The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (31 page)

Quigley fought and yelled furiously, but a rising tide was quickly rushing up to smother him. After a few seconds his protests diminished, his voice became slurred and his muscles began to go limp. A few seconds after that, the men were able to let go of him and he lay helpless across the desk. He wasn’t quite unconscious yet, and could dimly sense himself being bundled up off the desk and out of the room. By the time they were halfway to the waiting vehicle, Quigley could sense nothing at all.

Chapter Forty-Four

‘It’s not a license to globetrot,’ Ruth had said. But as Ben drove back along the winding forest and mountain roads towards Jäkkwik, tracing possible routes across the world map inside his head, he was intensely aware of the scale of the journey that now lay before him, Roberta and their new travelling companion.

It was approaching mid-afternoon by the time they finally reached the sleepy little airfield where the Steiner ST-1 was sitting in the pale sunlight looking exactly as they’d left it. There had been no new arrivals. None of the motley collection of aircraft, even those that were in a fit state to fly, had moved an inch.

‘This is your plane?’ Daniel said, staring in amazement at the Steiner turboprop as he got out of the Land Rover.

‘No, we came in that one over there,’ Ben replied tersely, and pointed at the partially stripped Swedish military transport aircraft by the hangars. He was feeling battered and sore all over from his fight with McGrath, and a dark, brooding mood had settled over him on the long road. First to board the plane, he dumped their bags in the aisle, then walked down the narrow fuselage to the bathroom, where he splashed some water on his face to clean away the worst of the blood. Most of it wasn’t his own.

When he came out of the bathroom, he found that Daniel had already ensconced himself in one of the plush faux-leather armchairs, looking like a somewhat tattered and eccentric business-class passenger waiting for a hostess to bring him a glass of chilled Chablis. Ben ignored him and stepped into the cockpit, where Roberta was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and poring thoughtfully over a computer terminal built into one of the instrument panels.

‘We have quite some road ahead of us,’ she said, looking up as he squeezed into the pilot’s seat next to her. ‘Your sister would kill you if she knew what we were planning to inflict on her little plane.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Any thoughts on our itinerary?’

‘Some,’ he said, nodding. He reached across the controls and tapped a digital readout with his finger. ‘This tells us we still have just over eight hundred and seventy nautical miles’ worth of fuel. That’s about a thousand miles, enough to take us as far south as Berlin or thereabouts. We can be there by this evening, take on fuel and some more supplies, and stay the night before setting off again.’

Roberta nodded and poised her hands over the onboard computer’s keyboard, ready to run an online search. ‘We’re lucky to get any wi-fi reception up here at all,’ she muttered. ‘What should I be looking for?’

‘Small and out of the way places,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t just drop in out of the sky at a large airport. Besides, the bigger places will have Jet A fuel for your 747, but they might not be able to supply the 100LL avgas we need. There are always dozens of small airfields near any city that aren’t too crowded.’

‘Got it,’ Roberta said, and typed in the keywords ‘airfields near Berlin’. She paused a moment as she scanned the results that flashed up an instant later. ‘Okay. Here’s a place that looks like it could work for us. The Flugakademie Freihof, fifty k’s south of Berlin. It’s mainly a flying school, but small charter airlines and private planes use it as an airfield.’

‘That sounds possible,’ Ben agreed. At the tap of a key, the ST-1’s sophisticated flight computer automatically logged the latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude and runway length data, and pre-set the airfield’s radio frequency into the system.

Together the two of them spent the next hour figuring out the best route, while Roberta rapidly covered a notepad with details of distances, fuel range calculations, time zones and mile to nautical miles conversions. Point to point they were looking at an overall distance of more than seven thousand miles, divided up into legs by the number of times they’d have to refuel. From Germany they plotted a route that would carry them sixteen hundred miles south-eastwards to the limit of their fuel capacity to Tbilisi in Georgia, threading a careful path across the troubled zones of the North Caucasus and those autonomous or semi-autonomous Muslim republics such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia-Alania and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, which were kept on a tight intelligence and military leash by Moscow and which Ben was hesitant about overflying.

