The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Mariani, Scott

  Slater crossed his arms. ‘You’re a very smart man, that’s for sure. Shame we couldn’t find a job for you on our team.’

  ‘Smarter than you,’ Ben said. ‘A cage load of monkeys could have done better. But that’s what happens when you hire a brainless piece of shit like Jones to do your dirty work.’

  ‘A man in your position should be trying to make me happy,’ Slater said. ‘You’re not making me happy.’

  ‘I haven’t even started yet,’ Ben replied. ‘You’re wasting your time on me. Even if I did know what you wanted to know, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Even smart guys can get into the shit, and you’re in a whole heap of it. We can bury you for ever. You shot two cops, for a start.’

  ‘That was Jones,’ Ben said. ‘He’s the real hard guy here.’

  ‘We have a whole bunch of witnesses who watched you murder two officers in cold blood,’ Slater said. ‘Then there’s the question of the two missing agents in Greece. I figure you for that as well.’

  Ben didn’t reply.

  Slater grinned. ‘Don’t remember? Did you get a knock on the head too? Let’s see if this refreshes your memory.’ He gestured to Jones, who aimed a remote at the flatscreen monitor on the table. It flashed into life and Ben recognised the scene right away. It was crisp colour footage of him and Charlie sitting at the café table on Corfu. The sound was muted.

  Slater let it play for a few seconds, and Ben watched himself shifting around in his seat as Charlie unfolded the story to him. Then the kid with the ball came past, and moments later he saw himself jump up and run out into the road to save the child from the oncoming van. Charlie was up on his feet. It was the moment just before the explosion.

  ‘OK, you made your point,’ Ben said. He didn’t want to be reminded of that moment. He’d relived it enough times over the last few days.

  Jones drew his scabbed lips back over his jagged teeth. He aimed the remote and his thumb stabbed the pause key just as the shockwave erupted across the café terrace and hit Charlie, ripping his body apart in a red blur. The image froze. Jones gazed at it and seemed satisfied.

  Ben stared at the screen. He was seeing the blast in a whole new way. When the bomb had exploded, he’d been on the other side of the road behind the cover of the van, with his face down close to the ground. He’d hardly seen a thing.

  This image was taken from a completely different angle. It showed the direction of the blast, and it told Ben exactly where the bomb had been. Memories flooded through his mind. He remembered the little boy with the ball. The man at the nearby table with the laptop. He remembered the way the man had shouted at the kid. Most of all, he remembered the fierce look in the man’s eyes.

  He’d never forget that face. Especially not now.

  He hadn’t noticed before that the man had slipped away while he and Charlie had been deep in conversation. That’s what people did in cafés, finish their drink and slip away – each table its own private, self-contained world. Nothing unusual about it. But he wished now that he’d taken more notice. Frozen up on the screen, caught in the exact moment it fragmented and belched fire and death across the café terrace, the laptop case was a dark blur under the empty table.

  Ben turned away from the screen and stared hard at Slater, then at Jones. ‘So I was right. You planted that bomb.’

  Slater waved his hand in the air. ‘I’m a businessman. I don’t plant bombs. I just pay other people to plant them.’

  ‘That recording was the last thing my agents sent to me before they went off the grid,’ Jones said. ‘What did you do to them?’

  ‘They’re both dead on a beach,’ Ben replied. ‘If you’re quick you might find them before the crabs finish what’s left of them.’

  Slater smiled. ‘So you’ve decided to be straight with us.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something else too,’ Ben said. ‘I’m going to kill you soon.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Yes. That’s a fact. Jones too. I’d get those graves ready.’

  There was a silence. Slater paled, and covered it with a nervous laugh. ‘I was hoping you were going to be reasonable. This isn’t making it any easier for yourself.’

  ‘You’ve let me see your faces,’ Ben said. ‘You wouldn’t let me out of here alive anyway. So even if I knew where the ostraka were, which I don’t, I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’

  Slater tossed his empty chocolate wrapper into a bin. ‘Fine. But there are quick and easy ways of dying, and there are slow and horrible ways to suffer.’

