The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (121 page)

The rest of their bodies were scattered about the room. It was hard to tell which bits belonged to whom. An arm here, a leg there. The place resembled an abattoir. It was like the picture of Linda Downey. Even worse.

Ben fought back a gag reflex. ‘Zara—’ he said out loud.

That was when he heard quiet footsteps behind him, and turned. A figure was standing in the passage behind him, silhouetted against the pale square of light shining through the dappled glass of the front door window.

The figure stepped closer.

‘Hello, Benedict,’ Harry Paxton said. Only the blunt, black shape of the 9mm SIG Pro in his hand made him appear anything less than welcoming. It was trained on Ben’s heart.

‘What have you done with Zara?’ Ben asked.

‘You mean my dear, faithful wife?’ Paxton replied.

‘If you’ve hurt her—’

‘What? You’ll kill me? I really don’t think so.’

‘Believe it,’ Ben said.

Paxton chuckled. ‘She’s alive. For the moment, at least.’

‘I want to see her.’

‘She’s not far away,’ Paxton said. He snapped his fingers. Ben heard a door click open behind him in the room, and wheeled around. Across the room, on the other side of the grisly row of heads, a man appeared in the doorway from which Zara had emerged the day before.

She was there with him. A fillet knife was pressed to her throat and there was a strip of silver packing tape across her mouth. Her eyes were huge with terror.

Ben stared at the man holding her. He’d seen him before.

‘This is Berg,’ Paxton said. ‘He’s an associate of mine.’

It was Thierry, the launch pilot who’d ferried Ben and Kim Valentine to and from Porto Vecchio in San Remo. Ben watched him, and all he could see in his face was that placid, stony blankness that comes with mindless cruelty.

‘See?’ Paxton said to Zara. ‘I told you he’d come. He is in love with you, after all.’ He turned back to Ben. ‘You don’t think I knew about agent Valentine and her friends from the beginning? And little Miss Loyalty here, arranging for them to spy on me? Oh, yes. I knew all about it. I only had to fit a GPS tracker to my
intrepid wife, while she was off pretending to visit her sick friend. She led me straight to them.’

‘You’re dead,’ Ben said. ‘No question about it. You’ve just dug your own grave and you’re standing right on the edge of it.’

‘Don’t overreach yourself, Major. Remember who you’re dealing with. There isn’t a single trick in your book that I didn’t write there for you. And remember that it’s thanks to me that you’re still alive.’

‘May 14th, 1997,’ Ben said. ‘Who are you kidding?’

‘Sparing a life is as good as saving one, Benedict. Remember waking up in the hospital that time? Me sitting by your bedside? I was all ready to smother you with your pillow if you’d recalled anything that happened. So you really do owe me your life, whatever might have happened that day.’

Ben could hardly find the words. ‘Why did you do it, Harry? How could you? They were your unit.’

Paxton shrugged. ‘Smith had his suspicions about me. I did what I had to do, before he went and told anyone. I had to protect my business. You’d have done the same. It’s called survival.’

‘Your business. You mean selling death.’

‘I cater to the demands of my clients, that’s all. What they do with my products is what humans have been doing from the dawn of history. That’s just the way things are, and always have been. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”’

‘Plato,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t try to glorify what you do by quoting classical philosophy. You’re just a cheap gun runner.’

‘Don’t be naïve. If it’s not my guns being used to kill people, it’ll be someone else’s.’

‘There’s a saying, Harry.
You are what you do.’

‘I’m a necessary evil.’

‘But evil just the same.’

‘You’re the last man I’ll take a lecture in morality from,’ Paxton said. ‘There’s no blood on your hands? You think you were in a different business? And you were one of the best at it. But I think you know that.’

‘I left, Harry. I don’t fight dirty wars for corrupt men any more. I got out of it, but you went in even deeper. That’s the difference between you and me.’

‘We’re not as different as you like to pretend,’ Paxton said. ‘That’s why there isn’t a man better suited to do a job for me.’

‘I did the job. It’s over.’

‘It’s not over. I have another for you, and this time you’re going to do it exactly the way I want.’

Ben made no reply.

