The Martyr’s Curse (Ben Hope, Book 11)

  ‘I’m sure there’s a more environmentally friendly way to dispose of those,’ Silvie said.

  Ben just grunted. He picked up the fifth phone and was about to send it hurtling along the same destructive parabola as the others, when it started to ring shrilly in his fist. He stared at it, wondering who the hell could be calling.

  ‘Should we answer it?’ Silvie said.

  Ben hesitated. It was just some cop’s phone. Could be the guy’s wife calling, to remind him to pick up groceries on the way home from work, or to tell him the washing machine had started leaking, or the cat was sick again. Then again, it could be someone who knew he had the phone now. Someone in the loop. With something specific and important to say.

  Ben hit the reply button and pressed the phone to his ear, waited for the caller to speak. He wasn’t too surprised when he heard who was at the other end.

  ‘We can’t go on like this,’ Luc Simon’s voice said in his ear. He sounded harried and demoralised, as if he’d just received news of what had happened back there at the railway line.

  ‘I can,’ Ben said. ‘For as long as it takes. If a hundred more of your goons have to end up stripped to their undies for Joe Public’s entertainment, then that’s what’ll happen.’

  ‘You’re a loose cannon, Ben. I have a serious job to do, and you’re not making it any easier. It’s distracting my people from the main issue at hand and diverting resources that could be far better used elsewhere.’

  ‘I could say the same,’ Ben said. ‘Last thing I needed was your Keystone Cops getting under my feet.’

  ‘Then we agree that it has to end, for everyone’s sake. Before this gets ugly.’

  ‘I didn’t hurt anyone,’ Ben said. ‘I hope you appreciate that.’

  ‘But someone will get hurt. It’s only a question of time. Help me stop this thing now, while it’s still possible.’

  ‘Are we negotiating?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’m open to reasonable suggestions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, for a start, such as you agreeing to abandon this reckless course and releasing Agent Valois into the hands of the authorities. In return for which, I’ll agree to hold the dogs off as long as I possibly can. Give you time to disappear.’

  ‘Like a sporting chance? Close your eyes and count to ten to give me a head start?’

  ‘A count of ten would be more than a man like you needs.’

  ‘I thought I could run but I couldn’t hide? I thought the long arm of the law would reach out and scoop me up, wherever I went?’

  Luc Simon chuckled. ‘Well, you know how it is. That kind of talk usually intimidates people into giving themselves up. You can’t blame me for trying.’

  ‘Problem is,’ Ben said, ‘running and hiding isn’t my thing. And I have a job to take care of.’

  ‘Then let’s deal,’ Simon replied. ‘We have a common objective. We both want Streicher. I know we have different approaches to achieving that goal. I want to see him brought to justice through the official channels and locked away for a very, very long time. You have something … shall we say … more permanent in mind.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Ben said.

  ‘But maybe we can worry about the details later. Leave our differences aside for now. In the meantime, we can work together. Call a truce. Pool our resources and our skills, instead of pitting them against each other.’

  ‘Which would naturally involve me giving myself up at the nearest police station and cooling my heels in a cell until the government boys come for me.’

  ‘Inevitably, that would have to be the first step.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like much of a deal so far,’ Ben said. ‘And then what?’

  ‘Arrangements could be made. Unofficially speaking. Wouldn’t you rather be an accredited law-enforcement official than a fugitive?’

  Ben smiled and shook his head. ‘What are you trying to say, Luc? You want to pin a tin star on me? Deputise me, like in the Wild West?’

  ‘There are ways and means,’ Simon said. ‘I have more influence than you perhaps realise.’

  ‘You still haven’t even told me what Streicher means to you people. Must be something pretty big, to be kept from DGSI undercover agents. What did he do … snatch a compromising photo of the French President snorting lines of coke with a couple of prostitutes?’

  ‘You’ll be fully briefed once you’re on board. We can come up with a suitably euphemistic title for you. Advisory Consultant, or something.’

  ‘I don’t do advisory.’

  ‘All right, then we could work out a better compromise.’