  ‘I’ll have to decide which one you deserve,’ Ben said.

  Slater sighed. ‘My God, you’re so stubborn. OK, let me show you something else.’ He gestured again at Jones. The agent pressed another button and from inside the DVD player came the clunking, whirring sound of the disc changer. The screen was blank for a few moments, then another image came up. A close-up shot of a gaunt, wasted man in grimy fatigues. He was in a filthy cell, or a cage, clutching at the bars. There was bright light shining in his face, showing the glistening fresh wounds and bruises on his jaw and cheek, the livid swelling of his right eye.

  ‘What you’re seeing here is from classified CIA archives,’ Slater said. ‘You don’t need to know what this is about. Same old story. Let’s just say the guy is privy to certain information, and these other guys want to get it out of him. He’s a tough fucker, like you. He’s resisted all kinds of torture. When the camera zooms out, you can just about make out the blood on his feet where they tore out his toenails. Any time now. There.’

  Ben watched the images on the screen as Slater stood up and walked around. ‘See, I’m a bureaucrat,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll admit it. I like to hear the truth from people, but I’m not a guy who’s comfortable around blood and violence – at least not at close range.’

  ‘It’s different when you’re just making a phone call, isn’t it?’

  Slater ignored that. ‘I could have you beaten into catmeat right now,’ he said. ‘I could have them cut off your fingers and ears, cut off your balls, fry you with electricity, dunk you in a tub, string you up by the thumbs, all that kind of shit. With your background, I’m sure you have a pretty good idea of what’s involved. But that’s more Jones’s line. Personally, I’d rather get what I want without the mess. I like things clean and clinical. If I have to have someone fucked up …’ Slater smiled. ‘Well, take a look at this guy.’

  Ben was watching. As Slater talked, the prisoner onscreen was being forced down in his chair by guards in unmarked uniform. A third came into shot and stabbed a syringe in the man’s neck, pressed the plunger home and jerked the needle out with a squirt of blood.

  Slater reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small amber bottle and laid it down with a clunk on the desk. Then he reached into the other pocket and brought out a small leather case. He unzipped it and laid it open on the desk beside the bottle. There was a syringe inside. ‘Know what this stuff is for?’

  Ben gazed across at the bottle. ‘Yes, I do. But I thought Jones asked us not to discuss his personal condition.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so funny. You know what this is.’

  ‘I’ve heard about it.’

  ‘I thought you would have. The very best of its kind. Vintage stuff. Hard to get. Unfortunately, the good doctor who supplied it won’t be joining us.’ Slater gestured at the screen. ‘Now, this guy, he was like you. He absolutely insisted he didn’t know what they needed to know. Boy, he was so sure of himself. But then he talked, all right. One shot was all it took. Within an hour he was telling them everything, and then some. Remarkable. And you know what, they didn’t even have to put a bullet in his head afterwards, because look what happened.’

  Jones thumbed the remote again, three times. The image accelerated to eight times the speed, and suddenly the picture changed: new camera angle, different lighting. The same man, but he had changed too. Radically. He’d gone from being a terrified, beaten-up prisoner to being a babbling, screami
ng lunatic jerking on his cage bars, eyes wild, teeth bared, foaming at the mouth. He was on a different planet.

  ‘Total insanity,’ Slater said. ‘The same guy, just six hours later. That’s what this shit does to you. The effects are irreversible, permanent. Sometimes they kick in within an hour or so. Some of the tougher ones hold out for much longer. But they all go the same way sooner or later. Raving psychosis till the day you die. You understand what I’m saying?’

  Jones smiled. He paused the image on the screen, laid down the remote and folded his arms in satisfaction.

  ‘I understand,’ Ben said.

  ‘Good. Because I want you to think about that.’

  ‘Thinking of giving me a cocktail?’