Paxton smiled. ‘That’s right. You’re going back to Egypt. You’re going to find Morgan’s treasure for me.’ He laughed at the look on Ben’s face. ‘Yes, of course I knew what he was into. Do you really think I sent you all the way to Cairo to avenge my dear son’s death? Maybe I would have, if he’d been my own flesh and blood. But I’m afraid he was just one of Helen’s little dalliances. I don’t like people who betray me.’

The meaning of his words took a second or two to sink into Ben’s mind. ‘You killed her,’ he said quietly. ‘You killed your own wife.’

Paxton smiled a thin smile, and nodded. ‘The same week I found out that all those years, she’d been cheating on me. I made it look like a heart attack. Massive adrenaline overdose. She went out like a light.’ He grinned. ‘And I was going to slaughter her bastard, too. I should have known he was no son of mine. I couldn’t bear to be near him any more. I was just biding my time, waiting for the right moment to rid myself of him. He was all set to have one drink too many on board the yacht and fall into the sea. A tragic accident. But then he told me about this thing he’d stumbled on, something that could be worth a lot of money. That was the only thing that was keeping him alive. You think it hurt me when he was killed? I just didn’t want to lose the treasure.’

‘So you decided to set me up,’ Ben said. ‘If I’d killed those two junkies for you, you were going to try to blackmail me with it, get me to go after the money.’

‘It wasn’t a perfect plan, I admit,’ Paxton replied. ‘When you foiled it by doing things your own way, I quickly realised that I was going to have to find another way to persuade you to work for me. I’m not blind. I could see what was developing between you and my wife. So, thanks to your amorous impulses, you’ve provided me with a perfect solution.’

Ben glanced back at Zara, tried to put reassurance in his eyes. She returned his gaze, but he doubted that she could even see him. She was transfixed with shock
and horror. They must have made her watch the slaughter of the three agents. She would have thought she was next.

‘So now, Major, it’s all up to you. You have a mission to complete. If you succeed, you can have her. If you fail, she dies in a very horrible way. You’re on the clock.’

‘You’re making a huge mistake, Harry. There’s still time to back out. Walk away and let her go now, and I won’t come after you.’

‘The mistake would be to underestimate me,’ Paxton said. ‘Any tricks from you, and Berg has a green light to do what he wants with her. Don’t even think about trying to find her. You wouldn’t. She could be on any one of a dozen vessels, anywhere in the world. You come within a mile of any of my fleet, and I’ll know about it.’

Ben stayed silent.

Paxton reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small object. He tossed it in the air, and Ben caught it. He held it in the palm of his hand and examined it. An inch-and-a-half long, brand name embossed in white on pale blue plastic. It was a computer memory stick.

‘Morgan’s research,’ Paxton said. ‘The file you sent me. Still encrypted, of course, but that’s your problem now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, Major, I suggest you’d better get moving. You have seven days, starting now, to find Morgan’s treasure.’

It seemed absurd. ‘Seven days?’

‘You heard me,’ Paxton replied. ‘One week. I’m not a patient man, Benedict. I’ve waited long enough for this. Call it a challenge. You’ve faced challenges before.’

Ben hung his head. ‘You’ve got me. I’ll do everything you want.’ As he said it, he was thinking about the Browning in his overnight bag, just yards outside the front door in the Mini. It was a delicate matter of timing and luck-but if he could somehow get to it, he could end this quickly. Kill Berg first, then Paxton, then get Zara far away from here.

Paxton was watching him keenly. ‘I know you so well, Benedict. You could be my son. I know the way you think. Everything that’s going through your mind. You’re already working out ways to get out of this. You think I’m just going to let you walk out of here now, while I’m still inside?’ He shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘You must take me for such an idiot.’ Still holding the SIG in his right hand, he reached inside his jacket with his left hand and came out holding a strange long-barrelled pistol.

Ben knew what it was. A CO
²
-propelled tranquilliser dart gun. His heart sank. No way out.

‘By the time you wake up, the three of us will be far away,’ Paxton said. ‘You’ll find everything you need on the desk. I wish you a very pleasant journey back to Egypt, and all the best of British luck.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll be keeping in touch for progress reports.
Bon voyage,
Benedict.’

He took his time aiming the dart gun. Ben tensed, waiting for it. He threw a last look at Zara, then the
pistol coughed in Paxton’s hand and there was a sharp pain as the dart pierced his neck.

