The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (30 page)

‘What is this base, a laboratory?’ Roberta asked.

‘From the outside it just looks like a big industrial facility, all sealed off behind wire and teeming with armed personnel,’ Daniel said. ‘I can only imagine what’s inside the place, to be so heavily guarded like that.’

‘So you actually went there,’ Ben said. ‘All the way to Indonesia.’

Daniel nodded again. ‘That’s right. It was Claudine’s idea. She was convinced it’d lead us to the next stage. Personally, I wasn’t so sure, but she just wouldn’t let it rest until I finally agreed. We took a flight to Jakarta last April. We knew the base was on one of the islands, but Guardini had only given us a few clues, passed on from Shelton.’

‘What clues?’ Roberta said.

‘Claudine had them all written down. She was the one who was leading the way, like always. I was just there as her helper. Anyway, it took over a week of travelling from island to island and a lot of very careful asking around. We were losing hope of finding a damn thing and just about to give up, when we eventually found the place. You have to cross over from Java to Sumatra to get there. It’s on the west coast of the island, near a place called Arta Beach.’

Ben said nothing, but just listened intently as he drove the Land Rover along the bouncy track through the forest.

‘Do you think you could find it again, Daniel?’ Roberta asked.

The Swede shrugged. ‘It’s remote, right out on its own. Nothing nearby but a few small towns and villages. But sure, I’m pretty certain I could find it, if you were willing to risk going there. Like I said, the bastards have got the place wrapped up tighter than a max-security prison. The two of us didn’t stand a chance of getting inside. Before we’d got two hundred yards from the fence, the alarm was raised and a jeep full of guys with guns came speeding out to intercept us. We just ran like hell and managed to get back to our car in time. I’m certain they’d have shot us if they’d caught us. I’ve never been so scared witless in my life. Until today,’ he added.

‘So after you came back from Indonesia,’ Ben said, ‘That’s when you told Claudine you wanted out?’

‘What was I supposed to do? It was just too dangerous. I said I was going to come back to Sweden and find someplace to lie low and try to forget about all this. I said she should do the same. I did everything I could to persuade her to give the whole thing up. But she wouldn’t have any of it. She insisted on going back to Paris and carrying on like before so she could expose what these people are doing. Pleaded with me to join her, but I was so damn scared. It turned into a big fight between us. She said I was a coward, I said she was a fool. I really tried, but in the end there was nothing I could do. She broke things off with me and went off on her own. I came back here. Every so often I’d drive to a town and email her, try to make her see sense. But it was no use. The thing I was most afraid of happened.’ Daniel shook his head forlornly. ‘Now they’ve found me too. I won’t be safe anywhere, ever again.’

Ben watched him for a moment in the rear-view mirror, then slipped the Colt he’d taken from McGrath out of his belt and passed it back to him. ‘Here, you can hang on to this if it makes you feel happier. You’re not much use to me if you keep running away whenever we get into a spot.’

‘Does that mean you’ll take me with you?’ Daniel hesitated, then reached out for the pistol and turned it over in his hands with fascination. ‘Oh, my God. I’ve never operated one of these before.’

‘There’s nothing to it,’ Ben said. ‘You’re cocked and locked. The safety catch is the little lever by your thumb. Flip it down and you’re ready to fire. There are still a few rounds left in the mag, plus the one up the spout.’

Daniel held the weapon tightly in his fist and a glow of determination seemed to spread over his face. He nodded solemnly to himself. ‘I want to make this right,’ he said. ‘We can do this. I know we can do this. With someone like you … I mean, the way you took those men down. I never saw anything like it – never met anyone like you before. You must be a soldier, right? Only some kind of special training could …’

‘I’m just a guy who was studying to be a priest,’ Ben said.

‘It’s a long story,’ Roberta whispered to Daniel.

‘Let me come with you,’ Daniel said after a beat. ‘Please. I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Take me to Indonesia on your plane and I’ll guide you to where the base is. We’ll find those bastards and put a stop to this thing once and for all. This time, I don’t care if I die trying.’

