‘Why, does the sight of a little blood bother you?’ she fired back at him. ‘I didn’t realise murderers were so squeamish.’
He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Murderer? Says the intruder who invaded my property carrying a loaded pistol, with the obvious intention of shooting an unarmed man in the back.’
‘Kinder treatment than you deserve. It would have been far too quick and easy a death for you.’
‘Please,’ he said, motioning to the luxurious armchairs and settees that filled the room. ‘Won’t you take a seat? You must be tired after your journey. I won’t ask where it is you’ve been keeping yourself hidden away all this time.’
Catalina didn’t budge from where she stood, looking him fiercely in the eye. ‘Somewhere you and your paid scumbags would never have found me,’ she said. ‘Not in a hundred years of trying.’
‘Then it would seem that you’ve saved me an awful lot of time and trouble, haven’t you?’ Smiling, Grant walked over to an antique sideboard and flipped open a lid to reveal a hi-fi system inside. ‘Some music, I think,’ he said, putting on a CD. ‘Ana Vidovic performing Albéniz’s Asturias. I listen to it often, and think of you. Although, as wonderful as she is, I don’t think she’s half the player you could have become, if you’d wanted to.’ As the opening notes of the classical guitar piece sounded over hidden speakers, slow and melodious at first, Grant walked over to an armchair and stretched out in it with a contented sigh.
‘You look more radiant than ever, by the way,’ he said, gazing at her the way he might have gazed at one of the expensive oil paintings on his walls. ‘You’ve evidently been taking good care of yourself. Or someone has. I admit it, I’m jealous. Who’s the lucky man?’
‘What makes you so sure there has to be a man involved?’
‘A woman like you? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t have been your only secret admirer. Which I have to confess to having been for quite some time. In fact, if I hadn’t been so foolishly bedazzled by your presence that evening we met, I might have watched my tongue, instead of blabbing like a schoolboy and letting you realise that I knew a little too much about you, and that our meeting was anything but a chance encounter. What can I say? I’m sure you have that effect on most men.’
‘Please. You’re making me sick.’
‘We’re all human. Even murderers have feelings.’
‘So you’re admitting it now,’ she said.
‘What I am is a businessman. A strategist, a pragmatist. Like you. We’re not so different, you and I.’
‘Now you’re really going to upset me.’
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of; far from it. We do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals. Mine is primarily to make money, while yours is to pursue scientific truth. But essentially, it’s all much of a muchness. I don’t take it at all personally that you came here today to kill me. You tried to do what you felt was required, under the circumstances. Just as you engineered that little piece of theatre of yours in July. Which was a neat bit of work, by the way. You certainly fooled the world at large, even if you didn’t succeed in pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.’ He paused. ‘The problem with faking your own death is that nobody will notice when it happens for real.’
‘If you’re going to kill me, then do it now. If you’ve got the balls.’
‘Perish the thought. I wouldn’t dream of curtailing my chance to spend some time with such a beautiful and brilliant woman. It’s just you and me, until our visitor arrives.’
He saw the flash of puzzlement in her expression, and looked pleased by it. ‘That’s who I was speaking to on the phone before, to inform them you were here,’ he explained. ‘He’s en route from London even as we speak, and very much looking forward to meeting you in person.’
Catalina said nothing. She darted another glance at the crossed sabres over the fireplace. They suddenly seemed very far away and out of reach. Her hand began to throb painfully as the blood pulsed faster with the racing of her heart.
‘You surely didn’t think I was alone in this, did you?’ Grant said with a grin. ‘You and your friends drew the attention of far more powerful and influential people than I. I’m only the middleman, the errand boy, who simply does what he’s told. The sanctions come from above.’
‘Just obeying orders,’ she said mockingly. ‘Of course. I should have guessed that you didn’t have the brains to do anything like this on your own.’
