‘You want to take a walk?’
* * *
The sun was shining brightly, just a whisper of a breeze stirring the treetops, as Ben took his sister into the forest that surrounded the Le Val facility. They barely spoke as they walked. He knew the paths through the woods better than anyone, better even than the wild boar and deer that had created many of them, and he led her deep into the woods towards the old ruined church. Storm trotted along behind Ben, keenly sniffing out the scents in the undergrowth.
They reached the ruin. Too much time had passed since his last visit to the place, and it was overgrown with wild-flowers now that summer was approaching its height. Ben pulled back a hanging curtain of ivy and led Ruth through the crumbling archway. He sat down on a mossy stone, and she settled in the long grass at his feet as Storm went scouting around the walls.
He couldn’t stop himself from staring at her. He was scared to blink in case she disappeared.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, half-smiling. ‘Us being here like this.’
He nodded in agreement. ‘Very weird. Can you talk about what happened to you?’ he asked cautiously. After years of the worst speculation, it was a terrifying question to ask.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about what’s done to the children the slavers take.’
‘I’ve seen the things that are done to them.’ He didn’t even want to think about it.
‘It didn’t happen to me,’ she said. ‘Nobody raped me. Nobody drugged me. Really. I’m OK.’
He breathed out a long, long sigh. Like letting out twenty-three years’ worth of pent-up pain. He said nothing for a few moments. Took a pack of Gauloises and his Zippo out of his pocket and offered her one.
‘I don’t smoke cigarettes,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me. You prefer the other stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘It settles my nerves. I don’t smoke it a lot though.’
Storm was scratching at the mossy earth at the foot of the wall, on the trail of a scent. Suddenly he stopped, stiffened, as if listening out for some imperceptible sound far beyond the range of human hearing. His shaggy hackles rose, and a long, low growl rumbled from his throat.
‘Go and lie down,’ Ben commanded softly. The dog glanced at him, then obeyed.
Ben lit a cigarette, clanged his lighter shut and dropped it back into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. ‘Do you remember the day you disappeared?’ he asked Ruth.
‘It was a long time ago. It’s like a dream.’
‘Start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’
She leaned back against the rough stone wall. ‘I remember being with them. The kidnappers. I remember being inside a car, or a truck. It’s not so clear any more. They took me across the desert, and we met up with these other men. Like a rendezvous, in a tent pitched out there in the sand seas, the middle of nowhere. There was money on the table. I think they were meeting up to sell me on, you know? But then they started arguing. A fight broke out. One of them had a sword.’ She chuckled. ‘It was probably just a knife, but I remember thinking how huge it looked. He took it out, and another man shot him. They were so busy fighting, nobody saw me slip away. I ran and ran. I was scrambling up and down all these dunes that went on forever. I remember how hot the sand was. It burned my hands and feet. But I kept going, because I was so scared they were going to catch me. But then I remember hearing this strange noise behind me, like a roaring. I turned and saw what looked like a giant wave coming towards me.’
‘A sandstorm,’ Ben said.
She nodded. ‘I just ran like hell. The roaring got louder and louder. Then I saw this old van, buried up to its wheels in the sand. God knows how long it had been left abandoned there, but it saved me. I managed to climb in the back before the storm hit. That’s all I remember for a long time.’
Ruth paused. ‘I woke up lying in a soft bed of blankets and skins. I was in a Bedouin tent. Faces looking down at me, of the people who’d found me after the storm. I was ill for weeks, from dehydration and shock. They tended me, nursed me and fed me, and then I just stayed with them.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘They were kind, wonderful people. They called me “Little Moon” in their language.’
‘Because of the scar?’
She pulled back her sleeve and ran her finger along the white crescent shape on her skin. ‘My little moon.’
‘How long did you stay with them?’
‘Three years, more or less. I don’t really know. We moved around, setting up camp here and there. They sold camels, skins, beads. Never in one place for long.’
He shook his head in amazement. ‘And all that time, we were searching frantically for you.’
