Except for one. They didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Not yet.
They frisked him, rifled through his wallet, took a look at his passport, and dumped them on the floor. The leader and the big bearded one kept their weapons glued to him as the shaven-headed one and the older, leathery one swept through the apartment. It was a quick search. There was little to find except Ben’s well-worn army bag and Morgan’s laptop. The leathery guy laid them both on the desk.
‘Down on your knees,’ the leader commanded.
‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said.
The leader gestured. ‘Mostafa.’
The big guy with the beard stepped towards Ben. He was about three inches taller and at least sixty pounds heavier. There was a lot of muscle behind the blow that sent Ben sprawling to the floor. He was ready for it, but it still drove the wind out of him. He struggled to his knees, gasping.
‘Better,’ the leader said. ‘Now where are Paxton’s things?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Ben said.
The leader snorted. His gaze flicked away and landed on the bag. He slung his AKS over his shoulder and strode across the room. Grabbing the bag, he upended it and spilled its contents across the desk. The wads of banknotes landed in a small pile. The man raised an eyebrow as he sifted through the stacks of money. He snatched up Morgan’s crumpled blazer, gazed at it coldly, and flung it aside.
Then he picked up the Rolex and examined it, flipped it over and studied the inscription on the back. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about. Yet you have Paxton’s watch. It makes me wonder what else you have of his.’
He laid the watch down on the desk and picked up the slim card folder that Paxton had given Ben. Opening it out on the desk, he rifled through the documents inside. His eyes skimmed quickly over the police and coroner’s reports, the photographs. His hand moved across to the laptop and flipped open the lid. The machine lit up, showing Morgan’s archaeological dig screensaver.
The leader peered at it and a small smile curled on his lips. He reached down, twirled a finger on the mouse pad and clicked. His smile widened. ‘“The Akhenaten Project”,’ he read aloud. ‘Very interesting. Now let’s see what we have here.’
He double-clicked and waited. Then he did it again. The smile melted away. He turned and glared at Ben. ‘The file is encrypted.’
‘I could have told you that,’ Ben replied. ‘Saved you the trouble.’
Cold fury filled the man’s face. ‘Tell me the password.’
‘I’ve no idea what the password is,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not my computer.’
The leader motioned to the big guy again. The powerful kick caught Ben in the ribs and sent him sprawling back down on the floor. White pain flashed through him. He saw stars. But he wasn’t about to let them see him beaten down. He struggled back up again, blanking out the agony.
The leader walked up to him, stood over him. Unslung his AKS and shoved the muzzle hard against Ben’s temple. ‘The password,’ he repeated.
Ben coughed, waiting for the pain in his ribs to subside. He didn’t think anything was broken in there. ‘I told you. I don’t know the password. I’ve no idea what’s on the file.’
‘Your friend didn’t tell you?’
‘Morgan Paxton wasn’t my friend.’
‘No? You have his things. You’re living in the same apartment. You were hunting the men who killed him.’
Ben’s mind was working hard as the pulse in his temple throbbed against the cold steel. Who the hell were these people? ‘I was sent here,’ he said. ‘I’m a private detective.’
‘Who sent you?’
‘Jennifer Paxton,’ Ben lied. ‘Morgan’s mother in England.’ He knew that giving Helen Paxton’s real name could easily lead them back to Harry, if they checked. Which Ben couldn’t afford to assume they wouldn’t. The leader looked like the kind of guy who would check everything.
‘She paid you all that money?’
‘She wanted me to find her son’s killers and bring back his belongings. She doesn’t know what he was doing here, or what’s on the computer. She doesn’t care, and neither do I. She just wanted his things. Sentimental value.’
The leader drew away the weapon. ‘Sentimental value,’ he echoed thoughtfully. He crouched down and his cold eyes bored into Ben’s. ‘My name is Kamal. And I’m not that sentimental.’
Ben met his gaze and said nothing.
Kamal stood up and walked back over to the desk. He laid down his gun, grabbed the laptop and shoved it back in the bag together with the documents, the wads of banknotes and the blazer, and slung the bag over his shoulder. Then he paused, looked thoughtfully at the Rolex for a second, slipped it on and did up the clasp. ‘Nice watch,’ he muttered, admiring it on his wrist. He grabbed up his AKS and slipped it under his raincoat.
‘Kill this piece of shit. I’ll be waiting in the van.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Kamal left the apartment he caught a last glimpse of the foreigner. Down on his knees, face white, eyes pleading as the men closed in around him for the kill. He’d seen a hundred pathetic lives ended that way. At that moment, facing a humiliating death, knowing that the sum total of their worthless existence was about to be snuffed out like a cockroach under the sole of a shoe-that was when Kamal felt most repulsed by his victims. That last undignified reaction in itself justified stamping them out. He couldn’t bear to be in the room with them any longer than he had to. Human detritus. Food for worms.
The foreigner was begging now. ‘Please! Don’t kill me! I’ve got a wife and child!’
Kamal smiled as he shut the door. He glanced left and right. There was nobody around. He made his way down the spiralling stairs, past the empty landings, and out into the street where the plain white van was parked across from the building. The early morning sun was already getting hot. He crossed the road and climbed up into the cab, slipped the stubby assault weapon out from under his coat and laid it down in the footwell. Kamal leaned back in his seat and watched through the dusty windscreen as the scattering of passers-by went about their business.