The blackness came quickly. His last sensation was a strange feeling of weightlessness, and his face thudding into the blood-soaked carpet.

It could have been seconds later that he woke up, or it could have been years. He felt himself rise up from the black depths, break the surface and bob up towards consciousness, and flickered his eyes open to a world of blurs and echoes. Nausea hit him like a bad smell, and with it the sick memory of what had happened.

He was still lying on the floor, but somehow it felt different, harder, colder. His left arm was flung out in front of his face. His eyes fixed on the hands of his watch and for a few seconds they meant nothing to him. Then, as the synapses in his brain started firing again, he understood that it was almost midday and he’d been unconscious for nearly two hours.

That thought gave him the burst of energy to jerk himself upright. One elbow on the floor. Then one knee, and he was staggering to his feet, shaking his head to clear the grogginess. He pressed his hand to his neck, feeling the sharp pain where the dart had punctured him.

The room around him was the same, but it had
completely changed. He was standing on bare boards, just a few nails and bits of fluff around the edges of the walls to show where the carpet had been taken up. Of all the furniture, only the desk remained, and it had been stripped almost bare. The computer, cameras and surveillance equipment were gone. So was the makeshift table-and the dismembered bodies. There was no sign of what had happened there. Harry Paxton had covered his tracks one more time.

Ben could smell soap on his hands. They’d even sponged the blood from the carpet off him while he’d been unconscious.

The acrid stink of something burning outside drew him over to the window. The blind was drawn all the way down, and he yanked it open and looked out through the dusty glass at the back garden. It was overgrown and weedy, surrounded by a high wall. A big fire was burning itself out in the middle of the patchy grass, black smoke wisping upwards from the charred remnants of the rolled-up carpet and what was left of the furniture.

He turned away from the window and walked across to the desk. It wasn’t quite empty. Lying on its surface were two items.

The first was the computer memory stick that had been in his hand when he’d been knocked out. The second was a drawstring bag, tied at the neck. Ben weighed the bag in his hand, undid the knot and looked inside. There were two stacks of money in there, one larger than the other. He brought each one out in turn. Euros and Egyptian pounds-about a thousand of one
and ten thousand of the other. Paxton really had thought of everything.

As the seconds passed, Ben became acutely aware of his predicament. All he knew was that he had to do what Paxton wanted. There was no choice. Paxton was no ordinary kidnapper. He was an ex-SAS colonel, and he knew Ben’s mind. He’d trained him, educated him, watched him grow into the soldier he’d become. There was no way to outwit him. The colonel had Ben sewn up tight.

Seven days to find something that had been lost for thousands of years, and he didn’t even know where to start. He picked up the tiny memory stick, held it in the palm of his hand and slipped it into his pocket, feeling his car keys still in there. He hefted up the drawstring bag full of money, slung it over his shoulder and left the house.

The street was empty outside. Ben walked over to the Mini, bleeped the locks and dumped the money on the back seat next to his overnight bag. Right away, he could see that someone had gone through his things. He checked. The Browning was no longer there.

He drove slowly, mechanically, back to his flat, parked the car in his usual spot in the underground lot, killed the engine and sat there at the wheel for a long time, staring blankly through the windscreen at the bare concrete wall in front of him. He knew he couldn’t bring himself to go up to the flat. Everything in there would remind him too much of Zara. The imprint of her head on the pillow. The rumpled sheets. Her damp towel in the bathroom. The lingering scent
of her perfume. Her note, still lying there on the kitchen table.

He blamed himself.
Why did you let her go?

He got out of the car and walked. He didn’t know where he was going. Up the ramp to street level, and he took a right and wandered up the alley. In a few minutes he was ambling numbly along Boulevard Haussmann, only vaguely aware of the people around him and the traffic streaming by. He kept walking. Crossed the boulevard and almost got mown down by a bus. He barely noticed it as it lurched to a halt a metre from him, horn blaring. He made it to the other side of the street and kept putting one foot aimlessly in front of the other.

As he walked, he put his hand in his pocket and held the memory stick tight in his fist. Somewhere inside the tiny electronic device, locked away behind an impenetrable curtain of secret codes and passwords and God knew what kind of techno-gimmickry, might be everything he needed to know. But there was no way in, no way to access it. He’d already tried. It was a dead end.