‘Shotgun,’ Ben called out to Jeff. An instant later, the weapon slid along the ground to within two feet of his reach. He stretched out a hand, then jerked it back as bullets ripped up the dirt. One of them whacked into the shotgun’s stock, splinters flying.
He said a prayer and then threw himself out into the open. Hit the ground with his chest, and the pain seared through him again. His fingers closed on the shotgun and he snatched it up as he rolled out of the way of another spray of bullets that chewed up the spot where he’d been a millisecond earlier. He fired as he moved. Forty yards or so was a long shot for a double-barrelled shotgun, but he saw the window of the Mini vaporise into a cloud of glass fragments and one of the shooters spin away with a shout. Ben rolled again, let off the second barrel upside down on his back.
The Mini exploded violently with a deafening ‘BLAM’, its back end kicking upwards with the force as the steel shot pellets ripped into its fuel tank and sparks ignited the petrol. An orange fireball blasted out of the barn, bits of torn planking tumbled across the yard. The blast caught one of the shooters and just about tore him in half before he was lost in the thick black smoke that belched from the blazing car. The other was on fire as he came staggering out into the open. He dropped his weapon, went down on his knees and collapsed and started thrashing about desperately to put out the flames that were licking up his legs.
Ben scrambled to his feet and sprinted across the yard to the fallen man. Able to see him clearly for the first time, he noticed the secondary weapon the assassin was carrying strapped to his back – a high-performance crossbow with a mounted quiver full of murderous razor-tipped bolts.
Jeff got there a second later, and stared at Ben with an expression that said ‘Why are you alive?’ Ben reached into his breast pocket and showed him. The Zippo lighter was dented in the middle, squashed almost flat from the impact of the bullet. Jeff grinned.
Ben started stamping out the flames that were licking around the intruder’s clothing.
‘Let the bastard burn,’ Jeff said.
‘I want to talk to him.’ Ben kicked a few more times, rolling the man over to quell the flames. He tore away the crossbow and looped its strap over his own shoulder, then pulled off the guy’s smouldering combat vest and tossed it away. He started searching him roughly, not caring how much he hurt him in the process.
In a pouch on his belt he found a digital Nikon. He activated the camera and quickly found what he was looking for. An image came up on the screen. It was him and Ruth as they’d sat in the ruined church in the woods talking. He touched a button and saw another shot of the two of them walking back to the house. Now he understood what Storm had been growling for back there. The intruders had been casing the place before the attack, hiding in the woods.
He tossed the camera away and rifled again through the guy’s belt pouch. The only other items in it were a phone and two photographs. One shot of himself, lifted from the Le Val website, and one of a slightly younger Ruth with a smile and long hair.
‘So you came here to kill the two of us,’ he said. The man’s eyes looked up at him through the slots in the ski mask.
Brooke ran past them towards the barn, carrying a fire extinguisher to kill the blaze before it took over the whole building. She waded in through the smoke, dousing the flames with foam. The Mini stopped burning, thick foam dripping from blackened metal. Then, as Ben was about to start questioning the prisoner, she let out a cry of horror and threw down the extinguisher. She’d seen something in the barn. Ruth ran over and saw it too, putting her hands to her mouth.
‘The dogs. They’ve shot the dogs.’
Ben ran over and felt sick at the sight. Four German Shepherds were piled in a lifeless heap in the corner of the barn, their bloodied bodies pierced through with crossbow bolts. Lying slumped over the top of the pile was Storm. Drops of blood plopped from the aluminium shaft that was protruding from his shoulder, splashing down into the red pool on the concrete floor.
Ben could hear Ruth sobbing behind him as he put his hand on the dog’s body. Just the tiniest flicker of movement. He checked the animal’s pulse. It was there, but it was weak. Storm’s eyes half-opened and looked right into his, as if he were saying ‘Don’t worry about me.’ He tried to raise his shaggy head, but the effort was too much. He licked Ben’s hand, then his eyes closed and he fell unconscious.