  ‘I don’t do much of that either,’ Ben said. ‘And the fact of the matter is, Luc, I don’t really give a damn what Streicher’s done that’s such a big deal to you people. I know what he’s done to my friends, and that’s enough for me.’

  Simon sighed. ‘Play the game, my friend. There are checks and balances. There are rules. Even you have to respect those.’

  ‘I have my own rules,’ Ben said. ‘You want co-operation from me? Then call off the heat and leave me alone to get on with this, my way. Carte blanche. No comebacks.’

  ‘So I just sit back and give you free rein to devastate half of Europe, is that the idea?’

  ‘Who said anything about half?’ Ben said. ‘Maybe just a third.’

  ‘You’re crazy. No chance.’

  ‘Then no deal,’ Ben said, and threw the phone. It flew up high in an arc and dropped and hit the road and smashed apart.

  ‘That’s one way to end a conversation,’ Silvie said.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Ben said, and slammed the RCZ into gear.

  The road kept winding ever downwards, until they reached a small village filled with the kind of Alpine chalets that appear on postcards. ‘Next right,’ Silvie said, pointing. ‘There’s a bus.’

  The silver tour coach was pulled up at a stop, its big diesel idling, indicator flashing. The name of a Swiss travel company emblazoned on its side. Ben parked behind it, killed the engine, and they climbed out of the car.

  ‘You think it might be travelling our way?’ Silvie said.

  ‘We don’t have much choice in any case,’ he replied. He took off his leather jacket, stuffed it in his bag and put on the Italian silk one in its place. It was tailored for a scrawnier frame and too tight around the shoulders, as well as a bad clash with the cap he was wearing. But he was more concerned about disguising himself than about scoring fashion points. He discreetly stuffed the FAMAS into the holdall, zipped it up, and the two of them made a run for the coach before it pulled away from the stop.

  ‘Heading over the border?’ Ben asked the driver.

  ‘All the way up to Lausanne,’ the driver replied with a beaming smile. ‘Due in at eight o’clock this evening.’

  ‘Got room for two more?’

  ‘Plenty. Hop aboard.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The coach finally rumbled into the main bus station in Lausanne just after eight o’clock that evening. Ben and Silvie kept their heads down and waited for the rest of the passengers to disembark before grabbing their bags and following in their wake.

  Lausanne looked like a hillier version of Paris, without the grime. ‘First priority is some walking-around money,’ Ben said as they stepped out into the neat, clean streets. Their stacks of euros were useless in Switzerland, but in the nation of banks it wasn’t long before they found a Bureau de Change still open, where they exchanged a fat wad of Rollo’s greasy, well-thumbed and disreputable-looking cash for a bundle of crisp Swiss francs that looked and smelled as if they’d been printed that morning. From the change office they walked to a nearby taxi stand and bundled their gear into the first one in the line, which was a green and black Mercedes estate. One day, Ben thought, he was going to get a ride in a taxi in Europe that wasn’t a Mercedes Benz.

  ‘Where to?’ the driver asked, eyeing them in the mirror.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Silvie said. Both Ben and t
he driver looked at her in surprise. ‘It’s not like I could just wander freely about,’ she explained to Ben. ‘I was the newbie. I was on a tight leash. I don’t know the house number, not even the street name.’

  ‘You drove from there.’

  ‘Breslin drove. In the dark.’ Turning to the driver, she said, ‘Can you take us to the cathedral, please?’

  ‘Why the cathedral?’ Ben asked her as the car took off.

  ‘I could see the tips of the spires from the window,’ she said. ‘The place is probably no more than a kilometre or so away from there, as the crow flies. I’ll know it when I see it, trust me.’

  A quick mental calculation told Ben that the house could be anywhere within a circle six kilometres around the cathedral. Given a rough population density of around three thousand people per square kilometre, the circle would encompass the homes of about nine thousand citizens. Say four thousand properties. He could only hope she’d pinpoint the safe house more precisely when they got there.

