The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (22 page)

The chorus of horns was swelled by the wail of incoming sirens. Flashing lights appeared on the overpass. The thudding beat of a second helicopter, a police chopper, grew louder as the aircraft hovered as low as it could over the scene.

‘We need to get away from here fast,’ Roberta said.

Ben didn’t disagree. Wiping more blood from his face, he reached inside the car wreck for his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He grasped Roberta’s hand in his bloodstained fist and they began to run up the middle of the road towards the nearest houses a hundred yards away.

‘Watch out!’ Ben slithered to a halt and almost yanked Roberta off her feet as a car suddenly shot out of a side street and came dangerously close to running them down. Its brakes squealed as the driver did an emergency stop. The door flew open.

It was an ancient Citroën Dyane, brush-painted green with an all-over mural of psychedelic flowers. The battered hippy-mobile was a good dozen years older than the curly-haired, bearded guy who darted out in alarm from behind the wheel. He took in the scene of the devastated overpass and the crazy-looking couple in the middle of the road, and his mouth dropped open. ‘Fuck me. You two okay?’

‘Is this your car?’ Ben said, letting go of Roberta’s hand and striding up to him.

‘Did you know you’re bleeding, man? Your head’s like, fucking cracked open or something.’

‘I said, is this your car?’

The hippy nodded blankly. Ben took a step closer towards him. ‘How does it go? Is there anything wrong with it? Tell me, I need to know.’

The wail of sirens was building rapidly in the background. Ambulances were arriving on the scene. A second police chopper came pulsing overhead.

‘It’s fine, man. Stops and starts like it should. Almost, anyway. What do you want to know for?’

‘Because I’m buying it. How much?’ Ben said quickly.

‘I was thinking of selling it,’ the hippy replied with a bemused shrug. ‘Five hundred?’

There was no time to haggle over pennies. Ben counted off the notes and pressed them quickly into the guy’s hand. ‘Let me get my stuff,’ the hippy said, grabbing a satchel and a few things from the back. He gazed in astonishment at the money in his hand while Ben and Roberta piled into what had, until just seconds ago, been his car.

Ben gunned the raspy twin-cylinder engine, pulled a tight turn in the road and the Dyane sped off in a cloud of blue smoke.

Chapter Thirty-One

‘Let me see that cut,’ Roberta said as Ben pushed the little car as fast as it would go through the backstreets, intent on putting as much distance between them and the scene of destruction as possible. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and tentatively mopped the blood away from the laceration just under his hairline. ‘I think it looks worse than it is,’ she said.

‘I’ll take care of it later,’ Ben said. He threw the Dyane into a corner, making it lean perilously over on its flimsy suspension, then floored the pedal without mercy to milk as much power as possible out of the feeble engine. Nothing happened for a moment, then the Dyane coughed and whined in protest as the revs reluctantly climbed. To make this underpowered tin can progress at any speed, momentum was everything. Every few seconds he stole a glance at the rear-view mirror in case there might be more pursuers after them.

None appeared. They seemed to have got away – for now. After a couple of miles he relaxed and began to slow down a little, not wanting to draw more unwanted attention from the cops.

Roberta patted the dash. ‘Well, you wanted to buy a car. You got your wish.’

‘Not exactly what I had in mind,’ he said, torturing the gearbox for another approaching bend.

‘It’s cute. Kind of reminds me of my old 2CV.’

‘That’s the problem.’

Nonetheless, the old banger managed to get them out of Paris, not perfectly inconspicuously with its garish paint-job, but unnoticed at least by the people they were trying to avoid; it also had the decency not to self-destruct as Ben thrashed it pitilessly north-westwards along the N13. The engine note settled into a steady howl that made conversation difficult. Roberta slumped deeper into her seat, and fell asleep with her head against the window.

After a couple of hours on the road, they stopped for fuel at a motorway service station, where Ben managed to clean himself up, wash most of the dried blood out of his hair and change his stained T-shirt for the last fresh one in his bag. They bought some pre-packed sandwiches and bottled water at a shop within the complex and ate a hurried lunch in the car. Then, not wanting to leave Roberta on her own too long in case someone somehow caught up with them again, Ben drove about hunting for a payphone so that he could make the necessary arrangements for the next leg of their journey. Public phones were getting hard to find these days, which wasn’t so convenient for people on the run whose every movement could be tracked via their mobile.