‘Will he make it?’ Brooke asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Ben turned and walked back towards the prisoner. Crouched down beside him and whipped off his mask. ‘You speak English?’ he asked him quietly.
The man nodded, squinting up with his teeth bared and his eyes glazed over with pain.
‘Who sent you?’ Ben asked. He spoke quietly, calmly. The rage was turning from hot red to a steady, controlled white.
No response.
‘Ever been on a farm before?’ Ben asked him.
Another nod, confused this time.
‘Then maybe you’ve seen those machines they use to shred up sawn branches? Big whirring blades, chew through anything?’
The guy just stared. His eyes bulged. Sweat was pouring down his face.
‘I have one of those machines,’ Ben said to him. ‘Right over there in the toolshed. If you don’t tell me who sent you here I’m going to lower you slowly into it, feet first. You have three seconds to reply. One.’
‘Fuck you,’ the guy said through clenched, bloodied teeth.
‘Two.’
The look of defiance melted a little, but not that much. ‘I don’t know!’
‘You don’t think I mean it, do you? Three.’ Ben stood, grabbed the guy’s ankle and jerked his body round brutally and started dragging him across the ground towards the toolshed. The guy kicked and struggled, yelling ‘No! No!’
‘Fire her up, Jeff,’ Ben said. Jeff trotted ahead to the shed, yanked the tarp off the shredder, stooped down to prime the carburettor and then pulled the starter cord. The engine spluttered into life. As Ben was dragging the guy inside the toolshed, Jeff grabbed a coil of rope from a nail on the wall and flung one end over a beam. Ben took a fistful of the guy’s hair, jerked him into sitting position on the concrete floor and looped the other end of the rope roughly around his chest. The machine whirred away next to them, blades gnashing like teeth, ready to devour anything that was thrown into its rusty maw and spew it out in little chunks from the outlet pipe underneath. Ben tugged the end of the rope and it went taut across the beam. Pulled a little harder, and the guy was lifted a few inches off the floor. Then a few more.
That must have been when he realised they were absolutely serious about feeding him to the shredder. ‘OK! OK!’ he shouted in panic.
Ben let go of the rope and let him slump back down. He unslung the crossbow. Bracing it between his chest and the floor, he yanked the bowstring all the way back with a click. Felt like a hundred and fifty pounds of pull. That probably gave the bow a velocity of over three hundred feet per second. He fitted one of the razor-tipped bolts and pointed the ungainly rifle-like weapon at the guy’s face.
‘Talk,’ he said.
There was no hesitation now. The man spoke a single name. ‘Steiner.’
Ben felt his mouth go dry.
His finger hovered over the crossbow trigger.
‘Let me go now,’ the man pleaded. ‘I swear I’ll never come back here again. I’ll tell them you’re dead. You and the girl, the way it was meant to be.’
‘The girl in the photo. Steiner ordered her dead?’
The guy nodded. Ben looked in his eyes and believed him.
‘Just let me go. I swear.’
‘You shouldn’t have hurt my dogs,’ Ben said.
And fired the bow. The weapon recoiled in his arms as it launched the bolt with a thwack.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Rory looked up from the corner of his cell where he was sitting when he heard the tinkle of the key in the lock. When he saw it was Ivan, his fear ebbed away as quickly as it had mounted.
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This time Ivan had one of the guards with him, one of the most surly and taciturn ones, but said something to him that made him stay out in the corridor while he came into the cell and half-closed the door behind him.
‘I brought you something to read,’ Ivan whispered with a nervous glance behind him to make sure the guard couldn’t see. He reached into his jacket and brought out a tattered comic book.
Rory took it, grateful to have something to while away the hours with. He’d been here so long now, and the way day merged into night, he was losing all track of time and going slowly crazy. Ivan stood over him, smiling benevolently.
‘Something else for you,’ he murmured, handing the boy another chocolate bar.
Rory quickly hid the chocolate and the comic under his mattress, the way Ivan had told him to. Then he turned to the man, looking up at him with big, inquisitive eyes.
