When he couldn’t see any, he abandoned such weak-minded superstitious notions, lit another of his dwindling pack of Gauloises instead and went back to thinking about Catalina Fuentes. Whichever way he tried to arrange the pieces of the puzzle in his head, he couldn’t make any sense of what was going on. Something crucial was missing from the picture, and if they didn’t find Catalina lying low in her astronomical bolthole in the mountains, they’d have to hope they dug up more to go on – or else Ben had no idea where they could turn to next.
He hated it when the success or failure of the mission depended on just a single scrap of a lead. Funny how it never seemed to be any other way.
The first half of the afternoon had ticked past by the time they finally reached Catalina Fuentes’ observatory in the Alpine foothills, two hundred and forty kilometres west of Munich. The motorway was far behind them, the road having grown progressively narrower and quieter as they neared their destination near the small town of Klosterkirche. Raul’s memory proved just a little less precise than he’d given Ben to believe, and it was only after getting lost three times in the forest roads bordering Lake Constance that they finally stumbled on the right path and Raul started to recognise the landmarks. ‘This is it, I’m certain,’ he said.
After turning off the road onto a stony trail that looked like no more than a farm track, they wound and snaked uphill for nearly ten minutes through empty hillside before the place came into view at the top of a rise. The first thing that caught Ben’s eye was the white fifty-foot dome that stood like a temple overlooking the forested valley below and the blue lake waters in the distance, seventy kilometres from end to end and smudging the boundaries of three countries. Adjoining the dome was a rambling single-storey cottage. Nothing ostentatious, just a simple stone building with ivy trailing up its whitewashed walls and small, cottagey windows. It looked clean and maintained, but the message was clear: all the money had gone into the dome. The dwelling itself was secondary, like a bunkhouse.
A cluster of smaller buildings stood behind the house, looking like old storerooms and animal pens converted from their original use. The property was fronted by a beaten-earth yard that ran off to patchy grass and then to a wooden fence that ringed the perimeter. Faded grass and the last wildflowers of the year waved in the breeze. As the land sloped up towards the hills the terrain became rougher, strewn with rocks. There were stumps where trees had been cut down. Trees being, Ben supposed, the universal bane of astronomers everywhere.
So this was where Catalina Fuentes had been in the habit of escaping to from the pressures of celebrity. Now they were about to find out whether her remote hideout was an escape from something else.
There was no lock on the wooden gate, despite the sign that said in German, PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT. Raul got out of the car to open it, and Ben drove through. He paused for Raul to dive back into the passenger seat, then bumped up the rest of the uneven track, which widened out into the dirt yard in front of the house. There were no other vehicles in sight, but one of the buildings could have been a garage.
‘Pull up here,’ Raul said urgently, thirty yards short of the house. ‘I don’t want to scare her.’
Ben was concerned that Raul was taking a little too much for granted, but he said nothing and stopped the car. Raul kicked open his door and almost fell out in his eagerness. He ran towards the house, waving his arms and calling out in Spanish.
Ben killed the engine and stepped out of the Kia. The air was crisp and fresh, the view magnificent and unbroken in a sweeping vista that didn’t stop until it reached the faraway peaks of Switzerland. He could see why a person would choose this spot to admire the heavens. He lit a cigarette and began walking towards the house.
Raul had already reached the door and found it unlocked, pushing his way inside still calling out in Spanish to his sister. ‘Catalina, it’s me, Raul. It’s okay. I’m here.’
Ben followed, still saying nothing. The doorway was set deep into the thick stone walls and the lintel was low, cottage-style. He had to duck an inch to walk inside. The front entrance opened straight into a small, beamed living room that was simply furnished and very different in style from the apartment in Munich. To his left was a pine slat door. Straight ahead, another door that Raul had already gone through, into a kitchen.
‘She’s here,’ he said, turning back towards Ben and pointing at a small pine table, on which rested a china mug and a plate with the remnants of a sandwich. Raul felt the mug, and his face glowed excitedly. ‘Still warm. See? Didn’t I tell you?’