  As twelfth-century Gothic cathedrals went, Ben thought that Lausanne’s was a disappointment. Perched on a hillside overlooking part of the city, it was bland and half-draped in scaffolding and plastic and surrounded by anodyne, uninspiring buildings. A little too sterile for his taste. A little too Swiss. It was no Notre-Dame de Paris, that was certain. But if he was looking to be impressed, it was more by Silvie’s orienteering skills. ‘Well?’ he asked as the taxi pulled up in the Place de la Cathédrale. The driver was watching expectantly in the mirror.

  ‘Hold on,’ she said, getting out of the car. She set off down the curving slope of the road, peering to left and right.

  The driver was drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel and looking as if he was about to start whining about being kept waiting. ‘How much do you earn on a good day?’ Ben asked him. The answer sounded like a lot of money. The guy must either hustle hard for at least twelve straight hours or he was lying outright, but Ben didn’t hesitate to reel the notes off his crisp wad of Swiss francs, wave them at the guy in the mirror and pass half of them over. ‘The rest when we’re done, okay? Now wait there.’

  He climbed out and followed Silvie down the hill. A panoramic slice of the city of Lausanne, about seventy degrees wide, was visible from their high vantage point. Hundreds of rooftops crammed together, thousands of windows, a packed huddle of sloping angles and chimneys and towers and tall yellow cranes and little churches and tiny cobbled squares. A road bridge cut across the foreground, signposted Pont Bessières. Silvie waited for a gap in the traffic and ran across to the other side.

  Ben followed. She’d reached the iron railing and was leaning against it, scanning slowly left to right, scrutinising the view through narrowed eyes, trying to get her bearings. The look of uncertainty on her face disappeared and she pressed her lips together, nodding. ‘Down there,’ she said, pointing. ‘That’s it.’

  Ben wasn’t sure which of a hundred clustered old houses she could be pointing at, but he had to trust her judgement. He looked back over his shoulder, measuring the line of sight and estimating that the tops of the white cathedral spires should just about be visible from the distant windows. ‘Our guy will know the way,’ he said.

  Which their guy did, now entirely happier with the situation and looking forward to collecting the second half of his easy money. They drove over Pont Bessières, crossing the city in a sweeping clockwise quarter-circle that would eventually carry them round to the district Silvie had pointed out. The taxi sped down streets and boulevards, past upmarket cafés and restaurants and Persian rug merchants and jewellers and fashion boutiques. Big, ostentatious names like Yves St Laurent and Louis Vuitton and Chanel and Rolex flashed up all over the place, but most buildings they saw seemed to be banks. It appeared as if the city council had organised death squads to patrol the streets and shoot litter droppers and graffiti artists on sight. Too sanitised. Too damn Swiss. Now and then they caught glimpses of Lake Geneva through the gaps between buildings, as big as an ocean, glittering in the evening sunshine.

  Away from the centre, the taxi took them deep into a web of narrower streets where tall old-fashioned shuttered buildings loomed close together on either side. Silvie perched in the middle of the rear seat, leaning forward through the gap between the front seats and directing the driver left, right, left again. Finally she said, ‘Here it is. This is the street. The house is down there, just around the next bend.’

  They got the driver to stop eighty yards short of the place. ‘We might be a while here,’ Ben told him. ‘Maybe an hour, maybe more, maybe less. You sit tight.’

  The driver had no problems with that. He had his radio, his cigarettes and a paper to read. Ben said nothing about the possibility of the quiet street erupting into a violent firefight sometime in the next few minutes. He could only hope the guy wouldn’t just scram at the first sign of trouble.

  Ben lifted the green bag out of the back of the Mercedes while Silvie handled the holdall. They exchanged nods and started walking down the street. He looked at her. He could see the edginess in her step and in her face and knew her heart was thumping fast, but she was doing a fine job of containing it.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being on my side.’

  She smiled. ‘Just being a good little hostage.’

  ‘Best I’ve ever had,’ he said.

  ‘Then you’re still glad you didn’t have to shoot me?’

  ‘You don’t have to come in,’ he said. ‘Things could get hairy in there.’