‘Do you know where my dad is?’ he asked him.
‘I have not been able to find out much,’ Ivan whispered. ‘That man Pelham—’
‘Shh.’
Rory spoke more quietly. ‘That man Pelham said he was coming.’
Ivan lowered his voice a notch further. ‘Pelham cannot be trusted,’ he said. ‘Don’t believe him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Rory whimpered. There were times when he felt near the edge of hysteria, and that mood had welled up inside him more and more readily since the torture. It was as though some vital part of his inner core had been ripped out, leaving him as fragile as a sickly kitten.
‘If Dad’s not coming,’ he sobbed, ‘why am I here? What do they want with us anyway? When am I going home?’ Tears streamed down his face.
Ivan laid a hand on his shoulder and looked earnestly into his eyes. ‘Do not be so scared. I promised I would take care of you. And I will.’
Rory sniffed and smeared the tears away with his grimy sleeve. ‘Are you in contact with the other special agents?’
Ivan looked back at the door, then nodded, smiled and put a finger to his lips. ‘When it is time,’ he whispered, barely audible, ‘I will give the signal and they will come for us.’
‘Can’t it be now?’
‘I still have work to do,’ Ivan said. ‘It’s not over. But soon.’ He cleared his throat, gesturing at the door. In his normal voice he said, ‘You are to come with me. Time for your shower.’
Rory jumped up. The trips to the shower block were the only times he got out of the cell. In a world so limited and confined as his new environment, even something as simple as walking a few hundred yards through the dingy corridors to stand on cracked ancient tiles and get doused with lukewarm water from a rusty tank was something to look forward to.
Out in the corridor, the guard followed them. Ivan’s hand was on Rory’s shoulder all the way to the shower block, and the boy felt a little more protected with him there. As long as that terrible woman didn’t come back to get him, he knew he could make it through this. He imagined how it would be when Ivan’s special agent colleagues came storming through the place, taking out the guards one by one. How they’d drag the woman out from hiding, and put a gun to her head and blow her away. How Rory would watch, and smile to see it happen. After what she’d done to him, that would serve the witch right.
Running the scene through his mind as they walked, he looked round and up at Ivan with a conspiratorial smile. Ivan winked and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
They reached the shower block. Ivan opened the creaky door that led through to the washroom. A row of rusty metal shower heads fixed to the ceiling corresponded with a row of floor drains. It was a pretty Spartan arrangement. Ivan muttered something to the guard, who went off on some errand. Then he got the water running for Rory, turned it up as lukewarm as it would go, and left to give him some privacy.
Rory stripped off his clothes, bundled them on the side and stepped under the water. There was a rough piece of old soap lying on the floor, and he used it to lather himself up.
Ivan stood for a few moments around the corner, listening to the patter of the water on the tiles. Then he peeked furtively out into the corridor. He’d sent Miklós looking for Boris, and he knew that Boris was off duty and had gone off with some of the others to the nearest town, twenty kilometres away, to get his fill of beer and whores. Which meant the stupid Miklós would spend ages scouring the place, and he had time on his own.
Ivan slipped into a small room off the shower block that was used as an office. Inside the room was a desk, heaped with papers.
But he ignored it. Walked quietly over to the wall. Hanging from a hook was an age-faded framed print of Adolf Hitler, posing in uniform with the Nazi flag behind him and, below, the slogan ‘EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FÜHRER’ in gothic script.
He raised a trembling hand to the picture. Lifted the edge of the frame away from the wall.
A smile crept over his face and his heart began to beat faster.
He moved his eye to the peephole through to the shower block.
He watched as the naked boy soaped his smooth, young body. First the upper half. Then the lower half.
Ivan groaned softly to himself and started unzipping his trousers.
Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the mountain, inside the chamber behind the vault door, Adam felt the rising panic of desperation as he faced the task he’d been set.
‘I don’t think—’ His words died in his mouth. He laid his hand on the cold metal shell of Kammler’s machine.