He burst out of the kitchen and hurried to the other door. It led through to a small office, from whose far side climbed a flight of wooden steps that Ben realised was the entrance to the observatory dome. The office was even less like Catalina’s apartment: not a penny spent on designer chic, as functional and utilitarian as any military HQ Ben had ever seen. The view from the window was of the unpretty storage buildings outside. Metal shelving lined the walls, heavy with files and textbooks and heaps of paperwork. More of the same cluttered the little desk space that wasn’t taken up with her computer.
Ben was sensing a very different Catalina Fuentes from the party-going, bejewelled and fashion-conscious celebrity whose walk-in wardrobe in the city was bigger than a lot of people’s homes. This was the real her, the serious hard-grinding scholar she’d been before the circus of fame and fortune had entered her life. The place was the nerve centre of her work. No frills, just science.
Raul stepped quickly through the room and called up the stairs, ‘Catalina! It’s me, Raul!’ Glancing back at Ben, he said, ‘She could be in the dome.’
Ben followed him through the door into a bare-block, concrete-floored space about a dozen metres square, its main feature a massive steel pillar bolted to the floor via a thick circular plate and disappearing up through the ceiling, the height of the roof of the house it was attached to. Raul was clattering up a metal staircase that coiled around the pillar, leading to a circular hatch through to the level above. Ben climbed the steps after him.
The observatory was dark inside, sealed off from the sunlight with the roof closed. Raul found a light switch near the hatch entrance and flipped it on. Now Ben saw that the dome consisted of sections bolted together like the segments of an orange sliced into a hemisphere, insulated on the inside with some kind of space-age silver material. The dome stretched the same dozen metres across at its widest point, a dozen more from its rubberised floor to the apex of its arched ceiling.
The space was filled with a bewildering array of rack-mounted electronics, computers and optical equipment that was dwarfed by the pair of giant white aluminium telescopes that stood in the centre of the circular floor. They were mounted on a massive pivot atop the steel pillar and trained upwards in parallel like twin artillery pieces. Ben wondered why she needed two, then remembered what Raul had said about his sister’s solar observations. One scope for night, the other for day. Each more than twelve feet long and hooked up to a spaghetti of curly multicoloured wiring for motor drives and banks of digital readouts at whose function Ben could only guess, their bulk was steadied by a counterbalance weight like an Olympic powerlifter’s barbell, on which was mounted a padded operator’s chair. Just the thing for those long hours spent gazing into space, Ben thought.
The dome ceiling curved smoothly above the upward-pointing twin telescopes. Noticing a complex arrangement of cables and pulleys connected between the centre of the roof and a large electric motor with a control panel, Ben realised that a whole section of the dome could be opened up at the flick of a lever to expose a vast expanse of sky. A separate motorised system allowed the upper section of the dome to rotate, running on tracks like the gun turret of a tank, so that the telescopes could be swivelled around to cover the entire firmament in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle over the tops of the racks of electronics and computer equipment.
The inside of the dome was an impressive sight. It was also empty. No sign of C
atalina Fuentes, or of anybody else.
Refusing to admit defeat, Raul headed back for the spiral stairs, switching off the light as he went. He clattered back down the steps, and again Ben followed. They returned inside the house, which seemed strangely rustic now in comparison to the high-tech wizardry of the observatory. Raul was calling ‘Catalina! Come on out, it’s me! It’s Raul!’
As Ben wandered back through the study towards the living room, he was thinking that the still-warm coffee mug on the table downstairs had to belong to someone.
Then he stopped. Stepped back a pace, looked out of the study window overlooking the back of the house, and realised he hadn’t imagined the sudden, furtive movement he’d glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.
There was a man outside.
Chapter Sixteen
The man was young, dark, and thin; Ben didn’t get a clear look at him as he made a break from one of the smaller buildings and darted out of sight around the corner, throwing a glance at the parked-up Kia as he went. One thing was for sure. Whoever he was, he hadn’t been expecting company, and he wasn’t happy about the unexpected arrival of two strangers.