But it was an unstable and ever-volatile world out there, and there was no route that could take them where they needed to go without touching danger. From Georgia the flight path took them south across the mountainous plains of Iran and onwards to the relative sanctuary of Muscat in Oman, where the authorities would be so used to expensive private aircraft flying in and out that Ben was willing to take his chances with the regulation-heavy Sultanate regime there.

Then it would be the long trek across the ocean to the southern tip of India and another minor airfield Ben and Roberta searched out online, situated a few miles from the city of Bangalore. In Ben’s experience India was generally a pretty relaxed place, riddled with the kind of lazy corruption that tended to come in handy in situations like this; there was enough cash left to cross an official palm or two with silver if it helped them pass through unhindered.

From there, the fifth and final leg of the journey would take them across the Indian Ocean to Medan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. ‘Assuming we can find a safe place to leave the plane,’ Ben said, ‘we’re going to have to hire a vehicle so our friend back there can guide us the rest of the way to this secret base.’

‘So there we have it,’ Roberta said, looking at the finished itinerary and shaking her head in wonder. ‘Like I said, it’s one hell of a way. Based on a cruise speed of around two hundred eighty-five knots and allowing for rest stops and refuelling, I calculate it’s going to take us around forty-eight hours to get to Medan. I’m worried about you doing all that flying.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Ben said. ‘Just worry that this one lead we have is worth trekking halfway around the planet to check out. Because if doesn’t get us anywhere, it’s game over. This is our one shot.’

Chapter Forty-Five

Just over three hours after taking off from the airfield at Jäkkwik, the ST-1 was touching down at the Flugakademie Freihof near Berlin. Ben had radioed in some time before their arrival, and was expected by the ground crew who shepherded the taxiing aircraft towards the refuelling station. The reference number Ruth had given them was like a magic wand that breezed them through the formalities, allowed them to fill up on fuel with no questions asked and secured them their own private hangar space for the night. If the dishevelled and slightly battered appearance of the pilot made any impression on the airfield staff, they didn’t show it – they must already be familiar with Steiner Industries’ informal new ways, Ben supposed – and they even organised a car to take them to the nearest town, Luckenwalde.

Leaving Daniel to his own devices for a couple of hours, Ben and Roberta raided a local Edeka supermarket for fresh clothing, food and bottled water for the rest of the long journey ahead. It was in the car heading back to the airfield that Ben turned to her with his idea.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘You can travel anywhere from here without anyone knowing where you are.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I’m coming with you to Indonesia.’

‘We don’t know what we’re going into. I’d be a lot happier if you stayed behind. I can give you enough money to lie low for as long as you need.’

‘Lie low. You mean hide.’

‘Call it what you like. You’d be safe.’

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Shook her head vehemently. ‘Absolutely no way. It was me who got you into this, and a whole lot more besides. You think I’d bow out now and let you carry the can? Forget it, Ben. I’m seeing this through, no matter what.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I tried.’

Then it was back to the plane, to illegally spend the night on board. It was hot and airless inside the hangar, but Ben didn’t let it bother him. He was intent on grabbing as much rest as he could, ahead of the sleep deprivation he was going to suffer over the coming forty-eight or so hours.

Shortly after dawn the following morning, the Steiner ST-1 was back in the air and rapidly leaving Germany behind as they headed eastwards towards the Polish border on the first five-hour leg of the journey. Poland; Ukraine: the landscape unrolled beneath them, green pasture-land and small towns and villages, hilltop churches, lakes and forests. Skirting the northern coastline of the Black Sea, the sunlight dappling the waters; into Georgia, the landscape harsher, rockier. Soon afterwards, the plane was buffeted by high winds and a violent rainstorm that lashed the windows and shook the plane like a toy. Roberta joined Ben in the cockpit and sat anxiously by him as he wrestled with the controls.

