The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (56 page)

Philippe
Aragon’s
residence near Brussels

That evening

It was late, and the two private bodyguards were sitting relaxed in armchairs at opposite ends of the large open-plan main reception area. They had nothing to do but leaf through back-issues of
The Economist
, astronomy magazines and architecture books while their charge came and went, filled out paperwork and made phone calls.

They weren’t complaining. Their two colleagues were out in the freezing cold patrolling the grounds, while they stayed inside the comfortable building soaking up the warmth from the solar heating system. In two more hours they’d have to put on their coats and exchange places with them, and they weren’t looking forward to that.

Philippe Aragon was feeling mentally drained after working all day. He had four major addresses to prepare, and stacks of files and reports to sift through. His PA, Adrien Lacan, had left him a whole pile of
letters to check and sign, and that alone had taken up a big piece of his day. He prepared a cup of organic cocoa with a pinch of cinnamon powder, said goodnight to the two bodyguards, and headed up the spiral staircase to his private quarters at the top of the house, carrying the steaming mug.

The electronic security system sealed him inside the reinforced door. He kicked off his shoes and slipped his feet into a pair of soft slippers, then walked through his private sitting room. Here at last he felt as though he was in his own tranquil space. He tried to forget about the armed men who were watching over him, sitting in his home and walking about his garden. The place was beginning to feel more and more like a fortress. It was mostly down to Colette’s insistence. Ever since the chalet episode she’d been edgy about safety. Maybe she was right, but it was tough living like this, looking over your shoulder all the time. He knew it was stressful for her as well, and he was glad that she’d been able to have a break and get over to Florida for her cousin’s wedding.

He pottered around his sitting room, sipping his cocoa, feeling mentally tired but restless. He sifted through a rack of CDs and slid out the Mischa Maisky recording of Bach’s suites for solo cello. The warm, woody tones of the cello breathed through the speakers and soothed him. He sat in a soft armchair and closed his eyes, listening to the music and tapping gently with his fingers against the armrests. But Philippe wasn’t a man who could switch off his active mind that easily. He jumped up. For a moment he thought about going
into his private study next door, firing up the computer and checking to see if Colette might have emailed him from the States. But he knew that once he was sitting behind the keyboard he’d only start tinkering with his speeches for next week again. It could wait till the morning.

Through the patio doors, moonlight cast long inviting shadows in the sunken rooftop garden. It was his favourite part of the house, and one of the designs he was most proud of. The garden was surrounded by a ring of stone pillars and filled with plants and shrubs. It smelled of fresh earth and greenery. A little fountain in the centre splashed and burbled softly under the big glass dome.

It was a beautiful starry night, clear and still. He wondered if he could see Saturn. He pulled a cardigan over his shirt and wandered out into the garden, enjoying the stillness and beauty. On the wall near the doorway was a panel with buttons, and he pressed one. With a subtle whoosh of hydraulics, a glass panel in the dome above him began to slide back. He went over to where he kept his Celestron CGE1400 refractor telescope permanently set up on an electronic mount. The cold night air flooded in through the open dome. He let the scope cool for a while to get a sharper image, then set the coordinates for Saturn. The telescope automatically whirred across and up, aiming through the gap in the roof. Philippe took off the lens cap and looked into the eyepiece. The ringed planet was a thrilling, surreal sight that had captivated him since childhood. He never stopped marvelling at it.

A sudden lancing pain at the base of his neck crippled him. He staggered away from the telescope, disorientated and stunned. A heavy kick to the back of his leg crumpled him to the floor, and he felt a knee between his shoulder-blades, crushing him to the cold flagstones. Hard steel pressed against the back of his head. A quiet, calm voice in his ear said, ‘Any noise, you die.’

Aragon was helpless. He tried to roll over on his side and look up. The man towering over him was dressed in black. Eyes looked at him impassively through the slits in the ski-mask. Moonlight glinted on the steel of the gun pointed at his head.