‘Oh, I have my ways and means, and muddle along not too badly in general,’ he said. ‘They don’t place their confidence in just anybody, you know. Though I’ll admit, between you and me, that you had us all rattled there for a while. My associates were less than impressed with me for allowing you to slip through our fingers as carelessly as I did. Now you’re back, you’ve done wonders to restore their faith in me. I should thank you. They’re not the kind of people one wishes to make a habit of disappointing.’
‘And naturally, you let them think it was you who found me, rather than the other way round.’
Grant shrugged. ‘It doesn’t always pay to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Sometimes it’s wiser to keep your mouth shut. A lesson you and your friends would have benefited from.’
‘We’re scientists. We tell the truth. That’s what we do, come what may.’
‘What, you don’t think there are plenty of your fellow scientists who keep the “truth” to themselves and say what they’re paid to say? That’s how it works in the real world, my dear girl. Even Galileo realised that, eventually. And I would be very, very surprised to think you didn’t already know it perfectly well.’
‘So what did these high-powered employers of yours pay you to kill my team, Maxwell?’
‘Not a penny. Let’s just say we came to an arrangement that serves our mutual business interests. But you shouldn’t do yourself down, my dear. This wasn’t about the others. You were always the star attraction, from the beginning. You were the one the world would have listened to, if we’d allowed that to happen. The others were just collateral damage. Their fates were sealed the moment you involved them. Moths to a candle.’
His words shook her deeply, but she refused to let him see it. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Maxwell,’ she said in a strong voice. ‘It’s not just about me at all. Killing me won’t end this. You’re forgetting that Steve Ellis is still out there. He’s the candle, still burning away where you can’t hope to get to it to snuff it out. There isn’t anyone who knows more about our research than Steve does. He was doing this ten years before I was even born. And when he broadcasts the truth to the millions of people who follow him, there won’t be a hole in the ground you and your sick little associates will be able to hide in, or a rock that you can crawl under. He’ll bury you all.’
Maxwell Grant listened pensively as she talked, and when she’d finished he gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Funny you should have mentioned deliveries here to the villa,’ he said. ‘As it happens, I received one earlier this morning. Not a satellite dish,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘Something much more interesting, I think you’ll agree. Here, let me show you.’
He stood, walked past her to the door and opened it. The two guards who had caught her were still standing outside in the corridor, along with two others. Grant had a quick, quiet word with them, and one of them hurried off. Catalina heard his footsteps ringing on the marble floor. The guard returned a few moments later, holding something square and brown. It was a cardboard box, cubic in dimensions, about eighteen inches tall and wide, wrapped with packaging tape that had been neatly slit along the top flaps. Grant took the box from him and carried it into the room, setting it down on a table.
‘Come,’ he said pleasantly to Catalina, beckoning her over. ‘Go ahead. Take a look inside.’
She hesitantly approached the table, and he stepped back to let her get closer. She reached out her good hand and tentatively grasped the edge of one of the box’s flaps and pulled it back so she could peer inside.
> Inside the box was Steve Ellis’s severed head. His eyes stared glassily into hers, like a dead mackerel’s.
Catalina screamed.
Chapter Fifty-Six
After the Alitalia B737 touched down at Brindisi Airport at eighteen minutes past midday, Ben was one of the first passengers off the plane. Then, after the frustration of passport control, he collected his bag and left the airport at a run.
Outside, he took out the phone to check it once more. Not his own smartphone, but one of those he’d taken from the dead men at Catalina’s observatory. Specifically, it was the one loaded with the software to mate up with the tracking device he’d found attached to the rental Kia, which had enabled the hired guns to tail them there from Munich.
The GPS tracker was a high-end professional piece of kit, capable of monitoring its target anywhere in the world. Ben was no hoarder, but nonetheless, handy gadgets like that weren’t something you threw away. You never knew when you might find a use for them. Which was exactly what he had done after his conversation with Catalina on the beach on Icthyios. The things she’d said had troubled him so much that, later that afternoon, he’d slipped up to her quarters at the top of the lighthouse and hidden the homing device in the lining of her travel bag.