Chapter Forty-Three

New York City

Jack Quigley caught sight of his reflection in a plate glass window as he walked along the western end of Fulton Street in Manhattan’s financial district, and saw a thin, gaunt and barely recognisable figure looking back at him. He’d aged years in the month since Mandy’s funeral.

For most of that time, on compassionate leave from his job, he’d been vegetating in a state of near-catatonic despair in a motel outside Shepherdstown, staring into a glass of Jim Beam that was never full no matter how often he topped it up from a long line of bottles. Not caring about his career, not caring about his ruined home, not about anything except the loss of the woman he’d loved and wanted to spend the rest of his days with – and the certain knowledge that she’d been killed in a blast meant for him.

It was the lowest point he’d ever reached in his life and three times he’d reached for his .45 Kimber, fully intending to blow out his brains but always pulling back from the brink just before the hammer dropped.

But after all the pain, in the last days a new energy had begun to flow through Quigley’s system – just a trickle at first, gradually building up to a flood. He’d come through the darkness. The grief that had crippled him was now focused tight, like a laser, and he felt only rage. Burning, calculating rage. He didn’t know how exactly these murdering bastards had managed to induce a heart attack in Herbie Blumenthal, but he wasn’t a child. He knew these kinds of covert assassinations had been part of the toolkit of agencies like his from the first. And he was certain deep in his heart that the intruders who had rigged the gas explosion that had torn the townhouse apart had had a clear plan in mind: to eradicate the only witness to what the fat man might have been blabbing about at that diner table in D.C.

And Quigley wasn’t going to rest until he’d found out every last detail Blumenthal hadn’t had time to tell him. If what Blumenthal had said was right, the death of Mitch Shelton was somehow implicated too. No matter what or how long it took, he was going to hunt down and destroy the people behind it all. He had little else to live for now.

Yet the fear was clinging to him like a cold sweat. All the way from Virginia to New York City, Quigley had been watching his driver’s mirror for someone following him; he kept glancing over his shoulder now as he headed on foot towards the address he’d found on the business card in Blumenthal’s wallet. He was tense and strung-out, and not even the solid presence of the big Kimber automatic in its concealed-carry holster under his jacket made him feel any happier.

Emptying its magazine into the bastards who’d taken away his life: now
that
might make him feel happier. When he thought about it, it made his hands shake.
Get a handle on yourself
, he thought.
You were a Marine once. So act like one.

This was the place. He stopped walking and gazed up at the glass tower that loomed thirty floors above the street. In mirror-shiny letters six feet high above the entrance was the name Mandrake Holdings, Inc.

Quigley took out the business card and examined it once again. He’d spent half of last night online researching everything he could about Mandrake Holdings. Their range of business investments was as diverse as it was extensive: residential and industrial real estate all across the globe, zinc, tin and diamond mining, international cargo shipping and air freight, construction, energy. Quigley turned the card over and wondered once again, as he’d wondered a hundred times before now, about the name scrawled on the back.

‘Triton,’ he murmured aloud. What the hell was Triton? He’d found no reference on Mandrake Holdings’ website or any of the other sources he’d checked out. But the same feeling in his gut that had served him well throughout his years as a Special Investigator was telling him this had something to do with what Blumenthal had been trying to spill to him.

He put the card back in his pocket. Took a last glance up at the glass tower, mustered his resolve and pushed determinedly through the entrance.

The building’s trillion-dollar lobby was as impressive as its exterior. Marble floor, marble pillars, modern art and sculptures dotting the walls, busy executives scooting by like ants and a general hive-like buzz of activity all around. Quigley walked up to the desk, where an impossibly gorgeous receptionist in a sharp suit and a headset smiled up at him like a long-lost lover.

‘My name’s Jack Quigley. I’d like to speak to someone in authority regarding Triton,’ he said, hoping the name alone would mean something to her.

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific,’ the receptionist said politely. ‘What is it regarding?’

‘Just Triton. I’d rather speak to someone in management, please.’