Ben froze, but what seemed to him like a hesitant pause before he exploded into action was less than three-quarters of a second. Before another second had gone by, he was already racing out of the study and sprinting for the door. As he burst outside, the layout of the property was burned into his mind and he was locked on and calculating the quickest route to his target. He turned left from the doorway, skirted the length of the house, turned again and the outbuildings came into view ahead. He ran faster, dust and gravel flying from his feet. He couldn’t see the man. He chased around the corner of the outbuilding.
Then, suddenly, there he was. This time, Ben got a better look at him. He was maybe twenty-four or -five, with the black hair and olive complexion that could have made him anything from Spanish to southern Italian to Middle Eastern. He was wearing faded jeans and a scuffed old leather jacket.
A motorcycle was parked around the back of the building. It was old and had seen better times, with peeling chrome and red paintwork and a big metal TRIUMPH badge on the tank. The man was grappling it off its sidestand by both handlebars as he desperately stamped on the kickstart lever to fire up the engine.
Ben ran straight for him.
The bike coughed and failed to start. The man lashed at it again with his foot, but this time the lever kicked back with the compression of the piston and he let out a grunt of pain as it jolted up and raked his shin.
By then, Ben was six fast strides away from him and closing. The man let the bike go and it fell over on its side. He took off as if a pack of pitbulls were snapping at his heels. Ben hurdled the fallen motorcycle and chased him, running hard. The man was young and fast, but Ben had been faster at that age, and he was still just as fast now.
Where the guy was heading, Ben had no idea. But it was clear there was no escape. He seemed to be aiming for the rocks, as if he thought he could scramble up the hillside like a goat, and away. He hammered over the long grass and hit the boulder-strewn incline at a bounding sprint. His toe caught the edge of a rock and he stumbled, and Ben came up behind him and jerked him backwards off his feet in a choke-hold that cut off the carotid artery feeding the brain.
The guy struggled hard for three seconds, but it was chaotic and untrained struggling that did him no good at all in Ben’s iron grip. By the count of five, he was as limp as a sack of clothes.
Ben lowered him to the ground, rolled him on his back and checked him for weapons. He was unarmed. Finding a slim wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket, Ben counted thirty-five euros in cash. There was no driver’s licence or other form of identification, not even a bank card. Ben had frisked the pockets of dozens of dead or unconscious bad guys, and nearly all of them had had that much in common with this one. Bad guys didn’t turn up ID, unless it was fake, or unless they were incredibly stupid, or it had been planted on them for a reason – usually after they were dead.
Except this one didn’t appear to be a bad guy, in any real sense. He didn’t look like a particularly threatening individual, and he certainly was less of a fighter than he was a runner.
Ben thought about the still-warm coffee Raul had found in the kitchen. Bad guys didn’t sit around drinking coffee in a victim’s home, least of all unarmed when they couldn’t handle themselves with their bare hands. And they especially didn’t turn up on prehistoric 1970s Triumph Daytonas with old-fashioned carbs you had to tickle and an engine you couldn’t fire up without jumping up and down on a kickstart lever.
So who was he, and what was he doing in Catalina’s secret sanctuary?
Ben grabbed the collar of the leather jacket and dragged the guy back to the house. He didn’t weigh too much. Raul stood in the doorway, watching anxiously.
‘What’s happening? Who is he? Where’s Catalina?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’ Ben hauled him through the entrance into the living room and dumped him on the floor. ‘Grab an arm, will you?’ he said to Raul, and together they heaved the guy up into a chair. By now, Ben already knew that the man wasn’t a threat. But he was scared enough to run, and sometimes to make a scared man talk you had to scare him a little more.
‘I’ll watch him. Go and see if you can find something to tie him up with.’
Raul nodded and hurried off. Ben heard him rooting about in the kitchen, then a few moments later he returned with a roll of silver duct tape. One of the most useful and versatile household items ever conceived, with applications most honest, law-abiding citizens could never begin to dream of. ‘Found this under the sink,’ Raul said.