‘Who the hell
are
you?’ Aragon said in a daze. He lay back in the armchair, his chest heaving fast with panic and shock. The intruder had marched him into the house and made him sit. His first thought had been that the man was an assassin come to kill him. Why hadn’t he? The gun was back in its holster. The intruder reached up a black-gloved hand and pulled off the ski-mask. Aragon winced at the pain in his neck, and rubbed his shoulder. Why was the man letting him see his face?

Ben sat opposite him in a matching armchair. Between them, a polished pine coffee table shone in the dim light. ‘Someone who needs your help,’ he said.

Aragon was taken aback. ‘You break into my house and point a gun at me, then you say you need my help?’

‘That’s how it is.’

‘People usually approach my office for that kind of thing,’ Aragon said.

Ben smiled. Aragon had guts. He liked him. ‘When you hear what I have to say, you’ll understand why I couldn’t see you the normal way.’

Aragon’s brow creased. ‘I don’t know if I want to hear it.’

‘I don’t know if you have a choice,’ Ben said.

‘You won’t get away with this. There are security cameras watching this room right now.’

‘No, there aren’t,’ Ben said. ‘This apartment is the only bit of private space you have left. You relish it. You wouldn’t let them put cameras in here.’

‘How the hell did you get past the guards?’

‘Never mind that,’ Ben said. ‘Just listen to me. If you help me, I’ll help you in return.’

Aragon laughed. ‘You’ll help me? By doing what?’

‘By giving you the people who murdered Bazin.’

Aragon stopped laughing and went pale. ‘Roger?’

Ben nodded. ‘Your mentor. Your friend.’

Aragon was quiet for a few seconds. He gulped.

‘Roger wasn’t murdered,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He died in a car accident.’

‘Politicians are usually good liars. You’re not.’

‘I had it investigated,’ Aragon said. ‘They didn’t find anything. It was an accident.’

‘I don’t think you believe that,’ Ben said. ‘I know about the chalet explosion. Was that an accident too?’

‘How the hell do you know all this?’

‘I always research my targets,’ Ben said.

Aragon was sweating. He bit his tongue. ‘So what is it you want to tell me?’

Across the room was a drinks cabinet. Ben stood up and went over to it. The soles of his black combat boots were silent on the wooden floor. ‘You want a
drink?’ he asked. ‘Something stronger than that cocoa you were drinking before.’

Aragon thought about running.

‘Don’t try,’ Ben said. ‘You wouldn’t get halfway to the door.’

Aragon sighed and leaned back in the armchair. ‘Get me a glass of Armagnac.’

Ben took out two bottles and two cut-crystal glasses. He poured a double shot of brandy in one, and a triple shot of Aragon’s eighteen-year-old Islay malt in the other. He handed Aragon the brandy and sat down again. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘I’m going to start from the beginning.’ He sipped the Scotch. Opposite him, some of the colour had returned to the politician’s face. His glass was on the coffee table in front of him. He sat with his arms folded, his brow creased with doubt.

‘Last January a friend of mine witnessed something by chance,’ Ben said. ‘Something he shouldn’t have. He was murdered for it, but the evidence fell into someone else’s hands. His sister. You might have heard of her. Leigh Llewellyn, the opera singer.’

Aragon nodded. ‘I know who Leigh Llewellyn is.’

Ben went on. He told the whole thing in detail. It took a long time. Aragon listened carefully. ‘They killed her?’ he said quietly.

Ben nodded.

‘I haven’t heard anything in the news.’

‘You will,’ Ben said. ‘There’ll be another staged accident, or a disappearance.’

Aragon thought for a few moments. ‘If what you’re
saying is true,’ he said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. But you haven’t given me a shred of proof, and you still haven’t told me about Roger.’

‘I was coming to that. It was your friend’s murder that Oliver witnessed.’

‘You mentioned evidence.’

Ben nodded. ‘Oliver filmed the whole thing. It was recorded on a disc.’

‘And where is the disc?’

‘Destroyed,’ Ben said.

