The Cassandra Sanction

  The Jeep continued across the island until it reached the lighthouse. The driver stopped the car, still without a word or a glance. The tower that had seemed so tiny from the air loomed over them, shining white against the red sky. Both it and the cluster of neighbouring smaller buildings were erected at the highest point of the cliff, with a sloping path down to the road. The second Jeep pulled up behind them as Ben and Raul climbed out. Two more identical vehicles were parked up by the lighthouse.

  The adrenalin was pumping faster through Ben’s system now. In no way was he reassured by the change in demeanour of their captors. Just because he couldn’t see the guns, it didn’t mean they weren’t there. And it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be seeing them again, at any moment. He and Raul had been brought here for a reason. Things could be about to turn very nasty. Which was fine by Ben. He was ready for whatever came next.

  They’re waiting for you, the Greyhound had said. The moment had arrived. Now for some answers, Ben thought. All his senses on alert, he turned towards the lighthouse.

  And saw the figure walking slowly towards them down the slope.

  It was the shape of a woman, her outline darkly silhouetted against the sunrise. The ocean breeze caught her shoulder-length hair.

  Raul was about to say something to Ben when he suddenly saw the woman too, and froze. A strangled sound came from his mouth, halfway between a cry of pain and an unintelligible mutter. He stood staring at her for a moment that seemed to hang in time forever. Then tears welled up in his eyes, and he rushed towards her with his arms open wide.

  ‘Catalina!’

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ben stared at Catalina Fuentes. She was wearing jeans and a navy jumper, a far cry from the photos he’d seen of her. She was also about six times more attractive in real life. Her hair was trimmed a few inches shorter and dyed a few shades lighter, as if she’d been trying to alter her appearance. Most noticeably of all, it appeared that she certainly wasn’t dead. Raul had been right all along.

  ‘You’re alive!’ Raul yelled in Spanish, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘Oh my God you’re alive!’

  Ben watched him run up the path towards her. She’d stopped walking and was just looking at her brother. Instead of embracing him, she suddenly lashed out with the flat of her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek with a sound that reached Ben’s ears like the crack of a whip.

  ‘Eres un estúpido!’ she shouted.

  Raul drew back as if he’d touched a high-voltage fence. He touched his fingers to his cheek where she’d slapped him. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come looking for me!’ Catalina yelled at him in Spanish, taking an angry step towards him. ‘Now you’ve ruined everything, you fool!’

  It wasn’t exactly the welcome Raul had expected. He was speechless with shock. Ben was almost as taken aback as he was. Raul stood blinking at her for a few seconds, then his shock burned away into anger and he started shouting back.

  ‘I’ve ruined everything?! What the hell is all of this about? Have you any idea what you’ve done to our family, to your parents? You broke their hearts. Are you crazy? Tell me!’

  ‘I’m not crazy,’ Catalina said, tight-lipped. ‘If you knew, you’d understand.’

  ‘Then tell me!’ Raul yelled. ‘To begin with, tell me what the hell you’re doing here on this rock in the middle of the ocean!’

  Catalina’s gaze shifted away from Raul and landed on Ben. ‘Who’s this with you?’ she demanded.

  Ben walked towards them and was about to introduce himself, but Raul did it for him. ‘His name is Ben. He’s been helping me to find you. It’s thanks to him that I’m here.’

  ‘Then he’s a stupid idiot as well,’ Catalina said. ‘Does he speak Spanish?’

  ‘Sí,’ Ben said.

  She crossed her arms and gave Ben a hostile glower. She looked a million miles from the terrified, furtive victim Ben had observed on the pawnbroker’s security video footage back in Munich.

  At that moment, a second figure emerged from the lighthouse and started making his way down the path towards them. He was ten or a dozen years older than Catalina, slim and well-groomed with a thick head of hair going elegantly silver. He was dressed as if he’d been about to take in a leisurely nine holes before breakfast, in chinos and a silk shirt with a V-necked cardigan to keep out the morning chill.

  Raul raised an accusing finger at him. ‘Oh, no. Please tell me I’m dreaming. Keller? What’s he doing here?’

  ‘This is his island,’ Catalina said. ‘He owns it.’