‘It’s all part of the same global conspiracy,’ Roberta said darkly. ‘They want to know exactly what everyone’s doing, all the time. Coin-operated phones are just about the last real freedom of telecommunication we have left. They won’t be around much longer, rest assured.’

After two circuits of the services complex, they finally discovered the graffiti-covered kiosk hiding behind a recycling bank. Freedom was in a sorry-looking state, but the phone still had a dial tone. Ben fed in a handful of coins and dialled Ruth’s mobile number.

His sister didn’t sound too enamoured with him. ‘What do you mean, you’re calling from a motorway services near Lisieux? Where’s my plane?’

‘It’s safe,’ he replied, fervently praying that was true. ‘Listen, that’s what I’m calling about. I need clearance to land in Sweden later today.’

‘Sweden!’

‘I haven’t got time to go into it, Ruth. We have to get to a place near somewhere called Jäkkwik.’ He spelled it. ‘If you can find me a small airfield not too far away …’

‘You’ll be grateful as long as you live,’ she finished for him tersely. ‘If you live that long, bro. Tell me: by “
we
need to get” do you mean to say you’re still gallivanting around with that woman?’

‘I told you she’s just a friend. That’s the truth. And we’re not gallivanting.’

‘Hmm. Yeah. A friend in need. Brooke needs you more. Thought about her lately?’

‘I haven’t stopped thinking about her,’ Ben said, and meant it.

‘Really. I spent the whole of yesterday with her. I’ve been on the phone to her for an hour this morning. She can’t stop crying. She’s devastated, Ben. You hear me? You broke her heart. You just fucking
crushed
her.’

Ben gripped the receiver tightly and fought the urge to smash it to pieces in grief and rage against the steel casing of the phone box. ‘Thanks for taking care of her,’ he said with heartfelt sincerity. ‘If you talk to her again, tell her I love her, okay?’

‘I’d say that’s for you to tell her, not me.’

‘I will, in person, as soon as I get back.’

‘I don’t know if she’ll even want to see you,’ Ruth said. ‘To be honest, right now, neither do I much. If you weren’t my brother, I swear I wouldn’t be having much to do with you. I hope you realise the damage you’ve done.’

‘I’ll make it up to her,’ Ben said, controlling his voice. ‘But now I need you to do this for me. There isn’t a lot of time.’

There was a long pause. Then Ruth sighed and said, ‘All right, give me your number there. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Well?’ Roberta said as he put the phone down. She saw the look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘We need to wait. You stay in the car.’

Ben paced up and down under a dark cloud as the next ten minutes stretched painfully into what felt like an hour. Eventually, the pay phone rang. He snatched it up quickly.

Ruth didn’t waste time on ceremony. ‘Are we talking about the same Jäkkwik that’s right up in the wilds of Lapland, nearly five hundred miles north of Stockholm? I had to search for it on the map. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but forests and mountains.’

‘It’s the only Jäkkwik I could find,’ Ben confirmed.

‘I won’t even ask what you want to go there for. Anyway, I had to twist a couple of arms to get this done so fast, but you have your clearance. The nearest landing point I could locate was a tiny airfield twenty kilometres away at a place called … got a pen and paper?’ Ruth spelled out the name and gave him the coordinates to get there. ‘I don’t think it gets a lot of traffic. The Swedish military use it from time to time for exercises, so there should be plenty of landing space for you, okay? Now, you’re looking at over twelve hundred nautical miles distance, so by my reckoning you’re going to need fuel soon after Copenhagen. There’s a small airport called Thisted in northern Denmark where private flights can come and go unscheduled. You can refuel on the Steiner Industries tab there. Just give them this reference number. It’ll basically allow you to top up on the company account anywhere in the world. That’s not a license to globetrot, though, okay? I’ll give you the coordinates for Thisted airport too. Ready?’

Ben noted them down. ‘Got it.’

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re up to. Just don’t make me regret that I trusted you with my plane.’

‘Thanks, Ruth. I mean it.’

‘I don’t want your thanks. You’re an asshole, Ben. Just know that I feel like a real shit for helping you.’ And Ruth ended the call.