Ben nodded. ‘Perfect.’
Two minutes later, the prisoner was securely trussed up and going nowhere, his head lolling forwards with his chin on his chest. Ben slapped him softly across the cheek a few times to waken him.
The man’s eyes opened slowly, unfocused, then suddenly snapped wide open as he registered Ben. He began to struggle again, straining against the tape that held his wrists and ankles to the chair, his head twisting from side to side in panic as he poured out a stream of words.
Raul stared at him in incomprehension, but Ben knew the language. Farsi was the same thing as Persian, spoken across a wide-ranging area covering Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and parts of Russia. Ben had worked in a lot of those places. He snapped out a command in the man’s language, a very vulgar expression meaning ‘Be quiet’. Along with a warning glare and a raised finger, it had the desired effect. The guy stopped thrashing in the chair, and looked up at Ben like a beaten dog.
‘Are you going to behave yourself?’ Ben asked him in Farsi.
The man nodded.
Still in Farsi, Ben asked, ‘What are you doing here? Where are you from?’
The man seemed surprised that Ben didn’t already know. ‘I am from Tehran,’ he blurted. ‘I came to Germany for work.’ They were making progress, but Ben was still wondering why they’d come here looking for a Spanish female scientist and found an Iranian man in her place.
‘Please,’ the Iranian muttered, his mouth half numb with fear. ‘Don’t send me back. I can’t go back.’
‘I’m not here to send you back,’ Ben said.
Chapter Seventeen
The Iranian’s eyes widened even more and he turned a shade paler. ‘You’re not from the BAMF?’
BAMF was the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Germany’s federal office for immigrants and refugees. Now Ben was understanding a little more about why the man had run from him.
Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t work for the government.’
That should have been good news for the Iranian, but it seemed to frighten him ten times more. Sweat was beading on his brow and he began to shake. ‘Then you’re here to k-kill me,’ he stammered. ‘Please! I’m not a threat to you!’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Raul asked, impatient that they w
ere still speaking Farsi and he couldn’t follow a word of the conversation.
Ben explained, ‘He’s an illegal immigrant from Iran, and he thinks we’re here to kill him.’
When the Iranian heard his captors speaking English, it seemed to terrify him still further. ‘I swear to you that I know nothing!’ he blurted out, switching now to English himself. ‘Do not hurt me! I am begging you!’
‘Oh, you’ll beg us,’ Raul snarled at him, making a fist. ‘You’ll beg for a bullet, if you don’t tell us what we want to know.’
Beg for a bullet. Ben looked at Raul and raised a hand. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m handling this, all right?’
Turning back to their prisoner, he softened his tone and asked in English, ‘What’s your name?’
‘I am Kazem Behzadi. I work here. Please do not—’
‘Just answer the questions,’ Ben said.
Raul’s eyes narrowed and he chewed his lip as if remembering something. He nudged Ben’s arm and beckoned him aside to say quietly, ‘She told me about a Kazem.’
Ben turned and walked to the kitchen. He came back holding a large chef’s knife from the block on the worktop. Kazem’s eyes popped at the sight of the blade, and he began to gibber in fear as Ben stepped around behind the chair.
‘Who’s your employer, Kazem?’ Ben asked.
‘Catalina! Catalina Fuentes! Don’t kill me!’
Ben believed him, and holding the guy prisoner made no more sense. Ben quickly slashed the tape holding Kazem’s wrists to the chair, careful not to cut him, then did the same for his ankles. Realising that Ben wasn’t about to saw his head off, Kazem stopped panicking and sat quietly in the chair, rubbing his wrists. His eyes followed the knife as Ben laid it down on a side table with the point turned towards the wall. Now that he understood that these two men were here neither to deport him nor to murder him, he looked bewildered. ‘Catalina Fuentes,’ he repeated softly, and then his eyes clouded. ‘But I do not work for her any more. She is dead.’