‘So you can’t show it to me? That’s very convenient.’

Ben pointed at the study door. ‘Can I use your computer?’

‘What for, if you’ve nothing to show me?’

Ben led Aragon into the dark study. The laptop on the desk fired up in seconds. ‘What are you doing?’ Aragon asked.

‘Checking my email,’ Ben said.

‘Your email. This is ridiculous.’

Ben ignored him. There was just one message in his webmail inbox. He didn’t have to read it-it was a message he’d sent to himself from Christa Flaig’s cyber-café.

At the time, it had been an afterthought, an insurance policy. He almost hadn’t bothered. Now he knew he couldn’t have done a better thing.

There was an attachment with the message. A big one. He clicked on it. The laptop was brand-new, fast and powerful, and it downloaded the file in under five seconds.

‘What’s this?’ Aragon asked.

‘Just watch.’

Aragon sat. Ben nudged the glass of brandy across the desk towards him. ‘Drink this. You’re going to need it.’ He moved away from the desk and sat on a chair in the corner, sipping his Scotch.

By the time the clip was over, Aragon’s glass was dry and his head was on the desk. Suddenly he lurched to his feet. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ he muttered. He staggered out of the study into a bathroom. Ben heard him retching into the toilet.

A minute later, Philippe Aragon emerged from the bathroom. His face was grey and his hair was plastered across his forehead. He wiped his chin with his sleeve. His fingers were trembling. ‘They killed him,’ he murmured. ‘They killed him, and then they rigged the car accident.’ His voice sounded weak and shaky.

‘I didn’t know who he was until today,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t recognize him before. I don’t follow politics. It’s bullshit.’ He paused. ‘But like I said, I always research my targets.’

‘You kidnap a lot of people, then?’

Ben smiled. ‘I’m on the other team. But the reconnaissance is the same whatever side you’re on. With you, it was easy. You’re all over the media. Before I left Vienna I paid a visit to the university library. There’s enough material on you in their political science section to write ten books. There was a picture of you with your family on a tennis court. Bazin was there. That’s when I recognized his face from the video-clip. There was a caption saying who he was.’

‘That was taken two years ago at Roger’s place in Geneva,’ Aragon said sadly.

‘Then there was another photo of you at his funeral,’ Ben said.
‘Europolitician pays last respects to his political mentor’

‘He was like a father to me,’ Aragon said. He sat heavily in a chair. ‘He tried to warn me that time.’

‘Cortina?’

Aragon nodded. ‘He phoned me just before it happened. I don’t know how he knew about it. I don’t know what he was mixed up in. I just know that if it hadn’t been for him, my family would be dead.’

Ben remembered what Kroll had said.
Men who cannot keep their tongues from wagging have them removed.

‘He was my best friend,’ Aragon continued. ‘And they murdered him as punishment for warning me.’

‘Join the club,’ Ben said. ‘They murdered mine the same day, because he saw them do it.’

Aragon looked up at him. ‘And now his sister,’ he said. He could see the expression on Ben’s face. ‘You loved her?’

Ben didn’t reply.

‘You know who did it?’

Ben nodded. ‘Who they are and where they are.’

‘I’ll have them arrested. One call.’

Ben shook his head. ‘There isn’t enough proof.’ He pointed at the computer. ‘You can’t make out the faces. And I want to get them all together in one place, round them up and catch them in the act. There’s only one way to do that.’

‘How?’

‘That’s where you come in,’ Ben said. ‘You’re going to have to trust me. You’ll have to do everything I say.’

Aragon paused, wavering, then let out a sigh. ‘I must be crazy. But all right. I trust you. What do you need me to do?’

‘There isn’t much time,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll have to make some long-distance calls.’

‘No problem.’

‘We’ll need to move immediately. You’ll have to drop everything you’re doing, right this moment.’

‘I can do that,’ Aragon said.

‘And it’s going to cost money. Maybe quite a bit.’

‘That’s easy,’ Aragon said. ‘Whatever it takes.’