She had him repeat it three more times. By now the perfect smile was gone without a trace and she was a completely different animal. She picked up a phone, punched an extension number with a long red nail, and without taking her eyes off him she relayed his message to whoever was on the other end. There was a long pause, then she put the phone down and coolly told Quigley to take a seat in the waiting area across the lobby. Someone would be down to speak to him presently.

Quigley sat, feeling restless and gripped every few moments by a desire to escape back out into the street. Maybe this whole thing, coming out all the way here to New York like this when he was still so raw, was a dumb mistake. Maybe he should know better. Maybe he was suffering from some kind of post-traumatic—

His self-doubts were interrupted by the arrival of two terse-looking men in suits. Forgettable faces, identical hairstyles. Not one man, he noticed, but two. His presence here must have made double the impression.

‘Mr Quigley?’ said one, while the other just watched and listened with folded arms. Quigley replied that he was, and showed them his Central Intelligence Agency ID card displaying his employee number, status and security clearance level. In the same impersonal tone the man asked him whether this concerned agency business. Quigley said no, this was a private matter.

‘If you’d be so good as to follow us, sir.’

‘That would be my pleasure,’ he said, mustering up his confidence.

The two men led him away from the lobby, down a series of twisting corridors and deep into a part of the building that was far less glitzy. They came to a security door. Before passing through it, they had him step through a scanner. He’d been hoping that wouldn’t happen.

The scanner beeped. The two men’s eyes fixed on him unflinchingly as he was asked if was carrying a weapon.

Quigley had no carry permit for New York, and knew full well that working for the CIA did not entitle him to go armed unless on official business, which he’d already confirmed this wasn’t. Moments later security personnel had arrived and he was relieved of his sidearm, which he gave up reluctantly.

Through the security doors now, which closed behind him with a resonant and ominous click. The building seemed to go on forever. ‘This is some fortress you have here,’ Quigley said. There was no reply. Finally, his taciturn hosts led him into a small neon-lit windowless square that contained only two plastic chairs and a plastic desk and looked more like an interrogation room than an office, and promptly vanished. Quigley was greeted by a third forgettable-faced man in a suit, burlier than the first two, who again asked to see his ID, spent a long time frowning over it as though he were about to declare it phoney, then asked him to state the nature of his business at Mandrake Holdings, Inc. Quigley reiterated the same painfully vague question he’d asked in the lobby about Triton.

The burly man’s face remained perfectly blank. ‘And what would that be?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Quigley replied.

The man shook his head. ‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’

All this way into the building just to be told that? Quigley didn’t buy it. ‘What about the Nemesis Program?’ he asked, pushing deeper. ‘Can you tell me anything about that?’

The man didn’t reply. His phone rang. He answered it without a word, listened expressionlessly, ended the call and said to Quigley, ‘Please wait here.’

The man left the office and shut the door. The lock clicked.

‘Hey!’ Quigley exclaimed, rising from his seat. ‘You can’t shut me in here.’

But that was exactly what they had done, and there was no option but to sit down again and wait.

Five minutes, ten. Quigley shifted about in the uncomfortable chair. He drummed his fingers on the desk. Glanced restlessly about him at the featureless room.

Then the lights went out. Quigley froze in the total darkness. A chill crept over him. He jumped to his feet, found his way back to the door and beat on it. ‘Hey! Let me out! You hear me? Let me out of here right now!’

The door suddenly burst open in his face, making him stagger back a step. The corridor outside was as dark as the room. All he saw of the three men who came striding in through the door were the glowing LEDs on their infrared goggles. Stunned, he felt strong hands grasp his arms. He was propelled backwards into the room and pinned down on the desk, struggling and wriggling against their grip. He managed to get an arm free and lashed out with a fist. A jolt of agony shot up his forearm as his knuckles split open on one of the men’s goggles.

‘What’s happening?’ he yelled. ‘Who are you people?’ His arm was being pinned back down and he couldn’t move. He felt the short, sharp jab of a needle stabbing into his arm and being quickly retracted. Jesus Christ, he’d been injected with something.