  ‘Straight, no chaser,’ Slater said. ‘But not just yet. Here’s what we’re going to do.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just after nine p.m. You have till ten to think about what you’d like to tell me. Then I’m going to reunite you with your friend Bradbury, and you can watch while I have this serum pumped into her. We’ll see what she has to tell us. You can listen in. It’ll be fun. And then, when I come back here in the morning, I’m going to let you see what it did to her before it’s your turn.’ Slater smiled. ‘I’ll be far away, sipping on a glass of Krug while you’re sitting in your cell downstairs enjoying your last hours of sanity. Soon afterwards, when you’re screaming in your cage like an animal, I’ll sign a paper turning you over to a state nuthouse where you’ll live out the rest of your miserable life, battering your head off a padded wall.’

  ‘Why waste the taxpayer’s money?’ Jones said. ‘We should just dump his raving ass in a backstreet somewhere.’

  ‘I like it,’ Slater said thoughtfully. ‘Now, enough talk. Jones, get your guys in here.’

  Jones opened the door. The two men who had brought Ben up in the lift were standing out in the corridor. ‘Take this prick back down there and lock him up,’ he said. He pointed at the muscular one. ‘Boyter, you’re posted outside his door. McKenzie, you get back up here a.s.a.p.’

  ‘You have one hour,’ Slater said to Ben.

  Boyter gripped Ben’s arm. ‘Let’s go, shithead.’

  Ben stood up, shook off Boyter’s chubby hands, moved towards the door. He stopped, turned and fixed Slater in the eye. ‘Remember what I said earlier,’ he said softly. Then he was gone.

  Jones watched with a smirk as Boyter and McKenzie herded the prisoner down the corridor towards the lift. He turned to Slater. The man looked a little less composed than he had a second ago.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Jones said. ‘He’s history already.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Slater paced while Jones smoked. Five minutes passed, then ten.

  ‘Relax,’ Jones said.

  ‘I never relax.’ Slater looked at his watch. ‘Those cigarettes reek. What’s keeping your guy McKenzie? I thought you told him to get back here a.s.a.p.’

  ‘He’ll be right back,’ Jones said. ‘Probably went to the bathroom.’

  Slater shook his head. His jaw was tight. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Something’s wrong. I can feel it.’

  ‘You’re nuts. Hope’s locked up tighter than a fish’s asshole.’

  ‘If that’s so, I want to see for myself. I have a bad feeling.’

  ‘You and your feelings,’ Jones grunted. ‘OK, let’s go.’

  ‘I’m not going down there with just you alone. How many people have you got in the building?’

  ‘Including me, there are a dozen agents in the place. You’re not telling me –’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Leave two watching Bradbury. I want the rest with me.’

  Jones protested loudly, but Slater insisted. Jones got on the radio. ‘Fiorante, join Jorgensen on the prisoner’s door. Everyone else, my office, right now.’

  In two more minutes the seven agents were collected in the corridor outside. Slater cautiously stepped out into the corridor. Jones led the way, exasperation showing on his face.

  ‘Not the lift,’ Slater said. ‘We take the stairs.’

  ‘I think the guy got to you,’ Jones sneered. ‘You’re spooked.’

  ‘Cautious is what I am,’ Slater said. ‘And smart.’

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, turned through the dingy lobby, trotted down another flight towards the basement kitchen.

  ‘Get your guns out,’ Slater whispered.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ Jones said again. ‘There’s no –’

  He batted through the double doors leading to the kitchen. Then he stopped dead and his mouth hung open. ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘Told you,’ Slater muttered.

  ‘What the fuck happened here?’

  Slater shot him a sideways look. ‘I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?’

  The kitchen was littered with debris. In the middle of it, Boyter and McKenzie were lying dead, the neon striplights reflecting in the broad pool of blood inching slowly across the floor.

  Slater peered down at Boyter and wondered for a moment what the strange circular object stuck to the side of his head was. Then it hit him. He had the snapped-off stem of a wine glass buried deep in his temple. McKenzie was lying at an angle to his colleague, his face blue, tongue hanging out, a livid weal around his throat where he’d been throttled to death with a steel chain. The handcuffs lay open on the floor, next to a small key. The men’s jackets lay open, holsters empty.