‘How fast can you scramble a private jet?’

‘Fast,’ Aragon said.

‘It’s going to be dangerous,’ Ben said. ‘Very high risk. I can’t guarantee your safety.’

‘He was my friend,’ Aragon replied without hesitation.

‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘Then let’s get on with it.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to kidnap you.’

Outside Vienna

The next morning

He wondered if Glass’s choice of a meeting point was his idea of a joke.

A thick icy blanket of mist had descended over the lake. He could barely make out the frozen surface from here. He wiped an arc in the condensation on the window, his fingertips squeaking on the cold glass. He leaned back in the seat. There was no sign of them yet. Behind him, on the other side of the plywood partition, his cargo was silent and would be for a few more hours, until the effect of the dope wore off.

Ben didn’t have to wait long. He saw them coming from far away, the headlights of two big cars slicing through the mist. They turned off the road and bumped slowly across the mud and slush and patchy reeds towards where he was parked. As they emerged from the mist he could see them more clearly. Two Mercedes, black, identical. The cars pulled up either side of his van, blocking it in. The doors opened. Glass
and five others stepped out, their breath billowing in the cold.

Ben narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t see Clara in either car. He hadn’t fully expected to. He jerked the handle of the van door and went out to meet them. He tossed his cigarette in the snow, and it hissed. Glass stood with his arms folded, watching him. His face was flushed from the chill. ‘Well?’ he said. His voice sounded flat in the mist.

‘Well?’ Ben echoed.

Glass scowled. ‘You got him?’

‘I did what I agreed to do. Where’s Clara Kinski?’

Glass glanced over his shoulder and nodded at his men. For an instant Ben thought they were going to pop open the boot of one of the cars and bring her out. Instead, they stepped forward and grabbed his arms. He let them. They spun him round and slammed him against the side of the van. Hands frisked him, lifting his pistol. ‘Where is she?’ he repeated, keeping his voice calm and low.

One man held a gun to his head while two others opened up the back doors of the van. Glass peered inside.

Aragon was covered with a blanket. His wrists and ankles were bound with plastic cable-ties and there was a length of duct tape over his mouth. He was unconscious.

One of the men pulled a photo from his pocket. He studied the prisoner’s face long and hard, then nodded to Glass. ‘It’s him.’

A fourth man reached inside one of the cars and
brought out a leather case. He carried it to the van, unzipped it and took out a stethoscope. He listened to Aragon’s heartbeat and looked satisfied. ‘No problems.’

‘Good work,’ Glass said.

‘The girl,’ Ben said again, keeping his eyes on the side of the van.

Glass grinned. ‘You’ll get her when we decide.’

‘That wasn’t the arrangement,’ Ben said.

‘Fuck the arrangement. You don’t make the rules, you cocky bastard.’

‘So what next?’

Glass reached inside his coat and his fist came out clutching a 9mm. He stepped up to Ben and stuck the muzzle of the gun roughly under his chin. ‘If it was up to me,’ he said.

‘Except it’s not,’ Ben replied. ‘Is it?’

Glass flushed. ‘You’ll be contacted. There’ll be more jobs for you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said.

‘No? You’re working for us now.’ Glass pointed at the frozen lake. ‘Or maybe you’d rather take a swim?’ He chuckled. ‘You’ll do as you’re told. Lie low and wait for our call. Any funny business and the girl dies. Don’t forget.’

Ben looked him in the eye. ‘I never forget anything,’ he said.

Glass’s grin wavered. He holstered his pistol with a grunt and motioned to his men. They slammed the van doors. One of them climbed in the driver’s seat and started the engine. The rest of them walked back to the cars. The two Mercedes threw up mud and slush
as they accelerated away. The van followed, taking Philippe Aragon with them.

Ben stood and watched their taillights disappear into the mist. Silence fell over the lake again. He started walking, then took out a phone. He dialled a number. A voice answered.

‘We’re on,’ Ben said.

He turned off the phone and walked faster.

No going back now.
But what if he was wrong?