  ‘I should have known that slimy bastard was behind this,’ Raul growled, clenching his fists.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Catalina said. ‘You have absolutely no idea, Raul.’

  Keller reached them. The four stood facing one another, Ben at Raul’s shoulder, Keller at Catalina’s. Up close, Keller’s face was lined, but tanned and handsome. His eyes were cool blue. They passed over Raul and he looked at Ben. ‘Austin J. Keller the Third,’ he said confidently, putting out his hand. His accent was Canadian, softened by years in Europe. ‘And you are?’

  Ben ignored the hand. ‘Interested in hearing some explanations,’ he said.

  Keller stiffened, and the confidence in his eyes wavered momentarily. Catalina and Raul were still bristling at one another. Raul was shaking his head in disbelief, his face dark. Catalina looked ready to slap him again. Behind them, Keller’s crew had got out of the Jeeps and were clustered beside them, watching from a distance and ready to intervene if needed.

  ‘You already met my guys,’ Keller said. Pointing at the Greyhound, he added, ‘That’s Bauer. He’s my chief of security.’ Then he pointed at the pilot. ‘Avery, he’s my Top Gun. Then there’s Spencer, Willis, Emmert, Fulton and Griggs. They’re all good guys.’

  ‘You can tell the Magnificent Seven not to get any closer,’ Ben said.

  Keller stared at him for a second, then waved a discreet signal to his men, telling them to stand down. ‘I think we’d all better go inside.’

  The interior of the lighthouse was adapted into one of the most luxurious homes that Ben had ever seen, a circular open-plan mansion on numerous floors that must have cost millions to convert. The art and antiques were worth probably as much again. But then, Ben realised, millions were clearly nothing to a man who owned private islands and jets and could sail the world in his magnificent twin-masted schooner. So this was Austin Keller. The man whose name Raul Fuentes couldn’t utter without the prefix ‘That bastard’. The man who’d broken Catalina’s heart. And now, it appeared, the man Ben and Raul had to thank for bringing them here. Ben was beginning to realise how mistaken his assumptions had been – but the truth seemed even stranger.

  ‘So this is where you’ve been all along, is that right?’ Raul said, still speaking Spanish and looking around him as if he could spit on the priceless Persian carpet under his feet. ‘How nice for you.’ Eyeing Keller with open dislike, he then switched to English to snort, ‘Are we allowed to know where we are, exactly?

  ‘The island of Icthyios, west of the Southern Sporades,’ Keller said with something of a flourish. ‘Karpathos a little to the south of us, Rhodes a touch further to the east. Our own little private haven, right where the Aegean meets the Sea of Crete. Eight and a half square kilometres. Mentioned in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’

  Ben realised his location estimate was off, but only by about five hundred or so miles. ‘And nobody lives here?’

  ‘Nobody but us,’ Keller said, proudly sweeping his arm.

  ‘Icthyios,’ Raul said. ‘Isn’t that some kind of skin disease?’

  Keller flushed a shade darker and cleared his throat. He glanced at Catalina, then smiled and in a breezy tone said, ‘You must be hungry. Some breakfast, perhaps?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Raul said to Catalina. ‘We’re getting out of this place.’

  ‘Go where?’ Keller asked, eyes widening.

  ‘I was talking to my sister,
if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m sorry things are like this,’ Catalina said to Raul. ‘What more can I say to you?’

  ‘You could tell me what happened. That would be a start.’

  ‘I wasn’t in the car,’ Catalina said.

  ‘Obviously. I gathered that.’

  ‘I drove all the way to Rügen Island, making sure nobody followed me. I took the car up onto the cliff path and parked a little way from the edge with the gearbox in neutral. Then I got out, and reached back in and put it back in drive, took off the parking brake, and I stood back and watched it roll off the edge.’

  Catalina’s eyes clouded thickly with tears as she spoke. ‘You want to know the last thing I said before I did it? I said, “Forgive me, Raul.” Because I knew how badly I was going to hurt you, and everyone else that I love. I can hardly stand the guilt, living with what I did to you all. But I did it for a reason, Raul. You weren’t supposed to come looking for me. This is all messed up. You’ve compromised my whole plan.’