  Slater and Jones stared at each other. ‘Hope’s loose in the building,’ Jones breathed.

  ‘No shit. And you’re going to find him.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ Jones said.

  ‘You’d better. You lost him. He stays lost, you’re dead. Understand?’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ Jones said again. ‘You get back up to the office.’

  ‘No way. I’m getting out of here. This place isn’t safe for me.’

  ‘It’s not safe for anyone.’

  ‘You’re expendable. I’m not.’ Slater stabbed his finger at the agents. ‘You, you and you. Escort me the fuck out of here.’ He started walking away, then stopped and turned. ‘And Jones?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You take him alive. Clear?’

  ‘We’ll get him,’ Jones said.

  Slater almost sprinted to the lobby, three agents close behind with drawn guns. He tore open the front door, left the building with jittery haste, and ran towards the sleek Bell chopper that was sitting in the middle of the parking lot. The pilot saw him coming, put away his flask of coffee and fired up the motor. The prop slowly began to turn as Slater wrenched open the hatch and piled inside. Minutes later, he was a rapidly vanishing speck over the treetops.

  With Slater out of the way, Jones gathered his agents around him. ‘OK, people, he’s only one man. With McKenzie and Boyter gone, that still leaves ten of us in the building.’ He picked up his radio. ‘Jorgensen, you still there?’

  ‘Right where you put me,’ said the voice in his ear.

  ‘Fiorante with you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Jones nodded. He jerked his pistol at the men. ‘Cash, Muntz, get up to the top floor and join them. That’s where Hope’ll be headed.’ He grinned. ‘He wants to get the girl.’ He glanced quickly around him, calculating tactics. No way Hope was going to get past four people on the door. Meanwhile, two teams of three men each could scour the place and head him off. ‘Bender, Simmons, you’re with me. Kimble, Davis, Austin, take the left side of the building. Stay in contact. You see him, take him down. He’s way too dangerous to keep alive.’

  ‘Slater said not to kill him,’ said Austin.

  ‘I don’t give a shit what Slater said.’ Jones touched his tongue against his teeth, felt the ragged edges that were such a constant reminder of the man. ‘I want this fucker bodybagged in the next ten minutes. Let’s go.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ben almost pitied the two dead men. Whoever they were used to dealing with, they’d been too sl
ow. They just hadn’t seen it coming.

  He’d left them where they dropped; found the key in the big one’s pocket and taken both of the silenced Berettas they were packing. Both fully loaded. He nodded to himself, tucked one pistol in his right hip pocket and the other in his back pocket. Glanced quickly around the kitchen. Yanked the knife out of the old chopping board. The stainless-steel blade was serrated and still sharp. He stuck it carefully in his belt.

  He’d already figured out his escape route. He strode over to a square hatch on the kitchen wall and yanked up the sliding metal door to reveal the dumb waiter. Next to the three-foot-square hole was a dusty old wall panel with three plastic buttons, two arrow-shaped, one pointing up and the other down, the middle one marked ‘STOP’ in faded writing.

  He hit the up button with his palm, hoping the thing still worked after all these years. There was a dull clunk, and the dumb waiter jerked up an inch before he hit the ‘STOP’ button.

  Good enough, he thought. The space was just about large enough to cram himself in. It stank of old grease, damp and mouse shit. He reached out from inside, felt for the ‘UP’ arrow and hit it. Felt the dumb waiter jolt under him, and the sensation of rising upwards. He withdrew his arm quickly inside as the wall came down. A glimpse of brickwork and then blackness. The dumb waiter rose up, grinding and vibrating. In the darkness he took one of the pistols and checked it again. There was no telling what he was going to meet up there.

  From somewhere over his head there was a screech as though the cables were about to snap. He braced himself but nothing happened. The dumb waiter gave a judder and then stopped. He reached out and pushed gently, opening a pair of double doors three feet square. His guess had been right. He was in the hotel bar, in a little serving area behind the bar itself. He lowered himself out of the hatch, thankful to be out of the claustrophobic space, and crouched down in the dust behind the old bar.