‘I often thought about you. All of you, but especially you, Ben. I cried myself to sleep every night for the first year. But, you know, time passes.’
‘And children adapt,’ he said.
‘And so that’s how it was for me. My new life, my new family. But I guess that they knew they couldn’t keep me forever. A little white girl growing up among the desert people, someone would have noticed sooner or later. And someone did.’
‘The Steiners,’ he said.
‘I remember when I first met them. We’d travelled near an oasis to fill up with water. I was playing in the bushes with some of the other kids when this huge bus came along. The kids all ran over to it. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I ran over as well. At first we all thought it was a tourist bus, but then when we got up close, we realised it was just these two people and their driver. All tourists seemed like rich folks to us, but this was just incredible. They were giving out toys and money to the kids, and we were all going wild. I was so excited, I didn’t notice that my head garb had slipped down. That was when Silvia saw my hair, and my blue eyes. I remember her watching me, pointing me out to him.’
‘Maximilian.’
She pulled a face. ‘Prick. Then, anyway, next thing I knew, there was this whole discussion going on, and everyone was crying and saying I had to go. After that, everything changed for me. For the second time, I was taken from everything I’d known, my friends, my new family. Suddenly I’m on a plane to Europe, and then a helicopter and this amazing fairytale house, and I’m wearing these new clothes. It was winter there, and so cold. A whole different world. From a poor Bedouin urchin to this little twelve-year-old rich kid.’
‘So then Steiner adopted you,’ Ben said. ‘And he named you Luna, taken from your Bedouin name. Except that he must have cut a few corners and greased a few palms to make the adoption possible.’
‘Oh, he’s very good at that.’
‘So what should I call you? Are you Luna, or Ruth?’
‘Everyone’s always known me as Luna. I hardly remember what it’s like to be Ruth any more.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘But maybe I need to start learning to be her again. I’d like you to call me Ruth.’
At that moment, the dog got to his feet, his lip curling back to show his fangs. Another long, low growl. He was intently focused on something behind the trees.
‘Quiet,’ Ben called over to him. Storm let out a little whimper and lay back down.
‘What’s bothering him?’ she said, peering over towards the trees.
‘There’s probably a boar in there or something.’ There were more important things on Ben’s mind than whatever was preoccupying the dog. ‘Why did you think I was dead?’
‘I was brought up believing it. That’s what Maximilian told me. He said there’d been this whole investigation. That he’d used every bit of his influence to find my family, and that what had come out was that my parents and my brother had been killed. I was only a kid. What was I supposed to think? At the time, I just accepted the reality I was presented with.’
Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘Killed how?’
‘An air crash, in India. A small tourist plane smashed into a mountain. He showed me the press cuttings. I saw it clearly. It was all there. Alistair Hope, his wife Kathleen and their son Benedict. He couldn’
t have got that wrong, could he?’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t think there was any mistake.’ Rage was building inside him. Steiner’s wealth gave him the power to fake just about anything he wanted. But to deliberately fabricate a lie of this magnitude – why would he do such a thing?
‘I don’t understand,’ she muttered. ‘When I was seventeen I wanted to find out more about what had happened. Maybe I didn’t totally trust Maximilian, I don’t know. I hired a private investigator from Bern to trace information about you all. He came back to me with exactly the same stuff Maximilian had.’
Ben said nothing.
Realisation crossed her face like a passing shadow. ‘The bastard got to him. Paid him off. Shit. I should have thought of it. More lies.’ She shook her head.
‘The question is why,’ Ben said. ‘Why has Steiner pretended all these years?’
‘Are our parents still alive, Ben?’ she asked suddenly, excitement flaring for a brief moment.
He sighed. ‘No. He wasn’t lying about that. They’re dead. But it wasn’t a plane crash.’
‘What happened to them?’
It was hard to say it, but he told her the truth about their mother’s suicide and their father’s subsequent pining away. She paled as she listened, and buried her face in her hands.