  Raul was crying, too, as mixed emotions of relief and anger finally got the better of his self-control. ‘Your plan? What kind of plan is it to pretend to your family that you didn’t even want to go on living? Was that your idea, or do we have this guy to thank for it?’ Raul jabbed a finger towards Keller without looking at him. ‘I mean, we all know he’s this oddball recluse or whatever he’s supposed to be, and he was always pressuring you to run off and hide away someplace in one of his retreats with him. I thought that was all over and done with, years ago. I thought you were stronger than this. How could you do it?’

  ‘I am not an oddball recluse,’ Keller said, indignant. ‘I just value my privacy, is all.’

  ‘You’re getting this completely wrong, Raul,’ Catalina said. ‘Austin had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. I’d never intended to involve him, but then I needed a safe place to go, and he offered to bring me here. Up until that moment I acted alone, just me, nobody else, and it was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. You have to believe that hurting you, hurting our parents, was the last thing on earth I would ever have chosen to do. But I had no choice.’

  ‘You trusted him,’ Raul said, throwing a look at Keller. ‘But you couldn’t trust me, your own brother?’

  ‘I did what I had to do,’ Catalina said.

  ‘What have you got yourself into? Who are these people who are after you?’

  Catalina turned a little pale. ‘You know about them?’

  ‘Of course I know about them.’

  ‘How? Why?’

  ‘Because they tried to kill me too,’ Raul said. ‘They had guns. They kill people, that’s what they do.’

  Catalina was too stunned to reply, so Ben spoke to her for the first time. ‘Actually, that’s not quite what happened,’ he said. ‘Whoever these people are, they were trying to kidnap your brother, to extract information from him that would help them find you. You’re in a lot of trouble, Miss Fuentes.’

  Catalina stared at Ben as if seeing him for the first time. ‘They tried to kidnap Raul?’ she asked in a shaky voice.

  ‘They were professional gunmen,’ Ben said. ‘The best money can buy.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  ‘How did we get away?’ Raul said. ‘Because they weren’t the best. Ben is the best. I would be dead now, if he hadn’t been there.’

  Catalina didn’t take her tear-filled eyes off Ben. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Who are you? How do you know my brother?’

  ‘He’s just a guy I met in a bar,’ Ben said.

  Catalina stared a little longer, then another thought hit her. ‘Oh, God. And this happened—?’

  ‘In Germany,’ Raul said. ‘At your observatory. We had some problems there.’

  ‘Your friend Kazem is dead,’ Ben told her. He couldn’t think of a gentler way to break it. ‘I’m sorry. He didn’t suffer,’ he added.

  Whether Catalina believed his lie or not, the news left her winded. Suddenly looking years older, she staggered to the nearest armchair and fell into it. Keller hurried to her side and clutched her arm as she buried her face in her hands and didn’t move for a long minute. Then she looked up, her eyes wet with tears and pain etched deeply into the beauty of her face. She looked at Raul, and in a steady voice she said, ‘It’s because of you that Kazem is dead. If you hadn’t come looking for me, everything would have been all right. I had everything planned. That place was a secret, Raul, and you must have led them there.’

  Raul’s face fell. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ He muttered it a couple of times, then went quiet.

  Catalina stood up and took his hands in hers. Squeezing them tightly, she kissed his cheek where she’d slapped him. ‘You’re my twin brother. I love you, and I forgive you, like I’d forgive you for anything. You weren’t to know what would happen. It’s as much my fault as it is yours.’ Turning to Ben, she said, ‘I thank you for protecting Raul, whoever you are. I can never repay you for that.’

  ‘If it’s money you want—’ Keller began.

  Ben silenced him with a look. He said to Catalina, ‘I don’t want your money. I want just one thing. I need you to tell me what this is about.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ‘It’s my business,’ said Catalina Fuentes. ‘Not yours.’

  Ben looked at her and could see the same stubborn streak in her that he’d seen often enough in her brother to realise now that it must be a family trait. It made him think of himself, and Ruth, and Jude. Maybe if you traced the ancestral lines back far enough, you’d find Hope and Fuentes DNA mixed up together in the most hardheaded, hotblooded part of the human gene pool.