  ‘That’s the whole point of having someone on your side, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Ben took out a Gauloise and his Zippo, and lit up. The evening gloom was slowly beginning to fall, lights coming on one by one in the windows of the neighbouring houses. The street was empty. No traffic. Streicher’s safe house was sixty metres on, all in darkness. Which could have been as much of a strategic precaution as a sign that the place was empty. If they ventured much closer to the front entrance, they risked being easily spotted by anyone lurking behind those unlit windows.

  ‘What are your thoughts on how we do this?’ she asked.

  ‘We get as close as we can without being seen,’ Ben said. ‘Then we find a way in and kill everyone who tries to stop us. With any luck, then we get to Streicher. Then we kill him too.’

  ‘That simple,’ she said.

  ‘Probably not,’ he replied. ‘What are yours?’

  ‘I don’t know. Seems quiet,’ she said. ‘Aside from Breslin’s Nissan there’s usually at least one vehicle parked outside, more often two or three. One of the black Range Rovers we used to cross the border, or the white BMW with the dented right wing. That one’s Torben Roth’s. But I can’t see anything. Maybe they’re parked around the back.’

  ‘You can get around the back?’ Ben said.

  She nodded, pointed to a gap between the buildings, forty yards down on the left. ‘Through that alleyway.’

  ‘That’s our way in,’ Ben said.

  The bare-brick alley was one place the anti-graffiti death-squad patrols obviously hadn’t inspected. It was just wide enough for a single car to squeeze down, until it opened up into a distinctly un-Swiss no-man’s-land with tufted weeds, litter and building rubble and a row of big-wheeled garbage bins. A rickety fence ran along the back yards of the houses.

  ‘No vehicles,’ she observed.

  ‘Doesn’t make the place empty,’ Ben said. ‘Not with that many of them living there.’ He motioned to Silvie to dump the holdall. He dropped the green bag to the ground next to it and crouched down. Unzipped the holdall and lifted out the FAMAS rifle and Omar’s Kalashnikov AK-47. ‘Can you handle one of these?’ he asked her.

  ‘Like a violin,’ she said, taking the AK-47 from him. He watched her slim, small hands flit smoothly over the controls, extending the folding stock into place, dropping out the curved magazine to check it, snicking it cleanly back into the receiver, racking in a round, flicking o
n the safety.

  ‘You know how to sweep a house out?’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Think I haven’t been on raid duty before?’ Her breathing was coming slightly faster as the pre-operational adrenalin kicked in. He tossed her one of the Glocks from the green bag, and she caught it and stuffed it into her jeans waistband, behind the right hip. Ben took one for himself, as a backup to supplement the Browning Hi-Power that was already nestling under his belt. Finally, he switched the part-used magazine of the FAMAS for a fully loaded one, clicked it firmly home with a slap of his palm and cocked the bolt. They were as tooled up as they could reasonably be. Four weapons, eighty-six rounds of ammunition between them.

  He flicked away his cigarette stub. ‘Last chance to change your mind.’

  ‘Get fucked,’ she said, and grinned at him.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  They broke in through the back door. Ben felt the flimsy lock give under the pressure of his shoulder. He stood back with the rifle shouldered, safety off, and counted one – two – three. No alarm or sudden yelling voices from inside. No twelve-gauge shotgun blast from the hallway. Nothing. He kicked the door open wider and marched into the murky hallway with Silvie one step behind.

  It was one of those townhouses that are narrow from side to side, but deceptively deep and tall, on three floors with a converted attic at the top. They swept through the ground floor first, turning on lights as they went, covering each other at every entrance. Back hall, living room, dining room, kitchen, utility room, front hall, a downstairs shower room with cracked tiling and a dripping tap. The place felt cold and empty. There was no smell of cooking in the kitchen, no crockery or cutlery lying about, no lingering coffee aroma in the air, none of the subtle effects of human presence that Ben’s sharp instincts had been trained to detect. But those same instincts told him never to trust an empty house until he’d covered every square inch.