They arrived in Tbilisi, just after 11 a.m. local time and only minutes behind schedule despite the heavy weather. The clouds had vanished and the sun shone brightly as they completed their second refuel on the Steiner Industries tab. It felt a little parasitical, like a mosquito drawing blood from its unsuspecting host. Ben consoled his pang of guilt by thinking of the billions the corporation pulled in from its activities all over the world. It would take more than a few drops of aviation fuel to bring his sister’s company down. ‘Anyway,’ he said to himself more than once as the high-pressure pumps filled his tanks, ‘I’ll pay her back.’

Just ninety minutes after touchdown, they were off again, this time setting their course southwards. Roberta stayed up front with Ben while Daniel slouched and slumbered in the back, never once offering to make himself useful.

Flying, flying. The constant hum of the engines and the hypnotic vibration through the floor and the seats would have lulled Ben to sleep if he hadn’t been so on edge about this long leg of the journey. Something else was on his mind, too.

‘What’s wrong?’ Roberta asked, seeing his expression as he stared fixedly ahead.

‘It’s not important.’

‘Tell me. Something’s bothering y—’ She broke off, suddenly remembering what day it was. ‘I get it. You and Brooke would’ve been getting married this afternoon.’

Ben said nothing.

‘You can still fix it with her,’ she said, affecting a cheery look. ‘You know that, right? It’s going to be okay. Really.’

Ben said nothing.

Armenia came and went; then it was into Iranian airspace where his personal concerns were overshadowed by the very real worry of crossing paths with trigger-happy military fighter jets. Just as troubling was the significant potential threat from the ground. It was a restless and perpetually inflamed situation down there, and with a thousand disparate militia groups going about armed to the nines and a good deal of illicit training of Syrian and other rebel forces going on in hidden camps across the country, it would only take a single sniper to object to their presence and a well-aimed .50-calibre anti-materiel round tearing through their flimsy unarmoured fuselage to bring them down.

But Ben’s anxiety proved unfounded. The long hours passed and they weren’t shot down or pursued, and he settled a little in the pilot’s seat as the vastness of the rocky landscape skimmed endlessly by beneath them. Roberta gazed out and marvelled at the rugged splendour of the Alpine-Himalayan mountain system that fringed the vast Iranian central plateau. ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ she breathed.

‘It looks pretty from up here,’ he said. ‘But you wouldn’t want to be down there. It’s not the most hospitable of environments.’

‘I guess you’d know all about that kind of thing. Don’t crash the plane, huh?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

Just as the craggy landscape seemed as if it might go on forever, the terrain began to turn into a flattening desert as they headed further south. Flying, flying: the burning sun casting a perfect shadow of the plane on the ground below them; the monotone of the engines taking on something of eternity. Ben was feeling the fatigue hit him acutely now after so many hours in the air. He kept having to blink. Only his frequent checks of their fuel readout were keeping him awake.

‘Talk to me,’ he said at last. It seemed a long time since he’d heard the sound of his own voice. It came out as a dry croak.

Roberta looked almost as worn out as he felt. ‘Okay,’ she said numbly. ‘What shall we talk about?’

‘Anything you like except Tesla and physics,’ he replied.

‘You want to hear a joke?’

‘You actually know any?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. Check this one out. What does a dyslexic insomniac agnostic do in bed at night?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

‘Lie there worrying about whether or not there’s a dog.’

A weak smile was all he could manage.

‘One to entertain your future congregation with,’ she said.

‘I’ll be sure to remember. Got any more?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Okay. Another religious one for you. Why did the scientist take a Higgs Boson into church? Because you can’t have Mass without it.’

Ben looked at her. ‘I thought we said no physics.’

She shrugged. ‘Those are all the jokes I know.’

‘Remind me to say a prayer for your sense of humour.’

‘Hey. That’s the thanks I get for keeping you awake?’

‘Speaking of barrels of laughs,’ Ben said, ‘what’s His Nibs up to back there?’

Roberta craned her neck and peered through the Perspex window in the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the passenger section. Daniel was slouched deep in a window seat with his head lolling on his shoulder. On the seat next to him were an empty crisp packet, two crushed drinks cans and several crumpled sandwich containers. ‘Well, it looks like he’s eaten his way through most of our provisions and now he’s asleep again.’