still. The angles of the roof and the four chimney stacks were darkly silhouetted against the sky, their lines traced here and there by silver moonlight. The single lit upstairs window cast an amber shaft of illumination across the yard. Ben strained his ears for any sound of movement from the house. The scrape of a dark window opening. The cocking of a gun. The bark of a dog.
Nothing. He kept moving. Forty yards from the house. Thirty-five. He was almost level with the side of the garage block to his left. He paused again.
And froze.
He could still neither see nor hear anything except the whisper of the wind and the soft thud of his own heartbeat. But he could smell something.
Cigarette smoke. Just a trace of it on the cold night air. Faint, but unmistakeable.
Unless there had been a dramatic reversal in his habits, Liam Falconer didn’t touch tobacco. Wouldn’t have the stuff in the house.
With a rush of apprehension, Ben suddenly realised he’d been wrong in assuming that Falconer was alone here tonight. Very wrong. He quickly sidestepped off the drive and ran for cover towards the side of the garage.
And a dark shape charged out of the shadows to meet him.
The knife blade was black and dull and reflected no light, because it was a military killing knife designed for use in fast, brutal covert raids where speed and surprise were essential. Ben sensed it coming as the rushing figure closed in on him. He heard its sharp point whip through the air, slicing towards his throat. He ducked out of its swing, blocked the arm that was holding it and lashed out with his boot. Felt his heel connect in a solid impact. Heard the muted grunt of pain and the crunch of a kneecap.
The attacker went down on his back and a wheezing gasp burst from his mouth as the air was knocked out of him. Ben went straight down after him, pinning the knife arm to the ground and ramming the butt end of his submachine gun hard into the man’s face. Then again. He twisted the knife out of the man’s gloved hand. Grabbed him by the neck and dragged him a yard along the ground, to where the shaft of light from the house shone past the side of the garage.
The man’s face was streaming with blood and his nose and teeth were broken, but at a glance Ben saw he wasn’t Liam Falconer. He was twenty years younger, rough-featured, his cheeks mottled from standing outside a long time in the cold on guard duty. He was heavily wrapped up in a military parka and a fur-lined hunter cap. His eyes fluttered, then opened wide and he lunged up at Ben as if to head-butt him. Ben smashed him in the throat with the edge of his left hand, then clamped it over the man’s bloody mouth. With his right hand he drove the long, slim blade of the killing knife down hard, punching though the heavy coat, between the man’s ribs and deep into his heart. It was over for him.
But it wasn’t over for Ben.
The chatter of a silenced machine carbine set to fully-automatic fire was a sound designed to be lost among the ambient noise of a jungle or urban environment. Out here in the dead stillness of the Scottish glens it ripped the night air like the buzz of a chainsaw.
Even as the bullets were still in the air, Ben was moving. He dived away from the dead guard and hit the ground and rolled around the edge of the garage. The bullets thunked into the hard earth and cracked off the wall. Splinters of stone stung his face. He rolled over twice more and then sprang up to his feet just as the dark shape of the shooter appeared around the other side of the garage, fifteen feet away. Ben could see the glint of steel and the flash of his eyes and his feet braced wide apart in a combat stance as he drew his weapon up to fire. Ben was quicker. He had to be. He clamped the butt of the MP5 against his hip and let off a burst that stitched a line diagonally across the man’s torso before he could touch his trigger. The shooter let out a grunt and crumpled to the ground like a sack of washing.
Ben felt the wetness cooling on the side of his face from where the flying stone splinters had opened up his cheek. He didn’t bother to check the cut, just as he didn’t bother to check the second dead man on the ground. He already knew it wouldn’t be Falconer, either.
Lights were coming on inside the house as whoever else was inside was alerted by the shooting. Ben wasn’t worried about losing the element of surprise, because you couldn’t lose what you’d never had to begin with. He realised now that Falconer had been expecting him after all. Ben cursed himself for his stupidity. It had almost cost him his life. It might yet.
Ben thought, Fuck it, and sprinted for the front entrance. He shouldered his way in through the door. Light was coming from up a passage beyond the wide entrance hall, gleaming off heavy oak furniture and stone floors. The walls were thick and craggy.
Movement up ahead. A door swinging shut as someone quickly retreated back through the house, too fast for Ben to see his face – but it was a tall, lean man who could have been Liam Falconer. Ben chased after the retreating figure. Heard the loud crack of an unsilenced pistol and ducked as a mirror shattered a foot from his head. He let off another stream of fire at the closing door. The bulle
ts punched through the solid wood.
He kept running. He reached the door and grasped the handle and wrenched it open. The inside of the door was tattered from where the bullets had torn through. Splinters littered the floor; a single spent .45 pistol cartridge casing rolled across the slate flagstones.
Nobody there. Ben paused, heart thumping, senses jangling. The air was heavy with the scent of fresh cordite and the trickle of gunsmoke that oozed from the muzzle of his weapon’s silencer.
He thought he heard uneven footsteps racing away, around the corner where the stone-floored passage twisted ninety degrees out of sight. He went after the sound. Framed oil paintings and Scottish broadswords and ancient flintlock fowling pieces and hunting trophies hung on the walls, the mounted antlers throwing spiky shadows down the corridor. Ben reached the bend in the passage and felt something slippery underfoot. He looked down and saw the bright red blood splats glistening on the dark flagstones. There was a trail of it. One or more of his bullets had certainly hit home, but his target was only wounded and still on the move.
Ben spent a second too long looking down at the blood.
Something moved behind him, coming out of the shadows. He whirled round and ducked simultaneously, catching his gun against the wall and letting it drop as the blast of a gunshot filled his ears like a bomb going off. The muzzle of the black combat shotgun was just feet away, swivelling towards him for a second shot as he lunged to grab hold of the weapon’s barrel before it could blow his head off. His ears were ringing and he was disorientated from the huge twelve-gauge blast in his ears, but if he didn’t move fast he was a dead man.
THE TUNNEL: A Ben Hope Story Page 2