He looked at his shiny new watch. The men wouldn’t be long doing what they had to do. He was impatient to get back to Claudel’s house and try again to get into the laptop file. He was sure he could crack the password. How hard could it be? That French prick would have ideas, anyway. They’d spent a lot of time talking about all this history stuff. Stuff that would have been incredibly boring to Kamal, if it hadn’t represented unimaginable wealth. That kind of brought it to life for him.
Then again, why wait? He had a minute or two. The men would probably be finishing off the foreigner about now. Once they’d got bored of watching Mostafa smack him around, Tarek would hold him while Farid slit his throat. Then they’d close up the apartment and make their way downstairs. Maybe stop for a cigarette in the hallway. There was time enough to have another quick look at the file.
He reached for the bag. It was battered and worn, but he liked it. Deciding to keep it, he undid the fastenings, slipped out the laptop and powered it back up. First, he clicked into ‘My Documents’ and tried again with the little icon labelled ‘The Akhenaten Project’. He got the same response as before. ‘Access denied’.
No problem, he thought. He cast his mind back to his talks with Claudel, pondered for a moment, then clicked on the box that said ‘Enter password’, and typed the word ‘amun’.
Kamal didn’t remember exactly who Amun was. Some god who’d meant something in ancient times. It only meant anything now if it could unlock the file, lead him to his money.
It didn’t. Access denied.
But it was no big deal. Plenty more options.
He typed ‘amuniscontent’. No joy.
He typed ‘heretic’. That was denied as well.
He swore violently, slammed the computer shut and shoved it back in the bag. Looked at his watch again, glanced, seething, at the window of the building.
What the fuck was keeping them up there?
His patience snapped. He reached down into the footwell and snatched up the gun. Slipping it under his coat he went storming back across the street. The precious laptop in the bag slapped against his hip as he walked.
As Kamal strode up to the entrance, an old man was coming out of the building holding a small child by the hand. The child looked up at Kamal with inquisitive eyes, and the old man shot him a fearful glance.
Kamal didn’t slow down. He marched straight ahead through the entrance, shoving the old guy roughly out of the way. He didn’t even look back, but the sound of the old man’s pain and confusion as he stumbled and fell against the wall, and the cry of the distressed child, pleased him.
Kamal took the stairs three at a time. He reached the landing where the apartment was and strode fast up to the door. It was open a few inches. He could hear no sound, no voices, coming from inside. He frowned. His instincts dictated caution, and he always trusted his instincts. He brought the AKS out from under his coat and held it at hip level, flipping off the safety. Then he jutted out his chin and marched in through the open door.
He stopped. Blinked and stared.
Two of his men were lying on the floor. Mostafa’s bulk was spreadeagled on his back with his arms flung outwards at his sides. He had a squashed red mess in the middle of his face where his nose had been rammed backwards into his skull.
Tarek was sprawled in a heap at an angle to him. He had a crushed trachea. It had been stamped on. There were bubbles of blood around the corners of his mouth, trickles of it down to his ears. His eyes were staring up at the slowly rotating ceiling fan.
Farid was sitting in a chair by the desk. One leg was bent under him, the other stretched out in front. His hands lay limply in his lap. His shaved head was on backwards.
The room was eerily undisturbed. Barely a sign of a struggle. The foreigner’s wallet and passport had disappeared.
And so had the foreigner himself.
Kamal’s mouth hung open. He suddenly felt cold, unnerved. Who the hell was this man, to have done this?
He was still standing there agape, his gun dangling loose at his side, when the door swung quietly shut behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ben clicked the door shut and walked into the room. In his hands was the stubby AKS he’d taken from one of the men. He had it trained precisely on Kamal’s head. At this range, he didn’t need to use the sights. A three-shot burst at three yards, and the walls would need yet another fresh coat of paint.
‘Lose the gun,’ Ben said.
Kamal was pale. ‘Who are you?’
‘Lose the gun,’ Ben repeated. ‘Or I’ll kill you. I won’t ask you again.’ As he said it, he could see how fast Kamal was recovering from the surprise. He wasn’t their leader for nothing. He was a far more redoubtable adversary than any of them. Quick, smart and very mean. Ben’s senses were on full alert and his finger was on the trigger. The AKS probably had a pull of about six pounds, maybe seven. He had about five pounds on it already.
Kamal frowned. Glanced down at the gun that was still hanging at his side. He relaxed his fingers, and the weapon dropped straight down to the floor, an inch from his feet.
‘Kick it away,’ Ben said. ‘And let’s have that Glock, too.’
Kamal paused a beat. I’m impressed, his eyes said. He nudged the AKS with his shoe. It slid across the floor. Then, very slowly, he drew back his long coat until it cleared the Cordura holster on his belt. He unsnapped the retaining strap and eased the pistol out between forefinger and thumb. Held it out at arm’s length and flicked his wrist. The gun clattered to the floor a couple of feet away.