A gamble, based on pure instinctive guesswork, but it had paid off. He’d been following the moving red dot on his virtual map from the moment she’d escaped. Without it, he would have had no way of knowing she was heading for Italy. And without knowing that, he’d have had no proof of his suspicions that she was going after Maxwell Grant.
But it wasn’t all good news. Even as he’d been sitting impatiently in the departure lounge on Karpathos waiting for the earliest flight he could get to Italy, he’d noticed that the little red dot had stopped moving. It was still in exactly the same place now.
It could mean that she’d found the tracker in her bag and ditched it. Or, as he feared, it could mean that she had reached her destination. And that worried him very much indeed, because the location of the dot was over two hundred kilometres southwest of his own.
Right country, wrong place. If southern Italy was shaped like a pointy high-heeled boot, he was right on the heel, and Catalina was near the ball of the foot, all the way down there in Calabria.
Calabria, where she’d said Maxwell Grant’s villa was.
Where the signal had come to a standstill.
Well over an hour ago.
Ben didn’t want to think about what could happen in that time.
From where he was standing outside the airport terminal, he could see part of the ubiquitous car rental offices poking out from behind the buildings. Even assuming he wasn’t banned for life by every hire company on the planet, minutes spent signing forms and fussing over insurance agreements were minutes he should be spending closing the gap between himself and Catalina Fuentes, as fast as possible. Faster.
He needed speed. Public transport was out of the question. Following Catalina’s example and hijacking a business jet from the private terminal wasn’t a practical option.
But as Ben stood facing the airport car park, gazing around him for inspiration, suddenly, staring him right in the face, was the very next best thing. Its roof was so low off the ground that he almost missed it behind the other cars parked around it. The wide-bore twin exhausts pointed at him out of the bright yellow carbon-fibre bodywork like the barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. As he walked towards it, he could read the name LAMBORGHINI in curly chrome lettering between its wide-set taillights.
A petrol-head was one of the many things Ben was not. But even he couldn’t fail to appreciate the nearest road-going equivalent of a Learjet. Especially when the road-going equivalent of a Learjet was the very thing he most needed at the moment – though the Lamborghini’s open-roof cockpit looked more like something copied from a fighter aircraft.
The only problem was the one slouched behind the wheel, puffing on a cigarette with one gold-braceleted arm dangling over the sill. He could have been a drug dealer hanging around the airport to score a deal, or just a rich boy grabbing a quick smoke while waiting to pick up his girlfriend. Ben didn’t much care either way.
‘Nice car,’ he said to the guy in Italian, walking over. ‘Mind if I borrow it?’
The guy lolled his head to peer casually up at Ben through his wraparound shades. He puffed a cloud of smoke and said, ‘Get the fuck out of here, cazzone.’
Ben was pleased to hear such vulgar profanity. The more offensive, the better. It made what he was about to do morally easier to bear. ‘I’ll take those cigarettes, too,’ he said, pointing at the soft pack of Camels on the passenger seat, next to the guy’s leather wallet. ‘You can keep the shades, though. I don’t need to look like a complete tool. That’s your department.’
‘Why would you want my car?’ was all the response the guy could muster, gaping at Ben in open-mouthed stupefaction.
‘Because my need is greater than yours, and because you’re not going to stop me,’ Ben said. ‘Now, it’s up to you how we do this. You can get out nicely, hand over the keys and promise not to report this to the boys in blue. Or we can do it less nicely. Which means you wake up some time tomorrow in the hospital and start the whole painful process of learning to walk again. What’s it to be?’
The guy goggled mutely at Ben for a couple more seconds before he decided to go for the non-hospital option.
‘Leave the wallet,’ Ben said. ‘Except for whatever cash is in it. That way I have your name and address, in case you forget the part about not calling the cops.’
The guy climbed shakily out of the car, and dropped the keys into Ben’s palm. Ben almost felt sorry for him, but not quite. ‘It’s just stuff,’ he said as he took his place behind the wheel.