  ‘Not any more,’ Ben said. ‘More people are involved in this now. You can’t undo that.’

  ‘Ben helps people, Catalina,’ Raul said. ‘You need to let him help you.’

  ‘He’s quite an enigma, your friend,’ Catalina snapped back at him. ‘But I don’t need anyone’s help, thanks.’

  ‘Sinclair is dead, and Lockhart,’ Ben told her. ‘Ellis ran. For all we know, they got him too. Whatever it is that you were all involved in, you’re the last one of the group.’

  ‘You wouldn’t even understand.’

  ‘About your solar research?’ Ben said. ‘About William Herschel and the price of wheat? You’re right. Then how about enlightening us?’

  Catalina narrowed her lustrous brown eyes at him. ‘You know about Herschel?’

  ‘And I know what kind of people are coming after you,’ Ben said. ‘The kind that won’t stop until they get the job done. You think you can handle them all by yourself?’

  ‘She isn’t by herself,’ Keller said, stepping close to Catalina and putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘Not any more. I have people working right now on a whole new identity for her. She’ll be safe here with me, forever.’

  Ben noticed the way Catalina squirmed out of his grip. Austin Keller might have seen the situation as an opportunity to rekindle their relationship, but it seemed that, so far, things hadn’t quite gone his way. From the hurt expression on Keller’s face, Ben could tell his feelings were sincere.

  ‘We talked about this, Austin,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stay on this island for the rest of my life. This was a temporary measure, nothing more.’

  Keller raised his hands. ‘What, you think you can go back? How’s that gonna work, when you’re supposed to be dead? Jesus, I mean, the whole suicide thing was your idea. One-way ticket, remember?’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ Catalina replied, giving him an icy look. She sighed, then walked over to an antique sideboard, opened it and took out a bottle of scotch. Bowmore single malt, eighteen years old. Ben noticed that, too.

  ‘Little early in the day, don’t you think?’ Keller said, frowning. ‘How about coffee instead?’

  ‘I need it,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ Raul said. ‘Ben?’

  ‘I rarely touch the stuff before breakfast,’ Ben said. ‘But I’ll make an exception.’


  Catalina poured three measures into cut-crystal tumblers and sat back in the armchair, cradling her glass pensively. She took a sip, then looked up at Raul. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I owe you an explanation. I’ve managed to let you become involved in this, and you must be wondering how you ended up here and what on earth this is all about. So I’ll tell you.’

  Raul perched on a chair opposite her. Ben leaned against the wall, took a swallow of the whisky. The Bowmore’s rich, deep, smoky aroma filled his nose. Eighteen years spent maturing in oak casks. Definitely best enjoyed first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. He took another swallow and waited for what Catalina had to say.

  ‘It all happened so suddenly,’ she said. ‘There was so little warning. The first inkling I got that something was wrong wasn’t until early July, in London. I was there to meet with a publisher to talk about a new book. One that will never be written now, obviously.’ She pulled a grim smile and took another sip of her drink. ‘I arrived in London on July third, a day early, to spend some time with a girlfriend I hadn’t seen for a while. I booked into the Dorchester, as usual when I’m in town. That evening, the two of us attended a private party that was being thrown by some people she knew at a club in Kensington. The normal kind of thing, everyone getting drunk on Pimm’s and champagne and lots of annoying celebrities kissy-kissing and pretending they wouldn’t cut each other’s throats if they had the chance. Not long after we’d arrived, my friend went off with this guy she was flirting with, and left me hanging. I was kind of annoyed about it, and I would have gone straight back to the Dorchester then, if it hadn’t been for the guitarist.’

  ‘The guitarist?’ Raul said.

  ‘The musical entertainment for the evening. Just one guy on solo classical guitar, sitting on a stool in the corner, very good-looking, Hispanic, dark, long curly hair. And he could play. Great tone, excellent technique. You know how much I love the guitar. He had the whole repertoire down – Granados, Villa-Lobos, Rodrigo. I stood there for quite a while watching and listening. That was when this older man came up to me and introduced himself. I had never met him before, but he’s quite well known in certain circles. His name is Maxwell Grant.’