He kept his eyes on Ben the whole time. There was a glitter of something in them. As though he found the whole thing amusing.
‘Now it’s going to be your turn to talk,’ Ben said. ‘I want to know a few things. Like what you want with Morgan Paxton’s research.’
Kamal gazed down the muzzle of Ben’s AKS, then looked up, fixing him with a cocky glare. The faintest hint of a smile appeared on his lips. ‘You would just love to know, wouldn’t you?’
‘Then make me happy.’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Kamal said. ‘You all will. The day is coming.’
Ben frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
But Kamal just smiled more widely. He took a step backwards, over one of the bodies, away from Ben, towards the window.
Ben took a step forwards, keeping a steady distance between them. ‘Don’t move any further,’ he warned.
A sudden sound behind him made him whirl around, ready to fire. For an instant he thought there were more of them.
It was the landlord. He was bleary-eyed and unshaven, wearing a vest and shorts. ‘I thought I heard someth—’
His voice trailed off mid-word. He took in the guns. The corpses. His face froze into an expression of horror.
Ben turned back to Kamal, but it was already too late. Two seconds was too long to leave a guy like him unguarded. Kamal plucked his hand from his coat pocket and lobbed something across the room, then turned and crashed through the window and out onto the fire escape.
The object rolled across the floor.
Fragmentation grenade.
Ben dived back through the open door, hauling the landlord with him out into the hallway. The guy was heavy and clumsy. As Ben yanked him out of the way of the impending blast, he crashed down on him with all his weight.
About half a second after that, the grenade detonated in the confined space. The explosion ripped through the apartment. Shrapnel tore into everything and a fireball rolled out of the doorway as the frame and door shattered into a million tumbling splinters. The wall burst outwards into the hallway, pieces of masonry spinning through the air.
In the aftermath of the blast was the stunned, deafened, disorientated silence that follows every explosion. Through the smoke and dust Ben could see his hand lying in front of his face. It was white with powdered masonry, spattered with blood. He struggled to focus. Saw his fingers twitch and contract into a fist, and realised the hand was still connected to his body. Something was pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe. He tried to get up, heave the weight off him. It was the body of the landlord, crushing him. A big arm fell limp at the man’s side.
Ben rolled out from under him. Through the terrible ringing in his ears he could hear the high-pitched whine of smoke alarms and, somewhere beyond that, the screams of a woman. He staggered to his feet. Looked down at the landlord. The man was dead. His chest and face were a bloody mess from where he’d absorbed the blast of lethal shrapnel.
Ben checked himself all over with trembling hands. He knew he could be badly injured, even if he didn’t feel it yet. Smashed nerve endings and pumping adrenaline could mask just about anything in the first moments before you even knew you were hit. But all the blood on him belonged to the landlord. He didn’t have a scratch on him.
Then he remembered. Kamal.
With his ears still whining from the blast, Ben leaped over the dead man, sprinted down the burning hallway and bounded down the stairs four, five, six at a time. Burst out into the street. A crowd of people had gathered, pointing up at the smoke that poured from the apartment window. Three or four of them were already on their phones, calling for emergency services.
People stared as Ben streaked past, broken glass crunching under his feet. He couldn’t see Kamal anywhere.
An engine revved. The grating roar of a diesel being pushed way too hard. Someone in a desperate hurry. He whipped around just in time to see Kamal peering wild-eyed out of the van window before it lurched away from the kerb across the street and took off, smoke belching from its exhaust.
Ben sprinted after it. Running for all he was worth, he caught up with the van. His straining fingers closed around the black metal handle of the back door, and he felt the joints of his wrist and elbow and shoulder being stretched as the vehicle accelerated manically
down the street. He held on. The van picked up more speed and now he was running in giant strides, the road flashing by under his feet. He tried to wrench the door open, so that he could clamber inside and get at the driver.
But the doors were locked. The van kept accelerating, engine screaming up through the gears. Ben lost his footing, stumbled and felt his knee grate on the road as he went down. For a short distance he was dragged along. Somehow he regained his footing and he was running again. His fingers were screaming to let go of the handle.
A blare of horns. The van swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle. Ben was thrown sideways and the handle was torn from his grip. He tumbled and rolled on the tarmac and came to a stunned halt at the kerbside.
As he looked up, all he could see was the back of the white van rapidly disappearing into the distance. At the top of the street it skidded left, and then it was lost in the traffic and out of sight.
Ben thumped the road with a bleeding fist. He was aware of the people staring at him from the pavement. Someone was yelling in Arabic, words he didn’t register.
He clambered painfully to his feet, and started walking in the same direction as the van. He didn’t look back.
He was half a block away by the time he heard the howl of approaching sirens.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ben walked for twenty minutes under the hot sun, ignoring the pain from the kick to the ribs, his grazed knee and scuffed hands. The worst of the blood was on his shirt, from where the dead landlord had bled all over him. He covered it with his jacket, and from more than a few yards away he didn’t look too alarming.
He bought a fresh T-shirt, a pair of imitation Levis and a litre of bottled water from a street market. He was thankful he still had his wallet, and just about enough cash to get him out of Egypt. If that was what he needed to do: he wasn’t sure yet what his next move should be.