‘I hate him,’ she said. ‘I hate that evil bastard. I’ll get him for what he’s done to us all.’
‘What about Silvia?’ he asked. ‘You think she was in on it too?’
Ruth shook her head vigorously. ‘He lies to her about everything. Even after all these years, he’s got her believing the sun shines out of his ass. She gave up everything for him, to live in that mausoleum. So, no, I don’t think she’s in on it. She’s a good person, not like him. I was close to her once. I wish I still could be. My cousin Otto, too. I miss them.’
‘What happened between you and Steiner?’
She shrugged. ‘I grew up, and he couldn’t deal with it. There was endless fighting. He wouldn’t let me breathe. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t have a horse, couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that. The more he tried to control me, the more I rebelled against him. Hanging out with people he disapproved of, smoking dope, getting involved in environmental causes, going on marches. He was probably afraid I’d cause a family scandal. In the end he gave me an ultimatum. Either toe the line or get out. I got out.’
‘From teen rebellion to kidnapping,’ Ben said. ‘That was a big step up.’
‘Yeah, well, you know why I took it. Because of the Kammler papers.’
‘You’re going to have to explain all this to me.’
Her lips curled into a dark, grim smile. ‘OK, but I can do better than just explain. I can show you. Have you got a computer?’
‘In the office.’
‘Let’s go. There are things you need to see. Then you’ll understand.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
They left the ruined church and started making their way back along the leafy path through the woods. There was a closeness between them now that hadn’t been there before, and it warmed him more than the June sun streaming through the trees.
‘How much do you know about science?’ she asked him as they walked slowly side by side.
‘Just what I’ve picked up here and there,’ he answered.
‘You never studied it, then?’
‘I studied theology, then war. Why?’
‘I studied science,’ she told him. ‘Physics. University of Geneva was where I took my first degree. When I graduated I went to Bonn for my PhD.’
He stared at her in surprise. ‘How does someone with a science doctorate end up selling pottery?’
‘Because I happen to give a shit about scientific integrity. Science is meant to be the pure pursuit of knowledge for the good of the planet and its occupants, you know? But of course that’s not the way it works. Like when a big telecommunications corporation uses bribes and threats to suppress studies that prove carcinogenic effects from mobile phone radiation. Or when astrophysics research projects get mysteriously shut down because someone inconveniently showed up major flaws in the Big Bang Theory. Little things like corruption and hypocrisy, I kind of have a problem with. I’d rather be helping Franz to sell his art than be part of that fucking machine. All it does is serve the establishment.’
‘You’re an idealist,’ he said.
‘Something wrong with that?’
‘Not at all. I’ve had the same problem all my life.’
‘Then you understand why I quit my career. But before that, it was my whole life. I was eighteen when I went away to Geneva. Maximilian hated me being away from home, but he was pleased I was following in his footsteps.’
‘How so?’
‘You didn’t know? Before he made all his money, way back, he trained in chemistry and physics. Was pretty talented at it, too. That’s what got him started in business – when he was a student he patented a heart drug that got taken up by a big pharmaceutical company and made him rich. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘off I went. I had everything money could buy. Maximilian bought me a luxury apartment in Geneva. I had a sports car, a fat allowance. Everything except freedom. He wouldn’t let me have friends or go to parties with the other students. He always seemed to know what I was doing, like he was having me followed. Insisted I always came straight home for vacations and couldn’t leave until term began again. That’s why I was there, the summer after the end of my first year, when I overheard the phone call.’
‘What phone call?’
‘Between him and his brother Karl. Not long before poor old Karl died. Shame, I liked him. Maximilian had been collecting antiquities for years by then, and he was telling his brother about these documents he’d found by chance at some auction.’
‘You mean the Kammler papers?’
She nodded. ‘Of course, back then I’d never heard of Kammler. But he was telling Karl what an amazing discovery it was. Amazing and worrying, and how he’d been sitting up nights reading the stuff, becoming obsessed with it. I could hear Karl’s voice on the speakerphone. He told Maximilian that if this stuff was even half true, he’d be out of business and that it was best to lock it away and not let anyone else see it. He was kind of joking, but I could tell that Maximilian was taking it really seriously. He was scared.’