Ben slid one of the Camels from the pack, lit it up with his Zippo and sucked hard on the smoke. It wasn’t a Gauloise, but you couldn’t have everything. Then he stabbed in the key, and fired up the engine with an exhaust blast that was only about half as loud as Austin Keller’s jet taking off at close quarters, and all but drowned out the scream of the tyres as the Lamborghini did a reverse powerslide out of the parking space. Ben slipped the stubby gearstick into first, punched the gas and the car took off like a spurred horse, leaving its owner standing desolate and on the brink of tears, still clutching the cash from his wallet.
Two hundred kilometres to cover. No time to do it in.
Ben clutched the tiny racing wheel and got ready for the wildest drive of his life.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Maxwell Grant had the box taken away by the same guard who’d brought it. ‘Now you understand,’ he told Catalina. ‘You really are completely on your own.’
She was still shuddering from the horror of what she’d seen, and her stomach was cramping so badly she had to clutch at it. It was all she could do not to vomit. ‘I should have killed you,’ she whispered.
‘Life is full of missed opportunities,’ Grant replied with a smile. ‘You had your chance. Fluffed it.’
‘Don’t start feeling too safe. If I don’t come back, my brother won’t rest until you get what’s coming.’
‘I’m well aware of Raul’s fiery temperament,’ Grant said. ‘It seems to run in the family, doesn’t it? It would have been so much easier for him if he’d simply accepted that his sister had committed suicide, as your parents and everyone else did. He could just have gone on living the same simple schoolteacher’s life in that peaceful little town. Married a nice girl and raised a family, and lived to a ripe old age.’
Catalina stared at him with a boiling hatred she’d never thought herself capable of.
‘You look at me as if I were the villain here,’ Grant said, spreading his hands in earnestness. ‘If we believed for a second your brother could be reasoned with, don’t you think we’d do anything we possibly could to avert further grief to your family? Reckless behaviour like his just forces our hand. He’s brought it all on himself. For heaven’s sake, I’m running
a business here. I can’t have a wild man running loose and bringing on board mercenaries to decimate my employees.’
It took Catalina a moment to realise who Grant was referring to. ‘Ben isn’t a mercenary. He’s Raul’s friend.’
‘Then God help Raul. Men like this Hope don’t have friends. They’re loyal only to the highest bidder. All it would take to turn him against your beloved brother would be a pocketful of money. And money’s something we have no shortage of.’
‘You don’t know him,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘Actually, I think we have a rather better idea than you do. We know all there is to know about your Major Benedict Hope. And if you knew even half of the bloody little exploits he was involved in during his time on the dark side of Special Forces, things so ugly that the records don’t even officially exist, then believe me, you’d be more afraid of him than you are of us. He’s the kind of killer who gives killers a bad name.’
‘Then you should be afraid too,’ she said.
‘Though, strangely, I’m not,’ Grant replied. He looked at his watch. ‘Now, as much as I’m enjoying your company, I have some calls to make before our visitor arrives. He’ll be here in less than an hour. In the meantime, my men will show you to a guest room, where you can freshen up and prepare yourself for your journey later.’
The nonchalant way he said it chilled her through. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘It’s a surprise.’
The guards escorted Catalina through the sumptuous villa and up a marble staircase to a first-floor bedroom, where they pushed her inside and locked the door. Peeping through the keyhole, she could see one of them standing sentry outside. Moments later, a second stationed himself below the window, armed with a black rifle-like weapon and cutting off any chance she might have had of climbing down the ivied wall and escaping over the lawns.
Feeling hollow and too utterly exhausted even to cry, Catalina went into the adjoining ensuite bathroom and washed the blood from her wounded hand. A first aid kit had been left out for her, with the bandages pre-cut into strips and the scissors removed. She could see nothing else that might work as an improvised weapon. Not unless she smashed the mirror and turned a piece of broken glass into a knife. In which case, the best thing to do with it might just be to cut her own throat.