Ben’s last memory was of the men taking him. The boy had been right. They’d come for him.
And Ben had let them do it.
A wave of crippling weakness made him stop, leaning heavily against the wall, his chest heaving as he fought to breathe. The air was thick and foul. What was that he could smell? His nostrils twitched. He tried to focus. His half-conscious mind telling him it was something important.
Gas. That was what it was. The reek of it filled the room.
Ben slowly turned. Blinked as he registered the sight of the heating timer control on the wall. The plastic cover had been removed. Exposed wiring.
And like the thudding of his heart, he heard the ticking of the countdown.
Move! shrieked a voice inside his head. He turned and staggered for the glass doors leading out onto the balcony. Crashed through the doors and swayed on his feet, blinking in the bright sun, fighting the rising blackness that threatened to overcome him at any moment.
He grasped the rail of the spiral iron staircase that led upwards. Marshalling all his strength he dragged himself up it like an injured spider. Now he found himself on a rooftop garden. He ran, stumbled, almost fell flat, somehow kept on running, then was tumbling into space—
And the whole penthouse apartment erupted in a firestorm behind him.
18
It was morning. Jessica Hunter sat alone in her empty kitchen. She blinked, feeling that she wanted to cry. But she’d cried so much already, and for so long, that now the well was dry. There was nothing left but the aching, desolate rawness she felt inside.
With an unsteady hand, she picked up the glass of vodka from beside the half-empty bottle on the breakfast bar surface in front of her. Closed her eyes and knocked back a stinging mouthful, then let the glass slip out of her hand back onto the surface. Beside the bottle was a small framed picture of Carl. She picked it up, gazed at it — and that was when the flooding tears finally came again.
Suddenly aware of a presence, she turned. She gasped when she saw the lean, silent figure in the doorway. How long had he been standing there, watching her?
‘You,’ she breathed.
He said nothing.
‘I thought you were…’ her voice trailed off and she just looked at him. She’d never seen him look this way. So still, so quiet, with a fire in his eyes that made her almost afraid.
Ben took a step closer. He stooped and picked up the crumpled three-week-old edition of Le Monde from the floor, to glance at the headline and the photo of the devastated apartment building belching smoke into the sky over Monte Carlo. The movement made him wince as a sharp jolt of fresh pain shot through him; and for an instant his memory drifted back, reliving the suffering of the last weeks like a nightmare daydream. The escape over the rooftops and through the chaos of Monte Carlo in the wake of the explosion. Stealing the car. The interminable fevered agony of the drive across the Italian border and northwards into Switzerland, to the tiny mountain village near Mont Blanc and the home of his old comrade, retired ex-SAS medic Frankie Gallagher.
Frankie might be every bit as crazy as they said he was, but he still knew how to get a bullet out. The nine-millimetre full metal jacket had clipped Ben’s left shoulder blade on entry and bounced diagonally to plough a channel deep into his shoulder, stopping just a whisker from the collarbone. The surgery hadn’t been easy. He’d refused to let himself pass out until he’d seen Frankie drop the flattened one-hundred-and-forty-seven-grain FMJ and six bone fragments from his bloody forceps into a surgical dish. An experience Ben wouldn’t forget in a hurry — but still preferable to facing the kinds of questions he’d have been asked in any hospital.
And sometimes it was better to let them all think you were a goner.
For a while, at least.
‘Heard that one myself,’ he said to Jessica. ‘But now I’m back.’
‘My boy is dead,’ she quavered, barely audible. ‘Why would you show your face around here? Why can’t you leave me alone? You failed. You said you’d bring him back and now he’s—’ her words dissolved into a spasm of tears. She buried her head in her arms, shoulders quaking.
‘Where’s Mike?’ Ben said softly.
She slowly raised her head, pointed a trembling finger towards the French windows and the sweep of lawn beyond. ‘Hiding down there in his office,’ she sniffed bitterly. ‘He can’t even be near me now. Says he can’t handle it. Says he’s leaving me. My whole world …gone…’
Ben touched her arm as he walked past her. There was nothing more to say, not yet. He swung open the French windows and walked down the garden.
Mike was at his desk in Drew Hunter’s old summerhouse studio, wearing a tweed jacket and getting ready to leave. All the desk drawers were open and empty, and he was busily packing the last of his papers into his briefcase when the door crashed in. Gaping up in speechless alarm, he was half out of his chair by the time Ben grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head twice, three times, against the desk.
‘Going somewhere, Mike?’ Ben rasped in his ear, then hurled him backwards into his chair so hard that it fell over backwards, spilling him to the floor. Mike could have done very little to fight back, even if he’d been conscious at that point.
Ben walked calmly around the desk. He closed the briefcase and tucked it under his arm. Then he seized a fistful of Mike’s jacket collar and dragged him out of the summerhouse; dragged him all the way up the garden and along the pebbled path around the front of the house to the car. He didn’t give a damn if Jessica saw him from the window. Didn’t give a damn if she called the cops.
The car engine was running, and the boot lid and driver’s door were open. Ben hauled Mike upright and bundled him into the boot. Slammed the lid. Walked around to the driver’s door, threw the briefcase inside the car and then got in and took off in a spray of gravel.
19
Mike’s eyelids peeped open slowly at first, then snapped wide in panic as he realised he couldn’t move. ‘Where am I?’ he yelled, straining against the bonds that held him to the chair and twisting his head wildly this way and that in the murky shadows. His glasses were badly twisted and cracked, and he couldn’t see properly. Just a little light filtered through the drawn curtains. There was a smell of damp and mouldy carpet. He tried rocking the chair, but it was stuck fast to the floor.
Ben was lounging in another chair a few feet away, where he’d been patiently waiting for the man to wake up. ‘Welcome back,’ he said.
‘Where am I?’ Mike repeated shrilly.
‘Somewhere nobody can hear you calling for help,’ Ben said. He swung open the caravan door with his foot. ‘See?’ he said, motioning out at the empty field. ‘Drew picked the spot pretty well, I’d say. So go ahead and make all the noise you want. It won’t help you.’
Mike’s eyes bulged. ‘What the hell do you want with me?’ he raged. ‘Are you mad?’
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know,’ Ben said. ‘Very dangerous for you, Mike, if you don’t co-operate.’
‘Fuck you! You’ll get nothing out of me!’
Ben sighed, standing up. ‘Thought you might say that. That’s why I brought some truth serum with me.’ He walked across to the far side of the static caravan, picked up a plastic five-litre fuel can and walked back towards Mike’s chair. Taking his time, he unscrewed the top of the can, then set it on the floor and slid it under the chair with a nudge of his boot. The tang of petrol rose sharply upwards as liquid sloshed out of the can’s open nozzle.