‘I don’t understand. What was it about the Kammler documents that was spooking him so badly?’
They’d reached the office. Storm left them to go sniffing round the buildings, and Ben led Ruth inside.
‘That’s what I’m going to show you,’ she replied. ‘And it’s going to blow your mind.’
‘I’ve heard that before,’ he said, thinking of Lenny Salt.
‘Just wait and see.’
Ben fired up the laptop on his desk. As it whirred into action, he ran his eye over the pile of mail that was stacked up beside it. He was about to sweep the whole lot aside when he noticed the official Steiner logo on the envelope.
‘That looks familiar,’ Ruth said.
Ben tore it open, remembering the letter that Dorenkamp had mentioned. It was from Steiner’s lawyer. An invoice for forty thousand euros in respect of damages incurred to property during Ben’s brief period of employment. The letter finished tartly by warning that ‘If the outstanding sum is not paid promptly within fourteen days, there will be further legal action and possible criminal charges.’
He tossed it down on the desk. Ruth read it and whistled. ‘Even at my worst, I only managed to smash a few of his windows. What the hell did you do?’
‘I had an argument with a smoke alarm. Now let’s see what you have to show me.’
‘Get ready,’ she said. ‘When you see this, everything you thought you knew about the modern world is going to change.’ She sat in the swivel chair and he watched over her shoulder as her fingers rattled over the keys. She quickly entered a website URL and a box flashed up on the screen asking for a password. She rattled the keys again and hit ENTER, and
the site opened up. Its design was basic, homemade, and Ben realised right away that its only function was as a repository for data files, secure storage for large amounts of information that could be accessed only by a chosen few.
‘This is access only,’ she said. ‘Not open to the public. Rudi created it, and we uploaded all our research stuff onto it. I’ve never shown it to anyone on the outside.’ She scrolled down an index of files, all with coded names that made no sense to Ben. ‘You’re a big boy,’ she said, selecting one and clicking on it. ‘I think you can handle it if I throw you right in at the deep end.’
As Ben watched, a video file loaded up onscreen and then began to play. The video seemed to have been filmed in some kind of warehouse. Bare brick walls, concrete floor.
‘You’re looking at a storage facility on the edge of Frankfurt,’ Ruth explained. ‘We hired it cheap, no questions.’
‘Who’s filming this?’
‘I’m holding the camera. Franz was there too, operating the gear. A few other guys, too. All witnesses to what happened there.’
‘Franz, the potter?’
‘He wasn’t always a potter. He was my colleague at Frankfurt University, where we were both teaching applied physics at the time this was filmed.’
As Ben watched, the camera panned slowly across a massive bank of equipment that looked as if someone had salvaged it from a 1950s military base or the set of some antiquated science-fiction movie. Lights flashed, the display of an oscilloscope glowed green, the needles on gauges pulsed up and down. Banks of diodes and buttons and dials, wires trailing everywhere. The equipment was emitting an electrical hum. The camera panned across to reveal more of the warehouse, and more equipment wired together across twenty yards of the concrete floor.
‘This was all stuff we bought as junk, borrowed or stole wherever we could and rigged up ourselves,’ Ruth explained. ‘There’s a Van de Graaff generator, a bunch of tuning capacitors, and that thing there that looks like a giant dumbbell is a Tesla coil. Nothing fancy or expensive. That’s the beauty of it.’
Ben didn’t reply, watching without comprehension of what he was seeing. In an empty space a few metres from the machinery were two large items that could only be described as scrap metal. One was a huge rusting cast-iron hulk of an old mangle that looked as though it had been dragged out of a river and probably weighed over seventy kilos. Next to it was a truck axle and differential, complete with double wheels. Beside the axle lay a small dark object that Ben couldn’t make out at first, then realised was a plain black baseball cap.