With his heart in his boots, Ben returned to the car and slumped behind the wheel. Roberta seemed to sense that he didn’t feel like talking. The journey resumed. Ben channelled his pent-up rage by taking it out on the poor little Citroën, for which this was destined to be a last voyage. By the time they reached the airstrip near Carentan a little over ninety minutes later, the engine was making terminal-sounding noises, smoke was streaming out from under the bonnet and the temperature gauge was deep in the red.

‘You’re a wrecker, Ben Hope,’ Roberta said, gazing sadly at the little car. ‘If you don’t smash them up, you’ll grind them down.’

‘It’s true,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Destruction. It’s the one thing I’m good at.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, realising how deeply her words had cut him. ‘I guess saying the wrong thing is what
I
do best, huh?’ But he didn’t hear her as he walked up to the airstrip’s mesh fence. To his relief, the Steiner ST-1 turboprop hadn’t been stripped to a skeleton by local scrap thieves, and was sitting unmolested and gleaming in the sun exactly where he’d left it.

Roberta appeared at his side. ‘So, to Sweden?’ she said.

He nodded. ‘To Sweden.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Washington D.C.

Thirty-one days earlier

When Jack Quigley walked into the crowded diner just before half past seven, he understood right away why the mysterious contact calling himself Steve Carlisle had chosen this rendezvous spot. The heaving establishment, all decked out in a nightmare of chrome and neon and sporting gaudy murals of James Dean, Elvis, Monroe and other fifties’ idols, was more public than Disneyland and the least likely place imaginable for a covert assassination plot.

He waded through the throng and managed to secure a table near the window. He sat down and looked around him, wondering if Carlisle was already here, but all he could see were families, groups of friends, couples. This was probably bullshit, some idiot’s idea of a practical joke. After less than a minute he was already itching to leave, and he was about to get up when the waiter appeared at his table, thickset and gruff with a badge on his uniform that said ‘No Whining’. Quigley glowered at him for a moment, then relented and ordered a quarter-pounder burger with fries that he didn’t really want, together with a soda water.
Twenty minutes
, he told himself.
Twenty minutes and I’m out of here.

The burger arrived within the first five, looking like a flattened turd in a bun. Quigley didn’t touch it and just sipped the soda water. Ten more minutes passed before a fat man in a rumpled suit with greying hair and a file under his arm bustled in through the glass doors and glanced nervously around the crowded room. His darting gaze settled on Quigley and he squeezed his bulk through the tables to get to him.

‘Mr Carlisle,’ Quigley said, not getting up. ‘And before you ask, no, I wasn’t followed.’

Carlisle settled his large frame into the seat opposite. He laid his file on the table. ‘Sure about that?’ he said, glancing nervously out of the window at the people and cars passing in the street. ‘It can be just about impossible to tell.’

Quigley caught a whiff of cheap booze off the man’s breath. ‘We’re alone,’ he assured him. ‘You’ve got my word on it. I don’t bullshit people. All I ask in return is that they don’t bullshit me.’

‘This is one hundred per cent on the level, I promise you. Everything I’m about to tell you, I can verify.’

Quigley nodded at the unopened file. ‘That the proof in there?’

‘Like I’d just walk around with it.’

‘Okay. I’ve no desire to hang around this place any longer than I have to, so let’s get into it. Basics first. Your real name would be a good start.’

Before Carlisle could answer, the forbidding waiter interrupted them with his notebook poised. Carlisle ordered corned beef hash and cabbage and a large Bud. Once they were alone again, he leaned his mass across the table and said in a confidential whisper, ‘Herbie Blumenthal. That’s my real name.’ He shoved the file towards Quigley. ‘My ID and credentials are all in here. Take a look. I’m kosher, honest to God.’ He let out a belch. ‘Shit. Sorry about that. It’s not me.’ He grabbed his beer and swilled a third of it down in a single swallow.

Quigley slipped on a pair of reading glasses that he hated wearing, and sifted quickly through the file’s contents. Forty-eight years of age, Blumenthal was an engineer by profession, had earned his degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and done postgrad work in System Design at MIT before being recruited to the Department of Defense’s DARPA agency eleven years ago.

‘There’s no mention here of you working for anything called Nemesis,’ Quigley said, scanning the text.