Pelham was leaning against the wall a few feet away, watching him. They’d been there for hours.
‘What don’t you think?’ he said calmly.
‘I’m not so sure I can get this thing to work,’ Adam groaned. ‘I just don’t get it. It’s just… it’s mind-boggling.’
Pelham pointed at the makeshift worktop that had been set up against the wall, and the laptop onto which they’d loaded the research files retrieved from Teach na Loch.
‘You told me that once you had your notes, you’d be able to make it work. It’s cost me a lot of trouble getting them for you.’
‘I know what I said,’ Adam said, fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘But this goes way beyond anything I ever imagined. My notes are useless.’
‘You’re playing for high stakes, Adam. It would be wise not to forget that.’
‘You think I’ve forgotten? I’m doing my best, goddamnit.’ Adam glared at him, then looked back at the machine. It sat there silent, mysterious, unyielding, on its concrete plinth in the middle of the vault. The cold, smooth black metal shell gleamed dully in the lights. It seemed to him that the thing was taunting him, deliberately holding back the dark, terrible, wonderful secrets that were contained inside. Secrets that, he was beginning to fear, its inventor might have taken to his grave. The thought made him want to retch. He lashed out his foot at the bell-like casing.
Pelham peeled himself away from the wall and walked up to him with his hands in his trouser pockets. Adam could see the shoulder holster under his suede jacket, and the butt of the pistol he carried inside.
‘Then your best will just have to be better,’ he said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ben and Jeff leaped in the Land Rover and went skidding down the drive. They found Raymond and Claude unconscious, trussed up in the security hut near the main entrance to Le Val with tranquilliser darts in them. There was no sign of Jean-Yves, until they found the man bundled in the bushes two hundred yards away along the perimeter. All three men were unharmed apart from the effects of the powerful dope that the intruders had used to overpower them. Ben and Jeff loaded them into the Land Rover and carried them back to the house.
It took a few hours to clean up Le Val. Before anything else could be done, the bodies of the six intruders had to be disposed of. That was the easy part. In a sleepy rural area with a population of less than one person per acre of land, where the police very seldom needed to involve themselves in the locals’ affairs, barring the occasional theft of a goat or
a chicken, dead men could be made to disappear quickly, privately and permanently.
When that was done, it was time to start on the place itself. Jeff helped Ben to roll up the blood-soaked carpet and rug from the house, carry it downstairs and burn it. The bullet damage in the house and trainee block was going to have to wait.
The dogs were grimmer work. All but Storm were dead, and Ben buried them in the field behind the house while they waited anxiously for Drudi. The retired vet from Palermo was the kind of man who would ask no questions and keep his mouth shut. After he’d carefully removed the crossbow bolt from Storm, he gave his prognosis. No major organs had been affected. Storm had a long recovery ahead of him, but he was going to make it. Ben and Brooke carried the bandaged, heavily tranquillised German Shepherd into the kitchen and made him a bed out of blankets.
As they sat with him a while, Brooke unbuttoned Ben’s shirt to take a look at his chest. There was an ugly purple rectangle on his pectoral muscle where the shape of the Zippo had been imprinted into the flesh by the bullet’s impact. The bruise was going to be spectacular.
She held him tight, tearful and fragile now that the shock of that day’s events was beginning to set in.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispered against his shoulder. He rocked her gently in his arms, kissed her hair. He didn’t want to have to leave her, not now, not ever. But he knew he’d have to. He had unfinished business to take care of, and that meant a trip to Switzerland.
Ben and Ruth touched down at Bern airport first thing the next morning, and after a fast drive up through the mountains in a rental BMW they arrived at the gates of the Steiner residence. The uniformed security personnel on the gate recognised Ben, and there were some amazed glances at Ruth as they were quickly waved through into the estate.
‘So, what’s the plan?’ she asked as they drove on down the private road and the château came into view through the trees.
‘Straight in the front door,’ he replied. ‘Do what we have to do, then get out of here.’